Stephanie Edwards Donnell Head lawyer of the community's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Stephanie Edwards Donnell had never written a will, and the man who taught her to read was dying before sundown. The message came at first light. Justin was ninety-five, close to a hundred, and his breath had gone thin. He was holding a pen his father gave him as a boy. He meant to press his whole life story into it before he stopped breathing, and pass the pen to his son James. He needed her to make it law. If she didn't, someone could challenge it later and strip the story from the boy's hands. Stephanie ran to her office. The community had built it for her that spring, board by board, with a green door and a covered porch. Neighbors had carved small flowers into the trim. She had never used it for anything harder than a land deed. She pulled her law books from the shelf. There was nothing in them about a dying man passing memory through an object. The books spoke of property, coin, and land. She had no case to copy from. Her hands shook. She sat down, then stood up again. She decided to build the framework herself. She wrote at the top of the page: Testament of Justin Donnell, Founder. Below that she listed his sound mind, his age, the date, and the hour. She named the pen as a lawful vessel of transfer, the same as a deed transfers land. She wrote that the story spoken and inked into the pen would become the property of James upon Justin's last breath. She added a clause naming two witnesses required at the bedside. She added a second clause barring any later challenge from any party of the community. She read it twice. Then she signed her own name at the bottom as counsel of record. She rolled the paper, took a second blank sheet for the witness lines, and ran. At the bedside, Justin was gray. His son held the pen against his father's palm. Stephanie set the document on a plank across the bed. She read it aloud, slow, so Justin could nod at each clause. He nodded four times. He signed with a mark. Two neighbors signed as witnesses. She pressed her seal into the wax and dated it. The testament was law. Justin closed his eyes and began to speak into the pen. His voice was a thread. James held the nib to the paper his father wrote on and did not move. Stephanie stepped back into the hall. Her hands were still shaking, but the paper in her satchel was clean and signed and could not be undone. Then a neighbor came up the stairs fast. A rider had come to the edge of town claiming to be Justin's blood kin from the north. He said the founder had no right to pass anything to the boy, and he had come to stop it.