Coby sniffed.

“Wouldn’t the shield keep the cat in?” Anna wanted to know. “The way it does the hens?”

Coby laughed. “Ah, lass, thee don’t know cats, does thee?”

“Reckon not,” she admitted. “We ain’t niver had one.” On account of we niver had ’nuff food thet there’d be mice fer a cat t’et.

The night filled with sound. Crickets by the hundred, bullfrogs, small frogs, and the little green tree frogs. The skeeters came around, but Aunt Jinny made a glyph that kept them off, and taught it to Anna, so the skeeters were frustrated and the bats were pleased that the skeeters were now hovering, frustrated, above their targets. That made a little cloud of prey for them, and they sometimes swooped close enough to Anna that she felt the wind from their wings on their way out of a dive.

With the moon rising above the garden, and everything so pretty and peaceful, Anna couldn’t help but think it would be even nicer if Josh was up here on the porch with her, instead of Aunt Jinny. Maybe sitting close, and holding her hand . . .

“Aunt Jinny,” she said finally. “Did y’all know Josh Holcroft’s got th’ Glory?”

She heard her aunt’s nightdress rustle a little as Jinny turned her head. “I did not!” her aunt exclaimed. “How do y’all know thet?”

“When we went t’ Ducktown,” Anna explained, “there was a piskie an’ a liddle mud-man in th’ wagon-bed. They wanted ter see the liddle angel baby. Josh seed ’em.”

“Huh,” Jinny said. “Reckon he got much?”

“Dunno, but iffen he did, wouldn’t Elder Raven know it an’ tell y’all?” Anna pointed out.

“Reckon yore right.” Jinny seemed to be pondering that for quite some time. “Y’all oughter see how much of th’ Glory he got,” her aunt added, finally. “An’ y’all c’n larn him what I done larned y’all. Jolene’s got one thang right; anyone with th’ Glory’s gotta be taught.”

Anna decided to ask another question.

“Aunt Jinny, what’s them liddle rock and stone critters?”

“Jest Earth Elementals. My Granny said they could be liddle or big, but I’d likely niver see a big ’un, since th’ bigger they gets, the less they wants t’ be anywhere near people.”

“They also become sleepy, lass,” Coby said. “Sleepy enough that they buries themselves into th’ earth and are mortal hard to rouse.”

“Innerestin’.” Her aunt chuckled. “See now, thet’s what happens when I get a young’un about what arsts questions. I larns thin’s too.”

Her aunt seemed content to sit there for the next hour or more, but Anna soon found herself yawning. There was only so much fantasizing about Josh being here beside her that she could manage, particularly with the Hob and her aunt plain as plain in the moonlight. So finally she excused herself, picked up her things, and went back into the cabin to put them away safely and climb the ladder into her bed.

But she did wonder why her aunt had gone so quiet on learning that Josh had the Glory too.