Nathan Snake's Arc

Chapter 13 of 13

Nathan walked with Thomas Farrow through the graveyard gate as the council gathered near the chapel steps. The daughter from plot seven stood waiting with J.F.'s journal in her hands. She'd asked to be the one to read it aloud. Nathan had agreed. Her father was buried on land that J.F. had given to help people like him. It seemed right that his daughter should speak the words that proved it. The daughter placed the journal on a wooden stand that Nathan had built that morning. The pages lay open under a piece of amber glass shaped like a rose with a heart carved into its surface. J.F. had kept it in the alcove beside the journal. The daughter began to read. Her voice was steady as she spoke J.F.'s words about giving the land to shelter those who had nowhere else to go. She read the conditions that the church had agreed to forty years ago. She read the names of the thirty family members who'd died of fever and been buried in secret on land meant for the poor. When she finished, Thomas stepped forward and told the council where to find the graves. He pointed toward the temple ruins where Nathan had planted the sapling. One council member asked if anyone currently lived on the disputed land. The daughter's two brothers emerged from the temple ruins carrying blankets they'd hung on a wooden rack to dry. The older brother met Nathan's eyes and nodded once. The council members looked at each other. One of them asked Nathan what he wanted. Nathan pulled the red cape with white fur trim from his coat and laid it across the stand beside the journal. He said J.F. had wanted the land to serve the forgotten and he intended to honor that. He said the deed proved the church had no right to sell what was never theirs. He said the people sleeping here now had as much claim to the ground as anyone buried beneath it. The council deliberated for less than an hour. They ruled that the land belonged to the dead and the living who sheltered there, not the church. They voided the deacon's sale and transferred the deed to Nathan with the condition that he maintain J.F.'s original terms in perpetuity. Nathan accepted. He walked to plot seven and knelt beside the sapling he'd planted on land that now belonged to the man's children and everyone else who needed it. The daughter stood beside him with her brothers. She asked if he'd kept his promise. Nathan said he had. The graveyard would always be a place her family could come to. The gate would never lock them out again. That evening Nathan sat with Jane at their kitchen table. The deed lay between them. She asked him what he'd do now that he had what he'd been working toward. Nathan looked at the jar of coins he'd been saving. He said he'd use it to build shelters in the temple ruins before winter came. He said he'd hire Thomas to help maintain the grounds and keep watch over the graves. He said the graveyard would become what J.F. had intended it to be forty years ago. A sanctuary for people the world had forgotten. Jane reached across the table and took his hand. She said J.F. would be proud. Nathan nodded. He folded the deed and put it in his coat pocket beside the promise he'd made to a dying man. Both were kept now. Both were real.