Bring Me the Head of Ivy Pocket

by Caleb Krisp

  “Who are you?” said a boy rather sternly. “Where are you from?”

  “I’m from a place where it’s frightfully rude to set traps.” My orange dress was soiled, a tear on the left sleeve. “Speak up—do you deny trapping me?”

  “It’s my net,” said the boy proudly. “But it’s for catching food, not girls.”

  “Pigs and rabbits, mostly,” said the girl who had cut the rope. She jumped from the tree onto the cart. “That sort of thing.”

  As I caught my breath, I peered at the pair standing above me. They had to be brother and sister. Both were whip thin with large brown eyes. Bronzed skin. Wiry hair the color and texture of a hay bale. The boy looked slightly older. The girl had longer tresses.

  “Who are you?” said the boy again. “Why are you here?”

  “My name is Ivy Pocket, and I am here on most important business,” I said, getting to my feet. “Just point me toward Prospa House and I’ll be on my way.”

  “You’ve escaped, haven’t you?” said the girl gravely.

  “We’ll have to report her,” said the boy to his sister.

  Then he lunged, grasping my wrist, and pulled me from the cart. I reached for the only weapon in sight—a short rake at the side of the barrow—and whacked him in the arm. He yelped, and a valley of blood rose up on his skin. “That hurt!” he hollered.

  “I should hope so,” I said, flicking straw from my dress. “What sort of boy goes around trying to report perfectly innocent girls? It’s unseemly.”

  “If you’ve escaped from Prospa House, we have to tell,” said the girl. “If we don’t . . . we just have to, that’s all.”

  “I’m not running from Prospa House,” I told them. “I’m running to it.”

  The boy narrowed his gaze, looking me up and down. “You don’t look like you’ve got the Shadow to me.”

  “That’s because I don’t, you trap-setting scallywag.” The wound on his arm looked rather severe—he had his hand clutching the cut, blood oozing from between his fingers. “I’m sorry for hurting you, though it’s entirely your own fault.” I sighed. “But I can help.”

  The boy looked doubtful. “Help how?”

  “If you’ll assist me in collecting a few ingredients, I’ll show you.”

  There was some reluctance to trust me. A small amount of hostile suspicion. But eventually my trappers saw sense and agreed to help gather the necessary ingredients. As we walked through the woods, which shimmered a golden brown in the morning light, I told them of my natural remedies. I had considered mending his wound the same way I had healed Miss Always’s wrist back at Butterfield Park, but I felt the less they knew about me, the better.

  I collected the necessary ingredients—the stems of a dozen wildflowers, a pinch of moss, the sap of a tree. It was something of a surprise when the girl pulled out her knife and pierced one of the white trunks and I saw sap, rich and red as blood, seep from it.

  “Now all I need is half a spoonful of curdled milk,” I declared. “For best results, I usually require a small handful of unicorn droppings, but we will just have to make do.”

  The girl frowned. The boy grabbed his cart.

  “Come,” he said.

  I discovered that the pair were indeed brother and sister—and their names were Lily and Amos Winter. We walked for a mile or two, past a stream and into a clearing. There I found a modest farmhouse and stable. As luck would have it, Amos’s cow had dropped dead two weeks before, and they were still using the last of her milk—which was delightfully lumpy.

  We sat in the cool of the barn, sunlight slipping between the wood panels, and I told Amos to stick out his arm as I mixed the ingredients together. With the addition of the milk, it made a wondrously thick ruby-colored paste.

  “Smells rotten,” said Amos.

  “Sure does,” said Lily, holding her nose.

  I heaped a generous helping onto his arm, covering the wound completely. Then I told him to leave it for ten minutes and prepare to be astounded.

  “What made you think I had escaped from Prospa House?” I asked, taking a seat atop a barrel of oats.

  “The girl,” said Lily.

  “The girl?”

  Amos nodded. “We found her in the woods about six months back. She’d escaped from Prospa House—was being hunted by them locks.”

  “We hid her here in the barn,” said Lily, biting on her bottom lip. “But they found her and took her back.” She shook her head. “I’ve never heard someone scream like that before.”

  I gasped suddenly. The vision. The one I had seen in the stone—of Rebecca being chased by a pack of rabid locks through the white woods. “Did this girl tell you her name?”

  Lily nodded sadly. “Rebecca. Her name was Rebecca.”

  “Blimey,” I heard myself say. “I know her. She is why I am bound for Prospa House. I have come to bring her home.”

  “No one gets out of Prospa House,” said Amos. “Not alive, anyhow.”

  “Of course she is getting out,” I said, jumping from the barrel. “I have been there before, I know where she is being kept and . . . she must be there.” I was suddenly troubled by doubts. “What will I do if she has been taken somewhere else?”

  “You can bet she’s still in Prospa House,” said Amos firmly. “I have a friend who works in the city—he said the souls stopped coming a few weeks back. Justice Hallow wouldn’t waste a remedy, even one who causes trouble.”

  “What color?” said Lily suddenly.

  I frowned. “What color?”

  “You said you have been to Prospa House,” said the girl. “What color were the doors where they were keeping Rebecca?”

  “Yellow. Why?”

  “That’s because she was a new soul,” said Amos. “Remedies grow weaker with each healing—that’s why they’re moved to other floors.” He looked down at his arm and touched the paste, which had started to dry and crack. “By now I’d guess she’d be on green. Or purple.”

  “How many colors are there?” I asked.

  “Purple is the last,” said Lily softly.

  I thought of Mr. Blackhorn, whom I had discovered on my last trip to Prospa House. His room had been a vile shade of purple. “Prospa House is a wicked place,” I declared.

  “Yes,” said Amos, “but the Shadow is worse.”

  “Papa was taken when I was just a baby, and Mama got sick last summer.” Lily’s voice quivered. “It showed on her hands first, the skin turning dark gray. Then it spread until her whole body was covered.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “She wasn’t in pain,” said Amos firmly. “The Shadow is lethal, but it doesn’t hurt.”

  Then the boy stuck his arm in a bucket of water and washed off the paste. We all gathered around to look. Underneath my natural remedy, the wound had healed—it was still rather red, but the cut had closed and mended.

  “How’d you do that?” said the boy, his face a mask of wonder.

  “Who are you, Ivy Pocket?” said Lily.

  I smiled. “One of a kind, dear.”

  “The Shadow took them all.”

  “Who?”

  “The Queen and her kin,” said Lily.

  “Wiped out the whole bloodline,” said Amos. “That’s why we have Justice Hallow and her kind running things now—been that way for two centuries.”

  “It’s Justice Hallow who decides who can see the remedies,” said Lily. “The healings are meant to favor neither rich nor poor, but it doesn’t work that way. Not at Prospa House.”

  We had been walking for nearly an hour through the white woods. Amos and Lily thought it best to keep clear of the farmhouse, in case Miss Always came looking. I noticed a set of train tracks snaked through the forest, winding between the bare trees.

  “Leads straight to the city,” said Amos, pointing to the tracks. “If you want to reach Prospa House, that’s how.”

  “She can’t!” said Lily, her voice carrying across the woodlands. “Anyone caught riding the tr
ain without a ticket is executed. And even if she could get on board, they’d take one look at her and know she didn’t have the Shadow—she’d be done for.”

  “Then she’d better not get caught.” Amos flashed me a crooked smile. “Though be sure you’re on the red train, not the white.”

  “What’s the difference?” I asked.

  “The red train carries the rich folk to Prospa House so they can be healed,” said Lily. “The white train takes the sick away from the city so . . .”

  “So they can die out of sight,” said Amos bitterly. “It’s against regulations to have the Shadow in the city—folks have to get on the white train as soon as they fall ill.”

  “There’s a hospital in the highlands, and those with the Shadow are taken there.” Lily pushed the hair from her face. “They don’t ever come out.”

  Which was frightfully depressing, on the one hand. But thrilling news on the other. All I had to do was get on the red train, and it would take me straight to Prospa House.

  “Where can I get on?” I said brightly. “Point me to the nearest station.”

  “The closest one is miles away,” said Lily.

  “That’s monstrously inconvenient,” I said. “How do you people get about?”

  “Horses, of course,” said Amos, looking slightly vexed. “Or on foot.”

  “The train line is only for the sick,” explained Lily. “Besides, Justice Hallow doesn’t encourage the villagers to venture into the city.”

  “We’re too scruffy for her liking,” huffed Amos.

  I let out a rather irritable sigh. “So how do I get onto the red train?”

  “You can’t, Ivy!” Lily looked as if she were about to burst into tears. “It’s like I said, if you got caught, they’d—”

  “It comes through these parts around three every day,” interrupted Amos. “It slows down when it comes round the verge—if you’re fast, I reckon that’s where you could jump on.” He looked at me with great interest. “Are you fast, Ivy?”

  “Terrifically fast. Monstrously quick. I once ran out of options in two minutes flat.”

  The brother and sister looked at each other and shrugged. Probably a local custom.

  With time to kill until the afternoon train, we had set off farther into the woods—bound for where, I did not know. Amos and Lily knew the forest well and were able to lead me through a web of thick scrub and rocky hills, until we reached our destination.

  “This is how we earn our keep,” said Amos proudly.

  “It’s tiresome work,” said Lily with a sigh, “but it pays.”

  We stood on the edge of an enormous cliff, its silvery white stone sparkling under the midday sun. Across the canyon stood another cliff. And far below us, a river raged, separating the two. “It’s very beautiful,” I said, “but how do you earn money from such a place?”

  Amos crouched down, pulling a small hammer from his pocket. He pounded on the rock at his feet. It crumbled easily. Then he picked up a few of the gleaming fragments and ground them in his hands. “These are called slumber rocks.”

  “The powder is used by physicians,” said Lily. “A small pinch is enough to put a patient to sleep—for operations and that sort of thing.”

  “It’s harmless enough,” said Amos. “Just fogs the memory a little.”

  Of course! That must be the strange powder Miss Frost had blown in my face on the carriage ride to Weymouth.

  “If you’re really going to Prospa House,” said Amos, walking over to me with his fist clenched, “then this might come in handy.”

  He opened his hand and let a handful of silvery slumber rocks slide into the pocket of my dress. I wanted to thank him. But didn’t get the chance. For a figure now loomed before us.

  “Goodness,” said Miss Always, pulling a dagger from her belt, “what a lovely surprise.”

  “Leave her alone!” shouted Lily.

  “Not possible.” Miss Always waved the dagger in her hand at Lily and Amos. “I only want the girl. Give her to me, and I will let you live.”

  Lily, Amos, and I were corralled at the edge of the cliff. And Miss Always stood between us and the woodlands. To reach safety, we would have to go through her.

  “I surrender,” I told her. “Let them go and I will come with you at once.”

  Miss Always didn’t looked entirely convinced. “Is that so?”

  “Yes, dear, it is.”

  “Don’t do it,” whispered Amos. “I can fight—I know how.”

  “As can I,” said Lily.

  “That’s very kind, but it’s best if I give myself up. Miss Always is destined to outsmart me, I can see that now.”

  I walked toward the villainous hag. She was watching me cautiously. Her dagger still drawn. When I got close, her eyes danced. “You grow smarter by the minute, Ivy.”

  “I quite agree.” Then I drew back and kicked her as savagely as I could in the leg. Miss Always howled like a wolf under a full moon and stumbled back. Which is when I pushed her over. “Hurry!” I called to Amos and Lily.

  The pair started running, darting around Miss Always. I was already charging toward the woodlands when I heard Lily scream. I skidded to a halt and looked back. Miss Always had sprung up and had Lily in her grip, her arm snaked around the girl’s neck, the dagger at her throat.

  “What a clever trick, Ivy,” said Miss Always, panting.

  “Amos!” cried Lily.

  “Let her go!” shouted Amos. He began walking slowly toward Miss Always, who was now backing away toward the cliff edge.

  “I will let the girl go as soon as Ivy gives herself up.” Miss Always turned her steely gaze upon me. “Understood?”

  “Yes.” And this time I meant it. Lily and Amos were not a part of this fight. Which is why I raised my arms in surrender. “I will go willingly. You have my word.”

  I was just a few feet from the murderous hag when Lily bit down hard on her captor’s arm. Miss Always yelped and pulled her hand away. But it was a victory of the temporary kind. As Lily took off, Miss Always lunged for her, grabbing the back of Lily’s dress. But her footing slipped on the sparkling rocks, and Miss Always staggered, dragging Lily back with her. The girl stumbled, rolled once across the white stones, and swept over the ledge.

  “Lily!” shouted Amos.

  Miss Always grabbed for the girl, grasping her hand. Amos and I ran to the cliff edge. The young girl had a look of terror in her eyes but made no sound. I saw the strain on Miss Always’s face as she tried to pull Lily back up. Amos reached for his sister’s arm. Together he and Miss Always began to pull her up. They were winning the struggle.

  Lily’s body inched up, bit by bit. Miss Always gritted her teeth and pulled with great force. Amos grunted. And Lily moved. But as she did, the brittle rock beneath her began to crumble. They pulled harder. But the ledge snapped, breaking off like a biscuit. Lily’s arms slipped from Amos and Miss Always’s grasp. And she fell.

  Her scream tore across the canyon. I didn’t watch. I couldn’t. But I heard Amos begin to weep, and Miss Always let out a ragged breath. The shock, the horror, seemed to squeeze the very breath from my body. It was too awful! Too beastly!

  I walked about for a moment. In a daze. But it was brief. For Amos lunged for Miss Always. But the wicked creature was too quick. She flung the boy across the bluff like a rag doll. “I had no wish to kill the girl,” she said evenly, “and I have no wish to kill you—but I will if you get in my way. Ivy is the one I want, so let me pass.”

  In the distance I heard the roar of a steam engine and a whistle blowing. It distracted me for a moment, so I did not notice that Amos clutched a white rock. I turned back just as he threw it at Miss Always. It struck her in the head. She dropped to her knees and groaned.

  The boy began to run, grabbing my arm as he passed. We were now bolting into the woodlands. Through the trees I saw a dozen locks darting about.

  “I will distract them,” said Amos, his face ghostly pale and stained with tears. He s
tifled a sob, his whole body shaking, and pointed straight ahead—and I saw a red train snaking through the forest like a blood serpent. “It slows as it comes around the verge.” His voice was rasping and faint. “I wish you luck.”

  “I’m so sorry about Lily,” I called out. “If it weren’t for me—”

  “Run, Ivy,” he shouted. “Run!”

  So I did. Amos peeled away as two locks flew at us. I punched one in the head and then, jumping onto a fallen tree, leaped over the other. My eyes scanned the woodlands and quickly found the red train again. It had begun to slow. I quickened my speed. From out of nowhere a lock lunged, knocking me to the ground. Hissing violently, with talons unfurled, it flew at my neck. I rolled quickly, and the hooded fiend crashed to the ground. Then I jumped up and kicked it squarely in the chest.

  I spotted the red train and took off. It had indeed slowed as it took the sharp rim of the mountain. I skidded down a ravine, my boots churning the dirt like a plow, and bolted straight ahead. By then the last carriage was roaring past me. I had no choice but to jump.

  My hands gripped the railing as I found my footing on the metal steps. I climbed up and tried the door. It opened! With the wind roaring around me, I stepped into the carriage. Closed the door behind me. Lily. Poor Lily! The memory of her slipping from the cliff played over in my mind. But I knew that if I was to rescue Rebecca, I had to push such thoughts away. My plan was rather simple. To stay on the train until it delivered me to Prospa House.

  But there were difficulties.

  The first became clear when I looked through the glass doors into the cabin. It was quite a sight—plush blue chairs, overhead lamps, silver knobs, and thick carpet. All the seats were taken, save for the last one on my right. A woman sat there alone, reading a book. I was perfectly comfortable in my little alcove and could have stayed there for the entire journey. If not for the conductor. He was dressed in a dark suit with brass buttons and a regulation hat. And he held a clipboard and was going from seat to seat, checking off passenger names.