Young Writers Society

~1037 words

- A/N: spoilers will happen if you do your own research into the things I talk about in this chapter. I am trying to make this somewhat historical. So I mean, if you already know your history, you're already spoiled, sorry! By the way, the book Ivy is reading is "Sense and Sensibility." Thought I'd add in some more historicalish things.

Ivy

Ivy knew it was a dream because she never could have remembered with this much detail.

She sat at the table in the kitchen of her old house. She was paging through her father’s leather-bound field notes, being careful not to rip any pages. She knew how to read, but her father’s handwriting was so messy, and he always used words she didn’t understand. Plus, his pictures were works of art themselves and interested her much more. Here was a diagram of all the layers of the earth, there was a sketch of fossils he had found: shells, leaves, bones. Most of the diagrams focused on one subject, however.

Her father was an explorer and geologist. He would often take Ivy’s mother along on his adventures through the world, from the Galapagos to the East Indies. He had a special fascination with islands. When Ivy’s mother died giving birth to her—in the belly of a Royal Navy ship—Ivy’s father took Ivy along with him on his adventures instead. When school got out, he’d whisk her away to some far-off place and they’d spend the whole summer exploring. But the last two summers they’d gone to the same place, and they were planning to go again this year. Her father was just packing up a few more things before they had to catch their coach. Tomorrow, they’d be on the sea, heading for Sri Lanka. From there, they’d take a smaller boat to the island of Sumbawa. On that island rested the object of her father’s fascination: Mount Tambora.

Ivy didn’t understand why he was so fascinated by it. It was just a mountain. They had seen plenty of those in their travels. But this on had truly captivated him.

Her father rushed into the kitchen and pulled open a few drawers before turning around to look at the table. He jumped when he saw Ivy sitting there. “Oh I didn’t see you there, Ivy. I was looking for that notebook. I’ve got a new one, because that one’s all filled up, but I wanted to check I hadn’t lost it. It has a lot of important data in there.”

“Papa, why do you love Tambora so much?” Ivy asked.

He tried to explain, but Ivy didn’t understand any of the words he was using. Finally, he simply said, “I love this mountain so much because it reminds me of your mother. Her name was Tamora, you know?”

“It was?” Ivy asked. “I thought it was Mum.”

Ivy’s father chuckled. “She had another name. Tamora. That isn’t the only reason the mountain reminds me of her, though, see here?” He pointed at a diagram on the page, one where half the mountain had been removed, almost as if her father could cut it like a cake.

Ivy looked where he was pointing, but suddenly, the picture was moving, it wasn’t a mountain after all, it was a veil of hair draped over shoulders. The woman turned her head to look behind her, her long hair sweeping across her back. It was Ivy’s mother. She looked at ivy and a sly smile began to form on her lips. “Ivy,” she said. “Ivy. Ivy.”

“Ivy?”

“Huh?” Ivy mumbled.

“Are you awake?”

Ivy became aware that someone had her by the shoulders and was gently shaking her.

“Wha?”

“C’mon Ivy we gotta get these crops to market. It’s morning? Saturday? You’re at my house, Ivy? Planet Earth?”

“Yeah I’m up, I’m up…”

“No you’re not.”

“Five more minutes…” There was a tug on her arm, and Ivy was jolted awake as she began to fall off the bed. Her leg shot out instinctively to save her, and suddenly she was standing up. “Okay, I’m up. Geez.”

Nikki was bright-eyed as usual. “Mum’s cooked you some hot porridge and put extra sugar in this time. I reckon she likes you more than me! Eat that up and let’s go!”

The breakfast was delicious, though Ivy barely had a chance to notice between her sleepy brain and Nikki’s impatience to leave. Soon enough, they were riding at the front of Nikki’s cart, ghost sitting alert on the back. Ivy dozed in her seat as they rode, and before she knew it Nikki had dropped her off at her flower shop.

“You go take a nap, Ivy,” she said. “I’ll be back as soon as I drop these off.” She gestured to the sacks and boxes of vegetables and flowers in the back of her cart.

Ivy tried to get some sleep—she obviously needed it if she could sleep through a bumpy wagon ride like that one—but she couldn’t seem to fall asleep, now that she was lying in her own bed. She kept thinking about her father. How, after they’d reached Sumbawa, her father had climbed the mountain alone and had disappeared, never to be seen again. They had sent search parties after him, but had found no trace of him. Ivy had been sent back to live with her crazy grandmother, who honestly needed Ivy to take care of her more than Ivy needed a caretaker.

It was rare that Ivy thought about her father these days. It was a painful mystery, a loose end in her life. How could he have disappeared? How could he have just left her, a child, alone and afraid in a strange land? She missed her father—she had loved him with all the zeal a daughter could have—but deep down, she also blamed him.

To distract her from these thoughts, Ivy read a novel she had bought from a used-book store recently. It was a silly little romance, but it had caught Ivy’s eye, as it was written by “a lady,” as the title page stated. Time flew by as she read, and she became so engrossed in the story that when Nikki knocked at the door, Ivy looked around, confused that she was in a flower shop and not at a formal dance.

“Ready to go?” Nikki asked, when Ivy opened the door.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ivy said, rubbing her temple.

“Ivy, I swear, you’ve been out of it all day!” Nikki said, as they walked to the workshop.