What Ivy Found

The cellar under Ivy's house had not been opened in eleven years.

Her mother said it was full of old junk that nobody needed. Her father said the stairs were unsafe. Her grandmother, who was the only one who had ever actually gone down there, said nothing about it at all, which was somehow the most interesting response of the three.

Ivy had been curious about the cellar her entire life. It was the kind of curiosity that sat very quietly at the back of your mind, not urgent enough to act on but never quite going away either. She had pressed her ear to the wooden door at the top of the stairs more times than she could count, listening for anything. She never heard anything except the faint smell of old stone and something else, something she could not name, that came up through the cracks.

She finally opened the door on the afternoon her grandmother died.

Not because of any connection between the two things. She opened it because her parents were at the hospital making arrangements and she was alone in the house for the first time in her life and the silence was too large and she needed something to do with her hands. She got the key from the hook in the kitchen, the one that had always been there, and she went to the cellar door and she unlocked it.

The stairs were perfectly safe.

The cellar was not full of junk. It was almost entirely empty, just stone walls and a stone floor and a single bare light bulb on a cord that actually worked when she pulled it. In the far corner, on a low wooden shelf, was one object.

It was about the size of a rugby ball, dark grey, with a surface that was not quite smooth. When Ivy crossed the cellar and looked at it closely she could see that the surface was made up of tiny overlapping shapes, like scales but harder, more like stone than skin. It was heavy when she picked it up, much heavier than it looked, and warm. Not warm the way something warm from sitting in sunlight is warm. Warm from the inside, like something alive.

She stood in the cellar for a long time holding it, the bare light bulb swaying slightly above her, the shadows moving on the stone walls. The cellar smelled of old stone and something else now, something she had smelled faintly through the door all her life. Warm and deep and ancient.

She carried it upstairs and called her best friend.

She called Maya because Maya was the only person she knew who would not immediately say put it back or tell someone about this. Maya was the kind of person who said things like let us find out what it is first and decide what to do about it after. This was sometimes a problem and sometimes exactly the right approach.

Maya arrived on her bicycle twenty minutes later and stood in Ivy's kitchen looking at the thing on the table.

She reached out and touched it with one finger. Then she put her whole hand on it.

"It is warm," she said.

"I know," Ivy said.

"Things that are warm are usually alive," Maya said.

"I know," Ivy said again.

Maya looked at her. "What was your grandmother like?"

Ivy thought about this. "Quiet," she said. "She knew a lot of things she never talked about. She used to go into the garden at night sometimes and I could see her from my window just standing there looking at the sky."

Maya looked back at the egg. Because by now they had both silently decided that was what it was, even though neither of them had said the word yet.

"How long has it been in the cellar?" Maya asked.

"Eleven years at least," Ivy said. "Probably longer."

"And it is still warm."

"Still warm," Ivy said.

They looked at each other across the kitchen table.

"Right," Maya said. She pulled out a chair and sat down. "Tell me everything you know about your grandmother."