winter, and seasons after
Ivy Walker comes back on a Wednesday, carrying a sack. Her clothes are muddy and she is out of breath, and she heads for the doctor's house undeterred by the children chasing after her. The rumors have been rampant for the two days she has been gone. Davy Newell says that he heard his mother talking to Elder Pearcy and that she's been to the Towns, but the other children just roll their eyes or laugh him off.
She comes out a few hours later, supported by her mother, and heads straight home. Elder Walker comes out and speaks to some of the adults. Davy and his best friend Alan Ross try to listen in, but Mr. Westcourt spies them underfoot and shoos them off. "This is no talk for children," he calls after them.
They hear later, over the supper table, that Lucius Hunt is going to be fine, that whatever Ivy brought back with her has worked. They also hear that Noah Pearcy's gone missing, but that's less cause for worry. God watches over drunkards and simpletons, after all, and there are no simpletons in Covington, so He has to have something to watch after to keep Himself occupied.
A night passes, then a week, and a fortnight, and Those We Don't Talk About do not attack the village. They do not harm livestock, they do not make Sarah Miller's fever worsen. They are silent, for which all the adults -- and not a few of the children -- say silent prayers of thanks.
Elder Walker finds Noah's body a week before the full start of winter, when the leaves are still falling, brown and crackly. He does not let anyone see his body but the Pearcys, and after she sees him Mrs. Pearcy takes to her bed for several days. There are whispers, but none of those who've seen him will admit anything.
Eventually Elder Walker admits that it was Those We Do Not Mention who did it. Not in retaliation for Ivy going through the Woods, he stresses, because her intention was pure and not even such as They would harm a crippled blind girl.
and Christophe exchange looks. Each wonders if they should mention the magic rocks, but Elder Walker is calm and not at all worried, and it wouldn't do to rile everyone up again, so they let it alone.
And then winter is there, and everyone has things to do, especially since Lucius isn't quite well enough to do everything an able-bodied man would to prepare for it, so everyone puts Them out of their minds.
The winter is hard, though not as hard as others have been, but the stores of meat and grain are more than enough to last them until spring as long as there is rationing. No one goes without, but it's certainly not the best time to go having a wedding feast, so Lucius and Ivy's wedding is held off for the time being.
Neither of them are complaining. Lucius is still recovering from Noah's attack, mostly healed but his ribs still twinge before the snow falls, which means they've been twingeing a lot lately. Sometimes he thinks Ivy seems quieter than usual, more reserved, but when he asks her, she just smiles and says she's thinking about Noah.
Ivy never talks about what she saw in the Towns, except perhaps to her father and the rest of the Elders. When Lucius asks her about it, she promises she will tell him everything before they are wed, but that that is a long time off, and shouldn't he be making sure his mother has enough firewood?
Sometimes, very quietly and never outside of his own head, Lucius thinks that Ivy is not the same girl he kissed on her father's front porch that night, that she's older somehow. Wiser, or a little sadder, but still the girl he's loved since he was a boy racing her to the border and back. So he supposes that it doesn't matter if she's different. She's still Ivy, and he still loves her.
Spring comes, and with it there is much to celebrate. They lost only two people to the winter -- David Conger, who caught sick and never recovered, and Old Hamish, who passed in his sleep -- and Elder Walker's youngest is to be married in less than a fortnight. And best of all, Those We Don't Talk About have not bothered them once.
One morning, Elder Walker and his wife come to see Lucius. They talk privately for a few minutes, then they head off in the direction of the old shed, the one the children are forbidden to play near. Ivy casts eyes after them until Elder Hunt squeezes her shoulder, and she takes off at a run to join them.
They are gone for most of the day, not coming back until the calls for evening meal begin. Lucius is pale when he comes back, and Ivy looks like she's been crying, as does Elder Walker. But Lucius still pulls out Ivy's chair for her when they sit, and they whisper to each other over the meal.
When Elder Walker mentions how lucky they've been not to have been visited by Those We Don't Mention for several months, Lucius takes Ivy's hand under the table and squeezes it tight.
Kitty and Charles have been married less than a month when she announces she is with child. The child, a boy with his father's dark hair and mother's eyes, is born the first week of May. They name him Richard, after Kitty's grandfather, and Charles, after his father. The older Charles is so pleased he allows the child to muss his shirt, though some of the older women laugh because that would never happen.
Holding the baby in her arms, head cocked in his direction, Ivy rocks on the chair on her father's porch and thinks that it's only fair that something good happen in this chair for once. There's been enough bad news in autumn and winter; change must come eventually. And if something happens to this child, well, she still remembers the way. He will not end up like David
, a tiny coffin buried before sunset.
She strokes Richard's head, and breathes in his new-baby smell, and thinks about her own wedding day. It cannot come soon enough.
After he finds out, Elizabeth opens the box she keeps in the living room. Remains of another life, she says very seriously, and takes out a series of photographs and hands them to her son.
It doesn't seem possible, though he knows -- has known, in his heart, since they told him that afternoon -- that it is, that there is another world beyond this one, where his mother wore trousers like a man and color on her face. Even looking at the picture of the Elders gathered in front of something called a "counseling center", it doesn't seem real.
At the bottom of the pile is a picture of his mother with a dark-haired man. His hair is longer than most men wear it, but his eyes are warm and he's smiling. His clothes are strange, with too-wide lapels on his shirt and trousers that flare oddly near the legs, but there is enough of his face in the one Lucius sees in the mirror to know that this is his father.
There's another picture after that, the last in the pile. It's the man in a dark suit and his mother in a wedding dress. Her hair is up, much as she normally wears it, and they're dancing together. He can hardly see their faces from the angle of the camera, but he knows enough to see that they loved each other. They loved each other very much.
Lucius doesn't ask to take the picture with him; no good having proof of the Towns lying about where anyone can find it. But he'll have the picture after she passes, as part of her effects. And until then, he can just stare at the picture until it's burned into his mind.
Two nights before their wedding, Lucius knocks at Elder Walker's door and asks if he could take Ivy outside for a spell. Elder Walker raises an eyebrow, but agrees.
They do not talk as they go; there's no need. Lucius' hand is warm in Ivy's own, his pace unhurried. They hardly seem to notice some of the townspeople staring and whispering as they pass, headed straight for the border.
Davy Newell and some of his friends are already there; Davy's the one on the stump, and he looks grateful when Lucius chases him off and sends him back to the village. But he still stays and watches, a thin shape behind an ancient, thick oak.
Alan and the others won't believe him later, when he tells them that Lucius took Ivy's hand and helped her up onto the stump, then helped her stretch her arms out, her back to the woods. They won't believe how Ivy laughed as she stood there, giggling like a child, her eyes squeezed close though it wouldn't be any different for her than normal. They especially won't believe she beats Lucius Hunt's record by a full five minutes, or that he's beaming as she does it, or that when he helps her down he kisses her full on the mouth like they're already married.
And then it is Saturday. Kitty dresses Richard in a new suit she's made special for today, then hurries to help her mother and Ivy get things ready. Charles and Elder Walker almost have to sit on Lucius to keep him still, but the rest of the village is bustling. The children make garlands of flowers for the bride and groom and their families; several of the men slaughter a decent-sized pig, and their wives set about preparing the meal.
The wedding goes quickly, and Elder Walker blinks tears back as he watches August join his youngest daughter to the man he still remembers as a dark-eyed child clinging to his mother's hand. He glances over at Elizabeth a few times, and is almost gratified to see that she's crying, too.
There have been times in the years since they started this community that he's regretted the decision to stay out here, locked away from the world -- the Towns -- and all that had driven them out here. Even the illness that stole Ivy's eyesight, probably treatable with a simple course of antibiotics, hadn't been enough to break him from his intended direction, though it tested him sorely. But there have been moments when his faith has wavered.
But he's in his community, his home, and his daughter is marrying the man she loves enough to push through fear for, and in that moment Edward Walker is nothing but grateful -- to the world, to his father, to everything. There's only joy in him.
Ivy and Lucius have been married less than a month before she tells Kitty and her mother she has kindled. It will be a winter baby, the doctor tells her, perhaps even Christmas. He tells her to be careful, and to take to bed and send for him if anything seems even a little wrong. Ivy agrees, but she knows in her heart that nothing will go wrong.
She's not quite three months along when her father and Elder Pearcy arrive, carrying a box between them. Gifts, they say where others can hear, while the door is still open. For you, and the baby.
Then they lock the door, bolt it, and Ivy knows it isn't gifts. Not really.
Lucius listens, as does she, and they both nod. Then Lucius pulls up a few of the floorboards, the ones near the closet, and Elder Pearcy takes the suit out of the box.
The Newell boy's been spotted near the border, her father tells them, and we must both be places tonight. He looks at Lucius expectantly, as if waiting for protest.
But Lucius just hefts one of the claws and nods, almost absently. Asks if there are any places in particular he should avoid. Her father and Elder Pearcy exchange a glance, then tell him it's best if he not linger near the Lowell's, since that's where the children are tonight.
Lucius just nods.
After supper, some of the men mention they're going to visit Michael Edwards, who's taken sick, see if he's feeling up to a walk -- and a spot of whisky, though they don't say that part out loud. Would Lucius care to join them?
Before Lucius can make up an excuse, Ivy lets out a long, shuddering breath and puts a hand to her stomach, and says that her stomach's feeling unwell. Lucius is a gentleman, and newly married besides, so he hurries to her side to take her home. No visiting tonight, he says, a touch of apology in his voice, and they go home.
They sit in the living room for a little while, watching the sky darken and turn black. Lucius tells her stories about his father, the ones his mother has couched in terms the rest of the village won't question. Ivy likes hearing about his father. Lucius sounds a lot like him, kind and gentle but not too sensitive; not like Charles, who has a son and another child seven months on the way but who can't stand the pleats in his pants to be mussed.
And then it's dark enough, and late enough, that everyone will be safe in their homes for the night. Lucius kisses her cheek and tells her he won't be too long, then heads for the floorboards and pries them up. The squeaking sound distracts her from her needlework, but not so much that she turns around.
She doesn't do that until he's standing at the front door, red-robed and claws over his hands. Ivy knows it's a costume, knows in her heart and her mind that it's all a ruse the Elders started, but it still sends shivers through her to hear the claws clacking against one another. Which is the point, really.
She stands there for a moment, long enough for Lucius to start fiddling with his robe -- she can hear him, breath speeding up as he gets more anxious -- before she leans in and carefully kisses his cheek. The teeth are whisper-close to her, but she has persuaded her father to let her study the outfit with her fingers before. She'll need to wear one one day, after all, and she needs to know where things are so she doesn't hurt herself on it.
"Don't be too long," she tells him briskly, trying and failing to sound stern, the way a proper wife should. She's never liked being proper, likes it less even now. Her belly's the slightest bit round with child, but she's still a tomboy. "After you've finished, I imagine we can put the babe to bed and see what sort of foolishness we can get up to."
Ivy can't see his face through the mask, but that's all right; she can't see it anyway. But she can see his color turn even brighter, as though he's blushing. Or excited. He's been bright these last few months nearly always, since they were wed. So has she, for that matter.
"Be careful," she murmurs. "Be quick, and stick to the treeline. The back door to the shed will be open. Father says you can leave it in there and lock it behind you. If anyone asks, you were out picking mint for my tea. Everyone knows women have strange urges when they're with child."
The suit isn't the best thing for speaking through, so Lucius' words come out a low growl. But the too-sharp mouth is closed and gentle against her forehead, and when he goes she doesn't hear screams or yells, so everything must be going all right.
Ivy sits by the window and thinks about her the Towns, and what her parents and the other Elders gave up to come here, and what they gave away. She thinks of the lies they've told, and the way that man from Town sounded, how wounded and disbelieving, and how she's never heard someone from the village sound that way.
She thinks of her husband and her child, and how it'll be to never risk losing either of them to a stray bullet. She thinks of how she'll explain Lucius' scars to the child, what tales they'll tell. If anyone will ever tell their children that Noah Pearcy did that, or if he valiantly struggled against Those We Never Mention, and how he's a hero. How they're all heroes, really, every one of them in her village; even Noah, who caused so much pain and hurt without ever really meaning to.
She touches her stomach lightly, and hears the warning bell ring. And smiles.