Letters in Ivy

A gust of winter’s breath swept in as Ivy opened her front door, revealing yet another wax-sealed letter on the doorstep. This would mark the eighty-eighth day in a row that a handwritten letter has appeared—each one brimming with obsessive longing and details that had previously only found their way to the pages of her diary. 

Ivy ran her fingers over the violet wax seal, tracing the outline of a deep cup with two loop-shaped handles formed in the middle. The emptiness of the road unsettled her—there was never a messenger, never a sound of retreating footsteps. Still, she hurried inside and knelt before the fire. Her hands trembled as she tore the envelope open, desperate for the ecstasy the devouring words always brought.

“Time and space act as the sun to my wax, keeping me away from you, my beloved. But my desire for you burns so intensely that I wish to fall to the sea as Icarus. What consumes me will taste every part of your soul, sweet like honey. I’ve craved you in this lifetime, and I will crave you for the rest of eternity. I watch you day and night, my nose searching for a wind filled with your scent. My mouth drips for the wine you create, knowing it was your hands and feet that embraced the grapes. Your special batch, the one hidden in the hatch beneath your bed, I’m sure would taste the most like you. I feel my desire for you pulsing through my veins, taking over every part of me. You will be mine, and I will be yours.”

Though the letters’ intensity and anonymity initially unsettled Ivy, her doubts soon yielded to aching loneliness. Though once frightening, the words had become her lifeline. She craved to be seen, to be understood. Unpredictable, seemingly secular behavior—such as muttering to herself and lashing out at village men—emerged after her husband’s sudden death last winter. Alone in the vineyard her husband left behind, she had begun to crave these letters, the only thing that seemed to see her clearly.

Just past midnight, Ivy woke with a fierce compulsion to visit her mother’s grave. Wrapped in layers of heavy fabric and old animal furs, Ivy lit a lantern and faced the harsh, New England winter night. A fresh sheet of snow blanketed the graveyard, and in the dim light she stumbled over an incongruous headstone. Scrambling to her feet, her eyes caught a familiar emblem: the deep cup with two looping handles.

Her lantern clattered to the ground as she clutched the headstone, desperate to confirm she was not dreaming. She tore off her gloves and traced the engraved cup, as she had every day for the last three months. Her fingers found the only word inscribed: “Evoe.” A cry broke from her throat. Pressing her forehead to the stone, she dug her fingers into the frozen earth. Tears streamed down her face as his name pulsed through her mind until it eclipsed all else. She had found him at last—the one who had been calling her.

Ivy stayed at the cemetery that night and refused to leave in the following days. While the letters had stopped, she heard Evoe’s voice speaking to her. She answered aloud, despite the wary glances of other mourners. Each day his presence filled her more completely, until even her own thoughts began to sound like him.

Her body weakened as days passed in the cold without food or sleep, and a local priest was finally able to carry her home. He muffled her ramblings with a crackling fire and porridge. Ivy’s mind screamed and thrashed, her body unable to give in to the invisible string that pulled her back to him. She dreamt of him as she gave into sleep, living an entire lifetime with the faceless man. She needed his touch more than life itself. She needed to feel whole.

“I need you,” Evoe said. “I need you, too,” Ivy responded. “No, you don’t understand, Ivy. I need you here, in the ground with me. It’s so dark… and cold,” he shivered. “You are the only person who lights this fire in me, that makes me feel alive again. Only you can help me… I need you here, with me.”

Evoe rested his forehead against Ivy’s, embracing her hands in his and bringing them to his lips for a gentle kiss.

“Please, Ivy… you are the resolution.”

She woke in a rush, seized by certainty. Shoving her bed to the wall, Ivy threw open the hatch to her secret cellar. Frantic, she filled a bag with the letters and her oldest bottles of wine—most importantly, the special one Evoe had written about.

Covered in a blanket of darkness, Ivy made her way into the vineyard. Guided only by the stars, she began to dig under a dead grapevine in a blinding rage. Her frozen hands unearthed first a foot, then a hand, then the head of her husband. Now hysterical, Ivy grabbed her husband’s body by the feet and dragged it all the way to the town square. Propped up against a fig tree, Ivy left him there with poison ivy still lodged in his throat.

She returned to Evoe’s grave and dug with a fevered hunger. Her delirium overtook her, and she began cramming handfuls of dirt into her mouth, desperate to consume him, to taste him. At last, she pried open the coffin—only to find it empty. Her breath hitched. On the inside of the lid, carved with precision, was her own name. Evoe’s voice slid into her mind, smooth and inescapable: “Come be with me, forever…”

Ivy uncorked her special bottle—wine laced with poison ivy—and laid herself down in the grave she had just dug for herself. Surrounded by her oldest wines, she clutched the latest letter tight against her chest. As the poison spread through her body, Evoe’s voice wrapped her like a lover’s arms, caressing her gently. She let herself fall into his voice, feeling herself pull out of her body and into the unknown.

At dawn, villagers found her, passing whispers mixed with pity and revulsion. Chunks of flesh were missing from her limbs, as if she had been gnawed upon in the night by what onlookers hoped was an animal. The letters passed through the crowd, easily recognized as written in Ivy’s own hand.

And beneath the snow, the now nameless headstone stood silent—its cup and looping handles gleaming faintly in the morning light.