Aunt Jinny looked up at that. “That so! Wall, good. What I cain’t larn y’all, Granny Spider shore can. Mind yore manners with her, she ain’t t’be trifled with.”

Which was almost exactly the same thing that Aunt Jinny had said about Jolene . . .

“Granny Spider ain’t ’xactly a Earth Spirit, is she?” Anna hazarded.

“Not ’xactly,” her aunt agreed. “Y’all don’ call or summon her, y’all arst perlite, an’ iffen she don’t come, say thenkee anyway. She’s what my Granpappy called a Great Elemental. Did she tell y’all ’bout Bear? Not just any ol’ bear, but Bear?”

Anna nodded.

“Bear, an’ Wolf, an’ Fox, an’ all o’ them, they’s Great Elementals too, by Granpappy’s reckonin’. Critters what might he’p y’all, an’ might not. An’ don’t go gettin’ hoity toity an’ thinkin’ y’all c’n boss ’em around, or—well iffen y’all’s lucky y’all might get a mighty set-down an’ th’ wust day of yore life, an’ iffen y’all ain’t lucky, they might be a-pickin’ pieces of y’all outen th’ crick.” Aunt Jinny finished her tea and picked up her dishes to take them to the sink. “I ain’t niver seed nobody what was thet stupid, so—” She shrugged.

“Yes’m,” Anna agreed, taking her own dishes to the sink. As usual, Aunt Jinny washed, and Anna dried.

Aunt Jinny immediately set to work sorting and bundling Anna’s harvest and hanging it to dry. Since her aunt didn’t give her any directions, Anna got the cut-out pieces for the corset cover and set to work on them on the front porch, with her Great-Granpappy’s book open on her knee. The sun still hung over the mountains to the west, and the light was the same color as the Glory. The hens were still out, but gathered up at the henhouse, ready to be shut in for the night, scratching away at the feed Anna had scattered up there for them. A few birds twittered sleepily under the eaves where they had a nest, and swallows swooped and darted everywhere, catching the ’skeeters that were injudicious enough to come out early. In a little more time, they’d be joined by, then replaced by, the bats.

She was impatient to get to the part where Pavel and Sally arrived here, and first met Eagle Sight, and made their home—but she got the sense that it would be a much better idea if she kept reading steadily and didn’t skip ahead. Reckon maybe the reason Aunt Jinny don’t know some things is because she just skipped around, and didn’t read the whole book. Since this book and the receipt book were the only two books in the entire household, she was beginning to think that her aunt was one of those people who just didn’t like reading.

It was a good thing that she did just that, too, because it was in the parts about the sea voyage that Pavel revealed the trick of scrying someone that you didn’t personally know.

You used a map.