I know why you deny my sister.
When I was younger you used to hold my arm when I walked.
Then suddenly you stopped.
One day, I even tripped in your presence and nearly fell.
I was faking, of course. But still, you did not hold me.
Sometimes we don't do things we want to do, so that others won't know we want to do them.
The ring of the hammer struck Lucius' ears and its vibrations jolted up his arm. His hand ached, and still he drummed the glowing metal on the anvil, again and again, until the muscles in his right hand seized. He stumbled back, the hammer dropping to the floor. He scowled at the mishappen metal, a mangled mess that wouldn't now turn into anything useful. He thrust the metal into the water bucket where it hissed, steam angrily clawing into the air. He snatched a cloth, agitatedly wiping his hands, and collapsed onto a stool. He hadn't been able to work properly, not since after lunch, when he'd meant to eat alone at Resting Rock and others had intruded. Noah…and Ivy.
He'd shared his biscuit with Noah. Poor Noah, so childlike, unable to grow like the rest of them. Noah had wandered off and left him sitting alone next to Ivy. Ivy—vibrant, intuitive, talkative. Always talkative. She talked like she always did, except the words that she spoke this time had dug into his mind. I know why you deny my sister.
Lucius dipped a hand into the water bucket, retrieving the now cool mishappen metal. He turned it in his hands as he allowed himself to remember…
"Come along, Lucius! It's a celebration!" Kitty dragged him into her home locked in a painfully tight grip. He hadn't intended to join in. The moment Kitty had leaped up in the schoolhouse and announced a "beginning of summer celebration," he had determined to slip away in the tumult of the younger children's excitement. But just as they reached the Walker home and he meant to veer off to his own, Kitty had snatched his arm.
The inside of the home had been decorated in colored bunting and blooming flowers. Pastries, fresh fruits, and pitchers of milk drew exclamations of appreciation from the other children. They tucked in, piling food upon their plates. Kitty squealed in delight and pulled him along, filling a plate for him. He was ever so grateful when other girls showed up and drew her into their own twittering. He retreated to the one chair set in the farthest corner of the room to eat in peace.
Although he hadn't wanted to come, he admitted the food was as delicious as Mrs. Walker always made. He had almost finished his treats and devised his next plan of escape—sidle down the left side of the room, blend in with other prating children, make it to the door—when little Ivy Walker suddenly perched herself on the armrest of his chair. She wasn't that little really, but three years difference felt like a lot to an eleven-year-old with an eight-year-old balancing on his armrest.
"Do you like the celebration?" Ivy asked, not looking at him, but her exuberant sister surrounded by giggling girls.
He slowly shrugged.
"Do you at least like the food?"
He nodded.
"I made the apple crumb. It took me forever to get it right. I am not as good as mama or Kitty at baking things." She sighed.
Lucius chewed and swallowed.
Ivy spun round, piercing him with her clear, green eyes. He froze as if he'd been caught out in lantern light. "You don't talk much. Why don't you talk much?"
Lucius stared back at her, then bowed his head to his plate and speared another piece of apple crumb with his fork. He chewed again and swallowed again. "I do not need to."
When he looked back up, she was still studying him, only her brow had creased in concentration. "You are the oldest…" she said slowly.
Yes, the oldest. When the elders left the towns, he had already been born.
"There is no one else old enough to talk to, maybe. Though, really, Kitty is not much younger than you. Are you lonely?"
He knew that. Kitty was only about a year younger.
"Maybe you don't want to talk to Kitty. Is Kitty the problem?"
Heat ran up the back of Lucius' neck. Little Ivy Walker had talked to him now and then, but never like this, so…direct…and honest…and discerning.
"You do not need to answer. It really was not polite what I said. Mama would scold me… Well, Lucius Hunt, you will eat and I will talk. That will keep you busy and Kitty will not need to entertain you because I will already be doing so."
She prattled on then, about school, chores, the weather, her siblings, and her favorite flowers. He simply listened and ate and exuded gratefulness in his thoughts for a rescue he hadn't expected in the form of an eight-year-old child. He almost regretted it when Ivy stopped short.
"There is Finton Coin. The other boys will have sent him. One of them will want you on his team because you are oldest and strongest."
Finton, a child the same age as Ivy, fumbled to a halt in front of Lucius' chair. He couldn't speak at first as he recovered his breath. "Gill…Gill is a team captain. He…he needs you. He picked you. Please come, Lucius. He cannot win otherwise."
Ivy Walker's clear, green eyes met his. He cleared his throat. "I will come. Tell him."
Finton tore back through the house. Lucius began to stand but Ivy spoke softly.
"I wish I could go, too," she breathed, gazing longingly after Finton.
"You're a girl," Lucius said matter-of-factually.
"I really do not think that should stop me," Ivy said with a frown, then stood up and yanked on his hand to pull him up. "You go have your fun, Lucius. And if you are willing, return before you go home. I want to hear all about the game." She took his empty plate out of his hands.
He played the boys' game. His team won. And when he passed by the Walker home to go to his own, Ivy was waiting on its steps. Kitty was nowhere to be seen. He told her the details of the game as shortly but as accurately as he could remember…
Lucius rose from his seat. He set the misshapen metal aside and procured a fresh bar. He could not afford to waste the precious metals. Many in the village depended on his skill to provide what they needed. He set the bar into the fire. He stirred the coals, watching the undulating waves that manipulated the air above the heat. Ivy's words joined the curling air, treading through his mind: When I was younger you used to hold my arm when I walked. He remembered…
Less than a year after "the beginning of summer celebration," Lucius huddled against the side wall of a stone home, one closer to the Walker home than his own, so close he was afforded an unobstructed view of Mr. Walker rocking back and forth in the rocker on the porch. Mr. Walker hadn't been to the school lately. Mr. Coin had taken up their lessons. Lucius preferred Mr. Walker.
Ivy was sick. She hadn't come to school for two months, but he knew whatever had taken her had started before then. There had been a day she had not greeted him with a smile. She had simply slumped over at her desk and laid her head on its surface.
The elders had told them all to think of her and pray for her. His mother had done so aloud. He had done so alone at night in his bed, words trickling from his mind rather than his mouth.
Something wrong had happened today. He knew it when he'd seen the doctor quickening past his home. He'd followed, remaining out of sight until the doctor entered the Walker home. Mr. Walker stepped out onto the porch about ten minutes later and sagged heavily into the rocker. He closed his eyes and his mouth formed silent syllables.
Lucius straightened when the doctor emerged. He had spent at least half an hour inside. Slowly, he approached Mr. Walker. Lucius held his breath. The doctor spoke; Mr. Walker dipped his head into his hands.
Lucius crossed his arms and tucked his hands under his armpits. He lifted his head to the clouded sky above and prayed like he never had before.
Ivy didn't die. She lost her vision.
Word spread around the village. Lucius' mother felt sad for her. People lamented. Lucius dreaded the day she'd return to school. Everything would be changed.
The day came. He lingered outside the school with the other children as curious as the rest of them. There she came, with her curly mop of red hair, in a cornflower blue dress, all pressed and clean as usual. She was holding Kitty's arm and she was staring into nothing.
The children grew silent and when Ivy reached the school, they parted to let her through. Kitty threw back her head.
"Really," she spat out indignantly. "Have you never seen someone blind before?"
They hadn't.
Kitty opened her mouth to say more, but Ivy broke in. "I thought you would all be glad to see me. I am alive, after all." Her words opened the floodgates, and the children gathered round her, some with questions but most with well wishes. Lucius hung back. Eventually, Kitty ordered the children out of the way and they headed towards the school entrance. But Ivy abruptly pulled on Kitty's arm, bringing her to a stop. She tilted her head and turned ever so slightly in Lucius' direction. Her brow furrowed in confusion. "Is that…Lucius Hunt?"
He started, glancing at the other children and then back to her.
"Ivy," Kitty breathed, "but how do you know that?"
Ivy smiled. "Lucius Hunt is so quiet I can hear his silence." And she tugged Kitty along to enter the school.
He watched her all that day from his seat at the back of the room. She listened and laughed and acted as if nothing were amiss. He marveled at her fingers, touching everything, memorizing her world with her hands instead of her eyes. Except…except for those few times her head swiveled his direction. Her clear, green eyes didn't seem so sightless when she did that. Each time he ducked his head to his slate or peered out the window to pretend something had commanded his attention, even though she surely couldn't see him.
Mr. Walker called on his daughter as usual and she answered his questions. She seemed to look straight at him, too, or maybe she was simply used to where her father habitually stood when teaching. Or perhaps, her actions were only a farce, playacting for her father's sake, so he wouldn't know how hard it was to live without sight.
After school, Ivy took Kitty's arm again. They descended the porch steps. Lucius trailed them. At the bottom, several of Kitty's friends waited.
"Helen is holding a quilting bee," one of them uttered quietly.
"We have not seen you in some time and we dearly wanted you to come," another added, attention shifting uncomfortably to Ivy who obviously couldn't take part in the event, not now.
Kitty huffed, rising to her full height. "If you want me to come then my sister must—"
"You may go," Ivy interrupted. "Lucius is going to take me home."
Kitty cocked her head then glanced back at Lucius. He tried to wipe the amazement from his face. Ivy slowly turned round and peered at him in the strange way she had all day.
"Won't you, Lucius?"
He took the steps one at a time. When he held out his arm to her, she felt it with her fingers, then latched onto him. He guided her away from the school without looking back.
She didn't speak until they'd made it inside the Walker home. Her mother and other siblings were absent. "In the garden, I suppose," Ivy said. "Will you not stay for a biscuit and tea? They are freshly baked and I even helped."
He assented. He thought she would require his aid, but she deftly circumvented the house, passing here and there assuredly and eventually setting a plate with a honeyed biscuit and a steaming cup of tea before him. She retrieved her own plate and cup and settled down across from him.
"You are wondering," she said after they had taken a couple bites and sips, "how I can see without seeing, aren't you?"
He washed down a chunk of biscuit. "You use your hands."
"Yes," she replied with a decisive nod. "Mama wouldn't let me stay in bed anymore. She made me rise and she guided my hands. I know where everything is…even you." She looked up and his stomach flipped. He couldn't explain it. She didn't seem blind, not right then.
"Are you not sad?" he whispered before he could stop himself.
She turned away, her hand going to her cup. She didn't raise it to her lips, but let its warmth seep into her hand. "What is the good in being sad? Things are the way they are."
When Lucius finished his biscuit and tea, she saw him to the door.
"Papa is making me a cane," she said. "But maybe you will still walk with me when I have need?"
He nodded before he remembered her lack of sight. "I will."
He walked with her often even after the cane, when she stood in front of him and primly held out her arm, waiting in expectation for him to take it…
Lucius lifted the metal bar out of the coals and set it on the anvil. He picked up his hammer, turning it round in his hand before he clenched it tightly. Then suddenly you stopped. One day, I even tripped in your presence and almost fell. I was faking, of course. But still, you did not hold me. He pounded down against the metal, ignoring the residual aching of his hand…
He stopped attending school at thirteen and began his apprenticeship. After all, someone would have to take up blacksmithing after Mr. Crane passed on, and the solitary nature of the craft appealed to Lucius. He hardly ever gathered with the other children from that time on. Once or twice Mr. Walker asked him to return to the school to tutor struggling students, but he didn't say much and he didn't think he was much help. His days became systematic: wake up, do chores, go to the blacksmith's, work until evening.
Now and then Kitty issued him invitations to her celebrations. He usually showed for the first ten minutes, and then posited an excuse to slip away. Or Ivy would talk to him like she had when she was eight. He dawdled longer at those times. She still held out her arm to him then.
Then one day, when he was seventeen, he made a delivery to the Walker home. Mr. Walker had asked for a set of four candlesticks to be made especially by Lucius' hands which were becoming known for their skill. He'd toiled long hours and even into the night to perfect them. He'd polished them until they shined, wrapped them in yellow cloth, and carried them to the elder's home.
When he arrived, the door was open and laughter burst through. He slowed his approach. Maybe this wasn't a good time. He hesitated. Kitty came flying through the door all covered in suds and flapping a towel.
"Oh, Lucius!" she cried upon seeing him. "Save me from these infantile simpletons!" She stalked away, her face screwed up in consternation. She'd been quite irritable ever since she turned sixteen.
Lucius warily climbed the steps and stared through the door. The floor was a mess. A large puddle of water dotted with floating suds was leaking away from an overturned laundry tub, inching towards him. Ivy's blue dress was soaked through, and she was laughing uproariously, grasping the hands of two of her friends to spin them round then let go so they slid across the floor.
"Is that Lucius Hunt?" Ivy suddenly called, her head jerking up and her eyes catching him in that odd way they always seemed to do. "Come in, Lucius! Come play with us!"
He cleared his throat. "I have a delivery for Mr. Walker."
"Oh, yes. The candlesticks. Wait right there." Ivy backed up to the far end of the room, then dashed forward and threw herself into a slide, zinging right at him.
The sunlight streaming through one of the windows caught her curly locks and for a moment they shined with gold, that precious metal he hadn't ever seen worked. She was grinning with her whole mouth, more alive than he ever thought he'd seen her. She piled right into him. He dropped the candlesticks and grasped her thin shoulders. She held onto him for dear life, trying to stay upright. Their faces were no more than an inch apart, and her clear, green eyes blinked at him.
He quickly set her on her feet and backed away. "You are uninjured?"
She nodded. "I am unharmed." She reached down, feeling the floor until she found the candlesticks. She unfolded one of the cloths and fingered the twisted fine braids of metal. "They are beautiful. My father will be pleased."
"Yes. Good-bye." He rushed away, not giving her another moment to speak. But she spoke anyway, in his mind. Day after day, month after month, she appeared in his mind's eye; he could get no rest from her! Even at his anvil he thought of her, of things he suddenly wished to do—wrap her in his arms, run his fingers through her curly tangles, stroke her pale cheek. So many thoughts, none of which were proper.
He began to make up excuses to avoid village gatherings. He buried himself in the work of the smithy. If he happened to pass Ivy and she held out her arm, he pretended not to notice. After all, she couldn't see him anyway.
A baby passed away. They held a burial. He dressed in his darkest clothing and stood solemnly with the other mourners. He wished things like this never happened. He wished there were better ways to stop these pains. He wished Ivy's hair wasn't so bright against her black dress, drawing his eye.
He meant to skip the village meal afterwards. His mother insisted he attend. He obeyed, though he sat at the far end of the table, away from those his age and closer to the elders. He made his excuses after a time and stood to leave. He backed up…and right into Ivy. Somehow, she had been passing right behind him. She stumbled to the side, tripped over a rock, and teetered precariously. She didn't have her cane.
He began to reach out, but caught himself, firmly locking his arms in place at his sides.
She didn't fall. She righted herself. She didn't look towards him. Or maybe she did. He didn't know. He had already hurried away.
He beat upon the anvil in a fury that day. He berated himself. He should have caught her. A good man would have. But he couldn't touch her. He couldn't.
She stopped holding out her arm to him. She used her cane consistently.
And he talked to her only when he had to. Until today. At Resting Rock…
He had seen her flying across the fields, free as any bird, her hair flapping in the wind, her dress flowing round her. All the times he'd snatched quick of glimpses of her in the intervening years seemed to coalesce in that one moment. She was coming towards him, right to him. His heart pattered, his stomach clenched; he couldn't help staring and staring.
Yesterday, Kitty had come to him, had invaded his smithy. She had professed her heart with all the imaginative eloquence she'd ever possessed. He'd replied directly: "I don't care for you." And went back to filing the metal he'd been working on. He'd heard her run away. He tried to silence his longing for someone else to enter his realm, someone younger than her and a sister.
Lucius spotted Noah behind Ivy. Of course, she was including the damaged boy as she often did. As he often did when Noah wandered into the smithy, handing him discarded slag to play with as he worked. She was doing a good thing. Then why did it disappoint him so to see Noah here, right now?
Noah won the apparent race. Lucius shared his biscuit, letting the boy tear off a piece. He could feel Ivy's presence only a few feet away.
"My sister cried a lot," she said succinctly.
He looked over at her. He guessed Kitty had, but he wasn't much bothered. She would find another to suit her.
"You wonder how I recognized you?"
He didn't. She always had.
"Some people - just a handful, mind you - give off the tiniest color. It's faint, like a haze. It's the only thing I ever see in the darkness. Papa has it, too."
Lucius' gut twisted. She saw something when she looked at him? Did it reveal his heart? Did she know? Should he say something?
"Do you wonder what your color is? Well, that I won't tell you. It's not ladylike to speak of such things. You shouldn't even have asked." She smiled at her own joke. He wanted to touch her lips.
Noah scampered off. They were alone. He concentrated on his meal again, but his pulse pounded in his ears. He spoke before he could stop himself.
"You run like a boy." Such a declaration really wasn't how one should complement a girl, he knew, but he'd paid enough attention to give her the praise she craved.
"Thank you," she replied softly.
Silence descended. He prayed for her it to stay, but she spoke as always. Her voice was quiet, conspiratorial.
"I know why you deny my sister. When I was younger…you used to hold my arm when I walked. Then suddenly you stopped. One day, I even tripped in your presence and nearly fell. I was faking, of course. But still, you did not hold me."
His heart beat like a frantic bird's wings. Ivy whispered.
"Sometimes we don't do things we want to do, so that others won't know we want to do them…"
Lucius missed the metal, the hammer crashing against the anvil, sending a painful bolt up his arm. He grunted and sucked in his breath.
Sometimes we don't do things we want to do, so that others won't know we want to do them.
He knew what he wanted to do. Oh, he knew! Everything he wanted to do plagued him day and night so he could not rest!
Lucius hacked at the metal on the anvil. Her words tumbled back through his brain, over and over. His memories haunted him. The day he had denied catching her stung him. He had been willing to let her come to harm. If she had fallen…if she had been hurt…
Lucius paused, swiping sweat from his sodden brow. The metal was beginning to take shape. He returned to the forge to lay the metal back in the coals. He was behind schedule. He didn't have an apprentice anymore. Little Daniel Nicholson had died and been buried. When the little boy had taken an interest in the smithy, Lucius had welcomed him. The boy had observed and watched and helped with all the easy tasks he could perform. They had talked. He talked more to the little boy than he had probably talked to anyone else his entire life except his mother.
And Daniel Nicholson had gotten sick. And died.
And Ivy had gotten sick. And lost her sight.
And Noah…Noah had been born damaged.
Daniel, Noah, Ivy…
Ivy… who saw him. Saw him. But only a single color. Which color? And why? But it didn't matter. She could see vaguely, if only certain people at certain times. And if she could see even the tiniest bit, she might be able to see more if a way were made for her. She deserved a life full of all that it could offer, not just taste and smell and touch, but every color, and yes, even the bad color of the berries Noah had placed in her hand today.
Lucius left the coals. He yanked open a drawer in his workbench, fumbled around until he procured a sheet of paper, a bottle of ink, and a quill. He dipped the quill and placed it against the blank page.
He had failed to catch Ivy when she stumbled. Harm had almost come to her. Harm had come to her through a sickness those in the village had been helpless to prevent. He would not continue to chance her to harm.
He scratched quickly along the page, penning a second request to go into the woods. Noah had not been harmed by the creatures. He would not be harmed by the creatures either. He knew it. He would go through the woods, he would go into the towns, and he would return with medicines that would still Noah, destroy village sicknesses, and give Ivy Walker her sight back. She would receive all that she deserved.
And then…then she would know how much he loved her.