“I gots t’be asleep?” She wasn’t entirely certain she wanted any of these critters near her while she was sleeping and unable to keep a wary eye on them. On the other hand—knowing Cherokee could be really useful.

The creature nodded. She sighed, but made up her mind. “Wall, will y’all larn me Cherokee?”

She had expected some sort of bargaining session to ensue. She wasn’t sure what she had that she could bargain with, but she certainly did not expect to get her wish for free.

But the little man just bobbed his head yes, without any more prompting on her part. She waited, but the subject seemed to be closed. She went back to the book.

Her aunt startled her by reaching up to where she was curled up and slapping her knee. “Y’all c’n come outa thet book now,” she said, amused. “Dinnertime. Pie fer arter.”

Well, she didn’t have to be invited twice! She closed the book, marking her place with the strip of embroidered ribbon she had found in it. She wished she had more of it, to decorate the bottom of a skirt and the cuffs of a waist—though then she’d have been afraid to wear either for fear of spoiling them. She climbed down and put the book up on the shelf before setting the table for dinner.

Still, her mind was back in that book even as she ate. Great-Granpappy Pavel had been seriously alarmed when the only “Earth Master” he could find was what he called a “boyar,” a title he had mentioned before, and obviously was someone very important and very rich—the same kind of person who had burned down his village and destroyed the crops to make a hunting preserve out of the area. He had been even more alarmed to awaken the next day—the Hungarian language fortunately well implanted in his mind—to find himself surrounded by the boyar’s men. He had been certain he was about to be ushered into a prison.

But instead, he was escorted to a house of the sort that surely only a President could live in! Rooms and rooms and rooms, furnishings that, despite Pavel’s careful descriptions, she could not quite wrap her mind around. And to his shock—but eventual delight—he found himself welcomed as a guest and an equal. His shabby clothing was all replaced “in the Hungarian style,” whatever that meant, he was feasted and given his own room as big as this cabin with a soft, soft bed in it of the like she had never heard. She had just begun the next part, where he’d recovered from the journey so far and his host was asking him what his intentions were, when Aunt Jinny interrupted her for dinner.

“I reckon today we’ll get inter th’ last’a the close in thet chest, hev a look in ’nother place I might’a stashed a thing or two, then reckon what I’m a-gonna need fer when y’all get a liddle more meat on your bones,” Jinny said, dishing out a slice of pie with scarlet juice running out of it. “Then next time Matt goes inter Ducktown, I c’n go with ’im an’ git what we’ll need.”