“We will bring her back to you in the morning. And if he does stay, we will keep her with us for as long as it takes for him to tire of waiting fruitlessly,” said Old Raven, and waved his hand over the mirror. It became a mirror again, and Anna became aware that every muscle in her body was taut with tension.

“Now you will discover if you like Cherokee food,” the old woman said to her, conversationally.

“I will be grateful and thankful for Cherokee food, grandmother, and you are generous to share with me and make me your guest,” Anna replied.

The old woman cocked her head at her husband. “She has good manners,” she said, and went back to the stove.

A few moments later, she and the younger woman served the three of them a wooden platter, which had some round fried dough-balls and some fried rabbit on it, with some fried squash to fill out the meal. Under other circumstances, she’d have been eager to try it, but right now all she could think about was Billie McDaran, and that he was out there, trying to find her. And for no good purpose, she was sure.

17

IN the end, she stayed three anxious days with the Cherokee, because the Little People came to warn them for three days in a row that McDaran was lurking around her aunt’s home. Fortunately the piskies were still willing to carry notes between her and Josh, so she managed to tell him what was going on. The Raven family didn’t have any paper, nor anything to write with, but Dawn Greeter suggested the ingenious solution of sewing a few words into a cornhusk with bits of colored thread unraveled from the edges of thriftily saved rags. Cornhusks there were in plenty, and Josh’s equally short replies came back on paper she saved to use later if she needed to. Those replies made her worry, because things like Stay safe, can’t tawk now were not exactly reassuring.

Dawn Greeter and Young Raven’s wife Moon Daughter found plenty for her to do, and she was not backward in doing as many chores as they set her, but she was anxious the entire time. If she hadn’t been so anxious she probably would have enjoyed the novelty of some of it—weeding in the garden was the same, and so was preparing harvested vegetables and drying them—but she learned how to grind corn in a stone bowl, learned how to make the corn-and-bean balls she’d been served the first night, and learned how to sew leather. Night-times were very different—everyone in the family, including her, was expected to pile together on skins and under blankets, on the floor, fully clothed. If anyone woke during the night, they often chatted to one another, or told stories, or sang to soothe the children. Old Raven told many stories in the evenings, anyway; some of them just seemed to be for the benefit of the children, but others were clearly tales with magic lessons, meant for her.