“C’n y’all larn me what them liddle Earth critters that y’all know are? An’ mebbe how t’call ’em?” she countered. “All I knowed so far is what Granny Spider showed me. Please?”

Aunt Jinny laughed. “They’s a powerful lot o’ ’em!” she exclaimed. “But y’all don’ need t’call each one separate, gen’rally, lessen y’all wants a particular one. Y’all jest call. Like this—”

Anna sat down on the stool, putting aside the corset cover with the book on top of it and the needle-book inside of the front cover. Aunt Jinny sat down in her chair on the porch. As she watched, Jinny sketched a glowing glyph in the air between them, then let the sign dissolve into little motes of Glory and drift off. “Now, iffen they’s any critters close by, they’ll know I’d admire t’see ’em—wall, see, there they is—” She pointed at the edge of the porch, and there were some little faces peering up at them. “Now, that there’s what m’Granny called a gnome.” This was a little wizened old man with an odd red cap that flopped over to one side, and a beard. “That one’s a piskie.” This was one of the creatures that seemed to be made out of leaves and twigs. “That one’s a hob. His name’s Coby. Me’n him’s old friends. He come with my Granny, an’—wall, tell ’er, Coby, y’all c’n speak fer yore own self.”

This was another wizened little old man, without a cap, who hopped up on the porch and looked up at Anna from beneath enormous, shaggy eyebrows.

“I be a Hob, right enow,” he said, in an accent so strange she had trouble understanding him. “And Hobs be crathurs what tends to housen, mostly. Thy Great-Grandam’s Papa asked me t’come along of her and see to her house. But thy Great-Grandsire had yon Domovoy wi’ ’im, sure he did, an’ there weren’t no room for two housen-minders in th’ same house. So, bein’ as the Domovoy don’t tend t’farmyards, an’ Hobs do, I do be tendin’ t’yard.”

“This here’s why I weren’t worrit iffen I got sick or hurt,” her aunt said with a sly smile. “Domovoy’d tend th’ house, Coby here’d put the hens up an’ let ’em out, muck th’ pigs and feed ’em till I got better. Not that I ever needed ’em t’ do’it, but they was there iffen I needed ’em.”

“Don’t thee be a-thinkin’ canst be slatternly,” Coby said sternly. “Hob won’t stay! Nor will Domovoy!”

But Anna had something else in mind than wondering why she and her aunt were doing all their own chores if the Hob and the Domovoy would tend the house and yard—she was wondering why her aunt didn’t rely on them so they could go to church on a Sunday. Surely these creatures would take care of things for a good reason like that!

It was surely too dark for her aunt to read her expression, but Jinny must have known her well enough to figure out what she was thinking.