Minama stares at Coreene with wide, almost worshipful, eyes. "You are? Oh, thank you, Mistress Coreene," she says, impulsively rushing forward to wrap Coreene in a tight hug.
When she lets go finally, she scrubs her watering eyes with the back of a dirty hand. "I can go next door and stay with old Katya. I do that sometimes. She's teaching me letters!" Minama says enthusiastically. She turns to the bedroom and waves her fingers. From under a pile of blankets, a thin beat-up book, its pages starting to fall out of the twine binding, rises and floats toward Minama's hand.
The girl apparently has some arcane talent.
"Mama says I'm not supposed to do that," says Minama as she clutches the book to her chest with both hands. "She says it's dangerous, but I don't see why. I can't make anything move very fast, so it's not like I'm going to hurt anyone with a flying book."
She grins, thinking her little jest to be pretty funny. "Besides, mama does it sometimes too. When she thinks I'm not looking, but I see her start the cook fire with her fingers."