Nathan Snake's Arc

Chapter 5 of 13

Jane came to the graveyard near sunset carrying the healer's journal under her arm. Nathan was raking leaves near the eastern fence when she walked through the gate, her face set in that expression she wore when she'd found something she wasn't sure what to do with. She sat on the bench by the toolshed and opened the journal without saying hello. Nathan leaned the rake against the fence and waited. The journal was bound in worn leather, its pages yellowed and crowded with drawings of plants and measurements written in a careful hand. Jane turned through sections marked with pressed flowers and diagrams of roots until she stopped on a page near the middle. She looked up at Nathan, then back down at the page. "There's a name here," she said. "Written in the margin beside a note about land grants made forty years ago." She turned the journal so he could see. The handwriting was different from the rest — darker ink, pressed harder into the paper. Nathan recognized the surname immediately. It was the same one carved into the cornerstone of the church, the same one the deacon carried. But the first name was wrong. This was a woman's name, and beside it was a note about property deeded to the church in exchange for care of the sick poor. Nathan asked Jane where the healer had worked before she died. Jane said the woman had kept a healing house near the plateau road, marked by a stone fountain carved with vines and a blue glass sphere set in its center. People came from miles around because she never turned anyone away. Nathan understood then what the journal was telling him. The church hadn't bought the graveyard land — it had been given to them, with conditions attached, by someone the deacon's family had erased from their history. The healer had known because she'd treated the woman's granddaughter years ago, and the story had been passed down through the families who remembered. Jane closed the journal and said the healer's daughter had come back that morning and taken it. She'd been kind but firm, and Jane hadn't fought her for it. Nathan asked if Jane had memorized the name. She nodded. Nathan walked to the church that night and used the red key to open the locked cabinet in the deacon's office. The original deed was there, just as he'd suspected, written in the same hand as the margin note. The land had been given for the care of the forgotten poor, in perpetuity, with no provision for sale. The deacon had lied about owning it outright because the truth would have destroyed his leverage. Nathan locked the cabinet and pocketed the deed. He had what he needed now — not just to refuse the deacon's price, but to take back what had been stolen forty years ago. He walked home with the deed folded in his coat, the name from the journal fixed in his mind like a promise he'd just learned he'd been keeping all along.