myth for lygodium kerstenii

The boy was no longer that - a boy. He was growing, changing. Rebecca was growing more listless and static. Every instinct to weave left her. Her heart hurt every time she tried. So she stopped altogether and the ivy kept growing around them. Sola, the boy’s mother, was ruling in the town that pulsed in the distance and that neither of them went to, except when Rebecca visited once a month to be paid for her silence. Unlike Rebecca who watched TV and burned bread out of a dull ache. The boy felt like the world was opening up to him. It felt crazy and hopeful and terrifying. The boy made a friend named Lygodium, who wore green shoes, and together they went to the island of passionfruit, knowing nothing about what it used to be, that the grandmother of swords used to live there. There they played in the frozen stream and snuck around shrubs and hid behind trees until they came upon a man who was whittling a piece of wood. He smiled and there seemed to be something behind his face, like he was full of something besides flesh and bone - something from the sky.

“You may want to climb that ladder.” he said, and gestured his hand up to an intricately laced rope up the tree there climbing up trees like a slow upside down waterfall.

They only saw that he had no footprints as he walked away below them, but by then it was too late.

The boys climbed the ropes and found their way into the clouds.

On the way up ivy’s friend froze in fear. The forest swelling around him as ivy kept climbing up.

“Will you go all the way up, we are already so high.” Lygodium called from below. Because they had been climbing for some time.

“I will go for as far as these branches will take me.” Ivy responded.

But Lygodium had stopped there, already shifting into the shape of a fern, from his feet up, his arms extended out like the wing of a bird taking flight. He looked out at the forest and the river in the distance, he would not make it to the top of the trees. There Lygodium would stay, as a climbing fern in a forest, a friend in a place that would always be a friend to ivy.

Rebecca followed the tracks of the fern from where they trailed over the frozen ground until they lifted up into the trees. In the distance she saw first the flower, a small, yellow thing and then a man leaning against a tree - standing just above the snow.

She could almost hear the crickets. That’s when she recognized him.