Looking around at the shelves filled with the fruits (and vegetables) of her aunt’s labor, Anna could well believe that Jinny had enough for “a bad year.” Shelves as high as she could comfortably reach, all loaded down with supplies and bunches of dried herbs above that. Ranged, now that she came to think about it, by type, according to some system only Jinny knew.

Other people would have had pictures on the walls, even if they were nothing more than pictures cut out of an old newspaper or a magazine nobody wanted anymore, and framed by hand with scrap wood. Not Aunt Jinny. Every exposed inch of wall was covered in food, tools and cookware, herbs, and a couple of shelves of odds and ends that were supremely practical, like her receipt book, ink, and quill pens.

“Got a storage shed an’ a root cellar behind th’ cabin too,” Jinny continued. “You ain’t niver had call to go there yet. I’ll shew y’all termorrow.” She sat in thought for a moment. “I’fact, I’m a-thinkin’ it’s time y’all met Matt an’ Maddie Holcroft. We’ll go visit ’em termorrow.”

And with that astonishing statement she shooed Anna up to bed.

The next day, Jinny was as good as her word. She showed Anna the storage shed, as stoutly built as the cabin and definitely bear-proof, full of pottery jars and wooden casks—mostly corn and dried beans, her aunt said—plus an emergency supply of seed in case the first planting was completely ruined. And she showed her the root cellar—dug under the cabin and entered by a trap door in the floor, barren of everything but a couple sacks of white and sweet potatoes, and some other odds and ends of last fall’s root vegetables, waiting for the fall harvest.

“Didja ever hev a hankerin’ fer a cow?” Anna asked, as they closed up the cabin, and set off down the trail to the Holcroft’s farm.

“Too much trouble,” her aunt replied. “Iffen y’all want milk, gotta keep ’er in calf. Cain’t rely on a tether t’keep ’er where y’all want ’er, an’ cain’t tether a calf. They’d be in the garden ever’ time my back was turned. More work than it’s wuth for one person, even two. A fambly now, thet’s different. There’s ’nuff call fer milk t’hev a herd an’ clear an’ fence off a pasture.”

The walk down the long, gradual slope was lovely—even if Anna did keep catching those odd glimpses of things that weren’t quite there out of the corners of her eyes. “Aunt Jinny?” she said finally, with great hesitation. “Is these woods got hants in ’em?”

She was afraid Aunt Jinny would laugh at her. But instead, her aunt just pursed her lips a little. “Not hants, ’xactly. But they say there’s things what ain’t what y’all’d call proper critters. The Ravens got lotsa stories ’bout ’em.”

Once again, her aunt gave her an odd, sideways look when she thought Anna wouldn’t notice.

There’s somethin’ there that she ain’t tellin’ me about, Anna decided. I wish’t I knowed what ’twas.