Josh’s eyes flitted momentarily—and with great longing—to the block of malachite on the worktable. Jolene saw the glance, and smiled again. “You will find that stone under your workbench when you return home. And from time to time you will find other materials worthy of your skill in the same place.” Then she straightened and became every inch a queen. “Go now,” she said imperiously. “I am saddened to lose such a fine artist—but we will see what you can become on your own. Perhaps you will be even greater without my teaching than you would have been with it.”

The lizard scrambled down Anna’s skirt and onto the ground, where it scuttled forward a few feet, then looked back at them. Obediently, they followed.

And when they looked back over their shoulders, there was nothing there but blackness.

The Queen of Copper Mountain was gone.

“I swan!” Aunt Jinny said, when she had finished telling her story for the second time. “Iffen it hadn’t been y’all tellin’ me this, I’d’a niver believed it. ’Specially not ’bout Jolene!”

Anna took a weary bite of the hoecakes Aunt Jinny had whipped up for her the moment she spotted Anna coming over the stile at the bottom of the garden. “Fer a liddle bit I was mighty tempted, when she said I c’d undo all thet bad what’s been done t’ th’ valley,” Anna admitted. “An’ in a way, I kinder feel like I done let th’ valley down.”

“You an’ me, we’ll jest keep doin’ what we c’n, an’ ain’t no one c’n arst more of us,” Jinny told her. And in a rare display of affection, she got up and hugged her niece’s shoulders. “Y’all sure y’all don’t wanter go to Kansas?”

“Jolene reckoned we could figger somethin’ out. Or more like, reckoned y’all c’n figger somethin’ out, on account’a y’all’s so smart,” Anna replied, and yawned hugely.

“Git up on thet thar stove, an’ take a nap, an’ I’ll git t’thankin’,” Jinny ordered, with a glance at the malachite box that Anna had brought with her and left with Pavel’s journal, her receipt book, and her Bible. “We’ll see iffen Jolene’s right.”

Anna never knew exactly what it was that Josh told his parents when he got home, but whatever it was, the very next day he came walking up to the cabin right after dinner, before Anna had left to go down there herself. But instead of addressing Anna, he went straight to where Aunt Jinny was hanging clothing up on the line.

“Miz Jinny, I ’spect Anna done tol’ y’all what happened ter us,” he said, his face set in an expression of determination. “Now, I don’ know much ’bout Miz Jolene. She been purdy good ter me, but that could’a been jest me bein’ fatted up like one’a the pigs fer eatin’ later.”

“Wall, thet’s sense,” Jinny agreed. “She do seem ter have had what they call a ‘change of heart,’ though.”