Niver get a-twixt Jolene an’ what she wants.

“She comes by here irregular, t’see what I’m a-workin’ on,” Josh replied to her unspoken questions. “Been doin’ it since I started. Reckon she saw somethin’ I carved fer sale in th’ mercantile a while back an’ arst who done it. She do know her stone!” His voice took on a brightness that made Anna’s heart twist a little with jealousy. “She knew right well how I could git a better finish on granite an’ marble, an’ she’s th’ one what tol’ me where t’ git the par-ti-cu-lar sorta sand I use t’polish with now.”

Is that something she knows because it’s an Earth-Magic thing? Anna wondered. But why wouldn’t Aunt Jinny know that sort of stuff?

The answer was obvious in the next moment. Because Jinny don’t care ’bout it. She cares about plants an’ growing an’ healing.

But Josh had fallen silent again, in a way that suggested he wasn’t all that interested in talking about Jolene. Not in the “I’m avoiding the subject” way, but in the “I’d rather concentrate on what I’m doing” way. Anna took the hint and fell silent.

Aunt Jinny had suggested—in that way that made it an order rather than a suggestion—that if she was going to be spending her afternoons down in Josh’s workshop, she really ought to be doing more than just watching Josh work, gazing on him like a devoted hound. So she picked up straw and the narrow plait she had begun a few days ago, with an eye to sewing the straw into another sun hat. She wanted a hat with a broader brim than the hat she’d arrived with. That hat was scarcely more than a narrow-brimmed bonnet. And after all the money Aunt Jinny had spent on her, she felt that the only way she was going to get one was to make it.

Besides—men and women both used the same kind of wide-brimmed straw hats. If this one turned out, she could make another, and it would be lovely to have something useful to give to Josh.

She hoped that keeping her fingers busy would get her mind off Jolene’s sudden interest in Josh. It didn’t work. All she could think about was that time in Ducktown, when she’d seen for herself how the fellers all lit up when they saw Jolene.

. . . and when I lost sight of her in Ducktown, Jolene was a-headin’ around thet corner Billie McDaran come from!

Billie McDaran . . .

Now Billie McDaran was no spirit, that much she was certain of. Where Jolene seemed utterly indifferent to, or was at least amused by, the evidence that she was very attractive to every man that saw her—well, Billie had been the opposite. When women peeped at him out of the corner of their eyes, or gave little flirtatious glances, or even stared at him openly, he had preened under their gazes. And when a few of them had looked at him in alarm or apprehension, well, he seemed to like that just as much. And though he had pulsed with a twisted form of the Glory, he had not had the overwhelming power that Jolene did.