“C’n y’all take me to Jolene?” she asked.

It stared at her.

“C’n y’all take me to th’ Queen of Copper Mountain?” she amended.

It bobbed its head once, whisked around in an instant, and faced the moss-covered rock wall.

She looked back over her shoulder to say “goodbye and thanks” to Bear—but Bear was already gone.

“Thank you, Elder Brother,” she said aloud anyway, in Cherokee. “Thank you for saving me from McDaran. Thank you for bringing me here. Thank you for answering my song.”

There was no direct answer, but a wind swept through the ferns, smelling of dried grass and clover.

“Where y’all takin’ me?” she asked the lizard.

It bobbed at the wall, scuttled up to it—and vanished.

For a moment she thought it had abandoned her, but then she saw a space between the boulders that was just barely wide enough to squeeze through. If she’d been any larger, or her skirts bulkier, or, indeed, if she’d had one more petticoat on, she would never have fit.

She’d expected some sort of—building, perhaps. Queens lived in palaces, didn’t they? Or at least some spectacular bit of scenery. But . . . this was a cave.

She shuddered. She didn’t like underground places. Going underground meant danger, rockfalls, cave-ins, all the stories of terrible things that had come out of the mines and got spoken of in hushed whispers when men had drunk enough, or when women recounted the stories of those they had lost. And it would be dark in there, and not just like “night-dark,” but a horrible empty dark that was so lightless it made your eyes ache.

But there was no help for it. According to Great-Granpappy, the Queen of Copper Mountain lived inside the mountain, so that was where Jolene would be. And so would Josh.

She took a deep breath and one last look around, and squeezed in through the crack.

19

SHE was afraid to move.

Behind her was the crack, spilling light—so very little light!—over the rocks in front of her. She stood with her hands against the rock wall behind her, and the little lizard posed in the spill of light before her, tail flicking impatiently.

Light’s what I need. But for light, she would need power. Was there power around here that she could actually use? This was Jolene’s territory; how would Jolene take to someone helping herself to whatever source of power there was?

But I cain’t go futher without light. I gotter see where I’m a-goin’.

She’d have to chance it.

She stole a little—oh, so very little—power from the nearest source, which astounded her with its depth and breadth. This was not like one of the rivers of power she had encountered so far in her education. This was like—like a huge lake, an ocean, even, but one that was so still and calm and peaceful that it caught at her heart, and so deep she could not sense a bottom to it.