Flame
***
"She's a real sweetie that one," the nurse said affectionately, watching Ayasha sit ever patiently with her dad. Ayasha stiffened as the nurse passed to check the screens, her hands sinking into the sheets and twisting them into her fists. Real sweet, I thought, just don't try to move her.
"So long as she gets to be with her Dad, she reckons all's right with the world," I replied wearily. Where had this fatigue come from? I did nothing all day, but I was constantly exhausted.
"Yes, she's funny about that isn't she?" the nurse mused, distracted, making notes, "You know what she did last night?"
I forced myself to sit up straighter and give her my attention. She motioned for me to join her just outside the door.
"She's sitting there as always, then she looks around, making sure no one was watching? Then she leans forward and whispers, real quiet, "Wake up Daddy please, Yaya misses you". That's like the longest sentence I've ever heard her say."
She would have been working on it for hours, knowing she wasn't supposed to annoy her Dad when he was sleeping, building up her courage, waiting for the right time… and all for nothing.
The nurse continued her rounds and I gazed at the snow edging past the windows. It fell in drifts and flurries, whipped into furies by the wind, while inside everything was still.
The snow took me back to a year ago, in northern Siberia. The wind lashed snow into our faces, searing our uncovered cheeks, biting at the tips of our noses, ladening our eyelashes with frost. An argument raged around us equally furiously.
We had come to look into setting up a cultural exchange in the Soul-free zone here. We had set up similar exchanges at home allowing humans to access educational opportunities in Mixed areas that they wouldn't otherwise have access to. They lived with a Soul family, and in return had to host them for a time within the Soul-free zone. Another one of Alex's ways of chipping down the barriers between humans and Souls, of surreptitiously dismantling his hated Soul-free zones.
Alex had a splitting headache as a result of the copious liquid hospitality on the two day train journey from Moscow, and was having difficulty keeping his cool. But maybe that was an advantage during a Russian argument. I kept out of it, walking up and down the platform hugging Ayasha to me, trying to ignore both storms.
I had gathered what the problem was. The train had been checked as soon as it was within the Soul-free zone, and as soon as they had seen me, all hell had broken loose. It seemed Alex hadn't made it clear that his wife was a Soul. I found it very suspicious that he had neglected to be clear on this point. He, of course, couldn't see the problem: who better to have on a discussion tour of human-Soul exchanges? To test the waters? The Moscow humans had had no problem with me, but they were used to living in Mixed cities. But the Northerners were refusing to let us go any further.
Finally they agreed to continue the argument indoors, and I could get a mug of hot chocolate while I waited for the outcome. The server stared at me like she'd never served an alien before. Maybe she hadn't. The Northern Areas had been proficient in their defence against Soul incursion. It must feel like a betrayal to have been tricked into inviting one in.
The station building was immense, an antique from Soviet days, frigid, and largely empty. I let Ayasha run around to warm up, doing rickety figure eights around islands of luggage. I ducked my face behind a trunk and she froze, anticipating a game of peekaboo. We had to make sure she could see the rest of us, otherwise she would just run over crossly and pull us into view. But if you played according to her rules, she'd be amused for hours. She screamed with laughter when I poked my head up again, causing a pause in the heated argument across the way, then held her breath in suspense while I 'hid' again. Finally Alex came over to collect us.
"They're letting us go as far as Murmansk," he said quietly, as I grabbed Ayasha so she didn't scream too close to his hangover, "We'll have to renegotiate with the officials there."
***
Murmansk was a port town laden with concrete apartment blocks and rusting ships. Our hotel was a street away from the water, which surged thick and black at the shore, unfrozen thanks to a stream of warmer water from the south, even in the depths of winter. The winter also meant near perpetual night; only a strange twilight suggested midday.
Our hosts had made us all deerskins for the trip, and despite the continuing dispute over my presence, these were handed over for us to change into, being much warmer than anything the South could produce. Of course, in the South they still had central heating. There was even a tiny set for Yashie. I came out into the hotel lobby with Yashie, interrupting the current round of 'negotiations'.
"Thank you," I said, "They are a perfect fit. Even Yashie's." I got her to do a twirl, to best display her fancy new threads. "Bolshoye spasiba." There was widespread amusement at this, though whether it was my accent or Yashie's stumbling catwalk I couldn't tell. The women gathered round to meet Yashie, our perfect ice breaker, and suddenly a decision seemed to have been made.
"They are letting you stay here in Murmansk," Alex translated.
"And you?"
"I'll continue on with the others, the tour will go ahead."
I nodded, glad that the trip would still be productive, and trying not to burden him with my disappointment.
The women invited me for a banya, and I tried to relax, letting the steamy heat warm my chilled bones and the birch smell lift my spirits. The women were raucous, teasing each other about the men and lining up their sons and brothers as the best husbands for Yashie.
"Yuri would be a perfect husband for her," Vedya said, pinching her cheeks.
"You just want to get rid of him!" Anielka scolded, and the others laughed in agreement. There was a divide in opinion as to whether a local, with prison camp and native heritage, was better or worse than a Southerner. Yashie soaked up all the attention as well as the heat, which the women kindly kept cooler for her. Still, the heat built and built with each ladleful of water on the hot rocks. Then everyone was out the door, pulling us with them. The icy air hit us hard but we were still enveloped in the fever of the banya, and it only felt invigorating. Some of the women rubbed snow onto their bodies, but Vedya motioned me further down with the others. I ran with them til I saw where we were headed. My footsteps slowed as the others splashed into the ocean, shouting, the spray white on the black void of the water spreading to the horizon.
I couldn't do it. My heart beat painfully against the sight and my throat shut down. I stood watching them for a while, then carried Yashie back and sat in the banya, laden with a deep shame that I couldn't conquer my fear.
Vedya came to join me a little later.
"You don't like ocean?" she asked.
"I… I can't swim," I lied pathetically.
"She scared!" Anielka said, her tone dismissive and incriminating at once. It was true, I was scared. But I couldn't face explaining why.
We joined the men for food and vodka, and the women pressed me to join them in a few drinks. I was buzzing slightly when I went upstairs to change Ayasha, noticing the glare of the light fixtures rather than my footing. I left the room door open – I would only be a minute, and sang to Yashie as I changed her, giggling together as I slipped on a fresh nappy.
"Mrs Flame," came a respectful voice from the door, "there is matter for your attention in lobby. Please will you come with us?"
"Of course," I smiled at them, two heavy set lads, and they came closer as I washed my hands.
"Now, please."
"Sure, I'll just-"
"You can leave her here. We won't be long."
"Oh no, she's not used to being alone and-"
The snub muzzle of a gun pressed to my side silenced me. My stomach shrank into a small hard golf ball. The two had become four and the respectful tone evaporated.
"You will come with us now."
I couldn't think. My eyes were latched onto Yash, but they ignored her, guiding me out of the room, the four men surrounding me. Some other guests were coming towards us down the corridor. I tried frantically to think of a way out of this, my heart drumming faster and faster, accompanying my breathing.
"You will be silent," they hissed, shoving the gun deeper into my ribs. I held my breath and the guests noticed nothing as they passed, chatting to each other cheerfully.
We walked through the dimly lit lobby like ghosts, and still raised no one's suspicions. Perhaps it was normal for four thugs to escort a terrified guest out late at night here. My panic grew, wiping my thoughts, as they walked me out into the dark streets. I saw the deeper blackness of the ocean at the end of the road and my steps faltered. My mind blanked completely at the sight of it, fear convulsing my body, my feet freezing to a stop.
They shoved me forward, their goal in sight, and I started screaming, knocking the gun away from my back and trying to run for it, anywhere that was away from the water. But there was a wall of muscle behind me, turning me back, trying to cover my mouth, forcing me back down with vice like hands that held my elbows tight behind me and propelled me forward. I twisted and ripped away from them desperately, but there was always another hand to grab me where the last had slipped. I tried to suck air through the hard hands that silenced me, and kicked out like a maniac at their knees: a man collapsed with a grunt beside me. An attempt to brain me with the gun only managed a glancing blow from my frenzied bucking; anything, anything to keep me away from the water.
My feet kept slipping on the icy shore. I kept shoving them back under me, desperately searching for grip anywhere, but they were stronger. They shoved me relentlessly forward, closer and closer. Then the icy water was snapping at my ankles, and my frantic writhing kicked the salty taste into the air, spraying everything.
Then the vices holding me disappeared; sturdy and lame footsteps running hard into the night. I sank to my knees in the water, sobbing like a madwoman, vaguely aware of other footsteps coming closer. Arms grabbed me and I screamed, but it was Alex dragging me out of the water, sitting me on the dry ground. His arms were tight and safe around my waist, but I couldn't get enough of a grip to do more than sit there, weeping helplessly.
"Your head," he said, and his fingers stung where he pressed them to my forehead, and came away coated in blood. I wanted to tell him I was fine, but could only shake my head. My lungs were useless for anything more than gasping. The others were shouting in a cacophony of Russian around us.
"Let's get you inside, hey," he said quietly, but I cried out when he went to lift me, the others stopped him, shouting and pointing to my shoulder. A tight ache told me I must have struggled so hard I'd dislocated it. He shifted his grasp to my waist and my good arm and helped me back inside the hotel. A doctor had been called and reset my shoulder easily, while Alex Healed the head wound with a minimum of fuss, his jaw furious in the dim light of the lobby, but his eyes staying cool for my sake. And I was as good as new.
***
I sat in the shower, Yashie at my feet , letting the hot water drum down on us, obliterating thought with its erratic rhythm. Yashie was fully occupied trying to fill her cupped hands and pour it over my knees, and I was fully occupied staring at her in the harsh yellow light of the naked bulb.
"I think that's probably enough, hey?" Alex said, turning off the water, and dropping a towel on Yashie as she darted naked through the room. He pulled me up, wrapped me in a towel and then his arms, and sat with me on the bed. I stared at the carpet, feeling his touch but unable to respond.
"How're you doing in there?" he murmured into my ear. I tried to focus, drawing in a long breath.
"I've really stuffed up this trip, haven't I?" I said, my voice too high and tight.
"You haven't done anything," he replied. "I'm just getting really sick of people trying to kill you."
I smiled despite myself, shivering, and he rubbed my arms slowly and methodically. They could have just shot me. They could have strangled me. But they wanted to make a point; they knew I was afraid of the water. They had wanted to do it in a way that terrified me. Well, they had managed that part alright.
"I can't believe we had to stay in the only place in the whole bloody Soul-free zone where the sea never freezes," I said, attempting for a casual laugh but ending with something sounding more like a loon. "If they'd tried to kill me another way I probably would have gone quietly."
Alex kissed the back of my neck gently, his breath hot on my skin.
"Vasily is trying to say it was just a drunken joke," he muttered. I stiffened. That gun was no joke. A dislocated shoulder was no joke. Alex's silence told me he agreed.
"I can't stay here," I whispered, thinking despairingly of being without him.
"I know," he murmured, "But I'm not sending you back on the train alone either."
Yashie came to a stop in front of us, lifting her chin high to see us from beneath the towel that was still draped over her head.
"And we'd better get some clothes on you, before you start sticking to the floor," he said, reluctantly putting me down on the bed and catching her.
"Don't think about it tonight," he said softly, doing an impression of a steam train on her head with the towel while she supplied the engine noises. "We'll deal with it tomorrow."
I nodded, pulling on a tracksuit and crawling under the covers, shutting out the world.
***
I lay in bed awaiting the dawn, having forgotten that dawn wouldn't come for months. Alex came in with breakfast for me, and Yashie pulled the blanket down, wriggling out of my arms.
"Konstantin is going to take you to stay with his family," Alex said as Yashie tucked into my breakfast, "They're corralling their reindeer at the moment so they'll be on the move, in the middle of nowhere, and everyone knows everyone."
"Sounds perfect," I said, getting up and rubbing the bruise in my back where the gun had been shoved.
"You're sure," Alex said, watching me doubtfully as I went to stare through the window at the lamp lit streets, "you seem…"
"I'll be fine when I'm out of this city," I murmured, and away from that water. Inland, to where anything liquid was frozen solid and would be for months.
We dressed in our deerskins and Yuri drove us out to where the dog teams were waiting, stiff with excitement in the crisp dark air, the snow glowing under the starlight.
"Flame, hang on," Alex said, drawing me away from the others. He rested his hands on my shoulders, wincing at the bruise on my forehead, and watched me doubtfully.
"Are you sure you're ok? Yesterday you were really messed up. I think, more messed up than I've ever seen you. But today, you're… you're acting like you're fine."
"Ok then, I'm not fine. Yesterday… I had a really bad night," I gave a short, bitter laugh, "But I'm ok, and I'm getting out of here. I know I will be fine, and I can cope with that. I just… couldn't cope, yesterday."
His eyes searched mine, but I was anxious to get going and slipped from his touch.
The dogs pulled us swiftly over the snow, a deep soft highway over hard frozen bogs, rivers, and lakes, towards the corralling camp. Alex followed in our tracks two weeks later.
The dogs warned us of their arrival minutes before they could be seen. We edged out of the tents and watched the sleds approach, skirting around the forest edge.
I felt a different person than the tense stranger that hauled herself off the sledge two weeks ago, tripping in the deep snow. Now, I had found a place amongst a group of people who had treated me like one of their own. They knew, of course, what had happened in Murmansk; I could see the revulsion of it, and their sympathy for me in their eyes. But they spoke nothing of it, keeping to day to day affairs of corralling and marking the deer, for which I was deeply thankful. Here, I could forget I was an alien invader. Here, I could just be a city cousin learning the ropes, providing amusement for everyone when I mispronounced words or couldn't hold a reindeer. They held me within their circle with warm hearts but gave me space to start to breathe again too, so that by the time Alex arrived I felt the knots within me had unwound and lay slack.
Alex was running behind the sled where the trail was firmer, but whereas the dogs were pulled up and tied a little away from the camp, he didn't stop til he had his arms around me.
"Daddy!" Yashie shouted, jumping and reaching beside him, trying to get him to lift her up, and when that failed, wrapping herself around his leg.
"Hey you," he said tenderly, his face close, "How's the deer herding going?"
"Oh, pretty good," I managed, a little breathless with joy.
"Better now we've come to help?"
I chuckled.
"You've come just in time. We've already done all the hard work."
"Oh I see. Well, perhaps we're not needed." He called out to the others, walking back to the sleds with Ayasha like an oversized boot on one leg and me hanging off his other arm.
"You're not going anywhere, mister," I said, trying to sound stern, but becoming rapidly infected with Ayash'a giggling.
"Well, turns out the dogs need a break anyway," he said, stopping so I could better slip my arms around him, "Lucky you."
I gazed into his wonderful face.
"Lucky me."
***
Ilne served out the evening meal into her enamel dishes, passing them to the group collected in the tent against the desolate snowstorm beyond. The temperature dropped by ten degrees instantly as Vasily came in from outside, stamping the snow off his boots and sealing the door behind him.
"How did the trip go, then?" I asked Alex, maneuvering a bowl to him passed Yashie's grasping fingers, "Any trouble?"
"Not a whisper. Everyone was very hospitable. Too hospitable."
"Oh dear," I grinned, thinking of the train trip.
"If I never have to drink to another 'Za druzhbu myezhdu narodami!'-"
But at this a shout went up and the vodka bottles materialised instantly.
"Oh god…" Alex moaned, but dutifully raised his glass.
"My liver is going to need an extended holiday when we get home," he muttered. I drank the first toast then surreptitiously passed the others to Alex, who looked at me with murderous eyes but drained them anyway, grimacing discretely. "I don't know about this exchange business though. The Souls would never cope with this amount of alcohol."
"We could put them into training before they went."
"Yeah, pre-damage their livers, that's a great idea. Maybe that's the whole idea, get rid of the Souls by luring them up to the arctic and drinking them to death. Oh, but Flame, you should see the hardware they've got up here. Blackheath would be in heaven."
"You mean guns?"
"Guns, mortars, surface to air missiles… all the stockpiles were up here from before the invasion. Sure helped them keep the Souls out."
Yuri grabbed his shoulder and launched off into a long retelling of some particularly amusing incident in Russian, and I settled back to enjoy the atmosphere. Vasily leant behind Alex to talk to me without breaking the flow of the story.
"Syarda would like to show you something," he said.
Syarda was always the first to try to teach me something new. She had an insatiable appetite for teaching, and I felt fortunate that she had the patience to work with me. Her tent was a little way away, and though the storm was raging outside, all the tents were connected by blizz lines, thin ropes that guided you from sanctuary to sanctuary.
I pulled on my parka and stepped out, feeling the taut rope bounding in the gusts of wind in one hand, closing the door behind me with the other, sealing in the warmth of the tent from the arctic night. The wind was ferocious, grabbing at my legs, tearing at my clothing, alternately attacking my lungs and fighting against my breath. But the deerskins were beautifully warm and the lifeline running through my gloved fingers would lead me straight to Syarda's tent.
But then the rope felt wrong in my hands. There was a slackness in it not caused by the hurl and suck of the wind. I crept my fingers along it and came to the end of the line, spasming uselessly in the air. I turned and ran my fingers back along the line, and it's evil twin, the other end of the rope, lay limp in my gloves.
The snow whirled mindlessly around me, filling the seamless world with noise and sight, white above, white below, and all around me, white. Fear chilled me to the core. I was lost without bearings in a trackless world. But I knew enough not to panic: I only had to keep the wind on my opposite side to retrace my steps to the tent. So I walked back, twenty, forty, sixty steps, counting breathlessly to impose order on the maelstrom. But my world remained unchanged, no tell tale shadows or fogs of light to denote a tent or cabin, no lumps in the snow indicating a lost boot, buried firewood, or a dog. Nothing to say I had gone anywhere at all. Had I not got the angle right? Had the wind direction changed? Now I could be anywhere.
The few seconds it took to realize this, made me know too that I had to keep walking: the cold stole into my muscles and stiffened my joints. Equally chilling was the thought of walking off blindly into the storm. So I walked around in a small circle, and my feet could feel the ruts and valleys of my own footsteps retraced. And though I thought by this to minimize drift, a stubbed toe told me I had travelled. My hands felt along the length of the structure before the image could form in my mind. It was the corral! Suddenly I had been plucked from nothingness and located very firmly somewhere. I clung to it in relief, grinning blindly into the dark whiteness, and the cold dug its finger deeper into me still. I knew I could not try to find the tents again. They were not far, but may as well have been in another universe in the storm. So I kept walking, ten steps along the fence, and ten steps back. Back and forth, back and forth, with the wind constantly buffeting me against the wood, my teeth clacking so hard they ached. And little by little, the infinite strength of the storm fought and won over the limited strength of my body, and soon I was walking so slowly that the cold captured me completely.
I squatted, stiff, huddling around my own small body heat, giving up as less as possible to the wind, but it was content with freezing my back and my feet. I sacrificed them to keep warmth around my heart, my hands, and my face. And slowly, a mound of snow built up behind me and cut out the wind. I thought sluggishly I should have done this myself earlier, as I relaxed into the snowbank that released me from the endless struggle with the shoving wind. Even my shuddering shivering calmed. I had seen the dogs sleep cosily beneath the snow, and felt a cool slumber descend on my limbs. A heaviness dragged at my consciousness, and I was tempted to sleep, but an image of Alex provoked me. "You don't think!" he was yelling at me, "What about us?"
What about you? I thought fuzzily, annoyed that he was yelling at me when I was so tired. Images of Ayasha and Bhask pierced my fatigue, and I considered them, uncertain, as the rest of mind collapsed around them. Just a little sleep… why couldn't they grant me that? But the images… my mind could not let go of them: Alex, Bhask, Ayasha… I was playing hide and seek with them in the snow. I could hear them calling for me. Ayasha found me first, small and warm in the biting snow, and I pulled her down beside me, fingers to my lips.
"Sh!" I whispered, holding her close, her deerskins long and shaggy, but she would not stay still. And as she squirmed away I put my head down on my hands and closed my eyes at last.
***
I was woken by a burning in my fingers. Someone was holding a red hot needle to them, only the sensation grew, like they were using a nail now, and then a poker. I tried to pull my hands away but someone held them tightly by the wrists. Another fumbled at my face, trying to open my lips, and I pushed my face into my shoulder desperately to keep it from them.
"Flame?" I heard Alex say, "Flame?" I twisted and pulled at my wrists but they were held firm, hard against the searing poker.
"Make them stop!" I sobbed, and the hands pulling at my face drew away. I turned to look at him, distraught, as my fingers were burning still. Then I saw that it was him that held my wrists so tight. My fingers were slowly ballooning out into little purple sausages.
"Alex, let go!" I wailed. How could he torture me like this?
"You've got frostbite Flame, that's why it hurts. We're trying to give you No Pain. Just open your mouth."
I tried to focus on him through the tears and the pain. He wouldn't lie to me. I had to trust him. I opened my mouth slowly, keeping my eyes on him, and someone gave me a wafer of No Pain. As it dissolved on my tongue I felt the fire start to be extinguished, and Alex's grip on my wrists gentled as I calmed. Gradually, I could take in the rest of my surroundings: Konstantin's tent, I could see Yuri, Alex, Konstantin... But it did not feel like Konstantin's tent; his tent was warm, and this one was icy. I was shivering ceaselessly, convulsively, and Alex drew me back into his lap.
"I'm so cold," I murmured, and the others were only in their undermost, softest deerskins, pulling off my boots, "it's freezing in here, aren't you cold?" Alex pressed his arms along mine and folded them into me, cradling my hands, his chest cupping my back. He felt like a furnace.
"Are you sick?" I asked him faintly, tired again now the pain had disappeared, turning and resting my head on his shoulder, "You've got some fever happening there." He kissed my forehead, pressing his cheek to mine.
"Oh, your feet, Flame…"
"They feel fine," I muttered, glancing at them. They didn't look fine though. They looked dead and the toes rotten. I gazed at them, puzzled.
"They're not my feet," I assured Alex, snuggling back into him, trying to holding the shivering still, "Mine feel fine. Where's Yashie?"
"Flame, can you feel your feet?" he asked, his voice that quiet tone that told me he was very serious.
"Um," I frowned, sorting through my jumbled head for the location of my feet, "Feet… Not really… No."
"My hands feel much better now though," I offered instead, but he didn't let go of them.
"Alright. You go back to sleep now," he whispered. Bossy, I thought, but drifted off anyway.
***
When I woke up next, Alex's arms were around me still, we were lying on layers of cosy skins. I eased my wrists out of his grasp and examined my fingers, flexing and stretching them slowly. They didn't look so bad. I tried to look at my feet and woke him, his arms tightening around me.
"Hey," he whispered, lazy with weariness, "you're up." His hands searched out my wrists and clamped them automatically.
"Easy tiger, my hands are fine," I whispered back. He looked amused.
"They're fine now," he said, pulling me into a sitting position and lifting a little husk off the floor. It was a perfect cast of the tip of my finger, the skin sloughed off entirely.
"The Heal sped up the healing process. I could have had a whole set, but the dogs ate the others."
"Oh," I whispered, "Guess they were pretty bad then, huh?"
"Not as bad as your feet,' he said grimly. My feet were elevated on a roll of furs, but were covered in bandages so I couldn't see the damage.
"Not good, huh?" I said, feeling the colour drain out my face at the possibilities but not finding the courage to ask.
"The Heal threw your toenails off, but it hasn't got around to growing them back yet. It might take awhile."
"Bugger."
"Then there's your back, your face… Anyway, you'll be fine, and that what counts, hey?"
I had the feeling he was reproaching me, but couldn't be bothered to figure out why.
"Yashie?"
"She's staying with Syarda, I'll go get her." He went to get up.
"Hang on," I said, catching at his arm.
"What?"
"I missed you," I whispered, wrapping my arms around him and squeezing his familiar warmth.
"Missed you too," he said softly, holding me tight. It was heaven to have him hold me…
"Flame?" the nurse asked, and I glanced at her startled. The hospital… Alex… My heart seized up and I covered his hands in mine, holding my breath to hold in the tears. I was so sick of crying.
"We're going to do his physio…?" the nurse said.
"Oh, I'm sorry," I murmured, getting out of their way. Yashie was sleeping so I could gently move her away, praying she didn't wake up before they were done. She started to fidget just as they finished up, and I hurriedly put her back beside him to avoid any screaming. She squirmed her way up between his arm and his body, and drifted back to sleep with his shoulder for a pillow, arm flung over his chest. She looked so comfortable, so secure in her Daddy's arms.
I picked up his hand. So warm, despite its stillness. Like he had a fire constantly burning within. I laid the length of my cheek into his palm, holding his hand against my face so it wouldn't fall away, willing him to draw life from me and wake.
The snow continued to fall outside, giving no measure to the passing of time, as if it would fall forever, and always had.