Ivy had returned. For days she hardly moved from Lucius' bedside until he woke, aching, exhausted, but out of danger. They clasped hands and for once, words failed her, lost in grateful tears. Lucius didn't mind. He understood her without words.
When they settled him again and he drifted off once more, Ivy was finally persuaded to seek the rest she'd shunned watching over her beloved the last few nights. She retreated to her own home, sliding into crisp sheets freshly laundered smelling of lye and wild grass, where she closed her eyes and listened. Floorboards squeaked as her parents attended to various tasks. Wind heralded the coming winter, whipping the shutters. Children running past her window displayed their resilience by playing games unhindered by recent troubles. All of the sensations were common, but starkly different, unnerving her when they used to comfort.
Ivy was insightful and quick-witted, perhaps too much considering her reflections tended to tumble out of her mouth at times they were better caged. Her current thoughts didn't pass her lips. She was forbidden to speak of them, even though she felt her mind might burst, stoked like the metalsmith's kindling flames but with no release from the fiery furnace.
She tossed and turned and wrung the hem of the sheets. Voices in the next room filtered through her open door, low, familiar, kind, but they couldn't drown out the voice that haunted her, ringing in her ears like an insistent warning bell.
"You cannot sleep." She'd opened her eyes when slumber eluded her. Her father spoke in his soft manner, his color appearing as chair legs scraped the floor and the wicker seat creaked under his weight. They hadn't spoken much since her return. She was afraid to broach hidden subjects, to invite further knowledge that pierced her heart. "You have been fearless and brave. I am proud of you."
She didn't reply, her father's voice distant, covered over by the other repeating telling phrases in her mind.
"You're troubled." A long pause during which she kept quiet. "Tell me what has silenced my daughter these last few days."
So much! A terrifying trip through the woods, abandonment from the two young men assigned to travel with her, an attack she refused to ponder for fear she'd discover a truth she couldn't accept. So she dwelt on the end of her search and the voice that met her.
"Will you speak to me? I am saddened I have pained you with burdens you should not bear. I am willing to hear any of your thoughts on the matter."
A single tear rolled down Ivy's cheek and her father's calloused fingers brushed it away. She grasped his palm before he could pull it back. "He had a kind voice."
"Who?"
"The man that helped me get the medicines." Kevin. "There was kindness in his voice."
Her father didn't speak for a moment, then, "And this troubles you."
Ivy drew in a long breath, her hand shaking, clutching tighter to her father. "I want to know the truth. Will you speak to me honestly?"
Her father's whispered "yes" contained a twinge of pain. She could guess he felt the heaviness of the secrets he'd kept from the village and from her.
"Are there others like him in the towns? Others with kindness in their voices?"
Her father's sigh quivered. "I cannot say."
She dropped his hand and rolled onto her back, staring up at a ceiling she couldn't see. "Cannot or will not?" She knew her question accused, but she couldn't help the harsh tone.
Her father's reply was careful and measured. "People may act kindly and yet harbor evil in their hearts."
"He brought me medicines. He didn't know me and he brought me medicines. He trusted me."
"I…am glad you met a man like this."
"You said the towns were full of people who hurt and kill."
"Ivy…"
"Was this, too, a deceit?"
"No…Not entirely." Ivy waited for him to continue, to excuse what tormented her, to make everything sensible again. "There are good people in the towns, but there are many who injure others to gain what they desire, whose dark hearts hate and destroy."
"Noah." Her voice was barely a whisper.
Her father answered slowly. "Noah was misguided. Damaged. He didn't understand what he did."
And did he die as her father claimed? Did a creature kill him, one she'd been told didn't exist? Or had he been removed from their village by the elders for his transgression? Or was it something else, something that horrified her when she thought of her trip through the woods, something that made her question if her father's farce had been uncovered by another? Ivy closed her eyes against tears and forced these thoughts to flee. Not now. She could not dwell on these questions without losing all footing in her world.
"We are not safe," she whispered instead.
"Ivy…"
"Please let me sleep. I am tired."
Her father acquiesced, scooting the chair back to its place, but he stepped up to her bed and spoke one last time. "We have only done what we must to protect those we love." His footfalls retreated out her door.
Ivy's heart beat against her ribcage, questions Lucius asked that had turned her stomach making themselves known. Lucius had dared to imagine a life where Noah might have been helped and she would have seen, dared to request of the elders he be allowed to go to the towns and bring back medicines. She had gone and she had returned, and now she wondered about the good people of the towns who perhaps found ways to live even better than they. The elders had left the towns but had not escaped sorrow or pain or darkness of heart.
Kevin's kind voice as he handed her the medicine bottles sounded in her ears. "That's all I could get. I hope they're enough." She felt his guiding hand, strong and steady like Lucius' as he helped her ascend the ladder he provided to scale the wall and reenter the woods. She recalled the genuine concern in his words when he said, "I don't know if I should let you leave like this without someone, you know. Will you be okay?"
Ivy pulled the heavy quilt cover up around her shoulders to ward off autumn's chill seeping through the floorboards and cracks in the windows. She listened to the howling wind warning of an icy season's approach. "I will be fine, Kevin. Thank you for your kindness."
Her father praised her bravery, but she thought his adulation misplaced. There were people who possessed far more courage than her. Good people with kind voices who braved the towns, and her thoughts of them wouldn't cease and couldn't be denied. Because as much as she feared to desire it, Ivy Walker wished for one thing—to know more of the good people with the kind voices who refused to leave the towns. She needed to know how they lived and worked and played amongst the suffering because pain had settled deep within her heart, and the village would never be the same for her again.
Author's Note: I recently rewatched The Village and I've long pondered what happened after. There are so many ways it can go, and although this fic doesn't look very far, this last time I watched it I was struck by Ivy's description of Kevin having a kind voice and how she didn't expect that. It made me think of something I hadn't considered before, how her only contact with the outside world might have affected her. Her world was upended in so many ways, it would be incredibly difficult, I think, to make sense of it all.