“Ja. And I will stay until she wakes.” There’s a challenge in her blue-green eyes as she jabs a finger at my chest. “You don’t know enough to help her.”
I cross my arms. I feel my anger well up, but I ain’t mad at Ebba. She loves Granny as much as I do. I’m angry at myself—for not calling for help faster and for not knowing what to do when Granny fell into her seizure. Despite my pride, I could use Ebba’s help, because Lord knows Aunt Val is too busy becoming Josiah Bellflower’s hussy to be of any use. “You can stay as long as you want, Ebba. I’ll fix up a pallet by her bed.”
Ebba waves me off, grumbling to herself.
I go to the kitchen, take down the stockpot, and soak the poke greens Granny and I gathered yesterday in a pan of salty water. They’ll be good with the ham hock I was lucky enough to get at the mercantile. Once the water is boiling, and I sit down to peel potatoes, the tears come. I sob into my apron, remembering the first day I came to Tin Mountain, when Granny took me by the hand, sat me down at this very table, and pushed a steaming mug of weak coffee cut with milk toward me. You’re home now, Gracelynn. This is your home. It always will be. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t have to be afraid of Daddy’s drunken, wandering hands or worry where my next meal would come from.
I’ve always sworn I’d never let anyone get too close, lest they hurt me more than I’ve already been hurt, but I don’t know what I’m gonna do if I lose Granny. She’s the solid ground beneath my feet. I put the potatoes on to boil, and just as the sky turns dark, I hear Caro’s step on the porch. I dread telling her what’s happened. The poor kid already has enough on her shoulders.
She pushes through the door and slumps into a chair to unlace her boots. Her hair is dark around the edges with sweat. She should still be in school, not working the fields, but Val put an end to that the day Caro turned eight, though I do my best to teach her what I know.
“Dinner’ll be done soon. Have as much food as you want tonight, Carolyn June.”
“I’m starved. Morris and Mama didn’t come out to the fields today, so I had to work all by myself. Things are real dry. Our parcel’s cracked so bad only weeds can push through. Hosea has us bringing water up from the crick. I carried twenty buckets today. My arms are like to fall right off.”
“Lands. This heat is somethin’ else. Morris never showed up to work, neither?”
“Nope, just me.”
If I was worried before, a whole new avalanche of fears falls over me.
I drain the potatoes and mash them, then pile some on a plate for Caro. She digs in, slathering a healthy knob of butter over the top of the taters, until it runs over the edges like a river. She squints at me, her jaw working as she chews. “Where’s Granny? And why’re your eyes all puffy? You been crying?”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. She’s sleeping. Real, real deep.”
“One of her headaches?”
I swallow, hard. “No, not a headache. She’ll be okay, though. Ebba’ll stay with us for a while to help take care of her.”
Ebba pushes through the curtained partition like a gray whirlwind and goes to the stove, angrily scooping out potatoes. “She’s not sick like a flu, Caro.” She sits across from me, her eyes narrowing. “It’s worse. Tell her the truth, Gracie. She should know.”
Caro looks at Ebba sideways. “What’s she talkin’ about?”
I take Caro’s little hand. “Granny’s in something called a coma, and she can’t talk or move, or anything else. At least right now.”
“Why?” Caro’s eyes well up. “What happened?”
“I don’t rightly know why she’s sick, Caro.”
“Is she gonna die?”
“Not if we can help it.”
We finish up with dinner and then take Caro to see Granny. Her breath rises and falls in a threadbare whisper. Beneath her crepe-paper eyelids, her eyes roll and flutter like she’s seeing something in her heavy veil of sleep. The oil lamp’s wan light deepens the creases in her forehead and carves darkness into the hollows of her cheeks.
“Talk to her, Carolyn June.” Ebba’s voice is thick with emotion. “Her body is here, but her spirit is somewhere else. Dreaming. Seeing.” Ebba flitters her hands over Granny’s head.
Caro sits on the edge of the bed and takes Granny’s wrinkled hand. A tear trickles down her face, but she starts rattling on about her day just like she would if Granny was sitting with her out on the porch swing.
Ebba nudges me with her elbow and motions me back into the house. “Let her alone with Deirdre so she can say what she wants to say.”
We go back to the kitchen, and I pour myself a cup of black coffee. My hands are shaking. I could really use one of Val’s cigarettes right now. “Tell me what you know, Ebba. About this curse, what happened to Granny in the past, everything. I need to know the truth. Granny only gave me half answers before she got sick.” Everyone thinks Ebba’s off her rocker. But she’s got a feral kind of wisdom I’ve come to appreciate. She makes her living as a water witcher and knows her way around our conjure garden as well as I do. There’s some sort of wild magic running through her veins, too, and she knows Granny in a way few people do.
“Most of the story is in that h?xboken,” Ebba says. “Deirdre finally showed it to you, yes?”
“Anneliese’s grimoire?”
Ebba nods, her head haloed with silver in the candlelight. “The past will help you understand what is happening now, better than I can tell you. The women in your family have powers. Sometimes the powers help and heal. Sometimes they hurt.”
“And that preacher?”
Ebba turns away, worrying at her sleeve. “A preacher came through Tin Mountain fifty years ago. Ambrose Gentry. Got things all stirred up. There was a flood. Many people died. She has it in her head that it’s him, returned to do the same again.”
“He couldn’t be the same man. He’s too young.”
“Some men have the devil in them. A darker kind of magic that fools the eye.”
I remember what Granny told me about Anneliese and Nathaniel Walker and the origin of the curse that plagues Tin Mountain: Anneliese’s murder. Maybe Ebba’s right. “When did the trouble start, and when did it end?”
“I was just a girl, but as I remember, it started near Walpurgis Night—witch’s night—and ended with the harvest—freyrfaxi. Young folks think Walpurgis is just about bonfires and playing pranks. But we old ones, we remember. Walpurgis is a powerful holiday for our kind. It’s a woman’s time—Frigga’s time—a period of fertility and increase. At least, it should be.” Ebba sighs. “Fifty years ago, when Gentry came through, there was no fertility. No harvest.”
“There was a flood, wasn’t there?”
“Yes, what folks call a hundred-year flood. The rain never seemed to stop.”
“But it passed?”
“Yes. After a time. But crops failed. Animals and people died, and things took a good long while to settle. I lost my aunt Maja that winter, and two of my cousins died, too.” Ebba gazes out the open window, where the cicadas are starting their nightly cacophony. “So much lost that year.” Ebba rubs her arms, as if fighting off a chill. “Deirdre tried to set things right back then. She . . . gave up much. But still, it wasn’t enough.” Ebba’s eyes glint, her thin lips curl down at the corners. “Some say it’s Anneliese who brought the curse, but it was him who brought it. He angered the land with her murder, and now it reacts as if poison’s been spilled on it when it senses his return. The curse will only end for good once he’s driven out and Anneliese’s restless spirit is satisfied. Justified. She and the land want a reckoning for the wrong that was done.”