Ivy of Our Hearts

Four

That night, we slept on a blanket made of moss and leaves, curled around each other like infant mice, though it itched and gave Margaret hives.

Someone will come for us, we said. They'll find us sooner or later. They must.

In the morning, we set out to find our way home again and made a game out of it, keeping an eye out for any wildlife that could cross our path. Margaret wanted to see a red fox. I hoped we wouldn't run into anything with too many teeth, or quills, or that smelled horrid. In the days that came, we would wake to our own symphony of bird song and whatever else called the woodland home, and although it brought joy to my ears, terror stirred within me, deep within me. I knew Margaret felt it, too.

The ache for home, the familiar.

No one had come. No one.

There were things we hadn't accounted for. Rain and where we'd use the bathroom were big ones. On the fourth day, a storm brewed, forcing Margaret and I to take shelter underneath an old sycamore. It had a gaping hole in its trunk that went straight through to the other side. The tree did nothing to keep us dry. We huddled against each other, cold, wet, and shivering. The rain made the ground beneath us mucky, so along with being drenched our clothes would be caked in mud the next day.

Unlike its name suggested, Roving Woods was no paradise. It was a dark fortress of trees crippled and twisted by time, but I would have plucked an apple without lure from any tree with haste if there were any at all. My mother, Cosette, kept the best garden in Clearwater—and an apple tree she'd let me name Ophelia. How I missed my mother's apple tarts, already, so soon, with a restless appetite.

I held out my hand and let the rain pour onto it. We'd been drinking water from the bottles we'd packed, but I imagined bringing my hand up to my mouth to lick up what I could, like some mad dog. But I didn't. I let the rain slip down my arm.

"Will it ever stop?" Margaret asked.

Her lips trembled. She pushed wet strands of her hair away from her dark eyes. Somewhere, during our wandering, she'd lost her ribbon. Somewhere a mother bird was using it to build her nest. At the loud burst of thunder, she shut her eyes.

Over the thunder, rain, and bird song, I heard her take a deep breath. But instead of a frown, a smile played on her lips.

Nothing smelled as good as the woods during a rainstorm. While the woods were musky with the smell of vegetation, the rain washed it all away. But I didn't think it was what made Margaret smile. Whatever she thought about wasn't in these woods.

Her baby brother, Benny, had learned to talk and for some reason, instead of calling her Margaret, he called her by her middle name. Rose. But he pronounced it Ose. "Ose, Ose, Ose," he'd coo all day long. Margaret thought it was sweet.

I leaned my head against the tree and let water drip from its leaves onto my forehead and into my eyes, blurring my vision. The rain fell for ages. The clouds that hung overhead made it so dark there was no differentiating between afternoon and twilight.

At last the rain slowed to a trickle, and I forced myself to stand, to stretch my stiff limbs. Margaret had her head in her lap but was awake. When she no longer felt the warmth of me beside her, she lifted her head.

"Where are you going?" she asked, sniffling and wiping her nose. "It's still raining."

I started to answer, nowhere, but something to my right moved. Something red. I leaned forward and saw what looked like a flag fluttering in the breeze not too far ahead.