Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 8 of 59

The morning after she named the last plant, Delia opened her cottage door and found a line. People stood along the path and down to the river. A woman held a coughing child. An old man leaned on a cane. Two farmers waited with a friend who could not walk. Her cottage held four chairs. It could shelter six from rain. She had thirty faces looking at her. Delia worked until noon. She treated one, then the next, then the next. But the line did not shrink. More arrived while she worked. A mother fainted from standing in the sun. A man gave up his place and walked home untreated. Word of free healing had spread past what her small house could hold. She could not fit them inside, and she could not send them away. She left the door and walked to the pink-leafed tree at the river's edge. The swing hung still from its branch. She sat and gripped the ropes. This was where she and Nick first met. She looked back at the crowd and did not know what to do. Nick came up the path and saw the line before he saw her. He crossed to the swing and crouched beside it. "You're turning people away," he said. Not a question. "I don't have room," Delia said. "I heal one. Ten more wait in the sun. A woman fainted. It isn't healing if they suffer to reach me." Nick stood and looked at the field beyond the cottage. The one his father had signed to her. Wide, open, green with her planted rows. "Then stop trying to fit them in the house," he said. "You have a whole field. Move the work outside." Delia followed his eyes. The field stretched flat and broad in the sun. Space for benches. Space for shade. Space for every person who came. "I built a cottage," she said. "I need a garden. A place people wait in the open, the way they'd wait by a river." Nick nodded once. "I'll bring men and lumber tomorrow. Benches. A cloth roof for shade. It's crown work I can order without asking him." Delia rose from the swing. She walked back to the crowd and raised her voice. "No one leaves. We're moving out here." She pointed to the field. "Sit where there's grass. I'll come to each of you." The old man lowered himself onto the grass. The mother laid her child in the shade of the tree. The line broke apart and spread across the open field, and no one had to stand. By dusk Delia had treated all thirty. Her cottage door stood open behind her, too small now to matter. The field was the sanctuary. The garden she meant to build had begun, not as flowers, but as people healing under an open sky.