Jolene by Mercedes Lackey

Author:Mercedes Lackey [Lackey, Mercedes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2020-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

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Aunt Jinny greeted her harvest with pleasure, and immediately set her to pulling the petals off the roses and lilies and putting them in two big pots. She covered both with enough water to submerge all the petals completely, covered each pot with a plate, and set them at the hearth where the soup had been cooking. Then she and Anna sorted and cleaned the rose hips and carried them up to the other loft, where she spread them out on a clean sheet to dry.

By then it was suppertime, and the mushroom soup was nothing short of amazing. “Et it all, it don’t keep, an’ it gets mushier with cookin’. It ain’t like bean soup what gets better,” Aunt Jinny admonished, and Anna didn’t have to be told twice. After supper, Jinny took the pots of petals off the hearth and strained petals out of the pink- and yellow-colored water through cheesecloth, pouring the fragrant liquid into bottles that she filled to the top, then corked and put away on a shelf. That meant three pots to clean instead of one tonight—though the pots that had held the petals smelled so good it could scarcely be called “cleaning.” Anna just regretted that there wasn’t anything left in the pots to dab on her wrists and temples.

“We’ll do lavender from th’ garden termorrer,” Jinny proclaimed. “It’s been a easy day fer y’all, so might’s well do a lesson in gatherin’ th’ Glory an’ puttin’ it in potions. So, le’s go outside. Works best when y’all’s got your bare feet on earth.”

“What’d y’all do when it’s winter, Aunt Jinny?” Anna asked, as Jinny took that same split-wood bushel basket that she’d had Anna fill with flowers and filled it full of potion packets. “Cain’t go barefoot on snow!”

“Th’ best y’all c’n,” Jinny said philosophically. “It ain’t so hard. Floor’s wood, an’ it jest takes a liddle more strenth t’pull the Glory up through it.” She led Anna down off the porch and onto the grassy verge between the cabin and the garden.

The last of the daylight gilded wisps of clouds overhead, tinging them with pink and yellow. The garden spread out below them, sloping ever so gently down toward the lane. Lightning bugs flashed here and there among the plants. In Anna’s mind it was just as beautiful as a field of flowers, if not more so. That garden meant comfort and prosperity in a way no flower garden ever could.

Jinny recaptured her attention by putting the basket down between them. “Now, make that liddle trick what let’s y’all see the Glory.”

Anna nodded, and found that, after Jolene’s tutelage this afternoon, it was literally as easy as opening her eyes. The garden glowed with magic. The “shield” over the garden was a haze of golden light. And everywhere under her feet, the Glory ran like rivulets of clean rain in the sunlight.

Without thinking, and without prompting by her aunt, she began what Jolene had taught her—drawing the power up into herself.

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