The Arrival

Ivy & Ixos - Issue One

Ivy & Ixos is a fantasy/magical realism novella, serialized in twelve parts. This is Issue One.

In this first issue, Ivy meets her dad for the first time since she was little, and gets her first glimpse of Ferris Island—the place where she will be living until it’s safe enough to go home.

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Photo by Nick Bolton on Unsplash

“Ivy?”

Auntymack reached out to hand her niece a granola bar, shaking spilled oats off of her own teal-blue scrubs onto the floor of the Prius with her other hand. “Ivy, you want one?”

The little girl shook her head, breathing against the passenger’s side window and tracing a heart in the mist. “Can we get out and look for seals?”

Her aunt said a muffled “no” through a mouthful of granola bar. 

“We always look for seals.”

Auntymack gave her niece a gentle but firm glance, swallowed her bite. “You know we can’t. Not this time.”

Ivy craned her head to look behind them. The ferry car-deck was nearly empty. Everyone else was still in their cars. “There’s hardly anyone here. Just for a second? I promise if I see anyone else to keep my distance.”

“It’s not about that,” Auntymack said. “The railings and stuff.”

She trailed off, realizing she had left an opening.

“I won’t touch anything,” said Ivy, quickly. 

“No, Ivy.” Auntymack toyed with the hospital ID name-badge clipped to her scrubs, with meaning. “It’s just not a good idea. I’m really sorry.”

Ivy slumped in her seat and tried to imagine how the cold March wind felt right now, sweeping up from this blustery corner of the world where the Puget Sound met the Salish Sea. So cold it stole the warmth from your fingers and the tip of your nose. Whipping by so quick it stole the breath from your lungs. She imagined the gulls riding alongside, looking like they were hovering in place, and how exciting it was to spot a pod of porpoises or a big jellyfish or a playful seal. She usually loved riding the ferry, but she had never had to ride it trapped in the car, before. 

And she had never been to Ferris Island, before, either. She and Auntymack had been all over the place, or so she thought. They had ridden the ferry to Kingston, and another ferry to Whidbey Island, and they had even taken a ferry to Vashon Island and Bremerton. But Ferris Island was new; it might as well have been another country. 

Ivy tried to imagine, for the hundredth time that day, what her dad’s house looked like. She had seen an old picture of him from before she was born, and he didn’t really look like anything special, so she hoped the house made up for it. 

She had asked Auntymack about it, over and over, ever since this plan had been revealed to her and she had gotten over the initial shock. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Auntymack had said. It had already been a week into the pandemic with no end in sight and there were bags under her aunt’s eyes. “It’s been so long since I was there. It’s a big property. Lots of trees. Woods, I mean, you know...forest. I think there was a garden. A pond? Sorry, Ives, it’s just been a really long time.”

“What about the house?”

Auntymack had shrugged, sighed. “It’s just a house, Ivy. It’s different than living in a condo in the city. I’m sure you’ll love it. And remember: it’s not for forever. Just for now. Just until this whole thing blows over and it’s safe for you to come home.” 

So Ivy had very little to go on, and her imagination filled in the blanks. She had seen pictures of country houses in magazines and that was the closest her imagination could conjure of what her dad’s house might look like. Woods and forests and ponds were a good sign; Ivy had never spent much time around those outside of excursions to the park. There would be plenty to do and explore. A garden? Was her dad a farmer? Did farmers have gardens? Were gardens and farms the same thing?

The ferry horn blasted. The dock at Ferris Island had materialized out of the mist.

*****

It had been decided among the adults that the safest and easiest way to do this was to transfer Ivy from car to car instead of Auntymack driving all the way to the house, which was halfway across the island from the dock.

Once the silver Prius had disembarked the ferry they pulled directly into the near-empty park-and-ride lot just adjacent to the loading zone, a few empty spaces away from a faded blue pickup truck.

“There he is,” Auntymack murmured, her tone complicated. 

The door of the pickup opened and a man stepped out. He was thin and stretched, sharp-featured, with a haunted stubble of beard about his cheeks and dust-colored hair under his baseball cap. He looked like the kind of man who regularly gets distracted and forgets to eat. 

Ivy recognized the young man from the photo she had seen in this older man, though he was thinner and sadder-looking now and he had a nervous energy about him as he lingered beside the pickup truck. 

Auntymack got out of the Prius and pulled Ivy’s suitcase out with her, all business, but she stayed next to her driver’s side door at a safe distance from the pickup. Ivy couldn’t tell if her aunt’s frostyness was because of the social distancing rules, or something else.

“Hi, Peter,” Auntymack said. Her tone was still complicated. 

“Mackenzie, hi,” he replied. “How was the ride?”

“Great, fine.” Auntymack gestured to Ivy to get out of the car. “This is, well...thanks for being willing to do this.”

“Sure.” 

Ivy mutely pulled her backpack out behind her as she got out of the car. Her dad and her aunt both had the same weird edges to their voices as every adult in her life in the past few weeks. Teachers, grocery store cashiers, even the news anchors and politicians on TV...they all had that stilted sound to their words, an uneasiness. It made her nervous and she wasn’t even sure why. It made her feel like the pavement might buckle under her feet. 

She came around the back of the Prius and stood beside Auntymack, suddenly unsure. Upon getting a good look at her, her dad smiled awkwardly and gave her a little wave. 

“Hey, Ivy. Wow...you’re taller.”

“Taller than what?” Ivy asked, not unkindly. She genuinely wanted to know. 

But it must have come off differently, because Auntymack nudged her like she had said something sassy. Her dad’s smile faltered a little and he mumbled something about moving stuff in the truck so she could have a place to sit, then he turned and busied himself at the task.

Ivy felt Auntymack’s hand on her shoulder. “Hey, kiddo,” her aunt said, kneeling down beside her, “I know this is weird. But I think you’re going to have a really good time with your dad, okay?”

Ivy nodded. Her curiosity about the house, the woods, the mysterious question of whether a garden and a farm were the same thing...they were ebbing in comparison to the reality of the faded blue pickup truck and the fact that her aunt was about to say goodbye, and neither of them knew exactly when they would say hello again. 

Ivy wanted to say be careful. She wanted to say don’t do anything stupid. She wanted to say don’t be a hero. She wanted to beg her aunt to stay as far away from any sick people as possible, no matter that she was a nurse and didn’t have a choice, and she wanted to ask her to come with them so they could all be safe. But Ivy was ten, and the overwhelming sadness made her feel like she was five again, and didn’t quite know how to put all of those things into the proper order. So instead, she just melted into Auntymack’s arms for one last hug, as tight as she possibly could, inhaling the smells of Auntymack’s perfume and bodywash and detergent where it clung to her clean teal-blue scrubs. 

“I love you,” said Auntymack. “Be good.”

Then she pulled away and gave Ivy a gentle push across the divide where her dad stood awkwardly, hands in his jeans pockets, pickup truck door ajar. 

Ivy took a sharp breath, shouldered her backpack, and walked right up to her dad. 

“I know we don’t know each other very well,” she said, “so let’s do this right.”

She stuck out her hand. “I’m Ivy.”

His eyes widened with gentle humor, but he shook her hand. His hand was rough but surprisingly warm. Ivy counted this as a good sign. 

“Pete,” he said. 

“Nice to meet you.” Then Ivy gave her aunt one last wave and the biggest smile she could pretend, climbed into the pickup truck, and swallowed back the sob that had lodged itself right behind her jaw. 

Through the fog of trying to keep her sorrow hidden she heard her dad say his goodbyes to Auntymack.

Her aunt said, almost too quiet for her to hear, but not quite, “She’s a good kid, Pete. Please just…be patient with her, okay?”

Ivy didn’t hear her dad’s reply. But soon after, he loaded her suitcase into the truck, climbed into the driver’s seat, and closed the door against the screaming gulls and whistling wind. 

“Okay,” Pete said, unable to look at Ivy as the truck sputtered to life. “Let’s go, I guess.”

*****

Ivy was not able to name either her own grief or her dad’s discomfort, but she knew that the tension in the pickup truck—a tension unique to grown-ups and their conversations—would lead to silence, and she couldn’t quite handle the idea of silence if this was going to be her first few hours with Pete. 

So she talked. She talked about school. She talked about her friends. She talked about Capitol Hill, about the park, about the neighbors in their condo who had a tiny dog that wouldn’t shut up. She talked about the games at recess and earthquake drills and how Auntymack kept packing pickles in her lunchbox even though she hated pickles and reminded Auntymack about that literally—literally!—every time. 

She didn’t talk about Auntymack, not really, because the subject was still raw and her aunt’s tearful face was still threatening to break like a thundercloud over the pickup truck, so she kept it light.

Pete remained silent. It could not be said that what was happening in the pickup truck was a conversation, in the strictest sense. If Ivy had been brave enough to glance over at her dad once in a while, she would have seen the dimly horrified face of a man who is ten steps behind and asking himself why, rather than really listening to the stream of words being thrown at him. 

All of a sudden the words stopped, and Pete startled, because Ivy was looking at him. She had asked him a question. He had not heard it. 

“I, uh…” he said, slowly. 

But something distracted her and she pointed out the windshield. They had long left behind what passed for a town center on Ferris Island—gas stations, the movie theater, a grocery store, a bank, the post office—and were traveling down a long two-lane highway bordered with meadowland overgrown with scotch broom, punctuated by the occasional gravel lane that led into mysterious tree-lined worlds. The sky was spring-blue. 

Ivy was pointing at a doe, grazing idly by the side of the road. 

“A deer! Pete, look, a deer!”

Relieved, he just smiled. “Yeah, that’s a deer alright.”

“Is it a girl or a boy?” Ivy asked as they whipped past. “Girl, right? The girls don’t have antlers, do they?”

“Right, yeah.”

“That’s so cool.” Ivy settled back into her seat. The deer pushed her forcibly into another frame of mind entirely, leaving Capitol Hill behind in favor of the present. “Auntymack said you have woods and a garden and a pond.”

“She’s about right. I’m on twenty acres now.”

The meaning of this was lost on Ivy. She said, “But you’ve got woods?”

Pete swallowed. “Yeah. Lots of trees. Some wetlands—swampy, kind of. The mosquitos can be really bad in the summer but you can hear the frogs singing.”

She glanced at him. If there was one thing sure to enchant her, it was animals. “Frogs? Really?”

He nodded. “Yep. Lots of frogs.”

Ivy considered this, the question tugging at her tongue. “Are you a farmer?” she asked. 

“Uh…” He shrugged. “No, not...not really. Farmers grow food and sell it. I’ve got a garden, though. It’s a big garden.”

“And what’s the house like?” Ivy asked. “I’ve never lived in a house before. Well, I did when I was a baby, I guess, but I don’t remember it. I’ve visited one a couple of times, because Auntymack’s friends live in a house in Ballard, but that was a really small house and it didn’t really have a yard. You could see right into the neighbor’s living room window so they always kept the curtains closed on that side.”

“Yeah, well...my neighbors aren’t nearly that close,” he said. “And as for the house, it’s just a house, I guess.”

Ivy fell silent, disappointed. That was exactly what Auntymack had said, nearly word for word. How can a house be just a house? A house isn’t a condo. A house is different. In the landscape of Ivy’s imagination a house went on forever, room after room, staircases up to mysterious attics and down to mysterious basements. A condo was surrounded by other condos, a soap bubble surrounded by other soap bubbles, delicate-walled. 

In school they learned that a seed contains all of the building-blocks, all of the nutrition that a plant is going to need to grow. That’s how Ivy saw a house, if she could put words to it: a house was just a shell holding a magical soup of ingredients for millions upon millions of stories.

How could anyone say that a house was just a house?

The pickup truck slowed and they pulled off the main highway, down a gravel lane that had been so tucked behind a stand of alders, wild roses, and huckleberry bushes that Ivy hadn’t seen it until they were already on it.

Her stomach did flips. The house, the reality of staying with her dad for however long this quarantine lasted, had been theoretical. Until now. 

“Are we nearly there?” Ivy asked, a nervous shake to her voice.

“Nope.” Pete glanced over at her, and while he was smiling his voice had exactly the same shiver. “Not nearly. We’re here.”

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