The Revolution of Ivy

by Amy Engel

  Bishop crashes out of the woods, Mark Laird stumbling along next to him, his head caught in the crook of Bishop’s arm. Seeing Mark doesn’t bring even the slightest shock to my system, and I realize I’ve been prepared for this moment since the day he disappeared. He was never going to stay gone.

  My frantic eyes look for damage, but all they can find on Bishop is a split lip, and I’m able to take a full breath for the first time since he walked into the trees. Mark, on the other hand, is looking worse for wear, and not only from the beating Bishop has obviously given him. He’s much thinner than the last time I saw him, his cheeks hollow and eyes sunken, hair matted with dirt. His clothes are shredded to almost nothing; it’s a wonder he hasn’t frozen to death already. He doesn’t look like a sweet cherub doll anymore. He looks rabid, like if I waved a hand in front of his mouth, he’d tear the flesh from my bones.

  “He was following us,” Bishops says, out of breath, but not loosening his hold on Mark’s neck. “He’d circled back around.”

  Caleb takes a few steps closer to Mark, and Ash and I do the same. “All this time,” Caleb says, “you’ve just been waiting instead of finding shelter, a new place to live? You’re even dumber than I thought.”

  Mark raises his eyes to Caleb, a thread of bloody saliva hanging off his lower lip. “You aren’t going to beat me,” he says, voice a harsh rasp. His eyes skip over to me. “That bitch doesn’t get to win.”

  Bishop’s arm jerks against Mark’s neck, hard, and Mark gasps out a choking moan, his hands flying up to try to pull Bishop’s arm away. “Shut up,” Bishop says in that same flat voice I heard when he talked to Mark through the fence. “And guess what? You’re the one trapped and bleeding, so I think we’ve already won.”

  “This time,” Mark says. He’s not getting enough air, his words weak and reedy. “Just this time.”

  There’s a beat of silence that lengthens into hours, fat and ripe with possibility. And then Bishop says, even and quiet, “This is the last time.”

  My whole body goes still at his words at the same time that Mark begins to fight, flailing and kicking, desperate, the meaning behind what Bishop’s said sinking in. But Bishop holds on, gives a slight grunt when Mark catches him in the ribs with an elbow, but doesn’t loosen his grip. It takes less than a minute for Mark to wear himself out, head hanging low, air gusting out of him in uneven bellows. Blood drips off his face into the dirty snow at his feet.

  Bishop looks at Ash, looks at Caleb, looks at me. Waits. He’s reading our faces, searching for a sign that we want him to stop. Waiting for a sign I won’t give him. Because I know what has to happen. Mark’s already had more than one second chance. He’s earned this ultimate punishment, earned it through pain he’s doled out, lives he’s taken, innocence he’s stolen. And if I’d finished what I started that night on the riverbank, then Bishop wouldn’t have to be the one doing it now. So I keep my gaze on Bishop when he jerks the arm he has around Mark’s neck upward, tightens it against Mark’s throat. I center myself with Bishop’s unflinching eyes as Mark’s life is choked out of him—his gasping breaths eventually fading into silence, his drumming feet slowing to a stop. I don’t look away when Bishop finally lets go, Mark’s body crumpling to the ground.

  We leave Mark’s body where it fell and keep moving. We don’t have the tools to dig him a grave in the frozen earth, even if he were worth the effort. None of us talks much the rest of the day. Bishop takes up the rear of the procession, and I can tell he wants to walk alone. It reminds me of the night he pushed Dylan from the roof, the solitary walk he needed to come to terms with what he’d done. So I give him space and walk silently in front of him, hoping in some small way that the simple fact of my presence will bring him comfort.

  When we stop for the night, Caleb manages to catch two small rabbits, and while Bishop and Ash set up the tent, I gut them and cook them over the fire. Almost as soon as we’re done eating, Ash and Caleb retreat to the tent, Ash mumbling something about being extra tired. It’s not a particularly convincing excuse, but I’m grateful for it anyway. Neither Ash nor Caleb seems affected by Mark’s death. They are practical about this world we live in. Out here we don’t always have the luxury of making moral judgments like right or wrong. Sometimes it is simply kill or be killed. But I think they want to give Bishop and me a chance to talk privately. Caleb lays his hand briefly on my shoulder as he passes, squeezes once, before disappearing behind Ash into the tent.

  The fire we used to cook the rabbits is dying down, but still gives off some warmth. I scoot closer to Bishop, watch the way the firelight plays over the line of his jaw. He turns to look at me, his face grim.

  “I killed him,” he says. They’re the first words he’s spoken since Mark. He holds his arms out in front of him, fingers splayed. “With my bare hands.” He laughs, a hollow rasp. “Well, with my bare arm, if we’re being technical.”

  I suck in a breath. I don’t want to say the wrong thing, don’t want to blurt out something that’s going to hurt instead of heal. I take his hands and fold them between mine. “They’re good hands,” I say, remembering all the ways he’s touched me with those long fingers, all the ways he’s used those hands to comfort and love me. “You’re a good person, Bishop.”

  He flinches just a little. “I don’t know if you can still say that after today.” When he tries to draw his hands back, I hold on, tighten my fingers.

  “Yes, I can.”

  He stops fighting my grip. “You want to know the worst part?” he asks, eyes back on the fire. “I don’t even regret it. I’m just glad he’s one less thing I have to worry about. I never have to think about him hurting someone else. Never have to worry that he’s going to hurt you again.”

  “That doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s like you told me back in Westfall—the world is brutal now. It’s hard, and sometimes we have to be hard, too, just to live in it.” He turns to look at me, and I let go of his hands so I can run my fingers lightly over the swollen corner of his mouth. “And it’s going to change us. There’s no way it won’t. But what you did today, it doesn’t alter what’s at the heart of you, Bishop. You’re still the best person I’ve ever known.”

  He doesn’t speak, just leans toward me and kisses me. I shift and pull him closer, thread my fingers through his hair. When we move apart, I put my head on his shoulder, watch the dying flames dance in the wind.

  “What happened with Mark,” Bishop says, “it made me think about where we’re headed, what we’re going to do when we get there.” He kisses the top of my head, leaves his lips against my hair as he speaks. “And I can’t see it ending any differently than today.”

  I shift my head so I can see him. “You’re going to strangle my sister?”

  Bishop laughs, and I’m not sure what it says about the people we are becoming that we can make light of what happened so soon. All I know is I’m thankful for the sound of Bishop’s laughter, the smile that lifts all the way to his eyes. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” he says. “But no.” He wraps a strand of my hair around his finger, gives it a gentle pull. “I just mean, even if we’re able to help her, even if we do this for her, I don’t think she’s going to be any different, Ivy. Some people…some people never change, even when they should.”

  “I know,” I say, because he’s probably right.

  “It’s like when I gave that food to Mark when he was first put out. Looking back now it was so stupid and pointless—”

  “It wasn’t,” I protest.

  “It was,” Bishop says. “A guy like that, a person like that, he’s never going to change. No matter how much other people did for him or how many chances he got, he was always going to be the same terrible person. And I don’t think Callie’s any different.”

  It seems unfair somehow, the sharp stab of pain his words brings. As if I should be beyond feeling such grief over Callie. He’s not telling me anything I don’t already know. Not telling me anything I didn’t already figure out my
self that day in the courtroom when I saw Callie talking to Bishop, already trying to work her way into his good graces.

  “I think my needing to go back has more to do with me than it does with Callie,” I tell him. “Or my father.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I could go on with my life, our life, out here. Leave Callie and my father to their fates, the same way they did with me. And I’d probably be okay with that, actually. For a while at least.” I sigh, push the toe of my boot against a blackened stick that’s fallen from the fire, watch it crumble to ash. “But it would eat at me. I wouldn’t be able to forget it. Just letting Callie be killed, not at least trying to stop it? Not making the attempt to help my father? It would leave a little rotten spot, right here.” I push my fist into the soft space beneath my rib cage. “Something that would only get bigger and darker with time.” I shake my head, hating the wobble in my voice. “And I don’t want to live with something like that inside me.”

  I slide my eyes toward Bishop, sure I sound crazy to his ears. I sound halfway crazy to my own. But his gaze is tender, heating my skin far more than the fire.

  “I love you,” he says quietly.

  I want to take his words, the truth of them I can see on his face, and cup them in my hands like a glowing coal from the fire. Keep them with me warm and bright, a talisman.

  “I love you, too,” I tell him, thinking about each word as I say it, putting everything I feel into each syllable. I hope I’m giving him back what he’s just given me. Something to hold on to. A touchstone against the darkness we are walking toward.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The dead girl’s bones are covered in snow. But not completely. I can see a flash of bone sticking up through the icy crust; a rounded lump up above that is probably her skull. I don’t point it out to anyone, but I know from the stiffening of Bishop’s shoulders that he’s seen her, too. The four of us are crouched in the trees, the gate in the fence directly in front of us, the early-morning sun painting the ground with gold and pink.

  “Is this where they put you out?” Bishop asks me.

  I can feel Ash watching me as I answer. “No. It was another gate. Farther west.”

  Bishop nods. “They don’t use that one as much.”

  “Probably hoping if they put me farther from the river I’d die before I found water.”

  Caleb makes a disgusted noise at the back of his throat, but his eyes remain on the gate. “Now what?” he asks.

  We’re all exhausted, hungry, and worn down, and I wish there were some way for us to regroup, have a few days of warmth and good food before we walk back into Westfall. But that’s never going to happen, so the best thing to do is push on before we use up even more of our reserves.

  “The patrols come along here every day,” Bishop says, nodding toward the fence.

  “How many men?” Ash asks.

  “Sometimes two. Sometimes just one. I’m guessing with everything going on inside Westfall, they won’t want to spare two men out here checking the fence. When the patrol comes around, I’ll get him to let me back inside.”

  We linger in the shadows of the trees, eating jerky and sharing water from our two canteens. I don’t ask Bishop if he’s sure about the plan or tell him to be careful; he knows what he’s doing, and from now on we’ll all be as careful as we can be. When I’m just at the point where I think I’ll need to move or go insane, I hear the crunch of boots over snow. Caleb holds up a hand, even though we’re silent already.

  Bishop grabs my hand, squeezes it once, and lets go. He moves out of the trees and toward the gate as I shift onto my knees, torso pressed against the tree in front of me, eyes glued on his back. He reaches the gate at the exact moment a patrol guard steps into sight on the Westfall side of the fence. He almost pinwheels backward at the sight of Bishop, hand falling to his gun.

  “Hey,” Bishop says, keeping his voice calm and even. “I’m Bishop Lattimer. I need to get back in.”

  The guard hasn’t moved, and his hand hasn’t left his gun, either. Next to me I feel Caleb slide his crossbow off his back. He does it without making a single sound.

  “I thought you were gone,” the guard says finally. It’s hard to tell how old he is. He’s bundled up against the cold in a hat and a dark scarf wrapped around his face, tiny ice pellets embedded in the wool. But he sounds young. Young makes me nervous, makes me think unpredictable and scared.

  Bishop must hear it, too, because when he speaks his voice has gotten even deeper, more adult. Trying to show the kid who’s in charge here. “I left. Now I’m back. I need you to let me in.”

  Still the guard hesitates, and my heart is beginning to throb, my pulse jackhammering in my neck. Next to me, the air shifts as Caleb fits a bolt into his crossbow. Ash lays a hand on my back, trying to calm me.

  The guard moves closer, finally. “Take off your hat,” he tells Bishop.

  Bishop does as he asks, his dark hair blowing in the stiff wind. The guard peers at him through slitted eyes. “Why’d you come back?” he asks.

  “Heard what was happening in there,” Bishop says, jerking his head toward the guard. “Wanted to come back and help my family.”

  “Some people thought maybe you left to go find that wife of yours,” the guard says.

  “No,” Bishop says. “And she’s not my wife anymore.” He shifts slightly, and the guard tenses up. “Listen, I’d love to stand out here all day and chat, but it’s freezing and I’d really like to see my family. I’m not sure how thrilled my father will be if he hears you made me wait.”

  That gets the guard moving. “Just have to be safe,” he says, pulling a ring of keys from his pocket.

  “Of course,” Bishop says, “totally understand.”

  The gate opens and Bishop steps through, claps the guard on the upper arm. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” The guard pushes the gate closed again and Bishop steps behind him, swings his rifle off his back in one fluid motion, and brings the butt of it down hard against the guard’s head with a crack. So fast the guard never saw it coming.

  The three of us are up and racing toward the gate as Bishop grabs the guard’s legs and drags him out of the way. Once we’re through the gate, Bishop takes the keys from the guard’s limp hand and locks it behind us. We stand and stare at one another, all breathing hard.

  “Nice work,” Caleb says.

  Bishop looks at me, cups my cheek briefly in his hand. “Piece of cake, right?”

  “Right,” I say. I tell myself that it’s fine. That the guard was never going to hurt him. But the thought that this is the easiest test we’ll have sits in my gut, hard and heavy.

  “So what do we do with him?” Ash asks, toeing the guard’s shoulder. “We can’t put him outside the fence without a weapon, and we can’t exactly take him with us.”

  “We leave him here,” Bishop says. “Tie him to the fence. Eventually someone will come looking for him. But we should have a good day or so with everything else going on. Plenty of time for us to get in and out.”

  “Won’t he freeze?” I ask.

  “Nah,” Caleb says. “He’s got a thick coat, boots. He’ll be okay.”

  “What if he yells?” Ash asks.

  Bishop squats down, hand on the guard’s scarf. “We gag him. Won’t be the best day he’s ever spent. But he’ll live.”

  I use my knife to cut the scarf in two, and Bishop uses half of it as a gag. Caleb takes the other half and winds it around the guard’s wrists behind his back and then ties the ends through the fence.

  “Think it’ll hold?” Bishop asks, eyes on Caleb.

  “For a while, at least,” Caleb says. “If he does get loose, he’s just going to be screaming about you. He didn’t see the rest of us. So that gives us some room to maneuver.”

  Bishop nods at him, satisfied. He lifts the guard’s coat before he stands, plucks the gun from the holster at his waist, and hands it to me.

  I take it gingerly in my fingers, surpris
ed at how heavy it is. “What do you want me to do with it?” I ask.

  Bishop is concentrating on unbuckling the holster from around the guard’s waist. “Carry it,” he says. He looks up at me, eyes dark and serious. “Use it if you need to.”

  “I don’t even know how,” I protest.

  “It’s pretty simple,” Caleb says. He takes the gun from my hand. “This is the safety. You want to press it off before you fire. Then it’s just aim and pull the trigger. You miss, fire again. Like I said, simple.”

  He hands the gun back to me, and I raise my arms while Bishop fastens the holster around my waist, below my knife sheath. The gun doesn’t feel simple to me. It feels dangerous, like a snake hissed and coiling in my hand. Bishop’s rifle has never bothered me. I’ve always wanted to learn how to use a gun, even back before I was outside the fence. So I don’t understand the way my skin crawls at the feel of this one in my palm. Except that from the second Bishop handed it to me, something clicked into place, one more step on this journey slotting into position.

  I don’t really believe in fate or destiny. Or at least I don’t believe that fate can’t be altered. I’m living proof. I altered my own. If that weren’t possible, I’d most likely be ruling Westfall now along with my family, Bishop and his father dead at our feet. But regardless of what I believe, or don’t believe, something inside me recognizes this gun, already understands that it’s going to have a part to play in what’s to come.

  I wait while Bishop finishes fastening the holster and slides the gun onto my hip, making sure I can easily get to my knife as well. He is staring at me, head tilted, a little smile on his lips.

  “What?” I ask.

  He reaches out and winds a strand of my hair around his finger. “You need to cover this up,” he says. “One look at it and people will know who you are.”