Well, Pavel’s words eventually worked their own sort of enchantment on her, and she fell back into the story.

On reaching new shores, Pavel and Sally found that they were by no means the only Elemental Masters in the new United States.

Initially, they disembarked in New York City, but neither of them could bear the place. In fact, it had the same effect on them that Soddy had on Anna, and having to shield all the time nearly wore them away to nothing in the course of a single week. They could have been in a bad situation, but they were saved by Pavel’s scrying; he spoke to his father-in-law, who spoke to folk in London, who got them the name and address of a Fire Master, and told him they were coming and in need of help.

The Fire Master, like so many Masters Pavel had met on his travels, was prosperous—though it was by his own efforts, rather than inherited wealth. It was beginning to look to Anna as if being able to practice magic gave you an edge on prosperity.

When she paused to think about that, it all began to make sense. If you were an Earth Magician, you could virtually guarantee the success of your crops and animals. Presumably Fire, Water, and Air brought with them their own means of making you prosperous, or even rich, as long as you were willing to work at it.

She returned to the story of the Fire Master that Pavel and Sally took shelter with. Fortunately, he lived in a rural area outside the city limits, and he willingly had them as guests, which took them out of the poisonous atmosphere of the city itself. Having begun as a blacksmith’s apprentice, he now was the owner of his own ironworks, and unlike the more altruistic of his European brethren, he expected to get value for value given when he offered to host them and help them on their way.

I soon learned why “Yankee trader” signifies the height of sharp dealing, Pavel wrote. The Master got full value out of both of them: a fully stocked cabinet of treatments and medicines from Sally, and expert supervision of some stonework and installation of a “Rooshan stove” in his own home from Pavel. Only when these conditions had been satisifed was he willing to pass them to a coastal trading vessel captained by a Water Magician he knew.

He advised that we sail further south, Pavel wrote. He told us that we would not find land “for the taking” until we got further south and then into the interior. I did not know what “land for the taking” meant at that time, and naively thought it meant there was open wilderness that belonged to no man. But in his defense, perhaps that was his impression too. I certainly saw nothing at the time, nor have since, to think he was trying to deceive us.

So sail south they did, as slowly as if they had been walking, for the trader stopped at every tiny settlement of more than a few houses, and the further south they got, the more often he was trading his goods for tobacco, which he compressed into tight bales with a machine he had on board for the purpose, and stowed in the emptying hold. Pavel was fascinated by this process; the trader bought the loose, dried tobacco from small farmers once they had cured it, loaded it into this ingenious device, which used a screw, like a printing press, to create compact bales, then weighed the resulting bales and paid the farmers by the pound. None of these farmers raised enough tobacco on their own to bother with owning such a thing, but the money they got from their small crops was enough to make a real difference in their lives. Not unlike Aunt Jinny and her potions.