But he didn’t seem to notice as he caressed the column of stone. “I gotter figger out what I’m a-gonna carve, thet’s what. I ain’t niver had a time when I was a-carvin’ something jest I wanted to. The liddle thangs, they was allus what’d sell. The headstones, they was allus fer th’ famblies. But this’s fer me.”

Instantly she felt ashamed of her tone. Just think of it, how it must have eaten at him, never having anything he had created just for himself. It would be something beautiful, because she already knew he that he loved and, more to the point, could make beautiful things. Just because he wanted to, and for no other reason than that.

She wondered what that would feel like, to set free that part inside of you that made beautiful things, and hopped off her stool to go stand at his side, one hand unobtrusively on his arm, staring at the stone. “I thank I’d be a-skeert t’ cut inter thet stone, it’s so purty,” she said at last.

Now, once again, he finally looked at her. “Thet’s part of it,” he admitted. “I cain’t go an’ do somethin’ thet’ll mar it in any way. So I gotter thank this through. I gotter plan ev’ liddle bit. It’s all gotter be right.”

“Let th’ magic he’p,” she suggested, surprising even herself. Where had those words come from? But she knew it was the right suggestion, even as he looked at her with pure astonishment.

“How?” he blurted, taking his hands off the stone.

“Le’s jest give up on y’all larnin’ t’ scry,” she replied, though it pained her greatly to say it. “At least fer now. Jest—put yore hands on thet stone. Let th’ magic kinder sift inter it. Mebbe y’all cain’t see ary flaws on th’ outside, but let th’ magic see if there’s any hidden. Let th’ magic tell y’all where th’ stone’s weak, an’ where it’s strong. Oncet y’all know thet, y’all will prolly hev some ideer of what kinda shape t’carve, an’ the shape’ll tell y’all what t’carve.”

The look in his eyes gratified her so much she forgot her earlier hurt. And his next words made the sting of the fact that these things came from Jolene ease. “I swan, Anna May Jones, y’all’s th’ smartest gel I iver did see! How’d y’all thank of all thet? Not even Jolene tol’ me the like!”

How had she thought of it? Maybe it was the things she’d learned this summer: how to use her magic with the earth and all the things that grew on it, instead of against the earth, forcing the earth to do things it didn’t want to do. Maybe it had been learning to do instead of be told what to do. Maybe it had been learning to feel and think before she acted magically.

“It jest felt right,” she replied. “Try it. Jest a liddle. See iffen thet works fer y’all.”

He took a deep breath, placed his hands on either side of the stone again, and closed his eyes, the better to see the magic. For her part, she put one hand around his back and onto his right forearm and the other on his left forearm, pulled in magic from the stream of it running beneath the earth nearby, and let it slowly trickle into him to help his. And through him, she got a sense that this was working; he was seeing the piece of stone in a new way, right inside it, sensing everything she had promised he would.