A small stone.
No treasure marker.
No jar.
I moved the leaves carefully and used the hand trowel rather than the shovel.
Three inches down, I hit something pale.
At first I thought it was a piece of branch.
Then the shape curved.
I removed more soil with my fingers.
The thing beneath the ground looked almost human.
A thick central root divided into two legs. Smaller feeder roots extended outward. At the top was a narrow wrinkled neck covered in tiny scars.
My heart started hammering.
I knew enough from Granddad’s journal to understand what I had found.
I also knew enough to realize I should not have dug it.
It was March.
American ginseng in Kentucky was regulated. Legal harvest had seasons and maturity requirements, and Granddad’s notebooks repeatedly warned against spring digging.
I had been so obsessed with proving the map meant something that I had done exactly what he spent decades telling himself not to do.
“Wonderful,” I whispered. “Found it by killing it.”
I loosened the remaining soil and lifted the root carefully.
It was heavier than I expected.
Not huge.
Not shaped like something from a fantasy novel.
Just old.
The neck alone had enough annual bud scars that I stopped trying to count them accurately.
I wrapped the root in damp leaf mold, marked the exact hole, and drove straight to Pine Mountain Botanicals, a licensed ginseng dealer whose name appeared repeatedly in Granddad’s later notebooks.
The shop belonged to Amos Bentley.
Amos was sixty-seven, broad-faced, gray-bearded, and possessed of an expression that made everyone feel as though they were being inspected for defects.
He looked at me.
Then at the bundle in my hands.
“What did you dig?”
“I think you know.”
“What month is it?”
“March.”
His expression worsened.
“I know.”
“Where?”
“My land.”
“Doesn’t change the season.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that after doing the thing.”
“I know.”
That almost made him smile.
I laid the root on the counter.
The humor disappeared.
Amos put on his glasses.
He did not touch it immediately.
Instead he leaned close.
Then he looked at me.
“Where did you get this?”
“Harlan County.”
“That narrows it down to only about five hundred mountains.”
I gave him the parcel number.
His face changed.
“North Wooten hollow?”
I stared.
“You know it?”
Amos took the root carefully.
“Girl, what is your last name?”
“Carver.”
He closed his eyes for one second.
“Samuel’s granddaughter.”
I suddenly felt as if Granddad had walked into the room behind me.
“You knew him?”
“Knew him?”
Amos turned the root under the light.
“Your grandfather argued with my father about ginseng before I was old enough to drive.”
He examined the neck.
“Thirty years minimum. Maybe more. Hard to age precisely once neck scars start crowding and breaking.”
“What is it worth?”
Amos looked at me over his glasses.
“That’s your first question?”
I felt embarrassed.
“It’s not the only one.”
“It better not be.”
He turned the root again.
“This is good wild-simulated American ginseng. Old. Natural shape. Grown slowly. If it were legally harvested in season, dried correctly, included in a good lot…” He shrugged. “Worth money.”
“How much?”
“A single root does not save a farm.”
My face must have changed.
Amos noticed.
“Ah.”
He put the root down.
“That’s what this is about.”
I said nothing.
He asked, “How much trouble?”
“Enough.”
Amos sat on a stool.
“Listen carefully. If Samuel maintained the Wooten hollow the way I remember him talking about it, that root is not your money.”
“What is it?”
“Evidence.”
“Of what?”
He pointed toward the root neck.
“Time.”
I waited.
“Samuel bought seed from my father in the eighties. Later from me. Never much at once. Half a pound. Pound. Sometimes less. He didn’t plant rows. He planted wild-simulated. Under hardwoods. Scattered. Moved beds so disease wouldn’t wipe everything out. Took mature roots selectively and kept replanting berries.”
Amos leaned forward.
“If that root survived beside his old marker, then there may be descendants from three or four generations of plants across that hollow.”
I felt my throat tighten.
“How many?”
“I have no idea.”
“Hundreds?”
“Maybe.”
“Thousands?”
“Maybe not.”
He held up one finger.
“And you are not digging another one to find out.”
I looked at the root.
“What do I do with this?”
“Replant it.”
“It’ll live?”
“Maybe. It’s dormant. You kept it damp. We put it back quickly, set the neck correctly, and hope.”
“You?”
“I am not letting Samuel Carver’s nineteen-year-old granddaughter wander back up that hill alone after she already dug a thirty-year root in March.”
For the first time that day, I laughed.
Amos did not.
“I’m serious.”
We drove back together.
He made me show him the map.
Halfway up the slope, he stopped.
Granddad had marked seven small areas.
Numbers corresponded to years in the journal.
Amos stared.
“He rotated seed beds.”
“Looks like it.”
“No.”
He tapped the map.
“Look.”
Granddad’s oldest planting sat highest on the north-facing slope. Later ones moved gradually lower and east, then returned upslope decades later.
“He was managing disease and seed source separately,” Amos said. “Your grandfather wasn’t just scattering ginseng.”
“What was he doing?”
“Building a stand.”
We replanted the root exactly where I found it.
Amos packed soil gently around it, leaving the bud near the correct depth and restoring the leaf layer.
Then he stood.
“Now you wait.”
“Until when?”
“Spring emergence.”
“It is spring.”
“Plants disagree with calendars.”