Do Your Worst(64)
Riley must have seen something troubled in his face because she reached for his arm. “Oh, god, Clark, listen, I would never, ever ask you to do that. After last night, I know you wouldn’t,” she said firmly.
Reaching for the book, she flipped the pages again. “I’m sure there’s something else in here I can try.”
“Something else. Right.” He’d stop thinking about taking her from behind any minute now.
Partially out of curiosity and partially to distract himself, Clark made himself consider the work that must have gone into compiling a journal that massive.
Her gran had seemingly dedicated her entire life to the study and practice of curse breaking, taking care to record all she could in order to pass down the legacy to her kin.
That kind of commitment, the pursuit required for such an endeavor, was even more impressive when you considered that unlike fishing or cartography or even lidar technology, curse breaking was a practice without an established history.
Chasing after such a polarizing calling must have required a massive leap of faith, especially for a woman back in—what, the 1920s? 30s?
“Riley, how did your gran—sorry, what was her name?—how did she become a curse breaker in the first place?”
She looked up, evidently surprised that he’d asked.
“June,” she said softly, as if talking about her family even now brought up dormant emotions. “Her name was June, and she was born in rural Appalachia. Into a small mining community.”
Oh. He’d expected she came from near Philadelphia, like Riley.
“I’ve always found Appalachia fascinating.”
The bedrock of the mountains was 480 million years old. It was one of the most ancient and mysterious geological artifacts in the world.
“Do you know those mountains predate the dinosaurs?”
“Yeah.” Riley grinned. “My mom likes to remind people that her hometown is older than Saturn’s rings when they sass her about her accent.”
Clark had begun to recognize the particular kind of softness born of—he suspected—love and pride that entered her voice whenever she spoke of her mum.
“But she left?”
Riley nodded. “She moved away when she got a scholarship to go to college—that’s where she met my dad—but even though she never studied curse breaking, she did kind of go into the other branch of the family business.”
He raised his brows. “What’s that?”
“Midwifery.” Riley put the book back in the drawer. “My mom’s a nurse in obstetrics and gynecology, but my great-grandmother, and her mother before her, they served in a long line of midwives in the mountains. So much of the land out there is isolated, almost inaccessible, trapped as it is in valleys and ridges. It’s hard to get to a hospital.”
She sat on the bed, eyeing the spot beside her until Clark did likewise.
“Our family brought generations of children into the world. And because the women in the community trusted them so much, they began to show up asking for help with problems beyond babies. By the time she was nineteen, Gran was the person everyone in town came to with their troubles.”
Clark had never heard Riley talk like this—effusive but tender, almost shy.
She was quick to share stories about her clients or to defend her decisions, but he rarely heard her describe anything personal. This easy, reverent storytelling about her matrilineal line came in such sharp contrast to the stilted, painful way she’d revealed her father’s betrayal at the pub.
He found himself so hungry to know her in this way he physically stilled, terrified that if he moved too much, he’d spook her into stopping.
“At first”—Clark exhaled when Riley continued—“ she just listened, or if it made sense, she’d give them a tonic or balm like the salve I gave you, something simple with ingredients mixed to bring healing or comfort, to soothe or fortify. But then one day, the sheriff came knocking at her door.” Riley’s face grew somber. “There had been a terrible cave-in at the mine. And June’s sweetheart, the father of the child she was still carrying, he was one of the men down there, trapped.”
Riley twisted her hands together in her lap, the movement flowing like a current through the chain to Clark.
“For a long time, Gran wouldn’t tell me the story. But finally on my eighth birthday, she let me stay up until midnight, and we huddled together under a blanket as she explained.”
At the slight tremor in Riley’s voice, Clark had the terrifying impulse to close his hand around hers. But he knew the most he could offer her was his attention, so he merely nodded, encouraging her to go on.
“Twelve men, some of them still boys, really, were slowly suffocating under miles of rocks and soot. Helpless, they screamed into the earth their anguish, their anger. And as each of them perished, their pain became a curse—whether they’d meant to create one or not.”
Clark’s throat tightened. He could only imagine the complete horror—both for the men and for their families—knowing they were down there but unable to save them.
“The land around the mine began to change after they died,” Riley said. “The soil turned black, frozen. Nothing would grow. Soon after, the water in the streams dried up. Animals began to starve. Those who could packed their belongings and left, but Gran stayed. All those tunnels, the network of the mines—she was afraid of how far the curse could spread. Her community had nowhere to turn for answers. You can’t fight a curse with rifles or fists. So they did what they’d always done—came to Gran and begged her to fix it.”