The morning mist still clung to the low places as Eli steered his old truck down a narrow gravel road that snaked along the edge of a wooded rise. Kate rode silently beside him, flipping through the worn pages of the journal they’d found in the attic. Neither had much to say—both were too wrapped up in what they might find ahead.
“Do you think he’s actually buried there?” Kate finally asked, glancing up.
“If Elias Arvin died in Martin County like the ledger suggests, this is the most likely place,” Eli replied, tapping the steering wheel with his thumb. “This cemetery’s old. Some of the stones go back before the Civil War. It’s where most of the early settlers in this part of the county ended up.”
They pulled into the edge of Brush Creek Cemetery, a modest patch of ground surrounded by low stone walls and shaded by ancient hackberry and walnut trees. A crooked wooden sign leaned on rusted metal stakes. Someone had painted it long ago in faded white letters: Brush Creek—Established 1811.
The place was quiet except for the wind in the trees and the low creak of the gate as Eli pushed it open.
Kate followed, clutching her canvas bag like a satchel of secrets. Inside were the journal, the strange map from the ledger, and a printout she’d made of an old land patent. “According to this,” she said, holding the paper up, “Elias received a land grant for his service in the War of 1812. He had to be buried nearby. He wasn’t the type to leave things unfinished.”
They split up and walked among the stones, many leaning at angles, covered in lichen or barely legible. Eli ran his hand along one of them, brushing away moss.
“Anything?” Kate called.
Eli shook his head. “Just a Margaret and a baby named Samuel. Died 1837.”
Kate squinted at a marker shaped like an obelisk. “This one’s got an ‘E. A.’ on it—but it’s not our guy. Emma Annabelle, 1860.”
Minutes passed. The sky began to brighten. Birds stirred overhead.
Then, near the edge of the plot where brush had begun to reclaim ground, Eli stopped cold. He looked down.
“Katherine…” he said, unusually formal.
She walked over, saw the stone he was pointing to, and drew in a breath.
The slab was simple and broken across the top. Someone had etched only a few words:
E. Arvin
Soldier – Surveyor – Storyteller
The land remembers.
Kate knelt beside it, her fingers brushing dirt from the base.
“That last line,” she whispered. “The land remembers. That was in the journal. It’s written more than once.”
Eli nodded. “And the title on the journal’s cover—Notes for Those Who Listen.”
Kate stood and pulled out the map again, now with newly penciled notations. “We’ve been looking for a cipher. But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s not just about decoding words. Maybe it’s about reading the land itself.”
Eli turned slowly, looking past the cemetery into the surrounding woods and gentle hills beyond. “You think it’s a map you follow with your feet?”
“Or your senses,” Kate replied. “He was a surveyor. He didn’t just make maps—he lived them. Maybe each marker, each story, leads to another.”
They stood in silence for a moment.
Then a breeze rustled the grass, and a single white feather drifted down from above, spinning gently until it landed at the base of the broken stone.
Neither of them spoke.
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