Anna looked down at her hands, awkwardly, and then to look as if she was doing something, capped the ink, cleaned the quill, and blew on her page to dry it.

“Anythin’ y’all’d like t’know ’bout Lonesome Holler, liddle Anna?” asked Old Raven, ever so politely. “Me’n my kin been here since the days afore the white men came. There ain’t nothin’ ’bout this holler we don’t know.”

She looked up and something sprang into her head. “I heerd,” she began, hesitantly. “I heerd that durin’ th’ War, there was bears here, what couldn’t be shot, keepin’ the sojers away.” She looked up shyly. “Was there really? Whassa spirit bear?”

Old Raven smiled very faintly. “Th’ Ole Men tol’ this t’me when I was a boy, so it must be true,” he said. “A time ago, there was a clan called Ani’-Tsa’guhi an’ there was a boy in that clan who’d wander away for days inter the mountains. An’ he never et in his house, jest slept. An’ his parents begun to notice his hair was a-growin’ out all over his body. So they arst him what was a-goin’ on, an’ he finally tol’ ’em he was a-eatin’ jest fine in the mountains, an’ th’ food was better there than with th’ clan. An’ he tol’ ’em, ‘Iffen y’all fast fer seven days an’ a-go with me, all y’all will allus hev enough t’eat an’ y’all will niver hev t’ work fer it.’ So the whole clan had a palaver with th’ headman, an’ they decided t’ do thet. An’ they fasted, an’ off they went, an’ they started t’look like th’ boy. With hair all over. ’Nother clan heerd of this, an’ they sent messengers t’talk to ’em, but th’ Ani-Tsa’guhi wouldn’ come back. ‘Y’all call us yanu from now on,’ they said, an’ then they said somethin’ else, on account’a they figgered they owed somethin’ t’ th’ rest of th’ nation. ‘An’ because we’re one nation, iffen y’all gets hungry, here are the songs t’call us by. Call us an’ we’ll come an’ give y’all our very own flesh. Don’ worry ’bout killin’ us, y’all cain’t, an’ we’ll live ferever.’ So they taught th’ messengers the songs, an’ went on, but when th’ messengers looked back, all they saw was a big drove of bears a-goin’ inter th’ woods. Th’ Ole Men tol’ me this when I was a boy, so it must be true.”

Well, that didn’t really answer her question, but she felt it was rude to persist any further. Unless—

Unless Old Raven meant that there were such things as spirit bears, and that they were the unkillable bears that had driven off the Yank and Reb soldiers to protect the Holler, and that they had once been humans and Cherokee.

“Bears ain’t a-gonna bother th’ Root Woman an’ her kin, Anna,” said Young Raven. “Not niver, not nohow.”

Well that answered a different question, though how Young Raven could be so certain of that, she was entirely unsure.