And poor Josh . . . would he have been working away over his statue, hoping she would be able to get away and join him, not knowing Aunt Jinny had forbidden her to leave? He’d have understood, of course. In fact, he probably had already thought of all that. But he might have been hoping anyway.

If only there was a way to send Josh messages!

Wait— “Aunt Jinny?” she said, as she climbed down from the stove. “Would one-a them Elemental critters take a note t’Josh fer me?”

Aunt Jinny looked taken aback, as if the thought had never occurred to her. “Wall . . . prolly,” she admitted. “I ain’t niver arst one.”

She didn’t wait for permission; she gathered magic and sent out a call for a piskie. And almost immediately, one appeared out from underneath Aunt Jinny’s bed. It was completely dry. Had it been there all along?

Never mind that. “Iffen I give y’all a thing fer Josh, the feller down the Holler what carves stones, c’n y’all give it to him, an’ mebbe bring me back another from him?” She didn’t want to confuse it by referring to a “note,” which it might not understand, so she just said “a thing.”

The little critter cocked its head to the side, then nodded. Aunt Jinny sighed and rolled her eyes, but rummaged for a scrap of the paper that had been wrapped around their Ducktown purchases, and gave her a stub of a pencil.

Storm 2 bad, she wrote. Sorry. Sad!

She folded it tight and handed it to the critter, which ran away under the bed and did not return.

“Eat,” Jinny ordered, as she stared at the empty floor. “Thang ain’t gonna give it to him till he’s alone. No point in y’all starvin’ whiles y’all wait.”

She didn’t feel as if she could eat, but with Jinny staring at her as if her aunt was willing her to eat, she picked up the spoon and made an attempt, all the while keeping her gaze fixed on that spot under the bed where the piskie had gone.

They finished dinner and had cleaned the dishes when it finally trotted out from beneath the bed again. When she saw it was carrying a folded paper, it was all she could do not to grab the note and the critter together in her eagerness to see what it said. It held the bit of paper up to her, and she took it, with a nod of thanks. It giggled and rocked back on its heels.

Figgered. Sad 2. Pa and Ma said all right.

For a moment she couldn’t make out what that last sentence could mean. Then it suddenly struck her. He’d asked Maddie and Matt if he could court her, and they had said yes!

Wordlessly she held the scrap out to her aunt, who scrutinized it, and smiled and shrugged. “Like I tol’ y’all, it’s gonna be a long courtship. Plenny of time fer one or both of y’all t’figger out thet mebbe marryin’ th’ fust person near yore age that y’all lay eyes on what ain’t yore relative ain’t the best ideer.”