For once, her aunt seemed uncertain. “I dunno,” she said, finally, after a long and uncomfortable pause. “My Granny said it was diff’rent fer ev’body. I allus saw it, from th’ time I was a liddle thang. Like I allus saw th’ Elemental critters. But bein’ in Soddy, y’all’d niver hev seed the critters, and there weren’t nothing givin’ off ’nuff Glory fer y’all t’see thet, either.”

Anna looked down at the ring of critters around her chair—or rather, she looked down into the darkness where they were, because by this point the sun had completely set, and down here in the holler, things got dark quick.

She kind of squinched her eyes up to try to make them out, and that was when she realized she could still see them. There was a faint glow around them. Was that the Glory?

Just as she noticed that, the glow seemed to get stronger and stronger, until it was no problem at all to make out the little critters, each of them surrounded by a sort of halo of dark golden light, like the kind of light that lies gently over the land just before sunset on an autumn afternoon.

She carefully raised her eyes, still keeping that glow in her mind, until she had the fence in her field of vision.

And there it was. That same golden glow at the edges of the garden.

“It ain’t a wall!” she exclaimed with surprise. “It’s—kinda a bowl, clapped down over th’ garden, iffen th’ bowl were sorta squared off!”

“Wall, knock me over with a feather!” her aunt exclaimed in an astonished voice. “I sure didn’ thank y’all’d see it thet quick!”

“Why ain’t it a round bowl, Aunt Jinny?” she asked, because she could see how the Glory swirled and ebbed and flowed, and how it knotted up at those corners. And she understood, somehow, that if the shield-thing had been based on a circle rather than the rectangle of the fence, none of that would be happening.

“On account’a I cast it on th’fence, t’give it somethin’ t’ anchor on, like Granny taught me,” her aunt replied. “I know, I know. Thangs don’t flow smooth ’round corners. But Granny said ’twas stronger iffen it got a anchor.”

Now Anna turned her attention to the garden, and to her astonishment, she saw that every plant had a very, very faint glow in that same golden color. “The plants!” she gasped. “Th’ corn’s a-glowin’!”

“Great hop-toads!” her aunt exclaimed. “Old Raven was right! You got it strong, girl! I cain’t see thet! Thet there’s what ev’thing what’s alive has of th’ Glory, just on account’a it’s alive. Not one of our kind in a hunnert’d see thet!” Then she paused and added, “Don’t get all hoity-toity over thet. Jest ’cause y’all kin see somethin’ it don’ mean y’all know what t’do with it!”

“Yes’m,” Anna said, still looking around her in utter entrancement at how pretty everything was with that glow about it. “Iss like a receipt. I kin write her down, but thet don’ mean I know how t’ make her up, I don’ know what the plants in the receipt look like a-growin’, an’ I sure as shootin’ don’ know how t’put the Glory in ’em t’ make ’em better.”