by Ruth Lauren
The inmates lined up in the snow stand still, some of them huddled in their furs with only their downcast eyes showing. None of them look at me. The warden walks back to the open ice dome, and the Peacekeeper pushes me farther forward. “Make no mistake, though,” the warden says, her voice carrying across the cold, clear morning. “This was not an escape.” She pauses. “There is no escape from Tyur’ma.”
With that, she gives a curt nod to the Peacekeeper, and he thrusts me through the gap and into the dome. Immediately the cold presses down on me. I clench my fists, trying to keep my breathing even as he places the first ice block over the entrance. After that, I don’t watch as each block is piled up, sealing me inside the ice. The wind cuts down, sounds are muted, and the world is restricted to warped images. Another Peacekeeper approaches and launches something at the ice. I lurch back just as a thick metal spike breaks through. When it’s pulled out, there’s a hole in the ice. He does this in several other places, and in each spot bitterly cold air whistles through the hole left behind. I crouch and bury my face in my mittens so I don’t have to look.
When I raise my head, I’m trapped in a bubble of freezing air. Already I’m shivering hard. How long has Sasha been out here? While I was chained inside the warm forge feeling sorry for myself, she was being questioned by Warden Kirov and then punished.
A rush of shame pulses through me. I made her believe I could lead her out of here. I gave her hope. She trusted me.
I let my head drop onto my knees and shiver and refuse to look up even when the rest of the inmates start their workday and orders are shouted and boots stomp right past me. I’m rigid with cold, my teeth chattering so hard it hurts, when I look up again. The prison grounds are empty. Everyone is working. The sun is arcing up toward its peak in the sky, though it’s hard to believe it ever warms the land below it.
Sasha is slumped on the ground. I watch her for a moment while my heart tries to pump blood around my sluggish body. I get to my knees and hammer on the ice, and then I stand and start shouting. She stirs. “Sasha, get up. You have to get up. We have to move,” I scream at the ice.
I jump up and down on numb feet. “Get up. Get up now, Sasha.” Suddenly I know that if she doesn’t move, she will die. If that happens, it will destroy me. “Move!”
She shifts. I throw my arms and legs out as I jump up and down, yelling that she has to do the same. It takes her forever to haul herself to her knees and then to stumble to her feet.
I think her mouth moves, but I can’t hear anything. I shake my head.
“It hurts.” The words come faintly.
“I know. But we have to move. We’ll freeze if we don’t.”
And so she does, copying my movements, and I know that even when I’m tired I can’t stop, because she will too. We stamp and jump, but it’s so cold, and I’m so tired that I only want to sleep.
Thoughts creep into my head about curling up in the snow and resting, just for a little while. I stare at the ripples and twists the ice makes on Sasha as she swings her arms. The sun peaks and slowly starts to descend again. I think about clawing my way out of here, kicking the ice until it breaks or I do. And after that, I stop thinking anything at all. I’m so cold, and the only way I know my feet are still moving is because I can see them.
Eventually I notice I’m shuffling around in a circle. I can’t move fast anymore—even if I wanted to. The ice hall is lit for the night, and the other prisoners are inside. My stomach growls and cramps.
Sasha has stopped moving. She’s sitting on the ground, leaning against a wall, not even pulling her legs or arms in to herself. I pound on the ice until pain rattles up past my elbows to my shoulders. I shout at her and then at anyone else, but no one hears and no one comes. I want Mother. I want Mother, but the worst thing is that I know she couldn’t help. When I was little I believed she could, no matter what had happened. Nothing could ever be that wrong, because there was nothing she couldn’t put right. All I had to do was ask.
Standing here, out of breath from screaming at my sister to not die, I feel a different kind of cold inside me. The kind that tells me there’s no point wanting Mother. There’s nothing at all she could do.
I slither down the wall, wanting to thump it, but my arm is slow and won’t obey me.
When the prisoners file out of the ice hall to be locked in their cells for the night, I watch as though it isn’t me in here anymore. It’s some other girl. I stare at the ice. Stone and ice between me and the world outside Tyur’ma.
The last of the prisoners goes into the cellblock. The Peacekeeper locks the door. Farther down, the boys’ block is locked too. The torches are lit on the top of the wall, blinking into life one by one, sending a tiny orange glow through my prison of ice.
And then everything is silent. The stars come out. The wolves’ howls are distant. All I want to do is close my eyes. So I do.
I panic as I wake up. There’s something wrong with my eyes. I rip a mitten off, though it takes me long seconds to remember how to do it and then to make my hands cooperate. I rub my face, pushing away cold crystals that tear into my eyelashes. Hoarfrost has settled on my lashes. There’s nothing wrong with my eyes.
My fingernails are tinged blue. I fumble with my mitten forever, trying to pull it back on. It feels as though my body might crack in the middle as I sit, and I wonder why I woke up at all.
Then I see the orange glow out in the grounds. A faint crackle follows. Smoke trails up into the sky.
A figure runs across the white backdrop of the grounds, but I lose track of it somewhere near the store. The orange glow climbs higher, flickering and growing. Fire, I think. Am I dreaming? Is it just a wish for heat that makes it seem so real? Maybe I’m having visions now.
I stare at the fire, watching as it snakes higher into the night sky, while idle thoughts flit through my frozen mind. Shouts ring out, and suddenly I’m awake. Peacekeepers are running over the snow. I crawl to where the door of the dome was. The warden herself, a swath of shifting, slipping gray furs through the ice, strides in front of me toward the fire. It is a fire. A building in the grounds is on fire. I spin around, trying to orient myself. The cellblocks are to my right, still dark, but the doors are open and prisoners are streaming out. In the mad rush, I can’t tell who any of them are.
The Peacekeepers yell directions, and I see other prisoners from the boys’ block handing out buckets. Moving bodies block my view, but I haul myself to my feet with the dawning realization of which building it is that’s on fire.
It’s our escape route. It’s the tower.
CHAPTER 17
Someone smacks into the ice wall next to me, a muffled thump and a brown blur. But I stand staring in horror at the flames. They have to put it out. They have to save the tower.
“Valor!” It’s Katia, banging her mittens against the ice. “Are you all right? Valor!”
I tear my gaze away from the fire. “Katia. I’m fine.” I’m not. I know I’m not. My thoughts are stuck in mud, my hands and feet are frozen, and our escape route—the only thing I had left—is burning in front of my eyes.
A girl rushes by and half knocks Katia off her feet. Katia steadies herself. “Warden Kirov says I can get you out now. We need everyone to put out the fire.”
I scrabble at the block in front of me, but I can no longer remember where the door was. Katia shoves at one of the blocks, then throws herself at it. Nothing happens. She runs off, coming back with a pickax from the mines. All the while, prisoners and Peacekeepers are shouting over the roar of the fire and everyone is running around, flashes of dark against the snow.
“Stand back,” Katia yells, swinging the pickax over her shoulder.
“No. Get Sasha first.” I press myself to the ice wall. Sasha hasn’t moved.
Feliks runs up with a shovel. Katia gestures at him, saying something too low for me to hear. He nods and runs to Sasha’s dome, swinging the shovel and driving it into the ice. Katia heaves her pickax forward and it cr
unches on contact, knocking her off into the snow. She grabs the handle and wrenches.
She swings again and again, each time the momentum of the pickax throwing her body off balance. But she keeps coming back until there’s a chink of clear space, air blowing through it. I suck it in gratefully, though it’s freezing and acrid with smoke.
Katia pulls at the block, working her hands into the gap, grunting with the effort, until it falls away, hitting the snow with a thunk. And then we both fall on the rest of the blocks, pushing and pulling and hacking them out of the way with the pickax until I fall through the gap, Katia dragging me by the arms.
She clings to me, her face pink, her great, heaving breaths pushing icy clouds into the air. Her arms are limp and shaking as she hugs me. I press Katia tight for a second, then I have to get to Sasha. I stagger upright and stop. Feliks has already dragged her clear of the ice dome. Around him lie the broken remains of the ice door. And on the ground lies Sasha, her lips and eyelids tinged blue, her skin as ashen as the soot-marked snow around her.
I drop to my knees. Katia brushes Sasha’s hair back. “She’s so cold.”
Feliks puts his hand on her neck. “Valor, her heart—it’s not working.”
I shake my head. No. This can’t be happening.
I’m numb all the way through to my heart.
Footsteps stop behind me. “Get her to the infirmary. Her too.” It’s Dr. Lenina, her face grim, braid slung over her shoulder. There are two prisoners with her, carrying a piece of canvas strung between two poles. “Come with me.” The doctor takes my arm as the two prisoners lift Sasha’s body onto the stretcher.
I pull away. “No. I have to put the fire out. I have to—the tower.” I can’t think straight. Everything’s fractured like cracked ice.
She shakes her head, about to argue, and I run. My feet have lost all feeling, sending me stumbling into the snow, but I have to put out the fire. I have to stop it burning before everything is destroyed. It’s the wrong thing to focus on. Somewhere in the back of my head, I know that. But I can’t face the other thing. Not yet. Not now.
Katia runs alongside me, her boots hitting the snow hard. The ground beneath us is solid, compacted by the chaos of all the prisoners running around. One Peacekeeper has a team of maybe forty boys and girls collecting snow in buckets and piling it up against the laundry.
I grab someone near me. “What are they doing?”
The prisoner shakes my hand off. “They’re trying to protect the building closest to the tower. Peacekeeper says we have to stop the fire from spreading.” She dashes off in the direction of the store.
Something high up on the tower makes a creaking, groaning sound. Katia bites her lip. She knows exactly what it means for us if we don’t stop the flames. Sparks and embers float through the smoke-thick air, landing on our clothes. We push forward into the heat, and my hands start stinging and burning. They’re not blue anymore, though. The heat is seeping through me now, making my thoughts faster and sharper.
Prisoners shovel snow, banking it up around the fire, but it’s melting as fast as they dig.
“We have to do something,” I shout to Katia. It can’t all be for nothing.
A hot blast of air blows into my face, and I blink warm grit from my eyes. There are four lines of prisoners passing buckets of snow down the chain and throwing it on the flames. Each time it melts in midair, evaporating with a hiss. They need to work faster.
“Come on,” I shout to Katia. We run forward. I look around, blinking against the smoke, searching for something I can use to move the ice. If we transport the ice blocks from the domes and throw them onto the fire all at once, maybe we can douse it.
I grab Katia’s hand to keep her close. The fire is raging up inside the tower. The door at the bottom is open and burning, and the whole of the interior is engulfed in thick orange flames, burning so fiercely I can hear them roar. The single window at the top of the tower bursts, sending thick shards of glass flying out. We flinch as one smacks into the snow in front of us.
A grinding noise comes from the tower, and for a second the crenelated turret around the top looks as though it’s sinking. In slow motion, the midsection of the building crumples, and a wave of heat blasts out.
“Fall back,” shouts a Peacekeeper as the first stones tumble and the broken tower looms over us. Prisoners scatter, pushing into one another as they scramble away. Katia’s hand is torn from mine, and I’m knocked forward onto the ground. Someone steps on my fingers and I scream, choking on smoke and ash.
I will not lose Katia like this. I will not.
I push up and scan the sooty faces running around me.
“Valor. Valor!” Katia is fighting her way back to me, buffeted on both sides by prisoners slipping on the mud-slush ground. Smoke billows over me, hot and stinking, stinging my eyes and blocking my view.
A hand latches onto my arm. Katia. “Run,” she yells, pulling me back toward open ground. So I do. My boots slip. I lose and regain my footing. My lungs feel like they’ve been roasted, my eyes burn, tears fall down my cheeks. I run.
Around us a rabble of other prisoners run too, until the building behind gives one more crack and hits the ground, sending a shudder through the earth. Smoke and dust roll along the snow and overtake us so we’re all running blind, but Katia never lets go of my arm until we’re clear on the other side of the prison compound, near the entrance to the mines.
I drop to the ground, coughing and panting. Katia huddles next to me. “Are you hurt?”
I shake my head, though I hardly know whether it’s true. My hands and feet feel as though they’re on fire. My chest is wheezing, and my throat is raw. Groups of prisoners huddle on the ground around us. Some are running around looking for friends. Some are carrying stretchers, empty or in use, to the infirmary.
Peacekeepers are dotted around the grounds watching the prisoners, but most eyes are still on the blaze. Including Warden Kirov’s. She stands by the entrance to the girls’ cellblock, a grim look on her face as she watches the ruins of the tower burn.
Nicolai runs toward us, drawing my attention away from the fire. He’s frightened. More frightened than any of the other prisoners I’ve seen tonight looming out of the dark or lit by the flames. Soot smudges one of his eyebrows.
“Are you all right?” he asks. “Do you know if anyone was in the tower?”
“We’re fine,” says Katia, her hand clasping my arm again.
“Who would have been in the tower?” I ask, but the answer comes to me before I finish the question. Warden Kirov is right here, and the only other person who uses the tower is Prince Anatol.
Nicolai bites his lip. “What about Sasha?”
I can’t answer him. I look back to the burning rubble. Dirty snow merges with churned-up mud littered with stones and charred debris. Ash and burning scraps of paper float like dark fairies on the air.
I sit and put my head against Katia’s and watch as the tower and the inner wall of Tyur’ma burn. As the ruins go up in smoke, they take with them any hope of us ever escaping from this prison of ice and snow.
CHAPTER 18
It starts snowing in thick sheets. I squint, blinking fat flakes away. There’s a strange void around the fire where the snow is falling and melting, but the fire isn’t spreading. It’s dying down, by inches at first, and then faster. The warden sees it too. She strides in front of us, the smoke at her back smothered by the flurry. Most prisoners are sitting now, clumped together, covered in soot and grime.
“You will be confined to the cellblocks until we have investigated,” the warden calls across the grounds.
I suddenly remember the figure I saw running from the tower when I was in the ice dome, before anyone else even noticed the flames. This was no accident. Someone started the fire.
“There will be no work detail tomorrow. Those of you needed for the cleanup and repair operation will be called in the morning and in the following days.”
The Peacekeepers st
art moving among us, forming groups, then lines of prisoners to take back to the cellblocks.
“This one needs to go to the infirmary,” says the Peacekeeper standing over me. I hadn’t even noticed his arrival. A pair of girls carrying one of Dr. Lenina’s stretchers stand next to him, stamping their feet, soot streaking their faces.
I force myself to sit up straight, trying to think of some way to say I can’t go without being defiant. I don’t want to go in there. Don’t want to face what I’ll have to face if I do.
Katia puts her arms around me. “Go,” she says quietly. “You should go.” She jumps up and joins a line heading back to the cellblock before I can even answer. The girls with the stretcher are staring at me.
“I can walk,” I say, scrambling to my feet.
Through the snow I see Warden Kirov give the Peacekeeper a nod. I get a long, stone-faced look before another Peacekeeper takes her attention. She’s not finished with me.
My Peacekeeper takes my arm and marches me to the infirmary. I try not to drag behind and annoy him, but I’d do anything not to go. I can’t bear to see Sasha still in there. I don’t know what I’ll do. I stumble, half-blinded by the falling snow, toward the infirmary. The Peacekeeper hauls me upright, but I’m crying so suddenly and so hard that it’s a miracle I’m still on my feet.
I’m totally disoriented when we reach the doors. He unlocks them, pushes me inside, and locks them again. I stand on the mat crying. Oil lamps are lit in little alcoves all along the walls, and all six beds in the ward are full this time. Dr. Lenina is leaning over one of the beds, directing a girl standing opposite. The doctor glances my way, presses a bowl into the girl’s hands, and hurries over to me.
“Valor. Let’s put you in here.” She moves toward the room I was in last time. I don’t follow. The girl lying under the heaped blankets on the bed she was standing by is Sasha.