Chapter 15

***Chapter 15***

***Ivy Belladonna***

***~***

***Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan***

It was opening night. Dancers and crew hurried around backstage, making sure everything was to the highest standard achievable. I tried to slip in through the back way, to avoid any fans waiting for me, but entered to be greeted by the stage manager, director, hairdressers, and makeup stylists, all bombarding me with questions about tonight’s performance.

I nodded to them and forced a smile. “I feel comfortable with everyone and believe it will all go well. I can do my makeup on my own, but thank you.” I bowed my farewell before walking past them for my hallway backstage.

Towards the end of the hallway was a dark brown screen with the characters  spelling out my last name: Obara. I slid open the door expected to be welcomed by belongings, but found a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses next to a small clay teapot warm with the aroma of freshly brewed tea. on my dressing table. I peeked back outside to the hallway to see if I could find whoever gave me such a gift. No one seemed to grab my attention, so I simply slid the door closed again and went back to my gift. I took some time to admire the roses, running my fingers along the delicate yellow petals. It was honestly a beautiful gift, and I set them closer by my mirror as I began to pin my hair back in a tight bun. Before getting too far into my routine I slowly poured myself a warm cup of tea from the pot. I let the steam drift over my face to calm down my anticipation. It was an overall sweet aroma, but with a hint of bitter almonds when I tasted it. After a few cups to calm my nerves, I returned to preparing.

I didn’t get too far into tying on one of my pointe shoes with deliberate delicacy before I had to stop. My whole mind began to spin as if I was upside down, and the pressure began to grow at an alarming rate. My heart raced like a bullet train, beating faster than it ever should, and I felt my throat close up, with only sharp, urgent breaths escaping. Thinking on my feet, my first instinct was to try to clear my throat, so I fumbled with the pot with clumsy hands to try to pour any of the tea into the little cup. The only seemed to make matters worse. I clawed at my throat and gasped for breath as my heart beat like a hummingbird. I struggled to stay upright, but collapsed onto the floor in a shivering heap. I began to convulse, with my whole world spinning and my heart about to explode. I couldn’t explain it, but it felt as if I were falling into a pool of darkness and shadows, until the world around was covered in darkness and stillness. I was nothing at this point and there was nothing left for me. I had thought I was alone in the dark until I began to notice a faint light ahead of me, its warmth inching closer.

“Graceful and elegant, it must have been beautiful to see you on stage,” An iron voice whispered softly towards me.
I stirred and fluttered my eyes open to find a man standing before me dressed in black, with the shadows covering a majority of his face. A necklace hung around his neck in a shimmering green pendant that was almost an olive in color.

“I’d hate to be informal...but who are you?” I muttered, trying to push myself up off the ground.
“Of course, how rude of me. You may refer to me as the Essence, as simple as that, and oh, my beautiful Ivy, you are going to be perfect.” Through the warm light, I could just barely make out how his mouth curled into a devilish smirk.
“I usually am, but for what exactly? And why are you calling me “Ivy”? Do you even know my real name?”
“I do know your name; whether it was your real name, that is up for debate. To answer your other question, you are perfect to be saved. I will save you and you will be queen, to rule all you can see.” He stepped closer to me until he was no more than a metre away from me.
“What are you talking about??? What is going on??? I’m just supposed to believe you?!” I shouted, but it all came out as a rough whisper because of how sore and cut up my throat was.
“I am simply here to catch you as you fall. Believe or not, I am the only chance you have, and this is a deal you will never be able to pass up,” He cooed.
Slowly, from his coat, he pulled out a piece of beige paper in a tight bundle. The Essence unrolled the bundle and held it out towards me. Bright against the pale brown was black lettering. I didn’t know what language, but I could tell the Eastern European style letters at the bottom of the page along with a thin black line.

“Let’s say I do sign, I don’t exactly have a writing utensil on me at the moment.” I frowned, looking up from the paper back at him.
His shark tooth grin grew even wider and he retrieved a long knife from yet another pocket of his jacket.

“I-I thought you were going to save me, not kill me!” I yelped, my eyes darting back and forth from the blade to the man.
“I would never kill you, Ivy; besides, I’m a little too late to complete that part of the task. This is how you are going to sign.”
From the man’s smile to the knife to his voice, I would've paid anything to have never met this man of nightmares. I watched him as he held the knife closer to me, the blade against his forearm so I could take the handle. Slowly, I reached out to take it. It was heavy, weighted down by the metal that had black engraving matching the lettering on the paper. I had no idea why I took the knife: I never really wanted to, yet I did as if I was compelled . The knife balanced over my other hand, right above my fingers. When my body felt that it had it right, I let the knife slip down onto a fingertip, pressing into the skin until it broke through. The two of us watched as the pool of blood began to overflow from the cold metal. Carefully, Iron-voice slid the paper under my hand to catch the flowing red. As soon as the drop made contact with the paper, the man swiftly slid the scroll back into the abyss of his jacket once again. I couldn’t help but notice in the fury of black fabric, there was no more green, only a sandy brown sort of color against the black.

He smirked down at me one last time before disappearing his way back into the shadows. It felt as if the shadows were advancing closer and my throat was closing up once again with my heart regaining the speed of a hummingbird. I struggled to keep breathing or even to stat up with all the pressure in my chest, throat, and head. I collapsed onto the floor into a shaking mess, barely even breathing at this point. The world was spinning down a drain until everything simply stopped; it was a silent darkness all over again.

Just like the time before, the world slowly began to come back to life to me through sounds and feelings. It wasn’t until I started to open my eyes did I finally begin to understand where I was: surrounded by a canopy of trees and on the ground by bushes plump with leaves, all except for the ones closest to me which were a pale dyng dark green. Cautiously, I stood up, brushing the dirt from my skirt to get a better look around.

“Hello?....Is anyone there?...” I asked softly, but still loud enough to be heard.
There was a soft crunch of leaves behind me and I spun on my heels at the approaching sound. It took some time but a man, barely older than I, stepped forwards. He had light copper skin and matching eyes that shone against the black hair that dusted over his shoulders. Three feathers stuck out from the behind the small braid in his hair. It didn’t look as if he was much on speaking: simply gave a dark look of boredom and disinterest.

“C’mon princess, they’re gonna want to meet you and I don’t want to explain it all to you,” He finally said, motioning to a path behind him with his head, keeping his arms crossed over his chest.
“Well, you don’t have to be so rude about it. I’m Ivy, if you would like to know.”
“Not really,” He sighed. “Name’s Ares, so can we go already?”
“I don’t know where we’re going, we’re waiting on you,” I smirked.
“Fine, fine, whatever, just work to keep up.”
I smirked a bit more at my victory as he started down the foretold path and further into the woods. He wasn’t much for words, which I wasn’t really surprised by; the two of us simply continued down the way. The world around us seemed on edge, tense for some reason which I couldn't bring myself to understand. During our silence, I raked through my memory, to see if there was anything there besides the piercing headache but it was barren, with nothing left for me except for my name. Never would I have expect what Ares was leading to: a little town in a vast clearing. He led me further into the rows of cabins; it looked as if he was looking for someone.

“Hey, you! She’s yours now.” He shouted to a blonde haired woman before fleeing down the opposite row.
“Sorry about him, we usually have much kinder people to welcome our new ones,” She apologized with a reassuring smile once she got closer.
“I don’t mind, it was rather humorous actually.”
“Well, that’s good, at least. He probably didn’t tell you much about what this place is, did he?”
I shook my head no and she motioned for me to follow her to a cabin with clouds on door and warm blue curtains in the windows. The two of us sat together on the front stoop and I waited for her to explain.

“My name is Skye, and I was the fourth person to come to this place: The Island as we have grown to call it, for obvious reasons. There’s plenty of others too, you would make the fourteenth. We all live in these little cabins, with one tailored specifically to one person. To tell who’s is who’s, we have tattoos on our wrists that match the ones on the doors.” She rolled up the sleeves of her jacket to reveal matching marks on her wrists to the ones on the door behind us.
I nodded along with her and let it all sink in. Slowly, I turned my wrists over to find leaves branded into my skin in a deep green color and a matching green haze behind it with vines. “Like this-?”

Skye stood and motioned for me to do the same. “Like that. Come, I can show you which one is yours. There’s not too many here so it’s not too hard to keep them all track. The odd thing is that there are more than we have in people, like there will be more people coming.”

I was able to find a few of the people Skye mentioned: a wolf man curled up on a rock in the sun, a young girl braiding flowers into a chain, and a boy and a girl that looked like they just came back from the water. Skye noticed the complete awe I was in at the sight of them, especially the wolf man.

“No one here is...normal. We’ve all got something in us that sets us apart. From my time here, Twister, the eldest in a way, and I were able to figure out that the names and the markings play a role in what we can do,” she told me.
“What can you do?”
She held out her hand in front of her and from her palm came forth a small cyclone out of nothing. “Skye. Air.”

All I could bring myself to do was nod some understanding. Any thought in my mind that this would be a calm, peaceful little town vanished. Skye let the little cyclone dissolve as we came closer to a cabin of deep mahogany with an ivy leaf door. She gave me a reassuring smile to ease me in the direction of the door. I took an uneasy breath and did as she wanted and stepped closer. The door itself was cracked open, which was a little odd, but I simply pushed it open further, carefully and slowly.

The sun lit up the front room in a warm glow against olivine green and pastel pink furniture. Everything was elegant in the way that it would be found in a palace of sort. When Skye said it was tailored to us personally, who ever did this must’ve had fine taste. Wrought black iron decorated the bed frame on the second floor while the remaining colors stayed the pastel pink or white to shine against the green.

Vines of ivy clung the walls both inside and out to give the room a old style Victorian England feel. My mind wandered aimlessly over what Skye told me, about the lack of normalcy and the rise in the obscurity. I couldn’t help but play with the vines absentmindedly when I collapsed (elegantly I might add) onto the chair with a matching ivy laced pillow. To my surprise and shock, the ivy leaves began to shrivel up at my touch. It didn’t take long until my my mind began to question what I had found, and what made me my own obscurity, and what this Island held for me.