CANNOT BE SEEN

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Chapter 6

"An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people- it takes away the heat and fever; and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the burden of mystery." John Keats

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The sun was just below the horizon, leaving a faint glowing haze in the lower half of the visible sky. The moon hung, surrounded by a sheet of stars, but you could only make out a hint of them for the light that tainted the heavens. The wind was brisk and it blew through the trees and between the wooden houses with a dull chill. Its slight force pushed the murky clouds slowly through the air and in the far distance you could see the laundry hanging on the line, flapping playfully. The long grass was bent over lazily and the trees were dancing effortlessly to the indistinguishable music of the night.

It was just after dinner and Ivy and Lucius were sitting on the resting rock, resting, as the case may be, with the silence of the evening encompassing them both.

Finally, Lucius voiced what he had been brooding silently over all evening. "Ivy,...what do you think this all means?"

It was silent for a moment before she answered. "I do not know, Lucius..." The tone had suddenly turned very serious. The trees and the breeze seemed to have stilled, listening intently to their conversation.

She sighed and went on. "At first, I was not certain what to think...especially after you had seen the metal-, the air plan."

"Airplane," Lucius corrected the foreign word quietly.

"Airplane," Ivy whispered, as if to remember it and then went on. "When you saw the airplane it was...something unexplainable. But what you discovered in the books...makes it something more. Do you not think so?"

"I do think it is something more, Ivy...and I want to know what, exactly, it is." He answered after a moment to mull over his thoughts.

"So do I, Lucius. I want to reveal the secrets that my father is keeping. He is keeping secrets. Can you not tell?"

"I have mentioned it before, Ivy, there are secrets in every corner of this village." His voice was hushed in truth.

"I know, Lucius. I feel them. They are everywhere." She whispered, her chest contracted in a vice of guilt. The secrets that Lucius spoke about were not only what the elders kept from the whole village, but what she kept from him as well. The creatures, or lack there of, and Noah's death.

She felt so terrible. She felt so much like she was betraying Lucius that she could not even breathe for several moments. She wanted to tell him so, but to admit that there were no creatures was to admit that she had killed Noah. And that was something she was not ready for...and would never be ready for.

But, he had to be told sometime...and she knew that. She took a deep, trembling breath, but before she could speak, Lucius did.

"Ivy, why would your father simply leave these books, if they are what we think they are, out where any prying eye might find them?"

She stopped for a moment to gather herself, "Well, quite plainly, I cannot read any of them, even if I found them. And Kitty, she is not one to read anything, Lucius. And mind, I am sure not all of them are...secret books."

"They are not," Lucius agreed. Only the ones with book covers on them were meant to be hidden. The naked books, which were most definitely the majority, were what they claimed to be.

"Furthermore, Lucius, where is a better place to hide something that you want no one to find than out in the open?"

He thought this over for a moment and then nodded. They were questioning what they had found already, because it was left out where someone could find. What a dangerous theory.

A long silence ensued before Ivy voiced what her mind was working to figure out.

"These books..." She paused briefly. "What do they mean?"

Lucius was silent after that for so long that Ivy was afraid he might not answer her at all, but then he broke the stillness.

"I am not sure. The books seem to...know the future."

"Maybe they are from the future," Ivy suggested half-heartedly in an attempt to weight every option.

"Books from the future do not just fall from the sky." Lucius countered.

"No. It is not even possible for things to jump time." Ivy sighed and leaned back against the rock. All this thought was hurting her head. It seemed there was no answer.

"No." Lucius whispered finally. "The answer is always in the question, Ivy. Your father says that."

She nodded. "What is the question, then?"

"How did a book from the future get into our village?" Lucius replied. The question sounded silly even to his own ears. It was impossible...it was impossible. Impossible.

"That is it!" Lucius exclaimed with enthusiasm after a moment of his brain trying to sift through his muddled thought.

"What?" Ivy asked eagerly, leaning closer to his color that now glowed brightly with realization.

"It is impossible." Lucius sounded as if what he said answered everything. Ivy, however, was still wildly confused, and this only provoked her confusion to kick up, like a cloud of dust and swarm around, enveloping her in it.

"What do you mean, Lucius? I do not understand you one bit." She asked with slight impatience at the way he left his thoughts unexplained.

"The answer is in the question. 'How did a book from the future get into our village?' the answer is not 'how did it get here', but, 'is it even possible?' And no, it is not."

Ivy let out an exasperated sigh and shook her head again. "Lucius, can you make yourself a little plainer?"

"The book did not come from the future." Lucius stated earnestly, as if he had known it all along.

"...You...you think it is fake?" Ivy asked in puzzlement.

Lucius let that possibility roll around his head. "No. It looked too real. And what would be the purpose of a fake book?"

Ivy shrugged. "What do you think, then?"

"I think that they are not from the future." he said simply.

Ivy still did not understand. "If not from the future...they are from the present?"

"Yes. It is the only explanation."

"Lucius, this does not make any sense." She was nearly laughing now.

"It does, Ivy. 'How did we get a book from the future?' We did not. It is impossible. So it must be from the present."

"But...Lucius," Ivy's voice was growing louder with incredibility. "The book spoke of the 1900's the 21st century even! It is only 1897!"

"That is our new question then, Ivy. How did a book from the 21st century get into 1897? There is the answer inside that question. We just have to figure it out..." But not one more word was spoken by either of them, they did not even have time to ponder their new question, because, in that moment, a wild, ringing bell went off, scattering the birds from the trees and stilling the every sound of the night.

Before Ivy could even react, Lucius had grabbed her hand and was dragging her towards the heart of the village.

She was left breathing hard and trying to keep up with Lucius.

Why was the bell going off?

Why did it ever go off? She asked herself with a slightly disgusted sigh. Lucius, however, was a little shaken up about it.

"Ivy, we will go to my house. It is closer." He pulled her in the direction of his home, his hand tight around hers and casting his eyes around warily, taking in the disorder of the village.

She watched as his color flashed with his fear for her safety and guilt possessed her once again. This was absurd. Lucius was ridden with undue worry for her, and she was lying to him. Not lying outright, maybe, but certainly, she was not being entirely truthful. Well, that will change, she insisted to herself. She was going to tell Lucius, she nodded silently in certainty.

Lucius watched as the rest of the village scrambled around the town, getting to their homes and finding their family members, warning each other. The hysteria. He turned sharply and moved up the steps to his home, ignoring the others, focused solely on getting Ivy safe from the creatures, before doing anything else.

"Ivy," He guided her in the door quickly. "Go inside, get into the cellar. The family next door is having trouble with their window shutters again, but I will be right inside after you." His voice was insistent to Ivy's ears and she let out a sharp breath.

No matter how she knew of the creature's nonexistence, the chaos was sharpening her edges, instilling unjustified fear. But there were no creatures, she told herself, Lucius would be fine. So, she nodded and watched as his color got further away and then she turned and stumbled her way to the trap door before climbing down inside quickly and letting it fall back into its place in the floor.

She sat there in complete silence for what seemed like forever. Nearly at her patience's end, she stood up to go find Lucius, but was stilled by the sound of a door slamming and footsteps echoing on the floor above her.

Lucius was down inside the compartment with her, the door enclosing them both inside, before she even had time to stand up fully.

"Is everyone inside?" Ivy asked quietly, hearing how the outside had hushed, and taking her seat again.

"Yes," he whispered back, still catching his breath.

"Our parents are in the meeting hall, still, are they not?"

He nodded, "They are, do not worry about them."

Lucius sucked in a breath when Ivy pressed her face, cold from the evening air, into his warm neck, and mistaking her emotion for fear, he placed his arm around her shoulders, only to find them shaking with silent sobs.

"Ivy?" He questioned in gentle tones, pulling away from him slightly so he could see her face.

"Oh, Lucius," She shook her head and then opened her eyes to look at his sharp color. "There is something I must tell you."

He sat silently, listening, and waiting for her to speak further.

"When you first awoke, you wanted to know about the towns...and the creatures." She prompted his memory, stalling unconsciously.

"Yes."

"I think it is unfair for me to keep it from you. I keep secrets, Lucius. Just like all the elders. I am guilty of it too, because I should have told you long before." Her voice was weighed down with guilt, but she went on anyway.

"I only kept them, though, because I was afraid that you would think ill of me...I am still afraid of what you will think, but, keeping secrets from you is wrong, Lucius, I know. And I wish you would forgive me." A dry sob punctuated her sentence and Lucius reached out and grasped her hand tightly.

"I would never think ill of you, Ivy. Tell me."

She squeezed his hand back and took a deep, trembling breath.

"Lucius...there are no creatures." Ivy whispered it so that as she spoke, she wondered if Lucius would even hear her, for she wanted anything but to repeat it. As it were, he had. She could tell by the way his hand jerked slightly and his color pulsated. He did not speak. Instead, he took deep breaths and Ivy waited as she let it sink into his mind.

"I have seen them," was all he said.

Ivy shook her head and spoke the truth. "You have seen the elders, dressed as creatures, wearing creature suits."

"The elders?" Lucius's inquisitive voice filled the small space.

"Yes, they made up the creatures. To scare us away from the towns..."

"They did everything? The screams from the woods? The scares? ...They skinned the animals?" Lucius's voice rose a little in anger at finding this out. Just as Ivy had done.

"Not the animals. My father said he knew who was doing that, though. They did everything else, Lucius. It was all farce. After I told my father that I wanted to go to the towns, he told me. He showed me the suits. There is one in the 'shed that is not to be used.'"

"Why do they want to scare us away from the towns so much?"

"Because, Lucius, my father said that horrible things happen in the towns. There is sorrow in the towns." Ivy whispered back, trying to convince herself as well as Lucius. But, she knew, there was sorrow here as well. She had felt it so profoundly when Lucius was unconscious for those long, long days.

"What happened to you in the towns? Was it horrible? ...How did you get there?" Lucius was bursting with questions now, it seemed. More swarmed in his mind but he quieted himself, realizing there were too many questions to voice all at once.

"I could not tell much, Lucius, but the man I talked to...he had kindness in his voice. It was not as wicked a place as I was expecting. He fetched me your medicines. And as to how I got there, my father told me how. I followed his directions." Ivy had to admit that getting this out in the open felt much better than keeping it hidden, keeping it secret.

To Lucius, the information was still sinking in. "I suppose it is not that much of a surprise." He said finally. It was of course, surprising to find out what you had believed your whole life was a lie. But, he had always suspected something more from the creatures...and he knew that the elders were hiding things.

"Everything that the creatures have done, have been the elders." Lucius stated it as a fact and not a question. But, then something struck his mind.

"What about...Noah was killed by the creatures..." He looked at Ivy closely, trying to comprehend. "And...you had killed a creature in the woods...how can those be so...if there are no creatures?" It was only a split second before it came together in his mind and he inhaled sharply in realization. Ivy let out a strangled sound, pulled her unworthy hand from Lucius's grasp and turned her face away, ashamed.

He did not know what to say. He could not even move. It was so clear now, why Ivy had acted the way she had at Noah's funeral. It was all coming together. Like the pieces of a puzzle dropping steadily into place, identifying more of the big picture with each and every little, tiny section.

"Ivy," His voice was gentle and filled with emotion, such that it made Ivy turn to him. She looked straight into his eyes as if she could see them, with tears streaming, unchecked, down her face. He reached out, wiping away her tears, and stroking her cheek before pulling her into a warm embrace.

Then Ivy started to sob uncontrollably, her words barely distinguishable. "I am so, so sorry, I did not know it was him, Lucius! I promise. He was in the creature suit, and I could not smell him through it!...I did not know, I did not know." She was shaking irrepressibly.

"Hush," he whispered into her hair. "I know, Ivy. It is not your fault...Hush."

And she did, with some difficulty. The tears still made rivers down her cheeks and the pain in her heart did not give way. But, now, it was rivaled by the feeling of love in her heart. Lucius's attitude towards her had not changed in the slightest and she was overwhelmed by such strong relief, that she felt as if she might faint. Then, guilt overtook her again.

"But...I-I killed him, Lucius. I-" Her voice was high-pitched in distress and she cut herself off as her voice shattered.

"You did not do it on purpose," He tried desperately to sooth her.

"I know that. But it was still I who did it." Her voice shook with repressed emotion and she asked, without warning, something that had been on her mind for quite some time.

"Lucius, are you angry at Noah for what he did to you?"

He did not even think about it. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because, Ivy, he did not really mean to harm me. He loved you...and he did not understand that there is more than one kind of love. It is no one's fault." His voice was so firm that it was hard for her not to believe him.

"But I cannot get past my...anger towards him, Lucius. I am so angry for what he did to you," she took in a breath and whispered, "He could have killed you."

"...And the guilt and sorrow I feel for what I have done to him, and the anger I feel for what he did to you. They are tearing me apart." She started to cry again and Lucius did not know what to say. If anything would make her feel better, he could not think of it. But, he wished for all the world that he could stop her suffering. So, he hugged her tighter to him and whispered, "Do not cry."

His words incited Ivy to look up at Lucius, her face still wet with crying. "I am sorry, Lucius, It does feel better that you know now. But I apologize for not telling you before...It was just so hard." She pleaded with him to forgive her.

He said nothing, instead he leaned down and kissed her sweetly before pulling back to just a few inches from her face.

"I forgive you for not telling me, Ivy. I understand. But, I do have one more question." He whispered this to her, his breath fanning her face.

Apprehension filled her. He was going to ask her something unanswerable. Something that tore at her heart, she knew. And as much as she wanted to quiet him, so that she did not have to answer another thing about what had happened, she knew that she owed it to him. "What is the question?" She asked evenly, reading herself for whatever he might say.

But, before he answered, he pressed his lips to her cheek gently, kissing away her tears, and leaned in so his lips were barely touching her ear. Then, he whispered so quietly that she had to strain to hear his words. "What is my color, Ivy?"

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TBC

Until next time!