JANE Snake's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

Nathan was already awake when Jane came through the door. He sat at the kitchen table with a folded map in front of him and dirt under his fingernails. He looked up when she entered but didn't ask about the journal. She didn't offer an explanation. "The daughter from plot seven came to the house an hour ago," Nathan said. "Her brothers were digging a water channel behind the temple ruins and hit stone. Old stone. She wants me to see it before the church does." He stood and pulled on his coat. Jane followed him out into the cold. They walked to the graveyard in silence, past the weathered cavalry outpost the church had claimed as a watchtower forty years ago. Its stones still showed moss in the cracks, and someone had hung a lantern from the archway that cast long shadows across the graves. The daughter was waiting beside plot seven, where her father's grave sat marked by an old charter stone half-sunk in the earth. A shovel stood planted in fresh dirt beside it. She pointed toward a pile of soil near the temple ruins. "There," she said. "Six feet down. My brothers stopped when they saw what it was." Nathan knelt and brushed dirt away from a flat stone surface carved with names. Twenty names. Thirty. All from the deacon's family, all dated within the same month forty years ago. Jane crouched beside him and ran her fingers over the engravings. The church had always claimed only the deacon's mother died that winter. This wasn't a foundation stone. This was a mass grave. Jane looked up at Nathan. "The healer's journal," she said quietly. "Forty years ago. She wrote about a fever that killed in days." Nathan met her eyes. The daughter stood over them both, her face hard. "The church buried my family's land deed with their dead," she said. "They knew if anyone dug here, they'd lose their claim to the graveyard. Now you know it too." Jane stood and faced the watchtower where the church lantern still burned. She had come to the graveyard following Nathan's lead, but she left it knowing exactly what she'd tell the youngest council member. The church had built their authority on a lie that killed thirty people. The hospital would be built on what actually saved lives.