Anna could only stare at the spider dangling in front of her face. And then—it—she?—chuckled. She had a lovely voice, deep and kind, and Anna relaxed a very little.

“That is a good story. You may go now,” the spider said. “I shall undertake to teach my granddaughter.”

“Thank you, Grandmother,” chorused all three of the Little People. And then they slipped into the reeds beside the crick, and were gone.

“Look at me, child,” the spider ordered. “Put your fear aside. Try to imagine that you have never seen a spider before and look at me. Look at me as if I were one of Jolene’s pretty baubles. Imagine that I am a beautiful brooch.”

Somehow the spider seemed to grow until she filled Anna’s entire range of vision . . . and the first thing that she realized was how delicate and elegant the legs were, each one tipped with a neat little claw. Then, as her mind calmed, she actually paid attention to the beautiful red and black patterns on Grandmother Spider’s body, and lastly, she gazed into the four black, black eyes of Grandmother Spider, two big and two little. They were like four beautiful black beads, and even though they looked nothing at all like human eyes, Anna sensed that there was kindness behind them. And Grandmother Spider gazed back at her, and said, “Now, you see.”

And she did. The spider was a beautiful, elegant creature, and nothing to be afraid of. In fact, there was much to be grateful to her for, because she ate insects that really could bring harm to people in the form of sickness.

She blinked, and the spider no longer filled her eyes; she held out her hand, no longer full of fear, and the spider spun down her strand of silk and landed gently on the back of it, her touch lighter than a feather.

“I will teach you first about Bear,” Grandmother Spider said. “For as the Little People told you, Bear is the spirit that you are most likely to need if you are in danger. Bear can run, and swim, and climb, and fight; Bear is fearless when that is called for, but does not lose himself in rage and will run when that is needed. And Bear is near to the Cherokee peoples. This is how you call Bear, and how you summon the lesser bears.”

With Jolene looking on in approval, Grandmother Spider taught her about Bear, and Deer, and Badger, and Panther. “And that is enough for today,” she concluded. And that was when Anna realized that they had been sitting there all afternoon, it was getting late, and she hadn’t actually gathered any ingredients for potions—

As Grandmother Spider reeled herself back up into the tree above, Anna looked frantically for her basket.

And that was when she saw the little green lizards; she had been listening so hard to Grandmother Spider, and the lizards were so quiet, that she hadn’t even noticed them until that moment.