Maelstrom

by Nadia Scrieva

  The next morning, Glais did not wake up.

  It was a while before Varia noticed. She figured that since he was ill, he needed to sleep much longer than he usually did to allow his body to heal. She tried to speak to him occasionally, but when he did not respond, she did not think much of it.

  “Glais?” she murmured. “Can I wake up now, or do you still need me as a human blanket?” Receiving no response, she figured he was too deeply asleep to hear her. She shifted her position, and snuggled against him from a different angle, and went back to sleep.

  “Glais,” she said again, waking up a few hours later. “Can I go back to reading now? Are you feeling any better?” She reached up to touch his forehead. He still felt somewhat warm, but it was better than the previous day. She smiled, patting his cheek. “You need to shave,” she said with a giggle. “You’re getting so prickly.” She went back to sleep again.

  A few hours later, she woke up, and immediately began to cry. She knew that this was not normal behavior for the young man. He had not even moved in his sleep, all night. “Glais,” she whispered, through her tears. With a fearful look in her eyes, she moved two fingers forward to press them against his neck and check for his pulse. It was faint, but it was there.

  “Glais,” she said again, shaking his shoulders. Tears were pouring down her cheeks. “Please, please wake up. Don’t do this to me. My mom was asleep for months. Do you remember how scary that was, not knowing if she would wake up? All the kisses in the world wouldn’t save her. I sang to her, and told her stories, but nothing would work. Please don’t make me go through that again.” She leaned down and pressed her lips against his, kissing him firmly. “Wake up,” she commanded. She kissed him again. “Wake up,” she cried, her voice cracking. “Please. Please wake up.” She slapped his cheek lightly, a few times. “Glais!”

  Varia felt helpless. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that she could not just scream for help, and have palace guards running into the room, ready to do her bidding. “This is my fault. I never should have brought you to this place.” She could not just pull out her phone and call 9-1-1, or send a text message to her Aunt Sio. There was no service, and her aunt was no longer alive. She did not know what to do.

  Her first instinct was just to go back to sleep. She placed her head down on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. Varia wondered if she was in the middle of a bad dream. She wondered if she could wake up, and see him smiling at her, feeling perfectly fine. Then she realized that there was no time to waste. If she did not get him professional medical care soon, he would starve to death. Shaking in fear, Varia moved away from the bed and began to rummage through Glais’ bags. She knew that he had brought some items for emergencies. She was thankful when she found a satellite phone. She moved into the elevator, to take herself to the surface of Lake Vostok. She punched in the code and stared at his lifeless body as the elevator ascended. She could not even stand to leave him for a few minutes, especially when he was in this condition.

  She leaned against the elevator wall, crying softly. Once she was at the surface, she turned on the large device. She held it up, moving forward, stumbling barefoot in the snow. “Come on, come on!” she coaxed the phone. When it finally displayed a signal, she quickly punched in the number for the palace at Romanova. When someone answered, the connection was choppy and indistinct.

  “This is Princess Varia Vellamo!” she shouted into the phone. “I need to speak to my mother! My Aunt Elandria! My father, the king! Get me someone, now!”

  She heard some shuffling sounds, and then silence. She felt like it was an eternity until someone answered the phone.

  “Varia? Oh, Sedna. Varia, is that you?”

  She could not stop her tears at the sound of her mother’s voice. “Mom!” she cried out. “Glais is sick. Please send someone. He’s in a coma.”

  “Varia? I can’t hear you. The connection is awful. Sweetie, where are you? Please come home.”

  “Mom, I need your help! I’m in Antarctica. Please send someone.”

  “I can hear your voice, but I can’t make out what you’re saying. I love you, darling. Just come home, and we can talk in person...”

  “I can’t get there!” Varia shouted into the giant phone. “Mom, I’m so sorry I left. I love you so much. I’m trapped at Lake Vostok. Can you send a plane, Mother? Please! It’s urgent.”

  “Are you in trouble? Varia, wherever you are…”

  The line went dead.

  Varia looked at the phone, and realized that it had died. It had run out of batteries. She opened up the battery compartment, hoping it was a generic type so she might have a spare, but it was very specific. Varia screamed and threw the phone at the elevator. Only then did she notice the pain in her feet, and realize that she would probably get frostbite if she stood in the snow any longer. Limping back to the metal elevator, she tried to determine the best course of action.

  “I’ll save him,” she promised herself. “No matter what it takes. I will save him.”

  Dressed in heavy boots and a large fur coat, Varia walked across the fields of ice. She had fashioned a sled out of the cot from her cabin, and dressed Glais very warmly. She had made a small tent over him with blankets, and put lamps inside the tent to generate heat to keep him warm.

  “I can do this,” she declared to the tundra, as she walked ever forward, against the storm, pulling on Glais’ sled. “I couldn’t do this before when I needed to, and I ruined my mother’s life. If we had gotten home sooner, my father would not have married someone else. But now, I’m stronger. I’m not going to let Glais down. I’m not going to let him die because I’m too weak to walk a thousand miles.” Saying the distance out loud made her shiver. “Maybe I’ll even run a thousand miles, so we get there faster.” Pulling the heavy sled behind her, she quickened her pace. However, after only half an hour of running, she felt like she was going to collapse. This resulted in a horrible déjà vu.

  “Mother, I want to be strong,” Varia said. “I know you like it when I’m strong. But I can’t go any further.”

  “Darling, please try. We need to either get to the shore or find a research station. The scientists will help us.”

  “I’m scared.” Varia lowered her head shamefully at saying these words. “It’s really cold. It’s really big. I never knew the world was this big. I want to go back. Can we please go back?”

  “Varia, we’re not going to get another chance to escape. We could be stuck in that little metal cabin forever.”

  “The sun hurts my head.”

  “You’re a tough girl, sweetie. You can do this.”

  Varia nodded. “I’ll try.”

  “No!” Varia shouted at the memory. She could see her smaller self as a mirage in front of her, collapsing from the strain of the exertion. That pathetic child had been too weak to take the sunlight. “I’m not that little girl anymore!” Varia declared. “General Visola Ramaris is my great grandmother, and now that I’ve met her, I know that I can do anything.” She continued trudging forward. She continued to push herself, and push herself, for hours, until her legs finally gave out below her. She began to cry in frustration when she realized that she needed to sleep. She needed to waste precious hours that she could be using to save Glais, due to her own frailty.

  She turned and crawled back to his tent-sleigh, and began to pack snow around it to make an improvised igloo to keep in the warmth, the way her mother had taught her so long ago. When this task was complete, she took off her parka to make herself smaller, and crawled into the tent with Glais. She checked his vitals fearfully, praying that he had not died while she had been dragging him across the tundra. She was relieved to find a slight pulse.

  “What was I thinking in running away?” she asked him. “I’m so dumb. I’m just a kid. I’m just a stupid kid.” She laid her head down on his chest, but she could not hear his heartbeat through his gigantic coat and many layers. She found herself gasping for breath and crying because of her anxiety.
“Glais… you were right. You were right to be careful with me and not treat me completely like a grown-up yet. I wasn’t ready. You knew that. I didn’t.”

  She needed to have constant reassurance of his life force, so she moved up to place her cheek against his cheek. She could feel his warmth, and his breathing. She sighed. “But you know, I’ll be ready someday, and you’ll be ready too. You just have to be alive when that day comes, because I was really joking about the necrophilia thing. I was just trying to make you laugh because you were sick. Can you forgive me for pressuring you? All I want is your health and safety. I’d give anything just to have you back.” Although she was very tired, she was too scared to sleep. She was afraid that if she closed her eyes and drifted off for one moment, Glais would stop breathing. The last time she went to sleep, she had woken up to something awful, so how would this time be any better?

  “I was sick here once,” Varia suddenly remembered. She remembered being in this same posture, with the situation reversed. Her brow creased. “The way I feel for you, now… that’s how much my mom loved me.” She closed her eyes as the memories came back to her.

  “Varia?” Aazuria asked in a hoarse voice that did not sound like her own. “Varia?”

  She exhaled her warm breath into Varia’s face which was cold as death. “No,” she whispered. Aazuria pulled her glove from her hand. She put two frozen fingers to her daughter’s neck to feel for a pulse. She wished that this was something no parent ever had to do. Her fingers were so frozen that she could not even feel if there was a pulse. She pressed her face against Varia’s sobbing.

  “Trevain,” she said softly, unable to believe that she had killed their daughter. “Forgive me. I just wanted to come home. Trevain, I tried so hard.” She would never see him again. Her warm tears were soaking her daughter’s cheeks. She whispered her husband’s name over and over. If Varia was dead, there was nothing left for her. Her fate was to die here, like this, holding her daughter. She wanted Trevain’s name to be the last word that left her lips. His name should be the sound which was carried by her final breath.

  But her body was not cooperating, and it would not die quickly. She spent an hour whispering his name. When she became tired of that, she began calling for Visola. She no longer had the energy to cry, only to make the faintest of murmurs against her daughter’s cold cheek. “Viso. Viso, why didn’t you find us? Did you all stop looking for me? Oh, Trevain, please. I can’t do this…”

  Her daughter’s lips moved against her cheek.

  “What’s a Trevain?” Varia asked her softly.

  Varia could never forget the first time she heard her father’s name, coaxing her back from the brink of death with curiosity. She pressed her lips against Glais’ mouth once more. “Okay, buddy. Here’s the deal. If you die, I’m going to die. I hope you’re cool with that.” She allowed her nose to fall against his. “But if you live, I’m going to love you so hard, for the rest of your life. I’m going to make you the happiest man on the planet. I don’t know how yet, but I’m going to find a way. I’m going to give you everything your heart desires, and I’ll never make you sad, not for one minute. So please, please live. Live so that we can have a huge, amazing wedding with everyone there. I know we both said we didn’t want that, but we actually do, don’t we? Live so that we can grow old together. Live so that we can have lots of adorable babies. Don’t you want to do that with me, someday? Live so that I can smack you in the face for scaring me like this. Please, please live.”

  She continued rambling and begging until she fell asleep, with her cheek pressed against his.

  Varia had no idea how long she had been walking. She was not meticulous like her mother in counting the days and estimating the miles. She was too blinded by emotion. Truthfully, she did not even know if she was heading in the right direction. She did not know the stars as well as her mother did, especially in the deep southern sky. She was just acting on faith. She had nothing else to go on, and she knew that. She did not have the knowledge, or the resilience, or the luck. There was only faith, and she prayed to Sedna on a bi-hourly basis to send her a miracle. She looked up to the skies for sign of a plane, hoping that some parts of her message had gotten through to her mother. At the very least, they should have been able to track the signal from the satellite phone, and collect her coordinates.

  Coordinates that were now hundreds of miles away.

  Varia cursed. She had not taken the time to consider that staying at the cabin in Lake Vostok might have been safer and more logical. The need to move had been too overpowering. She had to feel like she was making progress. This whole situation was helping her to understand her mother a whole lot more. The need to do something, anything to make a bad situation better, had always consumed Aazuria. That was why she had been absent so often, flying around the globe to visit and repair other sea-dwelling nations. Not because she wanted to neglect Varia, but because she did not want to neglect the millions of others whose lives she could improve.

  Every step she took made Varia realize what a poor decision she had made in running away. Unfortunately, walking hundreds of miles in heavy gear and pulling an unconscious boy behind her was exhausting. She was beginning to feel like she had not grown or improved very much over the last decade, for each of these steps felt as difficult as they had when she was five years old.

  Varia frowned. She could not remember why she had thought fondly of this godforsaken place. “If I ever get out of here, I am never coming back,” she said with determination. She finally knew how her mother felt; her mother had been the one struggling to keep her alive. Now that she was responsible for another person’s life, she understood that it was not fun and games. Antarctica was brutal and harsh. It was desolate.

  It was no country for little girls.

  When a storm swept up around her, Varia glanced back at the sleigh with concern. She was afraid for Glais’ safety. She was not sure how much longer he could remain alive in this state, without medical attention. She knew he needed food and water, but she was not sure how to force him to consume anything. She wanted to stop to check on him, but she knew she needed to keep going. Storm or no storm.

  Please, Sedna. Give me strength.

  Varia just focused on putting one boot in front of the other. She did this until she could no longer move. Her body collapsed, and she fell into the snow. She did not even have enough energy to crawl back to Glais’ tent and get warm inside.

  A shadow of dark movement caught her eye, and she looked up in concern. She tried to sit up, but could only pray that it was not some wild beast coming to attack her. She felt her heartbeat quickening. As the dark shapes grew closer, she was surprised to see that they were human forms.

  “Mother!” she shouted across the ice. “Is that you? Mom!”

  However, when the shapes were nearer, she recognized the blindfolded woman at the center. Her jaw dropped open in surprise.

  “Sedna has answered your prayers, child.”

  “Mother Melusina?” Varia gasped. Around her, stood the Sisters of Sedna. The holy women were not even wearing coats over their green dresses. Varia knew this was due to special sea-dweller biology, but it still seemed supernatural. “How did you find us?” she whispered.

  “This boy is my nephew,” said the priestess. “I share a special connection with him. I knew he was ill.”

  “Can you help him? You helped my mother, didn’t you? All those years ago, when she was in a coma.”

  “Yes.” The priestess smiled and moved forward. “Of course I can help him. But there will be a cost. What will you trade in exchange for his life?”

  Varia suddenly remembered that this woman was allegedly credited for bringing her evil grandfather back from the grave. She remembered what Mother Melusina had caused her Aunt Elandria to suffer. She realized that to promise her anything at all would be akin to making a deal with the devil.

  “I’ll give you anything,” Varia said. “Anything you want, if you help him get better
.”

  Mother Melusina smiled.

  Chapter 13: He Comes Home

  Three months later…

  Vachlan approached an abandoned farmhouse where he was almost positive that Visola was temporarily staying. He had been closing in on her trail for some time, and he could sense that he was closer than he had ever been to finding her. He could feel her presence. In recent days, over five mid-sized American cities had been bombed into the ground. He had hungrily watched her handiwork, and he had recognized that these were merely “test-shots.” The idea of missing the grand finale had his stomach in knots.

  He had forced Dylan to work with him tirelessly to hunt her down. He had bothered Trevain and Naclana to pull strings so he could gain access to privileged information. He was so close to making contact with her that he could almost imagine holding her body in his arms. He would not let up or rest until he was touching her. He needed proof that she had ever existed at all. However, when his burner phone rang, for what must have been the fortieth time that day, something compelled him to answer. It was a private line for family emergencies, registered to a name that was not his, so he really should not have been ignoring it as much as he did.

  “Hello?” he responded.

  “Vachlan!” said the voice on the other end. It was already an accusation. “Where have you been?

  “Elandria? Is that you? I’ve been looking for Viso.”

  “You asshole. How could you do this to them? Your poor kid has been in the hospital for months, and he asks for you every day. And you ignore his phone calls.”

  “Hospital? What are you talking about?”

  “Ronan fell off the roof and broke his leg in three places. He also suffered head trauma. I thought Ivory told you?”

  “Jesus!” said Vachlan in shock. He was unable to breathe for a moment. “She said he fell and hurt his knee. I thought it was a scrape that could be fixed with a Band-Aid and a kiss.”