I stretch out my arms, and the Dressers strip me of my clothes. In a mere tick, I stand before them completely naked. A few months ago, this would have embarrassed me to the core of my Spirit. But no more. It is what my career requires. It is what Apple demands. My body no longer belongs to me.
The Dressers affix to my body flimsy, sheer pieces of fabric. They lace onto my feet silken shoes with hard, wooden toes. They wrap my white-blonde hair into a complicated knot on the top of my head, and weave glistening jewels through it. But they leave my face to me.
I draw close to the mirror. I open my pink pack and pull from it a bag of yellow and pink stripes. As I do, my hand brushes against the packet of gear I used in Finland when I entered the rare smatterings of wilderness still left. Even though it serves no purpose here in Russia, I keep the gear in my pack to remind me of the time before my calling came—when I was still free to breathe forest air.
But I can’t allow myself to think about that now. Pulling out my Maybellines and Chanels from the bag, I spread them onto the counter. I begin to paint the face of another person upon my own. After I draw the last stripe of black across my lids and the final swoosh of red on my lips, I look in the mirror. The Elizabet I used to be—the girl romping through the vestiges of the Finnish forest, with wild hair and emerging freckles—is gone. I am replaced by the mask of a Kirov Prima Ballerina.
The dread at my calling begins to pound through me. The endless pivots and turns and bodily contortions that will be expected of me tonight course through my mind. The staring eyes and ogling looks and wild claps from the audience creep into my thoughts. The nightly exposure of self and sacrifice of Spirit—done for the audience’s pleasure at Apple’s bidding—washes over me.
But then I remember. The remedies.
I reach into my pink pack. Glancing around to make sure no one is watching, I place two remedy pills on my tongue. One for the pain that the Dance inflicts upon my body. And a Prozac for the dark depression that Dance inflicts upon my Spirit.
The Keeper yells for me. Before I answer his call, I take a tick to whisper into my worship tablet. Staring into its blank surface, I beg Apple to send the relief that the doctor promised. Then I step out into the hallway.
The Keeper looks me over, adjusting a feather draping over my right breast and tugging the sheer bodice of my costume down just a little farther. The audience likes this, I know. They like to see my flesh. He nods his approval and spins me in the direction of the stage.
The other Dancers part to let me through to the red curtain. I take my place near the opening in its enormous folds. I peek out at the gleaming gold walls and sparkling lights and filled blue chairs, expecting the nightly terror to settle in. But it doesn’t. The remedies begin to work.
The darkness of my Spirit and body lifts, and I become someone else inside and out. I feel no shame, no humiliation. I am not me. I am someone capable of sacrificing herself for Apple.
The Chronicle starts off slowly. But then it courses through me, aided by the forbidden Faerie tales told by my Nurse Aga, and the secret myths shared by Lukas, and the stories I made up myself to entertain Eamon. The Chronicle flows from my fingers as if Elizabet’s hand holds my quill and writes the words herself. I become Elizabet.
During the bells of writing, Elizabet and her world grow so real to me that when dawn breaks and I must stop, I blink at my white world of snow and ice as if it has become the dream. And the cacophonic world in the days just before the Healing has become the reality.
But then my dogs begin barking, desperate to be fed. The camp starts to rustle with the sounds of the Boundary servers preparing breakfast, the Testors readying. I am drawn away from the pre-Healing world and back into New North and the Testing.
Before I lose my nerve, I roll my Chronicle as small as I can. I march over to the Bird-Master and hand over the first pages of Elizabet’s story. He is not permitted to review what I’ve written, only to send. As he slides the Chronicle into the container at the carrier pigeon’s neck, I hold my breath. I watch the bird soar into the sky—due south—taking a part of me along with him.
Within a bell, I’m back down in the crevasse chipping away at the ice wall as if nothing ever happened. As if I’ve never stepped back into Elizabet’s world. Back into time.
Yet I’m changed. I am altered by this brush-up with a real person who lived and breathed and danced and trembled and loved in the days before the Earth’s waters rose up and submerged wickedness in a watery grave. No longer is the Healing just something my parents and Teachers and Basilikons lectured me about, a time and place so long ago that it defies comprehension. It is very real, and it is inhabited by someone I know well.
In some ways, this wisdom makes me reluctant to return to Elizabet’s Chronicle. I know what comes next. I don’t want to experience those last days of terror. And I think it will be hard for the people of New North to experience them along with me. But I can’t help myself; as my body balances in a crevasse of ice, my mind journeys back. When I return to my igloo tonight, I will write.
The Chronicle of Elizabet Laine, Part II
The pirouettes propel me across the stage of the Mariinsky Theater. With the remedies in me, I feel so free of pain that I spin faster than ever before. The audience cheers my performance, awarding me with bouquet after bouquet of flowers and a shower of MasterCards. The remedies have worked their magic.
The remedies take away the shame of so many strangers’ staring eyes. The remedies allow me to smile—instead of flinch—while being fawned over at the Patron Gallant party after the ballet. The remedies permit me to tolerate their leers and proprietary caresses.
The Keeper is pleased with my newfound compliance in the days that follow. The better I perform—on stage and at the parties—the more Euros that ballet makes and the more patronage bestowed upon the Kirov. This means more Euros for me, too. Euros that I send to my family in Finland, who desperately need the currency. Their MasterCards have been made worthless. The Rulers can do that to a family and a farm.
I should be happy. I tell myself that I am doing the right thing by dancing. The necessary thing. The very thing that Apple wants from me.
But in the solitude of my room—stacked high with other such rooms in a tower of dizzying heights—the disgrace is hard to bear. If my parents truly understood what I’m doing for those Euros, surely they’d beg me to return home. Surely they wouldn’t want the tainted currency, I tell myself.
Or would they? Isn’t my father the one who encouraged me toward this calling? Isn’t he the one who said Apple wants me to succeed at this career? Didn’t my mother nod along as he urged me toward this path? Sending me forth with her silence?
The very thought that my family might take the Euros no matter the cost to my Spirit makes me feel more alone. I turn on the Panasonic for distraction. But I am greeted with far worse than any pain.
Image after image of rising ocean waters appear on the device. The Media reports that—all over the world—the coasts are flooding. Ice is melting. The Media urges people to take heed and seek higher ground.
“No, it can’t be true,” I whisper to myself.
I feel woozy from the news and the barrage of horrible images. Kneeling before my Apple diptych, I begin to pray, “O Apple, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name …”
Despite my supplications, the blank diptych offers no answers. No solace. I feel darkness descend upon my Spirit, and as if in a dream, I’m drawn to my jars of remedies. I’ve been reserving them for performance days only, but would it really hurt to take one more tonight? Just this once? I place a Prozac on my tongue, and within a few ticks, I feel a relief that Apple alone used to provide.
I am again imagining Elizabet’s last days when I hear the cry of “Relic.” It jolts me out of my daydreaming. I’d guessed that this crevasse was tapped out, something that often happens when the Test days are winding down. I’d guessed wrong.
“Relic,” I hear again, and I realize that
it’s coming from right overhead. From Jasper. His voice is excited, and I stop my ruse of chiseling into the ice wall to listen. Even when he discovered his boat machine—an engine, I think I heard it called—he didn’t sound like this. What in the Gods has he found?
Digging as quietly as I can, I wait for the Boundary Climber to make his way to Jasper. I hear the Climber belay down, and I pray to the Gods that the crevasse structure will let me hear even a whisper of their conversation. Unlike the last Relic Jasper found, which I had to learn about from stray comments between Scouts.
“Are you ready to remove the Relic from the ice, Testor?” the Climber asks in the ritualistic way.
“Yes. It nears the surface, but hasn’t hit the air,” Jasper responds, also in the ceremonial fashion.
“I have the Relic bag ready. You may begin, Testor.”
Scrapes fill the air, and within a tick, I hear the familiar whoosh of the Relic removed from its grave of ice. Less familiar is the sound of the Climber letting out a little gasp.
“It has the sign of Apple on it!” The Climber sounds astonished; he’s lost the slow cadence of the ritualistic exchange.
“I know. Can you believe it?” Jasper answers, his voice giddy.
I freeze. The Apple symbol. Has Jasper just won the second and third set of Advantages? Have I lost the Laurels before they even come close to my head?
Tears well up in my eyes.
The Chronicle of Elizabet deserves to win. If the people of New North, and the Triad along with them, really listen to the story in Elizabet’s Relics, they will learn something far more important than the tired old tale that an Apple Relic will tell.
I hope I’m not just being petty and greedy. I know I should be happy for Jasper for making such a significant find, especially if our parents’ plans work out and we end up Betrothed. But I want to win; I don’t just want to be married to the Chief Archon like my mother. Even if we don’t end up in a Union, maybe I could strike a deal with Jasper, kind of like the rumors of past alliances, indeed the rumors that swirl around his uncle and my father. It would be fitting in a way. Yet, what would I ask for in exchange for my support of him? The only thing I really want is the Archon Laurels.
Only a bell or so until the final horn of evening, but still I go through the motions of pretending to work the crevasse wall. Even if I found something, nobody would care, not with the news of Jasper’s amazing discovery. Not even Aleksandr or Neils, if they ever had any interest in me at all, that is. As I scrape away at the stubborn ice wall, my mind drifts back to Elizabet’s Chronicle.
I know that I’ll return to my quill and paper when the sinik is over. Elizabet deserves to have her last ticks memorialized instead of being lost in the waters of the Healing. I almost feel I owe it to Elizabet to write the best Chronicle I possibly can. Is it Eamon’s death that propels me, too? Does it even matter? I will finish. And then I’ll send my Chronicles back to the Aerie and leave the decision to the Gods.
The Chronicle of Elizabet Laine, Part III
I stand on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater, ready for the orchestra to commence. All the Kirov Dancers are supposed to be practicing for the Ballet’s debut of La Bayadere, and the stage should be filled. But I am alone. The Panasonic reports have driven them all away. For hours Media has been advising people to evacuate the port city. One by one, the Corps Dancers left the stage, as their family members arrived at the theater in tears. Then the Principals decamped as loved ones stood at the stage door, begging for them to leave. But no one comes for me—my family is far away in Finland—so I stay. Where else would I go?
Anyway, even though I’ve been offering prayers to Apple just in case, I can’t fully believe the broadcasts. It doesn’t seem possible that the ancient streets of St. Petersburg could be submerged as Media threatens. The city has withstood so many ravages over the centuries, why would it fall now? And truly, would the Keeper really continue the Ballet if the world was about to end?
The remaining violinist begins to play, and I ready my body for the grueling opening of La Bayadere. Just as I’m about to extend my arms and legs for the arabesque, the Keeper yells out, “Elizabet! Come backstage!”
I lower my legs and arms and race to the back. What have I done wrong? The Keeper never interferes with the final rehearsal unless my dancing is absolutely horrific. And I’ve barely begun.
The Keeper is waiting just behind the red curtain’s final fold. “Gather your things. There is a Patron who will take you to safe passage on his boat. And me along with you.”
“A Patron?” What in the name of Apple is the Keeper talking about?
“Yes.” The Keeper whispers the Patron’s Water-name.
I recognize it. He is one of my most ardent admirers, one who sends flowers to the stage every evening and who sits alone in a special box seat leering at me night after night. One whose caresses grow more and more proprietary with every Patron party. He is rumored to be among the richest men in St. Petersburg. And the most corrupt. The very thought of him makes me shiver. Out of fear.
Still, the Keeper’s command confuses me. “You mean, he’ll take us tonight? After the performance?”
“No, Elizabet. We must go right now.” For the first time since I’ve known him, the Keeper looks scared.
His expression immobilizes me. If the Keeper—a powerful official who terrifies so many—is actually scared, could Media’s reports be true? Media is a liar: sometimes on Apple’s side, sometimes not.
“Now, Elizabet! This may be our only chance,” the Keeper screams at me, shaking me out of my reverie.
I run back to my dressing room. Stripping off my practice clothes, I search around for something suitable to wear on a boat. My Mini and Manolos won’t do. I poke my head into one of the other dancer’s cubicles and grab the Levis and boots left behind by one of the male dancers in his haste to leave. Pulling on his clothes, I reach for my pink pack.
The very tick I step out of my dressing room, the Keeper grabs my hand. “We must run.”
There is no need to duck and weave through the corridors of the Mariinsky Theater. The normally teeming hallways are deserted, and we make their way to the gilded front doors in record time. When we push the heavy doors open, I don’t recognize the streets outside.
The Teatralnaya ploshchad—usually so orderly and elegant—is falling apart. The streets are slick with water. Thousands of people—Euro, Penny, and Homeless in one enormous mass—crush the streets. They carry babies in their arms and overstuffed packs on their backs, and they are trying to run.
Then I discover why. I can hear the sound of rushing water like an underbelly roar beneath the noises the mob makes in trying to flee. The Teatralnaya ploshchad empties into the port on the River Neva and from there into the Bay of Finland on the Baltic Sea. Since these people don’t have time to make it inland, they want to ride the rising waters on boats.
The horde is merciless. People have been trampled underfoot, but I can’t let myself to look upon them. I cannot weaken or I’ll be down there with them. The Keeper clings to my hand like a life preserver, because that it is exactly what I am for him. Without me, I realize, he has no ticket on the Patron’s boat.
“Where are the Guards?” I yell to the Keeper over the sound of the throngs.
“They were among the first to evacuate. Don’t forget, they control the boats.” He yells back.
The people of St. Petersburg have been abandoned. The Guards, the men sworn to protect us from within and without, have deserted us. The citizens of St. Petersburg must face this catastrophe alone.
In the distance, I hear screaming. I realize that the sound comes from the direction of the port, and within a few ticks, a wave of water rushes down the street. Bodies and debris rain down with it, bringing death closer to me by the tick. The screaming now comes from my own throat. Drenched and disoriented, I clutch onto the Keeper’s hand. I need him as much as he needs me right now. He hasn’t told me exactly where the Patron’s boat i
s docked. Intentionally, I’m sure.
To my own surprise, I take charge of the situation. Dragging the Keeper, I sprint the remaining stretch to the port, weaving in and out of the mass of humanity in a frantic dance. Finally we reach the port.
People are hysterical to get closer to the few boats still moored. They leave the weak and old in their wake. I can’t bear to look back at the trampled corpses behind them. What is happening to everybody? To me?
“There! His boat is just there!” I hear the Keeper yell over the din.
The Patron’s boat—a vast, luxurious vessel—is one of the last left in the port. He waited until the last possible tick for me. As the Keeper and I approach, armed men block our way with raised spears and knives and guns.
The Keeper lifts his hand in a gesture of peace and calls out. “I am the Keeper of the Kirov Ballet. And I have brought Elizabet Laine as the Patron requested.”
He pushes me toward them as his offering. The men lower their weapons and reach out for my hand. They pass me to the Patron, this greedy man fat with Euros who has emerged. As soon as I’m safe in the Patron’s grasp, the armed men push the Keeper back, away from the dock.
When he fights back, the men throw the Keeper into the rising waters of the River Neva.
As I scream out in horror, the Patron tries to offer me strange comfort. “Sorry, my dear. I only have room for one more.”
I watch the carrier pigeon fly south. The bird carries the final pages of the Chronicle of Elizabet Laine. I’m pretty sure that its message will not win me the Archon Laurels, not given Jasper’s find. But I feel strangely satisfied, as if I’ve truly done my duty by Elizabet and Eamon.
I feel anxious, too. No one was ever written a Chronicle like mine before.
Relic (The, Books of Eva I) Page 12