Ivy of Our Hearts

Eight

He led me to the couch and sat me down right in the middle, so I had the slight sensation of falling.

"Let me see your hands," he said, kneeling in front of me. I could make out my reflection in his blue irises. I could have drowned in their inky pools.

He held out his hand. My fingers stung from where the wood had pierced my skin, but I kept the blanket wrapped around me, my hands hidden underneath its folds, too afraid that if I let him touch me I'd give my true feelings away. I would be his guest in this shack for however long I needed to be. I'd sit on his uncomfortable couch, but I wouldn't let him touch me twice. What would I do with such a feeling, of his hot flesh against mine? If I were more delirious, I would have pressed my lips where his touch had been.

Even the slightest feeling of his fingers along my wrist would set me aflame.

"Margaret, I think she'd be more comfortable if you did it." He said this all without turning from me. I shifted my gaze to the window above his shoulder and watched the rain slide down the pane. I even envied it. Translucent. Free in a way I'd never be.

"Come, Ivy." Margaret moved to put her hand on my shoulder.

I almost flinched away, but realized if we were alone, I'd be able to talk to her, maybe knock some sense into that thick skull of hers. I followed her to the bedroom, the only one in the cabin. The door across from it stood ajar and a tub sat below an opened window, which had a puddle of water on its windowsill. The water fell over the edge, plink, plink, plink, into the tub.

Once again, the wind made its way in and rattled my already frigid bones.

Margaret closed the bedroom door behind us. She went over to one of three pieces of furniture in the room, a white wardrobe with a single door and drawer. It had two circular embellishments I didn't recognize carved into both sides. One of its legs was broken so it tilted to the right. It was old, but someone had taken the time to make it look new with a coat of lumpy paint.

"He said there'd be some stuff in here," she said. "I should change, too." She tugged on the door. When that didn't work, she pounded on it. It sprang open; freeing a cloud of dust and a white winged moth that settled at the top of the wardrobe. Margaret waved her hand and coughed. "Holy heck."

"I'd rather stay in my own clothes," I said, watching the moth flitter to the top of the wardrobe.

Margaret didn't give the appearance that she'd heard me, although she had. She tapped her cheek, while shifting through the wardrobe's bloated insides with her free hand.

"I said I—"

"If you don't change, you'll get sick again." She cut me off.

"I don't give a damn," I said. "As soon as the rain stops, we're leaving and you're coming with me."

"Of course, I am," she said. She pulled out a moth-eaten sweater, wrinkled her nose, and shoved it back inside.

I hugged the blanket tighter around myself, mistaking her words for sarcasm. "My God, Margaret, how could you be so... so..." But I remembered our fight and stopped myself before I could say the word. If we were to find our way out of the woods, we'd need each other. As attractive as I found Phillip, I didn't trust him. Even beautiful things could be monstrous. Too often we confused beauty for goodness, as if their only sin had been being born pretty. I wasn't fooled by him. Margaret was another story.

"I want to go home as much as you do," she said, as she pulled out some things and tossed them onto the bed. "When you got sick, I thought we'd never get home." She turned to me. "What was I supposed to do?" she asked, her voice dropping an octave. "When he turned up, when you were so sick I couldn't understand you, he said he could help. I couldn't leave you like that." She shut the wardrobe door, leaned her head against it and whispered, "I promise, Ivy, as soon as the rain stops we're leaving, whether he helps or not."

I took a step towards her but stopped when the floorboard outside the door groaned. Margaret lifted her head. She sucked in a breath. He'd been listening.

He knocked. "Are you guys okay?"

I nodded at Margaret, a silent okay for her to answer him, though she would have anyway without my permission.

"Yeah, we are, "she said.

"There are bandages in the medicine cabinet. Did you see them?"

"No," Margaret said. "We're changing now."

"I'll leave you to it then," he said.

I listened for the sound of him walking away, then said to Margaret, "We have to leave as soon as we can. We can't stay here any longer. Think of our parents, Margaret. How scared they must be."

She went to the bed and picked up one of the sweaters. For a while, she stared at it. "Do you think he'll hurt us?"

I thought of his hands, his opaque veins against his pale skin, but I also thought of the stars, how they blossomed and burned. "I'd rather not stick around to find out," I said. I would rather not stick around to see how deeply I would drown in him.

"Here." Margaret held out the sweater to me. "It's your color."

I unwrapped myself from the blanket and threw it across the bed.

"Your hands," she said. "What did you do to them?"

I held them out in front of me, palms raised. They were stained with dried blood, my nails especially, as if I'd dipped my fingers in a bucket of paint.

Margaret draped the sweater across the footboard. "I'll get the bandages," she said, rushing past me to the door. "Put on some dry clothes. It'll help," she called behind her.

I picked up the sweater and picked at its fabric. It was a woman's sweater. Hunter green with a bit of detail along the sleeves. Someone had knitted it, which spurred even more questions about Phillip. No other person lived here. Did they? From what I could tell, he lived on his own, although he couldn't be much older than us. What sixteen-year-old boy would live in the woods on their own, would carve our initials into trees, and show up when we needed someone? He was too impossible, as impossible as how the wind had spoken his name, as if he'd commanded it.

I studied the moth. "How long have you been trapped here?" I asked it, but its wings fluttered once before going still.

"So, he's ravished you, too," I said, pitying the dead creature that must have spent its entire existence trapped in a closet, ensnared like we would be if we didn't get away.

I didn't want to change, not when I felt so unnerved, but I couldn't risk getting sick again, not when Margaret needed me to be well. I peeled off my wet blouse and pulled on the sweater. It hung past my hips. Margaret had taken down a dress for me also, but my jeans stayed put. I could bear them.

I could bear another night.