myth for wild ginger

Ivy slowed as the fox wove through the grass. After days, the horizon remained to the west, a spine of hills in the distance, but the land under their feet changed from dry clay to wet bog. The man's feet would be wet forever. He was certain, the damp, cold rose like a plague over his head. The sound of his teeth, chatter in his skull, the pain in his jaw from the exhausting tension of the chill.

The fox was paused at the edge of a forest now, light dappled the earth, somehow sun found its way through the leaves, when for days it had been consumed by clouds. The fox was silent. He had not once looked at ivy until now, two steps into the hummus and fallen leaves. He turned around, ears alert. eyes deep as mud. Ivy looked up at the trees. This is where I started.

“I can't come back. I will have nothing to show for myself. My mother will be disappointed, and I will become nothing more than another grass man official or worse. I will live in the limestone quarry. I will bake bread all day. Every day. I will be burned.” He had so been shut away before. He remained naive and prejudiced in his view of where he had grown up, looking down as he did on everyone there. Like a young prince.

But the fox was already halfway up the hillock. He believed the woman of his dreams more than he feared what he might become, trees, whispered, vines, reached toward him, his friend. Whom he had left. Writing with its mirror stems on the back of his hand, marking words, remember me. Remember me, but he did not respond. He was ashamed for having left his friend in the tree.

Sunlight blinded him and he tripped into a thicket of rounded leaves. On the forest floor, piercing red eyes, looked back at him and a voice high and whispering came from the ground. So you doubt the fox. So you spread yourself all over this world and you think you know what love is. You are proud and silly. You must give up what you believe. You must give away the seeds your mother gave you. They are rotting your eyes. Ivy then was grasped by red arms and brought below the earth. Where the red knight stood before him. Give them to me. Pushed him.

The boy fell back. The earth was hot, knees wet, he rose. Pushed the knight back, but the knight clung to his collar and tore the small pack he had. He smashed the vanilla pod and ate the pawpaw seeds before throwing the boy back down, long back, crimson as blood. He turned away, and Ivy jumped on him, scratching into him, soft skin, a tear, with the jagged nails of a wanderer. Ivy clung to his back, holding his neck.

The one who had taken what was his, the 2 fell to the ground and were still, and to Ivy's horror, after a silence, as they stared at one another, the Red Knight, with the red eyes. He began to laugh. A roaring, hot laugh.

That was when Ivy knew he had not won this fight, but he would not die because of it.