Ivy went to the kitchen and made a peanut butter sandwich but didn’t eat it. She left it on the counter and went back to the window, scanning the woods. The trees had been thickened by the snow, which coated the sides of their trunks and clung to the tops of their drooping boughs, making it hard to see all the way down to the creek. She unlatched the window and slowly slid it open, the cold sucking all the air out of her lungs for a moment. The creek was silent, and even the trees seemed to be holding their breath. Somewhere down there, though, in the muffled quiet, Ivy could hear a voice. It sounded like the lady. Was she singing? Yelling? Ivy leaned forward into the cold air, turning her ear toward the woods. She couldn’t make out any words.
“What?” she shouted.
The lady was definitely yelling. It started coming shrill and fast. Ivy heard something that sounded like please please please and suck or truck or something like that.
“What’s wrong?” she shouted.
“Help!”
“What happened?”
Then the yelling faded into babbles that didn’t sound like English. Ivy listened for a moment, then yelled, “Okay, okay!” and slammed the window shut. She put her hands to her cheeks to warm them. The lady must have fallen. Maybe she was hurt; maybe she just couldn’t figure out how to get back up the slope. Ivy went downstairs and got dressed, helping herself to a sweater and some warm socks from Mary Ellen’s suitcase. The lady had said there were no bears around here, but what if there were? What if she was being eaten? Wouldn’t the bear just turn around and eat Ivy too? She pulled on the rain boots and slowly slid open the deck door, stepping carefully into the snow. Was it a hunter? Had someone shot Mary Ellen by accident—or on purpose? She crept to the edge of the deck and looked down, but she couldn’t see anything.
“What happened?” she called.
“Rose! Please! Come down here!”
“Are you hurt?”
“A tree fell on me. I’m… Aaahhh!”
A tree. What the fuck was wrong with these woods? These woods were a straight-up failure, shit dying and falling and trying to kill you all over the place. “Okay, I’m coming!” Ivy called. At least it wasn’t a bear.
She found the zigzag path she’d come up on the first day, only now it was less of a path and more of an empty stretch between the trees. She could see little mini-avalanches where Mary Ellen had skipped the zigzag and gone straight down, probably on her butt. Ivy took the longer way, but she still slid a lot because the rain boots had zero traction. The air was colder than she could remember it ever being, the snow powdery soft.
She couldn’t see Mary Ellen, but she could hear her whimpering and crying out, her voice all scratchy. She wondered how big of a tree it could be; most of them were so skinny. Ivy remembered the one that had fallen across the road, the one that made her back up and crash the car. One like that could do major damage to a person. She shuddered, not sure she wanted to see what was happening down there. What if Mary Ellen was dying? Would Ivy have to take a knife and put her out of her misery?
“Okay, okay,” she said as she got toward the bottom and Mary Ellen’s cries got more desperate. “Where are you?” She saw the lady’s legs on the frozen creek. A tree was lying across them, a tangle of rust-colored branches hiding the rest of her from view. Ivy got closer, slipping on the ice, then stopped, seeing blood. “Are you okay? Can you move?” She skirted the bloody ice and crouched next to Mary Ellen’s head, parting some fronds to see her face, which was pale.
“I think part of it went through my leg. It’s pinned. Can you see?”
Ivy turned reluctantly toward Mary Ellen’s leg, lowering her head to see under the tree trunk. “Shit,” she said.
“Oh God.” Mary Ellen started to cry.
Ivy squeezed her eyes shut, wanting with all her heart to be somewhere else: to be sitting in math class, to be picking cans off the shelf at St. Gabriel’s, to be washing Gran’s hair in the sink—anything, anywhere, just not here next to this goddamned tree stub poked through the lady’s leg like a toothpick through a cocktail frank. She opened her eyes and swallowed hard, trying to sound all casual and normal. “It got your leg pretty good.”
The lady started flailing her arms then, breaking off the branches around her face and grasping at the tree trunk, which she basically had no hope of moving from her angle.
“Hold on,” Ivy said. “Calm down.” She stood up and took a good look at the tree. It was skinny, only about eight inches across, but it was long, stretching out into the middle of the stream. Sharp stubs stuck out here and there, giving it a mean, spiky look. “Should I lift it up?”
“Yes. Yes. I mean, I think so.” Mary Ellen craned her neck, trying to see under the tree.
“Can you, like, push yourself away? When I get it off you?”
“I think so.”
“Okay.” Ivy reluctantly straddled the trunk, not really wanting to do it, not really seeing another way. “Get ready.”
“Wait!”
“What?”
“What if, if…” Mary Ellen stammered. She let out a sob-sigh. “What if it starts bleeding like crazy? When the branch comes out? There’s a big artery around there.”
“I think you’re already bleeding like crazy.”
“I am?”
“Well…” Ivy held out her arms. “There’s blood. Like, coming out.”
“Maybe
