Ivory Apples Read online

  “What—?” I said.

  She looked up. “Ivy, no! Get back to the house! Go!”

  “What is this place?”

  “Please, just go back. I’ll explain later.”

  The children stopped what they were doing and came toward me, their wide mouths open in laughter. The music turned jagged, discordant. “Now! Hurry!” Maeve said.

  I became aware of her urgency, finally, and turned to go. Someone slammed against my back. Then he pushed his way farther, through me, into me. I felt him turn and insinuate himself inside me, his sharp fingers pressing up against my breastbone.

  Maeve said something, but I couldn’t hear her. A high, crazed hilarity had taken hold of me, like champagne bubbles rising through my body. All my senses seemed heightened, as if I had never truly experienced the world before. The red leaves blazed, the air tasted like fresh apples, the music was intricate and full of subtle changes. I wanted to laugh, to grab a flute and play it, to slide down the rocks into the lake.

  “Oh, Ivy,” Maeve said. Her voice was low and beautiful, the words like the beginning of a song. I turned to her, dazzled.

  I struggled to ask questions, to hear myself over what sounded like everything in the woods singing at once. “What—what’s happening?”

  The creature turned and nestled more comfortably within me. How did he fit there? Most of the others I’d seen had come up to my chin.

  He was urging me back to Aunt Maeve’s house. Without thinking, I went toward the path.

  I made an effort to stop, to look back at Maeve. She must have seen my anxious confusion, because she called out to me. “Try to keep him at bay, especially at first. But also pay attention, and choose wisely.”

  “But—what is he?” I asked. And was he male, as I’d been thinking of him? But I felt certain he was.

  The creature’s pull grew stronger. Finally I stopped fighting and headed along the path. Maeve called something behind me, but I couldn’t hear her.

  Well, why not do what he wanted, after all? For one thing, he knew the way back and I didn’t. But for another, the excitement he’d brought was still fizzing through me. I knew Maeve was right, that I should fight him, but just then it seemed too difficult. Everything around me was opening up, calling to me, overwhelming me with new sights, sounds, sensations.

  I stopped often as we walked through the woods, looking at a flower or up at the sky. A beetle crawled up a tree trunk, and I lost myself for a long time in thinking about its life, its purpose, all its varied and intricate connections within the forest.

  We emerged from the woods at dusk. A light shone at the back window of Maeve’s house, but the rest was in darkness. Fear broke through my enchantment finally, and I remembered forcing my sisters away. Had Beatriz gotten lost? Was Philip waiting in terror, wondering what had happened to us?

  I hurried inside. They were all there except Maeve, talking together in the kitchen. “—give her more time before we call the police,” Philip was saying.

  “Give who more time?” I asked. I wanted to laugh at the absurdity, the idea of calling the police while I was right there in front of him. At the same time, though, I knew I had to clamp down on my giddiness, the sense that I was held to earth by the lightest of tethers.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Philip asked.

  “Just in the woods,” I said.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay close to the house?”

  “I did stay close.” The lie took me by surprise, as if it had come from outside me.

  “Then why the hell are you back so late?”

  “I lost track of time.” Then, belatedly, I thought to say, “I’m sorry.”

  “Beatriz says you left them.” Next to him, Beatriz smiled smugly. “Didn’t I tell you to stay together? Who knows what could have happened?”

  I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Philip. He still thought that his logic worked, that he could list my misdeeds and I would understand what I had done wrong. He didn’t realize that he was up against something irrational, something that made a mockery of all his rules.

  “Nothing happened, though,” I said. Then, urged on by my newfound sense of mischief, I said, “I saw Aunt Maeve in the woods.”

  “Never mind that,” he said. “You know Beatriz isn’t old enough to look after the others.”

  “She was swimming in a lake. And she was naked.”

  “What?” Beatriz said. “Aunt Maeve? What did she look like?”

  “Like Aunt Maeve, but without her clothes on.”

  “That’s it,” Philip said. He rarely got mad at us, but when he did he made up for months of even temper. “You’re grounded for a week. No, two weeks. You think you can leave your sisters behind, and come in here late and—and with your clothes all torn, and make up ridiculous stories about your aunt—”

  This seemed terribly unfair. After all, he hadn’t gotten angry at the things I really had made up. “I did see her.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it. We’re leaving. Now.”

  “Aren’t we going to wait for her? What about dinner?”

  “Now. Let’s go.”

  We went out to the car and drove off. I planned to sulk conspicuously all the way home, but to my surprise my resentment was fading. Instead I felt astonished all over again by the world, by the stars lighting up the sky, the hook of the crescent moon, the hiss of the wheels on the road.

  For the first time I wondered what would happen if this feeling never went away. The creature had already gotten me in trouble, and that was over something fairly minor. I could feel his sharp-edged knees pushing against my ribcage, sense him chafing against his boundaries, urging me to let his chaos loose into the world.

  I hadn’t been good enough to merit the front seat; instead I was sitting directly behind Philip. Suddenly I saw myself taking the wheel and wrenching it around, hurtling the car out into the oncoming lane.

  I felt a shiver of excitement, imagining the carnage. The next instant my excitement changed to horror. How could I even think such a thing? But this wasn’t me; it was the promptings of the thing inside me. Wasn’t it?

  Aunt Maeve was right—I had to keep him at bay. I tried holding my breath or breathing deeply, tensing and loosening my muscles, but he continued to blaze up though my awareness, laughing silently.

  Finally I found a way to block him. I had to ignore him—or not ignore him so much as think around him, understand that he was there but not feed him with attention. It was easy, in a way, but hard too, because I longed for that intoxication again, the way he’d changed everything, remade the world into something bright and fresh and new. I kept wanting to reach for him, to feel that wild excitement coursing through me.

  “You’re very quiet back there, Ivy,” Philip said. “I hope you’re thinking about what you did, how dangerous it was.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Beatriz giggled, thinking I was being sarcastic. I meant it, though. It was dangerous as hell. I understood that now.

  CHAPTER 2

  I KNEW I NEEDED MAEVE'S HELP, needed to know what had happened to me, who those creatures were. But being grounded meant I couldn’t use the phone, at least not until Philip went back to work. It was Monday afternoon by the time I could finally look up Maeve’s number and call her.

  The line sounded scratchy, filled with static, as though I was calling another country, or another era. She didn’t answer, though I tried every few hours, willing her to pick up the phone. And if I couldn’t reach her, I’d have to wait another month before I saw her again.

  Even without her I was learning what the creature’s presence meant in my life. For the most part, I was able to keep him reined in, but every so often I’d forget myself and reach out for him again. School started a week later, and I found myself laughing inappropriately in class, or raising my hand when I didn’t have the slightest idea what the answer was. Once I watched my hand move out to slap the person in front of me, and I had to grab it and hold on
tightly to stop it.

  I got some strange looks, and I heard murmurs and laughter several times when I passed groups of students. I was an adolescent, that time when nothing is more important than what other people think of you, and with each question, each puzzled look, I’d vow to keep the creature under tighter control.

  Philip came home early one day and found me on the phone, trying to call Maeve again. He took the receiver away from me and hung up. “I said grounded, and I meant it. Go outside and play with your sisters.”

  I wasn’t supposed to go anywhere if I was grounded. I didn’t remind him, though, just ran outside before he could change his mind.

  We lived a few blocks from Amazon Park. Philip used to take us there because it was so close, but also because it had a good playground for kids, with swings and slides and a dinosaur you could climb on. Lately we’d been going over by ourselves, to play at the creek or walk through the trees or watch the dogs in the off-leash park. Sometimes people asked us where our parents were; apparently they thought we were too young to be out on our own. Philip told us that when he was a kid he could wander the neighborhood and no one thought anything about it. He didn’t know what had changed, why adults nowadays felt they could interfere the way they did, but he warned us that we had to be polite.

  Now I saw one of those adults, sitting on a bench between the playground and the pool. The sun lit her face like someone in an old painting, and my first thought was that she was too beautiful for these ordinary surroundings. Her hair was tied carelessly and spilled down her back, the light burnishing it from brown to old gold. She wore a gray pullover and black pants tied at the waist, and she was so thin and sat so straight that her clothes seemed to drape her without touching her body.

  It took me a while to notice that my sisters were there too. Semiramis was on the bench next to the woman, and Beatriz and Amaranth sat on the grass at her feet. Amaranth was looking at her eagerly, waiting for a chance to jump into the conversation, and Semiramis seemed delighted. Only Beatriz sat a little apart, her expression impassive, as if waiting for more facts before she made up her mind.

  “You must be Ivy,” the woman said as I came up to them. Her eyes were light brown like her hair, the color of Philip’s scotch. “Your sisters have been telling me all about you. I’d know you anywhere, though—you’re all so similar. Come and sit with us.”

  I was at the age where I hated being compared to my sisters, to anyone really. I wanted to be admired for myself, to be thought exceptional in some way. I couldn’t deny that we looked alike, though. Our hair was reddish-brown, and so curly that Philip couldn’t manage all the knots and tangles when it grew out and had to shepherd us to the hairdresser every few months to crop it short. Our eyes were a mixture of gray and green, different for each of us. I’d once heard a friend of Philip’s praise our high cheekbones, which we’d gotten from Jane. It had never occurred to me before to pay attention to cheekbones, and I felt annoyed—yet another body part for people to notice and make a judgment on, another thing to worry about.

  It might have been the comment on my looks that made me wary of this new woman, or maybe the fact that Amaranth and Semiramis seemed to have formed a bond with her, and I felt like an outsider. I sat on the ground near Beatriz, as far away from the woman as I could.

  “She’s telling us what we’re going to be when we grow up,” Beatriz said.

  “I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself,” the woman said. “My name is Kate Burden. I was just telling Beatriz here that I thought she would”—she paused, and Beatriz looked at her expectantly—“that she’ll be a pearl diver. Yes, that’s it. You’ll dive off those great tall cliffs and go deep into the water, and you’ll come back with those rare black pearls that are only found in one or two places in the world. Then you’ll have to smuggle them out, to walk past the customs people and pretend you’re just another tourist, and all the while you’ll have a fortune hidden in your suitcase.”

  Usually when people asked Beatriz what she wanted to be she came up with phrases like “metallurgical engineer” or “biological researcher.” I couldn’t imagine her smuggling anything. But she was smiling now, as if she’d totaled up all her calculations about Ms. Burden and they’d come out positive.

  “Me, do me!” Amaranth said.

  “And Ivy here,” Ms. Burden said. She turned to study me. “You’ll be a famous artist. No, a writer, or a dancer.”

  I was startled, though I tried not to show it. I’d been thinking a lot about writing lately. Meanwhile Amaranth scowled at her, and I remembered that she’d once told me she wanted to be a dancer.

  Ms. Burden laughed. “No, I guess I was wrong. It’s Amaranth who’ll be the artist, obviously.”

  Without thinking I said, “Well, that was an easy one.” The creature wanted to say more, something cutting, and I struggled to control him.

  Ms. Burden looked at me again. Her light-colored eyes seemed infinitely deep. I wondered how far she could see, if her gaze went all the way within me. “Well, sometimes what’s obvious is the same as what’s true. You shouldn’t be so quick to discount the obvious.”

  It seemed profound, a truth spoken by a wise woman. But was it? I was too young to know, I realized that much.

  Philip had urged us to be polite, though. “I’m sorry, Ms. Burden,” I said.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry for. And please don’t call me Ms. Burden—it makes me sound ancient. My name’s Kate.”

  She was old, though, thirty or even forty. She had a few delicate wrinkles on her forehead, like lines raked through a Japanese sand garden.

  “And who’s left?” she said, looking around at us. “Semiramis? Oh, I love your names—they’re all so fanciful. I think Semiramis will be a lion tamer.”

  Semiramis growled. “A lion tamer, not a lion, Ramis!” Beatriz said, and we laughed. Semiramis beamed, thrilled with the attention.

  “And what do you do, Ms.—Kate?” I asked.

  “Me? Oh, I’ve done a great many things. I traveled all over the world, teaching English, and I worked for a rare-book dealer, looking for treasures in old bookstores, and I was a bartender for a while, and I worked in Hollywood as a makeup artist . . . Oh, that reminds me!”

  She dipped her hand into her purse, and when she brought it out she was holding several bottles, blue and red and green and one that glittered. “Do you know how to put on nail polish?” she asked.

  We shook our heads. It certainly wasn’t anything Philip had ever taught us. She and Semiramis sat with us on the ground, and we spent the rest of that afternoon brushing our nails with colors and covering them with sparkles.

  “Why did you have so many jobs?” Beatriz asked. I noticed that she was sitting up straight, trying to imitate Ms. Burden’s posture. It annoyed me, though I didn’t know why.

  “Well. The truth is that an old woman cursed me, a long time ago. She said I’d never be able to rest, never have a family, that I’d wander the world for a long time. That’s why I did all those things, why so many things happened to me. But she also said that I’d find a family one day, in the last place I thought to look for it.”

  The sun was setting by the time we finished our nails. Beatriz’s polish had gotten mixed in with dirt—she was never very clean, though she walked and moved with the elegance of a duchess—and Amaranth had painted her fingers as well as her nails. I hadn’t managed to keep within the lines myself, and I felt unhappy as studied my hands. The only one of us who looked good was Semiramis; Ms. Burden had done her nails.

  We said goodbye and headed home, waving our fingers in the air to dry them.

  “Do you believe her?” Beatriz asked me, as we left the park and crossed the street. “About the curse?”

  It was strange hearing someone so logical talk about curses, and I thought it was a sign of how much Ms. Burden had won her over. “I don’t know,” I said. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I think she . . . I think she said all
that so we’d wonder if we were her family.”

  “Well, maybe we are.”

  My stomach cramped. Or was it the creature, moving inside me? Beatriz and I bickered a lot, but we rarely disagreed over anything important. “We don’t need anyone else,” I said. “And we especially don’t need a replacement for Jane. Nobody can do that.”

  “She didn’t say anything about replacing Jane. And anyway, she can’t possibly know that—that we don’t have a mother.”

  “Why not?” I think this was when all my suspicions coalesced, when I started to question everything she’d said and done. Who shows up at a park with four bottles of nail polish in their purse?

  “Well, how could she?” Beatriz asked.

  “And another thing,” I said. “All that about a curse—it’s hokey. It’s like a bad movie.” I remembered the word I wanted and brought it out proudly. “Clichéd.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “You just haven’t seen a lot of movies, that’s all.”

  “Oh, you just think you’re so superior—”

  It was an old argument. Of course I was superior; I was two years older, after all. We continued along those familiar lines until we got back to the house.

  If I couldn’t reach Aunt Maeve, I thought, at least I could read her book. I’d read it before, of course, but Philip had said then I was too young for it, and I think he was right. I hadn’t understood all that much, anyway.

  It took place in a small village called Pommerie Town, in what might have been the United States a hundred or maybe two hundred years ago. Strange things went on there, though few people spoke about them. One morning, for example, the people who visited the library found a river flowing down the center of the room, with a Japanese half-moon bridge connecting one side with the other. And yet no one said anything about the changes; instead they went about their business as usual, crossing the bridge when they needed a book on the other side.

  All the clocks in town ran backward one day, and another time a great dancing mania seized the people, who stopped what they were doing, found a partner, and danced until their feet bled. Things went missing and turned up in odd places: under the blankets in someone’s bed, inside a fish caught in the river. The chief alderman took his hand out of his pocket while making a speech and a bracelet glittery with emeralds dropped to the floor, a bracelet no one in town had ever seen. As everyone argued about where it had come from, the alderman, who had been as surprised as all the rest, suddenly admitted that he’d been embezzling from public funds.