The Curse of Dark Root: Part One (Daughters of Dark Root Book 3)

by April Aasheim

  “Oh, no! I’m not staying alone in this house at night.”

  “But we already banished the ghost,” I reminded her, my eyes looking upwards to the nursery on the second floor.

  “Demon,” Merry corrected. “And even so, a house doesn’t have to be haunted to be filled with ghosts.”

  I gave Merry a curious look but she said nothing more.

  I could only assume she meant her memories. There was no escape from them here. They were as thick as Aunt Dora’s chowder, lurking in every nook and corner––the rooms we ate in, played in, hid in, and cried in, throughout all our ages and stages. Sometimes I swore I saw seven-year-old Merry coloring near the front window, or ten-year-old Ruth Anne reading Tolstoy at the kitchen table.

  Of course, there were other memories too, those that didn’t belong to us but to our mother’s generation, and to her mother’s before that. The house brimmed with pictures of people we had never met, oddities gathered by Mother during her extensive travels, and knickknacks taken as payment by those who didn’t have the money to pay for Mother’s services. They watched over us, these remnants of the past, guardians from a bygone era.

  Merry’s eyes drifted towards a small chair in the corner of the room and the red crayon that peeked out from beneath it. I realized that she wasn’t afraid of what still lingered here; she was missing what was gone. Her daughter June Bug.

  “It’s settled then,” I said with more vigor than I felt. “A family dinner and sleepover at Harvest Home.”

  Michael entered through the front door as I spoke, wiping his feet on the welcome mat. “Excellent. It will be like living in the compound again.”

  I affixed him with my own evil eye. “Michael, if I wanted to relive my past I would have stayed there.”

  “We’re all reliving our past, Maggie. Some are just more aware of it than others.”

  FIVE

  Baby Love

  “I’m huge.” I wrapped my arms around my belly as I stood before the mirror hanging in the breakfast nook. I had seen my reflection in this very mirror hundreds of times, but I hardly recognized the one currently staring back at me. The pregnancy weight extended far beyond my belly, in both directions, lending shape and volume to my breasts and hips as well. Even my face seemed larger.

  Merry scrunched her lips to the side, in stern concentration. “You’re eight months pregnant. You’re supposed to be huge. I gained weight in my rear end, too. Frank called me Double Bubble.”

  “I still can’t believe you married that creep,” I said, turning to view my profile. From this angle it looked like I’d swallowed a watermelon whole.

  “It’s not like we had a role model for what to look for in a mate,” she said, chancing a peek out the window.

  Michael’s van was gone. We had sent him grocery shopping and knowing him he’d be rambling around the store for hours, trying to decide between soy milk and coconut.

  “I can’t see my feet,” I said, leaning forward to catch a glimpse of my toes without success. “Merry, how is all this…” I gestured to my belly, “…supposed to get out?”

  “With great difficulty.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

  “It’s not supposed to, but women have been doing it forever. We can blame Eve for the pain.”

  “Our sister?”

  Merry laughed. “No, of biblical fame.”

  “Oh, right. You eat one apple and you screw over an entire gender. She could have at least held out for chocolate.”

  “Enough chit chat. Time to get you dressed. Michael will be back soon. It wouldn’t be proper for him to see you in just your skivvies.”

  I stopped myself from telling her that at Woodhaven, I walked around completely naked and that had never prompted him to mount me, even when I wanted him to. Ruth Anne may laugh but Merry would not be amused.

  “Is dinner a pointed hat affair?” I jested as Merry rummaged through one of Mother’s old jewelry boxes. “Or will simple black robes and brooms suffice?”

  She tapped her finger to her chin. “I don’t think it’s going to be fancy, but we should probably clean you up so that Aunt Dora doesn’t worry. So, what do you think of these earrings? Remember how Mama wore them on special occasions?” She lifted a pair of green pendants that matched the color of my eyes.

  “Real emeralds?” I asked, taking them.

  “No, but they’re still pretty.”

  I had never been a jewelry kind of girl but I put them on because it would make Merry happy. She was the keeper of our family memories, and if seeing me in those earrings made her smile, I’d comply.

  “I’ve got earrings, giant underpants, and a bra that should have been burned in the early 70s. What else you got for me?”

  “I’m sorry. I should have brought you clothes over from Harvest Home.” She removed a silver locket from the box, smiled in private memory, and then put it back into the chest. “I’ll look through Mama’s old closets. She was pregnant four times. I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”

  She trotted upstairs and I continued to inspect my image in the mirror. My breasts were heavy and achy and I lifted my bra to get a better look. I wished I hadn’t. My nipples had nearly doubled in size since I’d last seen them.

  “Merry?” I hollered. “Do you have anything for large nipples?”

  “Just a large baby.” She reentered the room, a stack of clothes still on hangers draped across her arms. “Mama must have gotten rid of all her maternity wear, but I did find a few things that might work.” She handed me a billowy, crushed velvet blouse. “I know chanteuse isn't your color but it will do for now.”

  “Mother wore this? It seems a bit conservative for Miss Sasha Shantay.”

  “Nope. It was mine. I bought it right after June Bug was born to camouflage the pregnancy weight.” She sighed, her hands lingering a second too long on her abdomen.

  I pulled the blouse over my head but could only get it halfway down before it stalled, somewhere between my new bosoms and my expanding belly.

  “I’m stuck.” I tried to lift the shirt off but it wouldn’t go up nor down. The sheer frightfulness of it––of losing who I’d been––sunk in and I cried, right there with my shirt halfway on and my arms stuck out to the sides like a wallowing scarecrow.

  “Oh, honey, it will be okay. You’ll see.” Merry pulled and tugged while I wriggled and flailed until I was freed. I stood there in my horrible underwear, still sniffling, and she handed me a tissue.

  “I’m ugly. Fat and ugly and my breasts look like fried eggs.”

  She offered a warm, knowing smile. “You’re more beautiful now than ever, Maggie. Softer, inside and out.”

  “Can’t I just be softer inside?” I sniffed, returning her smile. I wiped an errant tear from my cheek and blew my nose. Then, looking at my reflection one last time I added, “Thanks for telling me I’m beautiful. Too bad you’re not my target audience.”

  “Shane’s crazy about you, large nipples and all. You’re a lucky woman, Maggie. A baby on the way and two men vying for you. What I wouldn’t give…”

  Michael’s van rattled into the driveway and Merry tossed me the robe I’d been wearing all day. I pulled it on just before he opened the door.

  “Doesn’t seem like you made much headway since I left.” He set two brown paper sacks filled with groceries onto the breakfast table. “Perhaps I should drive over to Dora’s and get you some clothes.”

  “Stay out of my drawers, Michael,” I warned him.

  He licked his lips and smiled. “Now Maggie, why would I want to do that?”

  I rode shotgun in Merry’s maroon sedan while Ruth Anne took the back seat. Michael drove his beat up van ahead of us, waving his hand out the window every time he changed lanes or turned onto another road.

  “He’s acting like we’ve never driven this route before,” I grumbled.

  “He’s in Daddy-Bear mode,” Merry said. “I think it’s kind of sweet.”

  “He’
s a dork,” Ruth Anne countered. “What did you ever see in that bozo?”

  I rolled down my window, wondering if I should defend my taste in men or be annoyed that Merry found him sweet. Vanity won out. “He might be a dork now but he used to have some kind of magnetic appeal. When I first met him, he could get people to do whatever he wanted, no matter how misguided.”

  I pressed myself into the back of the seat, lost in the memory of how Michael had found me in Mother’s store nearly eight years ago. He had asked me to go with him and I had gone, willingly and eagerly and not knowing him at all. Was that his charisma, I wondered, or simply my desire to get out of Dark Root by any means necessary?

  Ruth Anne leaned in between our seats. “I stand by my original summation. And those eyes of his, they give me the creeps.”

  Merry clicked her tongue. “His gaze is so intense. I’ve never seen a shade of blue like that.”

  “They’re grey, actually,” I said, trying to hide my agitation.

  “Well, they’re nice. And he’s nice. I didn’t give him a chance before. Apart from…”

  “Apart from him cheating on me?”

  “Yes, but remember he was under Leah’s spell. Besides that, what other problems did the two of you have?”

  “He was too neat,” I said, watching the rows of trees whiz by, their boughs turned up with the promise of sun. I inhaled deeply, breathing in the scent of fresh pine and spring rain.

  “Too neat? What do you mean?”

  “He folds his socks, takes two showers a day, and has had the same comb for nearly twenty years!”

  “Geez,” Ruth Anne said from the backseat. “The longest relationship I’ve had with a grooming implement was six months and that’s because I kept my toenail clippers on a key ring.”

  “There are worse things than being neat.” Merry stated.

  When we reached Harvest Home Michael stopped me on the front porch steps before going inside. He handed me a plastic cup with a straw, filled with a lime-green concoction that smelled like gym shoes.

  “I brought you this from an organic juicer in Linsburg. Drink up, young lady.”

  I wrinkled my nose and slushed the goop around in the cup. “What is it?”

  “It’s a kiwi-spinach-broccoli juice.” He smiled broadly to indicate how fortunate I was to receive such a gift. Then, poking me on the forehead he added, “It’s very good for you.”

  He had changed clothes, and now wore jeans and a baby blue, button down shirt that looked like it belonged in an Easter catalogue. He had shaved and his face was smooth yet defined. Even though he was pushing forty, he somehow looked younger than the day we’d met.

  I blushed when I realized he was scrutinizing my own appearance. After a thorough once-over, he leaned back against one of the grand pillars that supported the balcony.

  “That’s an interesting outfit, Maggie.”

  “Ruth Anne and Merry dressed me,” I explained. I tugged on the sleeves of Merry’s snug corduroy jacket while trying to hide Ruth Anne’s camouflaged T-shirt beneath it. With my hair tied up in a satin ribbon, and my feet encased in combat boots, my style settled somewhere between Old American Girl and Pregnant G.I. Jane.

  “You shouldn’t tease me,” I said, catching his expression. “Back at Woodhaven, you made us dress out of thrift stores and the lost-and-found.”

  He locked his hands behind his neck, still surveying me. “It’s kind of sexy, actually. Makes you look both innocent and feisty.”

  “What is wrong with you men?”

  Ruth Anne rapped on the window from inside the house, gesturing for us to come inside. I nodded and held up a finger to let her know it would be a moment.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, my lips hovering above the straw as I summoned the courage to take a sip of the broccoli juice. I sucked halfway, then let it fall again before it reached my mouth.

  Michael pushed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “I’m here for the baby. That’s all.”

  “You look different.” It wasn’t only his hair and clothes that had changed. His waist was slimmer, his biceps were rounder, and there was a healthy glow to his skin, as if he’d been spending a lot of time outdoors.

  “Just clean living.” He turned to view the wilderness, a panoramic, ancient forest that surrounded us on three sides. A leaf drifted down and he caught it, setting it as gently on the porch as one would a pet. “I started meditating more and training in the art of Karate a few months ago. It’s changed my life.”

  I inspected the back of his head. “Clean living grew your hair back, too?”

  “Same old Maggie,” he chuckled.

  “Same old Michael, with different packaging.”

  At last, I nerved myself to take a drink. It tasted worse than it smelled. I handed it back to him. “If this is clean living, I’ll stay dirty.”

  “I’d want nothing less.”

  I turned back to the door. “Michael, what’s waiting for me inside?”

  “Nothing you can’t handle.”

  My family knew more than they were willing to tell, of that I was certain. And tonight I’d find out the rest.

  “When I agreed to join the family business, no one ever mentioned curses,” I said.

  “People have always been persecuted for their beliefs. But the alternative is a world without magic. You wouldn’t want to live in a world like that, would you?”

  My lashes fluttered involuntarily. “No, I wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t want to raise my baby in a world like that either.”

  I squared my jaw and turned the doorknob. I’d faced death and demons before. Surely, I could withstand whatever waited for me next.

  SIX

  White Room

  Despite what the storybooks say, witches do not throw around curses willy-nilly.

  Two of the cornerstones of the craft are: you should do no harm, and whatever you put out into the world returns to you threefold. It is a system of checks and balances, and witches are taught early on that using one’s powers indiscriminately will surely reap repercussions.

  Our mother, Sasha Shantay Benbridge, had looked down upon those who bedeviled others. She considered curses a lowbrow form of magick. Any woman with real power wouldn’t stoop to such tactics.

  And yet…

  Mother’s words rarely matched her actions.

  We had seen Miss Sasha imbibe in black magic from time to time. She had accursed her own spell book so that only her direct descendants could remove it from her shop. She had blighted her cousin Larinda for trying to ruin The Council. She had also sentenced a salesgirl in Linsburg to a month of stuttering for suggesting that a woman of Mother’s age should not be wearing her hair so long.

  Whether these curses worked, I do not know. But Mother performed them with vigor and ritual, then shielded herself with thrice as many levels of protection to thwart off any repercussions. She was a complicated woman, with more layers than one of Aunt Dora’s spice cakes. She forged her own version of morality and it was difficult for others to understand where she drew the line.

  For one thing, the line was always moving, and always in her favor.

  I thought about all this––Mother and her ways, curses and their repercussions, and the justices and injustices of the world––as I made my way through the narrow foyer and into the living room of Harvest Home, the gracious Victorian house I shared with Aunt Dora. I was under a spell, a dark spell that had taken a month of my life, but who cast it and why? Larinda and her daughter Leah were the obvious choices, though no one seemed to worry much about them. That left my father, Armand, a powerful warlock whose actions had dissolved The Council.

  But why would he curse his own daughter?

  To stop her from having a child?

  I shivered at the thought, then recited a silent spell of protection, willing my father’s image from my brain.

  The scent of homemade apple pie wafting from the kitchen brought me back. It was good to be home, I thought, listening to th
e familiar thump and press of Aunt Dora’s rolling pin and her harsh words at the noncompliant dough. I ambled towards the galley––my favorite room in the house––and caught a glimpse of my fiery aunt in a pink nightdress, kneading dough with one hand and leaning on her gnarled cane with the other.

  “Hi, Auntie,” I said, feeling suddenly shy.

  She dropped the pin and turned to take me in. Though the lines on her face denoted her many years, her eyes were still as sharp and all-seeing as ever.

  “My Maggie girl!” With the aid of her cane, she trundled over to greet me. She looked me over, head to toe. “Ya look pale. Ya haven’t seen another ghost, have ya?”

  I shook my head, uncertain if she were joking. “Just side effects from Merry’s tea.”

  “Aye. I’ve been workin’ with her. That’ll clean ya out, good and bad. Well, ya know where the bathroom is. There’s a scented candle, if ya need it.”

  I laughed and gave my aunt a tight hug. “No side effects that way,” I assured her. “Tiredness mostly. I can’t seem to stay awake for long.”

  “Ya been crossed into the Netherworld. I’m surprised yer standin’ at all.”

  “The Netherworld?”

  “Aye, the place between this world and the next. And the place o’ dreams. But I don’t suppose ya were having any dreams, were ya?” She nudged her chin towards a rickety wooden chair near the small table in the center of the room. “Now take a seat before my legs give out.”

  I sat, re-familiarizing myself with the quaint kitchen and taking comfort in its cozy checkered curtains, an old double-sized stove, and a refrigerator that had somehow missed the safety recall. There were flowers in the windowsill, probably picked that very morning and copper pots that hung from the ceiling. The evening’s last light filtered in through the window over the sink, casting a halo over Aunt Dora’s gray head. And in the center of the table was an apple pie and a blue and white china teapot.

  “When I die, I want to end up in a room like this.” I leveraged my too-large body into my too-small chair and leaned forward so that I could better view...and smell...the pie. Steam rose from the crust and my stomach growled in response.