The Divided Line: Ivy [Part 2]

It began slowly—the plague, the greed, the riots. Revolutionaries rose up behind symbols, murals, and songs, while the masses were fed machinery and religion. In the wake of the destruction, politicians deemed art a dangerous thing—a worthless thing—and the masses agreed. They took away the paint, the books, and the instruments. But they could not wholly silence the artists. These are the stories they left behind.

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Rust and sea salt clung to metal beams which held the collapsing projects together. Moss grew on filthied plaster and gulls roosted on the rooftops. A woman stood out on the balcony of a leaning floor, a toddler on her hip. She watched Ivy pass below with a sharp and wary gaze. 

Outsiders did not come through here.

But the trucks had all gone this way, down the road and to the water. So Ivy went too. One step after the next. To whatever end. 

They’d spent the past week staking out the port. They’d gathered its fortifications, the patrols, and the schedule of the ships. And through a pack of cigarettes slipped to her father’s footman, Ivy had learned the name of the port’s commander, too. 

A black, unmarked truck with deep tinted windows sat parked against the curb, its back doors flung wide. A militia man at its maw jabbed his gun toward the people inside. The man spat out commands, but Ivy heard none of the words, only the violence in them. So lost was he to it that he didn’t even see Ivy coming.

Ivy struck the lighter, felt its heat flare against her hand. 

Three prisoners staggered out of the truck: two men and a woman. The men knew each other. Their hands grazed and their gazes met. The woman stood alone, clinging to the broken neck of a violin. They were all unchained, but fear and shock were as good a shackle as any. Until it was disrupted, at least. 

A version of Ivy

Juliana Stein via Pexels

Ivy brought the lighter to the Molotov in her other hand, let the cloth wick burn a moment, then threw it. It struck the center of the pavement in a burst of flame.

Panic reared through the company—a tangible, fleeting thing. 

When it subsided, the prisoners were on their knees, and the militia man’s gun was aimed at Ivy.

She stared down the barrel of it, felt the seconds pass in long heartbeats. Death waited for the pull of a trigger, but she was not afraid. Death was no enemy of hers. It would be a welcome silence to the grief that raged in her chest.

Still, she lifted her hands slowly, palms forth in supplication. 

She heard the commander’s voice before she saw him, and knew it from childhood, when they’d spent summers at the lake with her cousins. Uncle Sylas. He’d always been the one to get her out of trouble whenever she’d rallied the children to mischief. He’d been the only one who could talk down her father’s wrath. 

He froze when he rounded the corner. “Ivy—” He stammered. “What are you doing?”

“What no one else can.” 

She reached into her inner coat pocket and the man with the gun shouted, “Hands up!” His finger twitched over the trigger. 

Uncle Sylas pushed the gun’s barrel down, and Ivy took a breath. 

She lifted her hands once more, this time with her father’s Conformist flag held tightly in her palm. She let it unfurl, the golden sun against a black sky.

Her uncle watched, calculating. He touched his own gun, ready to draw if necessary. 

A drum began to beat. Its rolling strikes echoed off the nearby buildings. After a pause, a breath, then another drum responded. 

Music, her mother had once said, is a language all of its own. The rhythmic call and response repeated, declaring that the barricades were in place. A preventative measure against militant pursuit.

Ivy struck the lighter again and set fire to the corner of the flag. 

One of the prisoners shifted, tucked the balls of his feet beneath him, and set his hands on the ground for leverage. He knew the meaning of the drums. He knew what came next. 

Ivy began to sing.

Lower City (imagined)

twk tt via Unsplash

It was a song without words, one she’d learned in her youth from a friend who’d been born in the lower city. Ivy had sung it one day as she’d played in her bedroom. When her father heard it, he’d beaten her. She’d run to her mother, bruised and weeping, and asked what she’d done wrong. 

That song was a rebel song, her mother had said. You must never sing it again.

Ivy had learned later that it’d been used in the riots, passed from person to person as a signal. Run, it said. 

The captive man ran, grabbing the other man by his collar to drag him along. Sylas fired at their backs but missed. He turned to Ivy with a fuming rage, controlled and contained in a way her father had never managed. 

Behind him, the remaining woman clutched her head and wept prayers to her god.

She had missed her chance to run. But Ivy could not save her now. All she could do was sing as the militia man pulled the woman to her feet and dragged her toward the confinement zone. 

With the last of her song, Ivy let the burning flag fall to the ground. 

When it landed, her uncle’s gun trained on her. “Get down on your knees,” he said with all the authority of his position. 

But Ivy knew he would not shoot her, knew by the pained look in his eyes that he would let her go, as he had always done when she was a child. And even if he didn’t, she’d die before she let them take her. 

Ivy turned back the way she came. 

Her uncle fired. 

The bullet struck the concrete foundation of the nearest building. 

Ivy kept walking, and her uncle did not fire again.

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The Divided Line is an original serial updating biweekly.