Meanwhile, at the front of the plane, Trevain was stirring from his nap. After producing a giant yawn, he looked over at his wife who was deeply engrossed in a piece of legislative literature.
“I used to love flying when I was younger,” he told her, “but now it just makes me tired all the time. How do you do it? You must circle the globe twice a week.”
“I have to,” she answered simply, flipping an electronic page.
“Aazuria, you’re so far away. Let’s open the window and see the sights. Why don’t you put that down and have a conversation with me?” he asked.
“Because we’re about to land, and I need to distract myself from where we are,” she answered. “It’s not easy to be here.”
“But we came here to face it—together,” he reminded her. “We came here to get past this, and if you just bury your head in the sand until it’s over, we won’t really fix anything.”
Aazuria pressed the power button on her tablet and turned to him with anger in her dark eyes. “Fine. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”
“Don’t force her, King Trevain,” said the psychiatrist lightly from where he sat across the aisle. “No one likes to remember a time or place when they’ve been victimized. It’s really brave of her to do this at all.”
Trevain nodded, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. He pretended to go back to sleep to hide his frustration, but he was startled by a small hand resting on his bicep. Looking to his side, he saw that Aazuria was gazing at him with a nervous look on her features. Her usually-white hair and fair eyes had been darkened from her recent exposure to sunlight, and she always seemed a little more innocent to him above the water.
“I don’t think I can go back down there,” she told him in a low voice. “Being this close to the place is painful enough. I tried so hard, for so long, just to get away from this continent. Can I just stay here on the plane while you and Varia go check it out?”
Trying to hide his disappointment, he nodded. He closed his eyes again and relaxed against the back of the chair. He felt Aazuria’s grip on his arm tighten as the plane sharply dipped in altitude, preparing for its landing. He felt a weight against his shoulder where his wife had buried her face into his coat. He was surprised by this sudden intimacy; she never initiated any kind of physical contact with him.
It was like the closer they got to Lake Vostok, the more vulnerable she became. He was beginning to see that she had left all her weakness and femininity in this place, emerging only a mother and a stateswoman. Her imprisonment had transformed her into a war leader with no trace of the tender girl he had seen glimpses of when they had first met. Her softness had been rare even back then, but now it was nonexistent. He wondered if this was who she needed to be in order to rule; would he be making it more difficult on her if he tried to change her? Was that not his place? Trevain found himself passing his hand gently over her hair, causing the scent of her green-apple shampoo to waft up into his nostrils. It was a little too intoxicating. He could not resist taking advantage of her unusual nearness by pressing his lips against her forehead. He held her against him until they felt the jolting, jarring motion of the plane landing on the endless glacier below.
“I should go on more plane rides with you,” he joked. “It’s the only time you’ll let me cuddle with you a little.”
She smiled, making the motion of nodding against his arm. “If you decided to travel all over the world with me, Varia would lose her stay-at-home dad.”
“We’ve already established that I’m not much use to her. She connects more with you in the few hours you spend at home than the days she has with me.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To change that,” she said with a small yawn.
“Zuri,” he said softly, after thinking for a moment. “Do you think that things happen for a reason? Like maybe, if you hadn’t been abducted, you wouldn’t have been able to defeat the Clan of Zalcan?”
She hesitated. “Yes. This, and also Bain’s death. Without these events, I wouldn’t have been angry enough. I suppose I should be thankful for that anger.”
“I am thankful for you,” Trevain said. “Honestly, I don’t care how distant we are, or how much you don’t seem to like me anymore. I’m just thankful to have you back safe, and home with me. Nothing else matters.”
“I’m glad—I’m glad you still consider me valuable, even though I’ve been deficient when it comes to offering you any real companionship.” Aazuria sighed and pulled away, sliding the shutter of the window open. They both flinched at the harsh white light that poured into the cabin, temporarily blinding them. She turned back to her husband, her face a dark silhouette against the bright sky and snow.
“You wanted me to share this part of my life with you, so here we are. Welcome to my hell.”
The elevator was only large enough for three people to travel down at a time. Aazuria was afraid that after all these years, the technology would be rusted and malfunctioning. Yet somehow, the entrance to Lake Vostok remained in perfect condition. The solar panels on the surface of the dome were still absorbing sunlight for energy, and the air intake valves were still functioning. It seemed that the only barriers preventing her from traveling down to the cabin below were in her mind.
“I don’t remember the code,” Aazuria said, and she was lying of course. The elevator would not work without the six digits that had kept her imprisoned for so many years. How could she forget those numbers?
Varia looked at her mother suspiciously. “Really, Mom? That’s not like you. Well, I remember it. I’ll go down first and send it back up. Coming, Glais?”
“I’ll join you,” the psychiatrist said as he shivered uncontrollably in his parka. “I hope it’s a little bit warmer down there!”
“It is,” Varia assured him, tugging Glais inside the pod with her. The doctor followed as she punched the code into the keypad. “All aboard!” she joked as the elevator began to descend.
Aazuria watched her daughter descend into the earth, and a feeling of nausea overcame her. The mechanism was just as noisy as she remembered it being all those years ago. She pressed a hand against her stomach as she stumbled forward, grasping the side of the structure. It all came rushing back to her. The debilitating loneliness and fear; the futility of trying to escape.
“Zuri? Zuri?” came a voice, piercing the shadows in her head.
The elevator grated loudly, metal against metal. She saw Prince Zalcan Hamnil’s gruesome, contorted face as if he was alive and breathing. Had she not killed him after all? Her enemy moved toward her, his hands outstretched, his twisted features leering spitefully. His hands reached out to touch her, and she could feel them burning directly through the layers of her coat. With a muffled gasp, she pushed him away. When he looked at her in surprise and tried to reach for her again, she sobbed and hit him across the face.
After a moment of lightheadedness, her vision cleared, and she realized that she had actually hit her husband. She was startled to see the red mark across Trevain’s face as he lay on his back on the ground. Taking a shuddering breath, she tried to combat the ghosts in her mind. Trying to ignore the chilling sound of the elevator, she fell to her knees beside him in the snow.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to—”
He rubbed his cheek. “It’s okay. It’s not the first time you’ve done that to me. Kind of a turn on, actually.”
She would have smiled, but she could not seem to relax. “I saw his face.”
Trevain nodded. “Do you think of him when you see me?”
“No. It was just the sound. It made me remember…” Aazuria sighed as she looked off at ceaseless expanse of whiteness. “It’s probably a good thing you convinced me to get therapy. My mind has been playing tricks on me lately. I thought I saw my father before, back in Romanova. I couldn’t sleep for several nights.”
“You should tell the doctor about it,” Trevain suggested. “Honestly, I’m starti
ng to believe that man can fix anything just by talking. He reminds me of my father that way—he’s pretty brilliant, huh?”
“Yes, but he’s certainly not all talk,” Aazuria noted. “He did get us to come down here, didn’t he? Sionna wouldn’t have chosen this particular doctor unless she believed he…”
Creaking and grinding metal noises began again as the elevator ascended. Aazuria winced and shut her eyes tightly, gritting her teeth together. She could not seem to form a coherent thought while the elevator was in service. She felt Trevain moving to her side, and taking her gloves from her hands. He clasped his warm hands around hers, massaging her fingers in a soothing manner to help her get past what seemed to be an anxiety attack.
When the elevator stopped working, and the pod had returned to the surface, Aazuria glanced at it warily. Her breathing returned to normal, and she squeezed Trevain’s hands thankfully. “When Varia was five, she figured out the code to the elevator. I used to come up here every time Prince Zalcan left for the winter. I would carve a giant SOS into the snow—it would take me days, and I would be so frozen that I couldn’t move my hands or feet for hours once I got back to the cabin. I felt like they were going to fall off. I would lie there shivering in excruciating pain, and Varia would try to rub my limbs to warm them up.” She gave him a mordant little smile. “But what really hurt was when no one ever saw my signals. I would try to carve a new SOS every few weeks, but no one ever found them. I thought I’d be stuck down here forever.”
Trevain lifted himself to his knees, and wrapped his arms around her. He pressed his cheek against hers. “Everything’s fine now, Zuri. You don’t have to be cold or alone ever again. If you don’t want to go down there, we don’t have to.”
Aazuria shook her head. “We didn’t come all this way for me to be intimidated by an elevator. What would Varia think of me?” Rising to her feet, Aazuria took Trevain’s hand and led him into the giant dome which contained the pod. She punched the digits into the keypad to allow the machine to work, and with one timid glance at her husband, pressed the button which would initiate the descent of the pod.
“So you did remember the code,” he mused.
She nodded, moving into the corner of the elevator and pressing her back against the wall. From the inside, the sound was even louder; she could feel the vibrations of the apparatus in her body. All the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up at attention, and every nerve seemed to be alert, crackling with electricity as though little lightning bolts were shooting across her insides, and colliding in explosions within her head. Aazuria suddenly found that she could not breathe. She remembered this feeling from moments before her heart had stopped, when Emperor Zalcan had used a stun-gun to electrocute her.
She wondered if she was going to die again.
The elevator ride was several minutes of plunging deep into the earth, and Aazuria felt her panic growing with every second, every vibration, and every whir and purr of mechanic motors. She found her hand moving shakily to the control panel, where she hit a button to pause the pod. “I can’t do this,” she whispered as she grasped the sides of the control panel. “I don’t want to go back down there. I didn’t know I would feel this way.”
“It seems to me like you’re a little claustrophobic,” Trevain said gently. “The elevator’s kind of small—it gives me the willies too.”
“No, I don’t mind small spaces. I mind this particular small space. I mind the thought of never being able to escape from that cabin again once we go down there. I know it’s irrational,” she said, her words jumbling together in confused chaos, “but is it irrational? I was trapped down there for over six years. Then, even once I could use the elevator, it was winter in Antarctica and I couldn’t leave the cabin anyway. I would freeze and starve to death, and so would Varia. How can you expect me to go down there again?”
Trevain seized her shoulders to pull her away from the control panel. He shoved her body up against the wall of the elevator, clasping her face in his hands. “Here, let me distract you.”
When his lips pressed against hers, Aazuria’s eyes widened in surprise. After a moment, her eyes naturally closed and allowed the warmth of his mouth to invade her senses. She felt him unzipping the top of her coat and slipping his hand around her neck, angling her head for more leverage. He slid his hand down to rest against her collarbone, causing her skin to melt beneath the emotion which seemed to be leaking into her body though his fingers.
“I’m going to send the elevator down now, okay?” he asked, his words tickling her lips.
She nodded dumbly, and when the machine began moving again, she hardly noticed the sound of the elevator clattering. He returned his mouth to hers, and she hardly felt the rattling motion of the pod in which they stood. It felt like it was only natural for the world to shake when he kissed her. She had tried to starve herself of this for so long, and for so many good reasons, but in the tiny metal box which led her down to her personal prison, her past was inescapable. Her husband was part of that past.
Aazuria abruptly realized that in running from her trauma, she had also left behind her bliss.
There had been sound logic behind abandoning both, but she could not seem to remember them with Trevain’s hands on her body. When the elevator finally arrived at the cabin below, Aazuria was dizzy and disoriented, but not from fear. Trevain stepped away from her, leaving her face slightly flushed in surprise, and her body humming with arousal.
“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Trevain asked lightly.
She shook her head.
“I should go on more long elevator rides with you,” he said with a grin before moving to open the doors into the cabin.
All the pleasant tingly-feelings that his touch had given her began to dissipate when she saw the room. She moved forward in a daze, feeling her insides contort in a physical reaction to the memories inspired by every piece of furniture. Every corner of the cabin held the lingering aftertaste of the sorrows and joys she had experienced in the congested space. The virtual pages of the mental diary she had kept all seemed to be flipping rapidly in her mind’s eye. Aazuria walked forward and touched the back of the chair in which Varia sat. She saw the way its wooden legs had been taped together, and remembered smashing it to smithereens while she was in labor. Of course, there was very little furniture in the cabin, and she had eventually needed to put it back together.
Day Three-Hundred-and-thirty something in Vostok. I feel like all I do, all day, is sit on that small bed, waiting for Varia to get hungry again. I would love to be in the water, but I can’t step away from her for too long. To add some variety to my day, I have mended the broken chair. Now, I’m sitting a few feet away from the bed as I breastfeed Varia. Is this what I have been reduced to? Finding amusement in the novelty of sitting in a different location?
The thoughts were so vividly clear as they danced across her brain that she could almost remember the feeling of holding an infant in her arms. She could almost remember the painful tug of the child suckling at her nipple, and her own tears as they fell, splashing on Varia’s little body. She had used the bed sheets to fashion reusable diapers for her daughter, but other than that, the poor girl had been raised for an entire year without any clothing. Moving forward, Aazuria stooped to the ground near where Glais was standing, where pieces of snow and ice had dislodged from his winter boots. She pressed her hand flat against the ground, feeling the cold metal floor.
Day One-Thousand-Fifty-Something in Vostok—I think. I have been diligent in my exercises, doing hundreds of pushups and sit ups each day. My body has completely transformed in these few years, and I am proud of myself for that. It’s too late, of course, because I’ve already been captured. Some help this is now. Varia is just over two years old, and she is sitting a few feet away from me and staring at me curiously. Prince Zalcan brought her some Indian-style dresses the last time he visited, and she looks adorable in them—she can speak in simple sentences.
I w
ant to get her out of here so badly. Maybe I could overpower my captor, but I don’t think that would earn me my freedom. I could probably torture the code out of him to make the elevator work, but even if I did, how would I get home? Varia is so young, and I don’t want to risk harming her. I am growing insanely impatient, but I’m sure that my strength will come in handy soon. I just have to keep up with my physical training. When Prince Zalcan is gone, I should do more basic fighting exercises—things that I’ve seen Visola doing. I wonder, if I ever get out of here, will I keep up my training? I hope so. Note to Future Aazuria: please don’t let yourself go and get weak again. I am praying to Sedna for an opportunity to escape sooner rather than later.
The floor seemed to be speaking to her with the thoughts of her own distant psyche, reminding her of the trials she had endured. She remembered sweat pouring off her face and dripping onto the floor as she did push-up after push-up. She remembered the excruciating ache in her muscles, and how hard she would force herself to work. She remembered the anger and frustration of being cooped up so unjustly. With a nod to her old self, she was happy to report that she still did keep up with her physical exercise to some degree. She had not grown soft, although she was not as driven as she used to be. That old Aazuria, the one who had slaved away to make herself stronger on this very floor—she respected her. She had been at the pinnacle of her personal physical fitness.
“What do you see, Aazuria?” asked Dr. Rosenberg. He was gazing with concern at the crouched woman who had been holding her hand to the ground for quite some time.
“I see everything,” she answered quietly. “I want to bomb this place into the ground.”
“Don’t do that, Mom!” Varia begged. “I love it here. Please, it’s my own special spot. My first home.”
Trevain was pacing the small cabin, captivated by every inch of the room. It was so cramped that he had to slouch a bit so that his head would not scrape the ceiling as he walked. “All those years you told me stories, Zuri… it seems so unreal to actually be here. I can’t believe you were stuck in this hellhole. It’s like a… cage.” Trevain sat down on the small cot, and it creaked under his weight. He put his head in his hands. “I should have found you.”
Tides of Tranquility Page 13
