JANE Snake's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

Jane pulled her coat tight and stepped into the cold. The youngest council member lived fifteen minutes from her door if she walked fast. She'd rehearsed the words twice already—show him the journal, make him understand what forty years of knowledge looked like, then make him choose between being remembered as the man who saved it or the one who let it die. But she hadn't made it three houses past her own before someone called her name. A woman stood in the road, breath rising in the cold air, a worn leather satchel pressed against her chest. The brass buckles caught the lamplight. Jane stopped. The woman was older than her by a decade, with lines around her eyes that spoke of travel and too many days outdoors. "You're the doctor," the woman said. It wasn't a question. "The one who took the journal from my mother." Jane's hand tightened around the journal under her coat. "She gave it to me. Three days ago. She wanted the knowledge preserved." The woman stepped closer. She pulled a locket from beneath her coat and held it out. The intricate metalwork gleamed. "She gave me this when I was twelve. Told me it was our family's mark, that I'd carry her name forward." She lowered the locket. "That journal belongs to her daughter. Not to someone building a hospital for strangers." Jane looked at the locket, then at the woman's face. She saw the old healer there—the shape of the jaw, the set of the eyes. She thought about the council member waiting, about Nathan's three days running out, about the hospital that would train healers who never knew this woman's mother existed. She opened her coat and pulled out the journal. The woman reached for it but Jane didn't let go. "Your mother didn't give this to me because I deserved it," Jane said. "She gave it to me because she knew I'd use it. If you take this home and keep it safe, forty years dies with you." She released the journal. The woman held it against her chest like it might disappear. Jane turned and walked back toward her own door. Inside, a candle still burned on the kitchen table, the one that smelled like old books. She sat down and realized she had nothing left to show the council member. The woman's footsteps faded behind her. By the time Jane stood again, the night had grown colder and the youngest council member would be asleep. She'd lost the one thing that might have changed his mind, but she'd learned something she couldn't unlearn—the healer had given away her daughter's inheritance to save something larger than family. Jane would have to do the same.