Forest. Tower. Mother. Mother in bed, worse and worse, fading away beneath the snowy sheets as white as her skin, white, white, the same color that flowed around the lady, pretty lady, that she sometimes saw at the edges of her sight when she stared at the tower. The tower. The forest. Her mother. The lady. Was the lady sick? Was that why she had not seen her for the last few weeks? The lady's hair was the same raven black as her mother's; was her skin taking on the same greenish tinge as Geneviene's? Green, coloring the white with a sick tinge, spreading over her mother's skin, from arms to shoulders to neck to face.
It had been this way as long as Ivy could remember. Remember she did, the same words running around in her head as she clung to cold stone in the warm sunshine. The tower was the only solid thing in her world of haltered hopes and emotions, both changing swift as the tides of a storm. It had been four years from the talk of death and Edana to the reality of death crouching on their doorstep, on their mantle, on her mother's detached face. Four years with poison running through her mother's veins, and she had not died. A little piece of Geneviene slipped away each day. Her smile had been first to go. Even her bitter laugh and sharp tongue eventually disappeared beneath the motionless silence she now lived in, her face ever turned towards the open window.
Now Ivy was seven, the oldest she had ever been, she told herself firmly. She never went in her mother's bedroom anymore, not with that stricken sallow face to meet her—or not—no matter how much her father coaxed her. Instead, she had begun turning to the tower. Slowly at first, but more and more, until the heartbeat not her own had become a welcome presence. Ronan had not missed the sole window in Ivy's room, locked at night but always unlocked when light came, Ivy's cheek once more pressed against the pillow. When a distressed Ronan spoke to her, the window stayed locked. But Ronan was not reassured. Ivy's disappearances during the day became increasingly frequent.
She lived more and more in the Wood, her father too busy with caring for Geneviene to protest. She danced—oh, how she danced—with light feet and a heavy heart, trying to dance away the sorrow and doom and impending sense of wrongness. And for a while, she forgot everything while her feet and hands took wing in motion, the woody vines creating green dimples of shadow that danced across her skin, a color of green not wrong or poisoned, but pure and lovely.
Sometimes, she danced for the tower. And smiled to think of it. Ivy liked to imagine that the tower watched her dances with appreciation; perhaps even longing for such lithesome movements as stone could never perform. Lately, however, it had felt almost as if the tower were dancing along with her, within her. Its pulse had been growing stronger and faster the last couple of days, exciting her to leap higher and spin faster until she felt all chains that had bound her to the earth had been loosed, and she was floating up to the frosty moon, so like the tower in every way.
And then the time came when she no longer wanted to dance.
It was a deceitfully sunny day that saw her ushered to her mother's bedroom quite against her will. But to her surprise, Geneviene was sitting up in the bed, normally pale, green-tinged cheeks a vivid scarlet. Ronan sat Ivy beside her, stepping back to watch them, hopeful for the first time.
"Will you be well . . .? I mean, without . . . Should I stay?"
"It's fine, it's fine. Now, if you please . . ." she gestured toward Ivy, saying the rest with her eyes. Ivy shivered as Ronan closed the door softly behind him. It was four years ago all over again. She wanted out of there. She swung her legs over the bedside and stood up, looking at her mother in apology before she turned to go. It was a wrong move, for Geneviene's eyes seemed to pin her to her spot.
"Ivy, I have something for you."
Ivy shrunk away from her mother, her eyes wide and questioning. Geneviene clutched the item hidden in her hand tighter, and a minute stream of green fluid escaped her grasp to flee down the side of her hand, as if crying in her place. Her daughter feared her. What kind of monster was she that her own daughter feared her?
She rose from her bed to walk nearer to Ivy, but instead caught her reflection in their only mirror. Who was that person who stared back at her? Certainly not she. When last Geneviene had smiled back at herself from the confines of a mirror, she had been pretty. She reached forward to touch that other her with a thoughtful finger. Ivy was right to think her a monster. She slammed the surface of the mirror with her palm, causing cracks to split her image into pieces and more blood to dot her hand. She turned away from it, and Ivy, and the world, instantly regretting her outburst. Now Ivy had so much more reason.
But to her surprise, Ivy came up to her, tracing the lacework of cuts on her mother's upward-faced palm, her own upturned face grave, with no fear.
"I have something for joo, too." She kissed the same palm, hugging Geneviene's arm tight afterwards. Geneviene curled her fingers protectively around the imprint that impulsive kiss had left, and smiled. What a gift. Her other hand opened without hesitation and presented its contents to Ivy.
Ivy gave a tiny squeal of delight and carefully plucked the duet of leaves from Geneviene's palm. Two perfect ivy leaves, branched off of the same stem, curled over each other to form the semblance of a heart. Ivy was of the age to still take wonder in every dewdrop and spider web, and she caressed the glossy green surfaces, delicately laced through with yellow veins that indicated they had just begun their transition to autumnal gold. Geneviene traced their intersecting paths herself, using the same finger to tap Ivy's nose afterwards, leaving a drop of green sap on its tip as brilliant as a jewel.
"These two leaves will represent you and me, my Ivy. We are of the same vine in more than one way, and no matter which one of us is plucked, we must cling together."
Ivy's grip around her mother's arm tightened, as if she wished to fulfill her mother's request even then. Geneviene walked closer to the window, with Ivy in tow, and stared out across the sunny afternoon towards the wooden fence that was choked with more of the same ivy that clothed their house.
"Ivy—" Geneviene's green, green eyes were coldly serious, and she bent to add weight to what she said next. "Ivy," she said again, and a smile softened the marble green glow of her face. "Ivy . . . you are so like ivy in every way. But beware, my ivy-child, because ivy can also be quite weak. Ivy can only live by depending on something else for strength." She stopped for a moment, struggling for words. How could she communicate something of this gravity to a seven-year-old?
"I know!" Ivy cried, hopping lightly up and down in excitement. "Da' told me: they find stuff to grow on by 'growing towards the darkest shektor of the 'rizon,' or something like that."
Geneviene silently thanked him.
"That's 'sector' and 'horizon,' m'dear. Your father always was quite the botanist. But what I'm trying to say is this: don't live . . . don't be . . . don't try to be like the ivy, that has no will of its own. Use your own strength, or someday you may wake to find you have none."
Ivy's wide eyes, turned upwards, absorbed all this like a plant reaching its leafy fingers up to summer's rain, what "Da'" said forgotten as she wrapped herself in her mother's pretty words. She did not know what they meant, though they sounded nice, she told herself. But still, images flitted through, weaving in-between the musical rise-and-fall of her mother's voice. Ivy could almost feel the cold stone beneath her hot cheek, echoing strength, darkest.
"Never let them take the ivy I gave you, Ivy. Your own strength."
Them? Ivy dared not ask the question. Instead, she stroked her ivy leaves, memorizing every detail of them. Her strength.
