“She’s so beautiful,” the prince said, and there was a smile on his mangled face. “Just like you. I can’t believe this happened. What did you call her?”
“Pearl,” Aazuria lied. Once she began lying, it seemed that they just continued flowing forth without restraint. She did not know why that was the false name she had chosen, but it reminded her of The Scarlet Letter. She felt that she needed to keep Varia’s name secret to preserve its sanctity.
“How did you do this alone?” he asked, still staring down at the baby in wonder. “I’m so sorry I left you with child. I didn’t know…”
“It was difficult,” she responded truthfully. “I thought I was going to die.”
“I am so sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” she responded. “If you were sorry, I would not be locked up down here to begin with.”
“That’s true. My father gave me a commendation for holding you captive. I’m a hero in the Clan,” he told her. “Everyone in Adlivun thinks you’re dead.”
Aazuria’s heart sank. “Thanks for the good news.” She closed her eyes and reminded herself to be strong. Just as she was lying to him, he could be lying to her.
Hamnil tenderly touched Varia’s cheeks. “She has different-colored eyes. I can’t believe I’m a father. I never imagined…”
“You said you would return sooner with food,” she said, changing the subject. “Is this all that you brought with you?”
“No,” he answered, gently returning the child to Aazuria. “I have more supplies on the surface. I’ll go and grab them.”
Aazuria stared as he worked the code on the elevator, and she counted six digits. She could not see which numbers he was pressing. When the elevator noisily began ascending again, she held Varia close.
“You are safe now,” she told her daughter in a low voice. She felt a great weight lift from her chest to know that Hamnil had returned. She was also glad that her lie had gone smoothly. “He thinks you’re family, and he seems to place some value on that. Even if something happens to me, I believe he will protect you.”
Aazuria looked up at the mechanical structure that held the elevator. “But if he ever tries to take you away from me, I will kill him.”
Chapter 22: Escape from Vostok
Childhood was glorious, regardless of time and place. Five years had passed, and Varia was learning like a sponge. Aazuria often felt she had already soaked up all of the knowledge that Lake Vostok could offer. Every story that Aazuria could dig out of the recesses of her memory had already been told a dozen times. She felt suffocated by the small cabin—being trapped in Antarctica gave her a constant feeling of asphyxiation.
For the young girl, the great dark spaces were filled with the colors of her imagination. Ghosts spoke to her and sang . Her mother was nearby in almost her every waking moment, but sometimes Aazuria would sleep. Varia would lie behind her mother, nestled in snugly between the wall and her mother’s protective form. Aazuria never slept deeply, and Varia knew that if she tried to climb over her mother and exit the room, the stern woman would stop her and scold her.
Varia would often pretend that her mother’s back was an easel, and use imaginary finger-paints to draw paintings on Aazuria’s back which no one else could see. It was one of her favorite games, but her mother did not sleep nearly enough for her to play it. If her finger accidentally touched Aazuria’s back, the woman would wake up and turn around with a start.
“What are you doing?” Aazuria would ask, fully awake as though she had not even been sleeping.
“I was painting the sunshine,” Varia explained with a yawn. “But I’ve never seen it, so I don’t know if I used the right colors. You said it’s round?”
Aazuria sighed, pulling her daughter close against her. “I promise you’ll see it someday soon. There’s no way for me to describe the sunshine. It’s brilliant, and it makes you feel brilliant when it bathes you. Someday you will see, Varia. When we’re free from here.”
Varia nodded. She could sense the tension her mother felt in the days before her father’s expected return. Aazuria jumped at every noise and intensified her training routines. She also insisted that her daughter perform various strengthening exercises. It was exhausting, but Varia was always eager to please her mother. She just did not understand why her mother was so scared of her father.
“Can you sing me the lullaby, Mother?”
“Which one?”
“The one about the northlands.”
Aazuria grew quiet for a moment, and Varia quickly became impatient. “Please tell me about the northlands, Mother! Where are they?”
“Darling, they’re everywhere except for here,” Aazuria responded.
“Will you sing about them?” Varia prodded, hugging her mother as tightly as possible. She hoped that Aazuria would see how strong she was, and be pleased enough to sing the song. Any show of strength or intellect made her mother happy, and thus Varia was always seeking to improve herself.
“Are you sure you want that song, sweetie?” Feeling her daughter nod aggressively, Aazuria sighed. She knew that her singing was inferior, at least compared to Elandria’s voice. But she had to try. There was no one else around. She often worried that by the time she got home, Varia would be too old to enjoy her Auntie Elan singing her lullabies. The thought broke her heart. She missed her sister dearly, and she knew that Elandria would have inspired and enriched her daughter’s life to the highest extent if she had been given the chance to be involved. All of this had been robbed from her. She would never forgive Zalcan, and her vengeful fantasies were intensifying in both frequency and vileness.
Stroking Varia’s soft white hair, Aazuria thought of Trevain. She had to be patient. Zalcan would not keep her imprisoned forever. Would he? It had been five years. Tears came to her eyes as she imagined her husband’s face. She forced herself to begin singing the requested lullaby.
Frosty winds gusted from the far north lands;
They froze my fingertips and chilled my face.
But they brought kisses you’d blown from your hands
They fetched the mem’ry of your warm embrace.
I have grown weary in the far south parts
Waiting for the waiting to be over
Do you still keep me safely in your heart?
Do you wear my ribbon on your shoulder?
With every sorrowful breath I breathe
I am dreading the ending of our story
But on the day I hold you close again
there will be an avalanche of glory.
“Mother, are you crying? Sing the rest of it. You didn’t get to my favorite part about climbing the mountains.”
“I cannot sing this tonight, Varia.”
“But why are you sad? It’s a happy song, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Varia could feel the sadness in the way her mother’s body softly shook with sobs. “Just not tonight.”
Aazuria was finally relaxing now that November had come, and Hamnil had left for the summer. She would be alone with her daughter again until at least March. She did not know for how many more years this would continue. Despite her anger towards the prince, she had to admit that he had been very kind to her daughter from the moment she had told him of his paternity. Although it made her sick every time Varia called him ‘Father,’ it had impressed her how easily he had accepted Varia as his own, and how affectionate he was with the young girl.
In fact, in the last five years of her captivity, Aazuria might even have gone as far as to say that Prince Zalcan Hamnil had become her friend. As much as that was possible with the magnitude of the grudge she held against him, it had happened. Of course, a woman could hold a secret grudge for an eternity and never have it diminish in the least. In fact, Aazuria was learning that a grudge well fermented only reinforced itself and deepened with time. Hers was so powerful that it could have consumed her; she would have gladly allowed it to destroy her as long as it also destroyed the prince, but she could not. She cou
ld not take any single action that would compromise her parenting or her much-desired return to Trevain, and vengeance was one such action.
Aazuria had restricted Varia from going into the water more than once a week for training laps. The water would slow down their aging process, and she wanted her daughter to grow larger and grow quickly so that she could defend herself if it was ever necessary. Perhaps if Corallyn had been allowed to grow to her full height and strength, Zalcan would not have been able to overpower her. But the young girl had lived for nearly a hundred years, and having done so underwater, had looked no more than ten. Aazuria would not allow Varia to remain small and weak, not even to extend her life—this luxury could not be afforded during wartime.
Was it even wartime anymore? She did not trust any of Zalcan’s news of the world above. She needed to get back home and see for herself. She mentally repeated over and over that her day would come, and upon returning from a brief hunting trip in the water, she was shocked to find that perhaps it finally had. Aazuria dropped her game on the floor as she saw her five year old daughter pressing buttons and causing the elevator to move.
“Look, Mother! I got it to work,” Varia said with a huge smile.
Aazuria raced to Varia’s side and threw her arms around the girl, squeezing her and laughing. “Varia! How did you do that? You know the code? How did you find it?”
“I listened to the beeps it made when Father pressed the buttons. Then I tried to have it make the same sound,” Varia responded.
“You were able to do that? You’re such a smart girl!” Aazuria said, kissing her daughter’s forehead fiercely. “Ready to get out of here?”
“And see the sunshine up top?” Varia asked.
“Yes. Yes,” Aazuria said, as she had already begun rushing around and gathering supplies. There were not many things to gather except for warmer clothes. She quickly wrapped furs around Varia, and she tied a long piece of rope around each of their wrists so that they would not be separated in the case of a whiteout storm. She also grabbed the bags filled with trash to try and mark their surroundings so that she could find her way back if necessary. Aazuria could not stop laughing, and she felt like her whole body was flushed to the point of overheating with happiness.
“Take us up, darling,” she told her daughter. Varia proudly punched in the codes to make the elevator start moving. When they were on the surface, Aazuria wanted to yell at the top of her lungs, throw her arms out and dance for hours to be free. But she would not feel safe until she walked into Adlivun and latched herself onto Trevain. She would use a giant padlock to keep her fastened to him, and handcuffs, and superglue, and she would never leave his side again.
“Where is the sun?” Varia asked in confusion. “Are those the stars?”
“Yes. It is nighttime.” Aazuria pulled a piece of paper from her coat and began to sketch a small map of the stars above. She drew just the brightest ones to get a sense of her bearing. She looked around and tried to memorize the landscape. It seemed that they were on an extremely high elevation. She sketched the landscape. She had no idea which direction was closest to shore or where exactly she was, but she needed to start moving. As the night progressed, she could determine around which point the sky appeared to be spinning, and that would be directly south. She would move in the opposite direction.
Hopefully, she would come across a research station. She knew that there used to be research stations around Vostok, but apparently the funding had been cut off. The task ahead seemed daunting, but she was prepared. “Let’s get going, Varia. I have a feeling that this will be a very long walk. Followed by a very long swim.”
By the third day of walking, Aazuria was feeling her excitement grow more and more. It felt amazing to get away from her prison. She had hardly any conviction about their direction, but she was hopeful. She was finally free—everything else would come easily now. She had finally seen her daughter in the sunlight, and as predicted, the young girl’s hair, eyes, and skin, tanned considerably. Varia’s white hair became a dark auburn and her eyes became a dark brown. The young girl was amazed with the change in Aazuria’s features as well, and she almost did not recognize her mother once the dim sunlight had begun to take its effect.
Just as a precaution, the pair had been dropping empty cans of food behind them to mark their path, and their load was getting lighter. Although Aazuria’s legs were beginning to ache from the countless miles they had covered at a brisk pace, her outlook had never been brighter. She was beyond optimistic. At least she was until Varia stopped altogether.
“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.”
On the sixth day of walking, they were caught in a storm. They would have been separated if not for the rope holding them together. When Aazuria could no longer see the stars, she became worried. She tried to build a makeshift shelter of snow to rest in until the storm blew over. She told Varia traditional Inuit stories about igloos to keep her imagination alive throughout the worst of it. Even though she was hardly much closer to him than when she had begun walking, she felt the distance shrinking. At least in her mind, Adlivun felt accessible. She knew she would be there before long.
When the storm died down, and they were able to begin walking again, Varia only lasted four hours before she collapsed. Aazuria chastised her, failing to remember that four hours was a long time for a five-year-old to walk. She had trained her daughter to be stronger than that.
“I can’t go any further, Mother. I just can’t,” Varia said. She sat down, and refused to move anymore.
“You must,” Aazuria said forcibly.
“I feel unwell. Please, can we go home?”
Feeling a rush of anger, Aazuria reached out and picked up her daughter. Varia was much too big to be carried, but there was no other option. The girl cooperated, and clung to Aazuria’s neck. The displaced queen of Adlivun continued trudging through the snow.
On the tenth day of walking, Aazuria realized that her daughter had a high fever. Varia was ill. She had never been in the sunlight before, and she had never experienced such cold temperatures. It was too much for her young body. Aazuria tried to keep up conversations with her daughter as she moved onward, but the young girl was too ill to respond.
“Oh, Sedna, Sedna, please,” Aazuria prayed. “Please, let me find the shore.”
The desperate bargaining with various gods and goddesses had begun. She could recognize what she was doing, but she could not prevent herself from leaning on fantasies. Aazuria bit her lip so hard that she tasted the sweetness of blood and felt its warm trickle down her chin. The blood snapped her back to reality. The world stopped spinning.
She realized that she needed to stop. She needed to turn around.
“Varia,” she said gently. “Do you want me to return to Vostok?”
When her daughter nodded against her neck, Aazuria shut her eyes tightly in defeat.
“Please,” Varia whispered.
Aazuria nodded. Part of her wanted to keep going. She had been walking almost non-stop for ten days, and it would take just as long if not longer to get back to Vostok. She did not even know if she could find Vostok again. The storms had surely blown her cans around. But it could be another ten, twenty, or thirty days until she reached the shore of Antarctica. And then they would need to swim. While Aazuria felt far more comfortab
le covering long distances in the water than she did on land, she knew that it was impossible.
Varia was ill. As much as she wanted to push onward, she knew that her daughter would not be able to survive it. Varia had never been sick in her life, and this was serious. The conditions between the underground cabin and the surface were too different, and Varia’s young body had not had the time to adjust before being plunged into a thousand-mile hike. Aazuria had no clue where they were heading. It could be more than that—it could be two thousand miles or more.
“I have been foolish,” she whispered. “Please forgive me.”
She turned around, and began walking back to Vostok. Each step she took was heavier and more difficult than the last. All the hope inside her had been crushed. There was a great emptiness within her; the kind that broke a person down and made them stop fighting. This was the moment she had been waiting and preparing for. This moment was the culmination of five years of training her body every day. And she had failed. If it were not for her daughter, she would have preferred death to going back
She was lost. She could not find her way back. It was around the twentieth day of being out on the glacier—she had lost count once she had started moving backwards. She had been walking back at least as long as she had walked away, but she could not find the white dome. Her arms were aching from carrying Varia, and her legs were buckling under her as she walked. A combination of burnout and tiredness caused her to literally drop to the ground. She had fallen asleep for several minutes before she woke up with a start. She crawled over to where she had dropped Varia and covered her daughter’s body with hers protectively.
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