The Fire Underneath of Things - 20

~1030 words

Ivy

“Volcanoes?” Ivy asked. “My father was researching volcanoes that whole time?”

Alder nodded. “He sought out active volcanoes in order to take a closer look at them.”

Ivy felt as if her head was falling apart in chunks, so she put a hand to her forehead to steady it. “He climbed all those mountains. Right to the top. I can’t believe he- that was so dangerous!”

“He went all over the world before he suddenly focused all his research on Mount Tambora.”

“I finally understand why he never took me with him. I never got it! I mean, I might’ve been small, but he never once even allowed me to try to climb even the shortest mountains—volcanoes, I mean—with him!”

“His last journal mentions that he was planning another trip there, but that’s the last one I have,” Alder continued.

Ivy’s head snapped back up, “that was the last one he wrote, except for the one he had with him when he… disappeared. Oh no.”

“What is it?” Nikki asked. She had been following the conversation in silence, but now went to Ivy and began rubbing her back.

Ivy tried to smile her thanks at Nikki, but the smile ended up feeling strange and forced. Her voice, too, sounded a little too bright. “All this time, even though my rational self knew he was dead, part of me thought he must have gotten lost on the mountain and would come back any day now. He had excellent survival skills. He wouldn’t have died from just being lost. But there’s not much you can do if you fall into a volcano, is there?” Her voice caught on the last work, and that was enough to send the hot prickles in her eyes flooding down her face.

“Oh honey,” said Nikki, and she fumbled around in her pockets for a second before pulling out a handkerchief and handing it to Ivy.

“I’m, s-sorry,” she hiccupped, trying to wipe at her tears. “It happened so long a-ago I really sh-shouldn’t be crying.”

“No, Ivy , you cry as much as you want. There’s no one here that doesn’t understand,” Nikki said, shooting a slightly-questioning glance at Alder, who nodded solemnly.

Suddenly there was knock at the door to the office. Ivy stiffened and sniffed, looking at the door with apprehension in her eyes.

“I’ll get it,” said Nikki, already halfway to the door.

Before she pulled it open, Ivy looked away. She didn’t want to look at whoever was behind it with tears running down her face. She heard the door open.

“Yeah, Grey?” Nikki demanded.

“May I- Oh my.” There was a moment of stunned silence. “Ivy are you okay?”

Ivy couldn’t look at him, especially because it was Grey. She didn’t want him to see her in her moment of weakness, not when she already felt vulnerable around him. Instead, she just waved and said, “Fine, fine, don’t worry about me.”

Nikki ask what he wanted, and Grey stuttered some reply, obviously off-put by Ivy’s state. She was relieved when he finally left.

“That insensitive little-” Nikki bit off the end of her sentence as Alder’s eyebrows raised in surprise.

“I’m sure he wasn’t trying to interrupt anything,” Alder said.

“He was trying to peer in here to gawk at Ivy,” Nikki muttered.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” said Ivy. “Tell me more about what you’re trying to do with my father’s notebooks, Alder.”

“Well.” He cleared his throat before continuing. “Your father made some very concerning predictions about Mount Tambora.”

“Predictions?” prompted Ivy, trying to turn the conversation away from her own emotions.

“Yes. Predictions that have catastrophic consequences for the entire world if they are proven true. And Mister Blackwell—I mean, Charlie—made many predictions, several of which have already come true with perfect accuracy.”

“How catastrophic to do you mean?” Nikki asked, her eyes wide with dawning terror.

“Catastrophe in every sense of the word. The sky will darken, the crops will die, the water will be poison to drink, this all over the world. This volcano is enormous. It will affect everyone.”

Ivy suddenly felt silly crying over one person. The weight of this discovery settled on her shoulders like a ton of bricks. “Have you told anyone?”

“Who haven’t I told?” Alder threw his hands in the air and sat further back in his seat. “Every person I tell thinks I’m crazy to believe some random journals I found in a dusty old bookshop. They think they’re works of fiction. I think some have believed me, but they’re too afraid to admit it could be true. After all, if they believed me, it would mean believing the end is right around the corner.”

“How close?” Ivy whispered.

“Closer than you could possibly imagine. Within the next year or two.”

Ivy’s stomach plummeted. She suddenly felt all the things she wanted to do bursting in her heart. Things she’d never have time for.

“But you have a way to stop it somehow, don’t you?” Nikki asked, the hope in her voice feeble.

“I’m working on it.” Alder ran a hand through his scraggly white hair. “I’m trying hard to make this machine work. Something we can send into the air to eat up the ash. Once I perfect the first one, we need to start making hundreds, or all is lost.”

“How close are you to finishing the first one?” Ivy asked.

Alder looked at her with eyes devoid of all hope. “Not nearly close enough.”

Ivy and Nikki looked at each other, lines of fear and despair etched on their face. They had joined this movement for the fun of it. They had no idea that it would have been the single most important cause they could join in the world, but it was already too late.

“Still, it’s the only thing we’ve got right now,” Alder said. “Maybe something more will come along to aid us. When you to girls joined the cause, I looked on it as a sign that our end is not written in stone, that there are people out there that will help, if only we could reach them.”