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He was twelve and his sister had fallen from a tree during a rare moment of play. They didn’t have many times like that during harvest season, but their owner was better than most, usually giving the children Sunday after church to run crazy, even if their parents had to go back to the fields.
Esther came to him, blood on her arm and crying a river as only an eight-year-old could.
“Fix me, Nathan!” she screamed.
“Essie, hush up!” Ruth growled low, sounding more like a mama than any girl of fourteen had a right to. She looked sharply at the field manager who stood overseeing the adults in the cotton field nearby. “That ain’t something you need to go blabbing about!”
No, Nathan’s healing was a secret. Always had been. Whatever kindnesses Master Jackson saw fit to give them all, the fact was that they were slaves, pure and simple. If he learned what Nathan could do then suddenly, the power wouldn’t be for Nathan and his kind, but for Jackson and however he might want to see it used.
“But it hurts Ruthie!” Esther sobbed, reaching for her big brother and letting Nathan enfold her in a hug than did more to fix her than the power in his hands likely could. “Jeremiah threw me out of the tree, Nathan,” she told him, hiccuping her outrage and fear. “It’s real far.”
Nathan grinned gently. “It is real far, Essie,” he agreed softly, though the highest branch you could climb to weren’t more than five or six feet off the ground. “You calm down now and tell me what you said to him.”
“Didn’t get no chance to say anything to him,” Esther said, calming already. “Stupid Miah went running off. Figure he’s afraid you’ll come beat him up.” She looked up at him hopefully. “You will beat him up, right?”
That got both him and Ruth chuckling. “Reckon he’s more afraid Ruth’ll come after him, honey,” Nathan told her. “You know I ain’t one for solving problems with my fists.”
Esther grinned, taking hold of one of his hands and laying it flat on the long scrape that ran her whole arm from shoulder to wrist. “No. You solve ‘em with your hands, right?”
Nathan focused himself and moved his hand to the top of the scrape, feeling the energy move from him to her as the scrape began disappearing as he watched. “That’s right, honey,” he told her, a contentment welling up as he healed, fixed, made a body whole that weren’t whole before. He wasn’t sure why God above had gone and given something like this to a slave like him, but there was something real and pure and satisfying about it. “So let me just solve this one with my hands, okay? Be real still.”
It took a while to heal the whole long thing, and Esther was squirming with impatience by the time he was done. Ruth had sat by, looking like she was just resting and watching after the children, but really making sure nobody who shouldn’t know about this could surprise Nathan while he worked. She was even more afraid of him being found out than he was, but then, she’d been older when they lost Mama, so maybe she knew more things they should be afraid of. She wouldn’t tell him what she’d seen, but there was something there, some hurt that his touch couldn’t fix, no matter how much he wanted it to.
“I love you,” Esther told him simply, hugging him tight with a smile on her face. “You’re the best brother ever!”
As she scampered off, Ruth got to her feet, using Nathan’s shoulder as a place to push up from. That she could give him a loving squeeze while she did it was surely unintentional. “She ain’t wrong, little brother,” she murmured warmly.
Nathan all but glowed.
“Don’t mean I want that going to your head, now,” she warned him. She looked out over the orchard and the mess of children. “You look out for them for me for a while?” She asked.
He nodded. “Where you going?” As if he didn’t already know.
Ruth gave him a tiny grin that boded no good. “Figure I better go find Miah. Make sure he don’t fall out of a tree himself.”
Nathan smirked as she walked away, knowing that, undeserving or not, he’d fix whatever happened to Jeremiah, too.
God wouldn’t want him to do anything less.
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the end