Lyman had left. Then, as she waited for Pap to wake up, she sat staring quietly at the stone, watching the shifting light of morning cast smoky blue shadows through it onto the white tablecloth. When Pap finally stirred, scattering cats, she said simply: “You’ll never guess what happened to me last night.”
After pouring him a strong cup of coffee, Emily told Pap about her trip to the Old China Mine. She kept the story simple, leaving out the more distressing elements. No need to alarm Pap about trivialities when the main issue was sure to trouble him enough.
When she came to the part about the stone, she laid her hand on the table, palm up, as if inviting him to read her fortune. He felt the stone in her hand with his rough thumbs, his sightless eyes straining to remember how to see.
“Well, if that don’t beat all … It’s a stone, you say? A blue-colored stone?”
“Yes.” Emily leaned forward. “You know something about it?”
“Nope.” Pap shook his head. “But it feels powerful, whatever it is. It’s got something in it, I can’t quite feel what. It doesn’t really feel like magic or power, or anything, really. More like … I don’t know, like something that isn’t yet, but might be. Like light from a star.”
Emily was slightly surprised. Pap was rarely given to such poetic abstraction. She shook her head with impatience.
“Well, anyway, can you get it out?”
Pap was silent for a long time, his thumbs stroking Emily’s palm.
“I can’t see as there’s any way to medicine it out without cutting,” Pap said. The thought made Emily cringe. “And no way I can see that you wouldn’t lose all the use of that hand.”
“That’s my writing hand,” she said. “I couldn’t do charms or anything without that hand.”
“Your other hand would learn, in time,” Pap said distantly. “But, Em, I don’t know if we should make any decision too quick. It’s not doing any harm where it is … none we know of anyway. And we know taking it out would do harm. So maybe leaving it in—”
“Leave a rock in my hand?” Emily said. “It’s not natural!”
Pap chuckled. The sparkle in his eyes made Emily almost think that he could see her.
“Ain’t much that’s more natural than a piece of rock,” he said.
“Not a piece of rock that’s stuck in my hand!” Emily wailed. “There’s got to be more to it.”
“I’m sure there is,” he soothed. “But, Em, there are bigger magics in this world than I know about. An old Kentucky goomer doctor like me don’t have any call to meddle with things like that, so I never set myself to learn about them.” Pap stroked his grizzled chin. “But maybe that educated young Warlock feller, Mr. Stanton—”
Emily snatched her hand away. She was about to give Pap a piece of her mind about Dreadnought Stanton (who had cashed in his small store of goodwill by lecturing her all the way down the mountain about how a woman her age should know better than to grab willy-nilly at mysteriously glowing objects) when a knock came at the door. Emily threw the door open and was not pleased to see that it was the very Mr. Stanton of whom they had been speaking. One of his pair of fine black horses was hitched to a nearby tree. He carried a saddlebag over his shoulder and sported a richly variegated black eye.
“Good morning, Mr. Stanton.” She stared at him coolly. “What happened to you?”
“Well, someone had to alert the town about what happened up at the mine. I explained the situation to Mr. Cunningham at the general store—I thought he might be able to get word to the mine’s owner. Mr. Hansen happened by, heard that we’d gone up to Old China together. One thing led to another.”
Dag! Emily put her hand over her mouth, as if to hold in a groan. She’d forgotten all about Dag.
Stanton took a seat at the table across from Pap. Absently, he filched a piece of Pap’s cornbread and devoured it in three large bites.
“What’s wrong with Dag?” Pap asked.
Stanton dusted cornmeal from his hands. “Your girl makes her love spells too strong,” he said. “Too much lavender.”
“Love spells?” Pap’s brow knit. “Em, what’s he talking about?”
“Ashes of Amour,” Emily murmured hesitantly. Then she pressed her lips together and was silent for a long time—a silence Pap interpreted with terrible accuracy. His face fell.