Ivy of Our Hearts

Thirty-eight

I had dreams of running through the forest, darting around trees, my fingertips grazed their trunks. I ran through mud puddles and skipped across streams, trying to find my way. The trees made way for me, chanting this way, this way.

I slowed down as I reached the end of the trail. I knew because the trees were sparser there, and I heard their voices on the other side. My parents. They called to me. Ivy of our Hearts, they said. I reached out to them as the dream faded.

I woke crying with one word on my lips. Home. I would go home.

For the first time since we'd been here, Margaret had woken before me. Her side of the bed had been made. I got up and made up my side to match hers. I'd figured out a while ago that the longer I stalled on little things the less time I'd have to spend with him, so I took my time. I couldn't hear him in the other room, but there was never a time he wasn't near. Like a blister, no matter how much I picked at him, he refused to let us be.

It had been days since I dug up Nora's grave, maybe weeks. I'd stopped counting. Days and nights bled into each other. My only consolation was Margaret. When I'd finished at the bed, I took down my coat, slipped on my boots, and left the room. He sat at the kitchen table flipping through a magazine. He didn't look at me and I didn't stare too long at him. My gaze slid to the knives on the kitchen counter, each one so sharp.

How easy it would be to drive one through his eye.

I went out the front door. Margaret stood near the fence. I came up to her, snow crunching beneath my boots. It hadn't stopped falling since last night. She asked, in a quiet voice, because everything she said was quiet nowadays, "What do you miss the most, Ivy?"

I thought of my room. The quilt Mom had made me from different patches of fabric lay across my bed, how it smelled like lavender because Mom washed all our things in lavender detergent. I thought of Dad's beard, how he'd grown it out, so it itched whenever he kissed or hugged me. I thought of Mom, her jubilant dimpled smile. I thought of Mom. I thought of Dad. I thought of those knives.

"I can't pick just one," Margaret said. She'd been out here for so long snow clung to her hair. She shivered. Her breath issued out of her in puffs of white. "Do you think Benny remembers what I look like?" she asked. "Babies have such short memories."

"I don't think that's true," I said.

"Listen to how quiet it is."

Down below, the trees donned coats of white, so heavy their usual whispers had been silenced. Winter had come to the woods and brought with it a sleeping spell. No animals stirred.

"How can it be so quiet when my heart is so loud?" Margaret asked. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat and said, "I'm going in."

Once she'd left, I picked up a clump of snow and patted it into a ball, which I then tossed as hard as I could. I remembered when I'd first met Margaret. She and her family had moved in a few houses down one morning in September.

One afternoon, while our moms sipped lemonade, we compared the scabs on our knees. While I was a knobby kneed five-year-old, Margaret was bubbly, and how the flecks of gold in her brown eyes sparkled were a promise that she'd always be until now.

A gust of wind pushed flurries of snow into my face. Some stuck to my lashes and made it hard to see. Would it be painful to freeze to death? Would I scream as ice crept over my heart? Those knives came back to my mind. They were sharp knives. I'd seen one slice through a melon without much effort. Ice had already crept into my heart. It had crept into my soul, but I could live without a soul and would have to after tonight.

In the end, I would capture his heart and hold it in the palm of my hand still warm and still beating.

We would go home.

***

I straddled him as he slept and pressed the knife against his throat, right above his Adam's apple. "Phillip of my heart," I said, as he stared up at me wide eyed. I pressed the knife deeper, cutting him, drawing blood, which I hadn't expected to be bright red like a human's because he was a monster.

"At least we know you can bleed," I said. He opened his mouth to talk but I silenced him by pressing the knife deeper. I had been right about the knives. They cut so nicely. I relished in feeling him squirm beneath me. His eyes watered as I stroked his petal soft hair. Leaning in close to his ear, I said, "Are hearts aren't yours any longer. You will let us go home." Even with the knife pressed to his throat, he shook his head. "Maybe this will convince you," I said, as I tore open his shirt. I trailed the knife from his throat and along the lines of his abdomen to his belly button.

He showed me his true appearance then, like I thought he would. His wings tore from his shoulders, great, black wings. His pupils grew wide and darkened. He even squawked like a bird, rousing Manderley. She swooped down on me. Her hooked toes tore strands from my hair. Her wings struck my face. My eyes watered, but I refused to scream. I refused to let them win. I flung out my arm to push her away, and with the other, I raised the knife, grasping it tight at the hilt, and drove it through Phillip's chest.

"You will never have my heart," I said, as tears streamed down my face. I wiped them away. How could I cry when this beast had taken so much from me? How could I mourn him? A rattling came from Manderley. Perched above him, on top of the armrest, she mourned him.

"Shut up you stupid bird," I said, though even I shook. My hand, the one that clutched the knife in a death grip, shook. Phillip's eyes were open, staring up at nothing, forever stilled by me. I couldn't bear them. Manderley continued to cry. Her wings were held up before her as if she couldn't bear to see Phillip in such a way.

I couldn't bear the noise she made.

"Ivy, what's going on?" Margaret called from the bedroom.

I'd told her to stay there no matter what she heard. "Don't come out," I told her now.

The door of the cabin banged open, startling me. The knife slid from my fingers to the floor with a clatter. Beyond the door, snow swirled in the air. It was a foot high and obscured my view of anything that might lie past it. I attempted to get up. My thighs were sleek with sweat and his feathers adhered to my skin. I cringed and tore them away. On my feet, it took much more effort than usual to walk to the door and close it. I had forgotten how to use my legs and tripped over my feet. Every part of me now felt foreign, like I had slipped into another's body without knowing. This was what death did to a person. It tore their soul from their body. It made them forget how to love.

Squinting, I peered out of the door into the night. All I saw was white and I remembered the smoothness of his skin. I felt his breath on my ear, as if he'd risen in death and stood behind me, those invisible arms wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me close.

He would haunt me forever. 

 Love, the word tasted bitter on my tongue.