Page 60 of A Curse On Black Lake
I grab the journal that would be my great grandmothers and start flipping through the pages.
“Can I help?” Killian asks.
“Yeah, grab the next one.” I point without looking.
He comes to my side with the next book and carefully opens it, turning each page one by one.
After I finish hers, I move to my great-great grandmother, Juniper. My great-grandmother named her daughter after her mother. Five pages in, I find a description and the name of the flower. Not much information is provided, but my she picked up on the strange correlation between death and life of the plant.
It’s not something I’ve ever seen occur in nature before — as if God Himself sends the flower to grow when someone dies. But it’s almost pointed, only for specific people, not all deaths.
Moving on to the next one. Killian finishes with his and pushes it back on the shelf next to the one I returned. His thick fingerdrags across my hand before he reaches over for the next one, and I can feel my cheeks heat under his gaze.
I wanted to kiss him earlier, but it felt wrong. We had been talking about the people we love the most. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t want to kiss my friend.
Chapter twenty-one
Eliana
Weworkourwayback over closer to two hundred years of my family’s history and everything we know as Greers. The last journal, rather collection of journals, ends with my many times over great grandmother, Lily Greer, from 1850 to 1859.
The 1859 hand-bound journal is still in impeccable condition for its age, with the pages still intact. Killian found another drawing of the flower, but the information is nearly the same as the other four. No one can make heads or tails of why or even what it could be used for. Most of my ancestors said it’s ornamental and not worth the time. Meaning, for markets it’s not a flower that should be included in fresh bouquets or used in various healing methods.
“Is that the last one?” Killian asks.
I hum and open it. One of my favorite smells wafts into my nose, and I take a deep breath. There’s nothing like the smell of an old book.
“I love that smell,” Killian says quietly.
I smile at him. “I do too. Something about history smells good.”
He chuckles. “Even if it’s about death.”
“Isn’t everything?” I ask him.
He stares at me, and normally anyone that looks at me that hard makes me want to shrink into myself so they don’t look too closely. But I don’t with him.
Instead, I lift my chin.
“It’s about both,” he says, reaching towards me. “If it was only about death, then there would be no point for this,” he says and taps on my heart.
“Then why does it feel like death is always surrounding us?” I ask him.
“It’s Black Lake — itdoessurround us.”
Accepting his answer, I open the cover, and a brief whiff of peppermint fills my nose as Killian pulls the chair out for me to sit down while he stands next to me. I carefully turn each page, terrified I’ll mess it up. Though I’m not sure who I would give it to. I don’t have children to pass these things down to. Yet another disappointment. But Grams never said a word about legacy. She was confident a man would come along and I would be able to continue the Greer name. She never seemed to be concerned about it, as if she knew he would come. I’m nearly thirty now. Maybe she should have been.
Shaking myself out of my thoughts, I turn each page. Old remedies and tinctures that Grandma Lily wrote. Some we still use today. Others we now know can be a little too poisonous or aren’t worth the work it takes to grow the plants. People had different ailments back then.
I turn the page, and I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s there. But I am. Only this time there is significant information about the flower because Grandma Lily was the first to name it.
June 17, 1859
This is the Monitio Flos De Letum, the Flower of Death. It sprung not hours after Jasper Radcliffe was murdered in front of our eyes. Upon study, it appears to yield no medicinal value. Nor does it offer much ornamental. I studied it that day. But what surprised me is how quickly it died. I don’t know that I have ever seen a plant die so quickly. Especially one in this area of the world. It is here and gone for such a short time, it would seem that it is somehow connected to the death that this land has experienced. I can neither confirm nor deny the correlation, but more explanation, if any, will be in my separate journal, so as not to fill this space with useless observations.
“Do you know where her other journal is?” Killian asks me.
I look around at all the books and journals, most unnamed or unlabeled. The ones we’ve been looking through are our main recipes, growing techniques, and important notes. The Greer family journals, on the other hand, are hard to pull together.
