Summer Fever

One of the stories I wrote for my Creative Writing class.

Summer Fever

All of my memories before the age of four consist of my father wrapping bandages around my knuckles. My hands always froze and blistered over, especially after the summer weeks. I would be going over some English words or chasing brown lemmings across the yard when the pale blue skin around the joints of my fingers would swell, crust over the sides, and glaze the knuckle in a taut obsidian coat, shortly before the epicenter ruptured and dark blue liquid oozed all over my hands. It didn’t hurt much, but it was a ceaseless nuisance--one my sister never had to endure.

“Why don’t Burrha’s hands ever get yucky?” I would ask as my father smoothed laptev salve over my fingers. A lifetime of working in the nickel mines had made his own hands rough and calloused. After my question, he would always stop mid-caress, look right at me, and tell me that I was special; he’d picked me from the top of my parents’ seftus tree, where the best of the gene pool collected. Babies near the top always got the most sunlight, and once I was detached from the branches, the cold hit me harder than it had hit my sister, who was born naturally.

My usual response was a pout. “That’s not fair.”

As I grew older, I came to realize that Burrha’s rare entrance into the world overshadowed everything that might have made me “special”. She picked up languages the way I picked wood squills for an elaborate bouquet--by the time she was nineteen, she could fluently speak half the 100 languages of the Brotherhood. While I preferred doing housework with our mother instead of trying to improve my slightly-above-average combat skills, Burrha sweated over her training for several hours a day until she’d become the best warrior on our side of Chetyrekh River. She was athletic, musically intuitive, and exceptionally beautiful, with light violet skin and deep cobalt eyes. Normally, one look at her could even stop a Dalmirian in its tracks.

There were a few exceptions, of course. About six months ago, Burrha and I walked to our favorite marketplace on the tip of Cape Chelyuskin in search of fresh muskox meat (the lemmings had gotten into our mother’s supply at home).

It was a typical mid-winter’s day. After the recent eight-inch snowfall, the wind had died down a bit and the sky remained bleak. While my sister and I worked our way to the center of the bustling marketplace, pausing to admire some displays in a fisherman’s stall, I was shoved aside by a scurrying Dalmirian. My left hand slammed against the corner of a wooden table and I stumbled, narrowly missing a rack of Siberian salmon and a nasty fall on the ice as Burrha caught and held me with one of her muscled arms.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes meeting mine as her hands found my own.

“I’m fine.” I winced as a sticky, dark blue liquid pulsed between our fingers. Burrha held up my hand and eyed a small pool of Volrûk blood--my blood--seeping between the gaps in our knuckles.

Within seconds she had thrown me onto the ground and had begun covering my hands with snow. “Hey!” she called back to the Dalmirian, who had seemingly disappeared. “HEY!”

A neighboring spice vendor and a furry family of Lagür turned to stare at her. “Burrha, it’s fine,” I said quickly, my heart racing and fingers going numb as I spoke. “Just leave it.” The Dalmirians had always been on bad terms with our kind, and we both knew that not even the threat of the Brotherhood’s oath could hold them back if provoked.

“No, it’s not,” she replied, digging frantically in her satchel for salve. “Ràckh! Father must’ve taken the last of the laptev.” She looked back toward the direction in which the Dalmirian had vanished, then at me, her eyebrows bending inward and lips thinning.

I knew the look. “No, no. Burrha, please.”

“EOI!” she shouted, in flawless Dalmir. “Stheen-huén!”

The Dalmirian came barreling from out of nowhere, its boar eyes rolling and long ears flopping as it squealed with rage at the insult. Pig-b***h. It began waving its stubby legs around wildly and making more incomprehensible shrieking noises.

My knuckles starting bleeding through their snow covering. I looked from my older sister to the Dalmirian, my mind racing as I struggled to remember basic linguistics.

“Srethn,” I finally got out, the words distorted by my trembling lips.

The apology was quickly forgotten as Burrha snarled what I assumed were more slanders at the Dalmirian.

“Burrha!” My eyes began to water and for a second, she gave me her attention. “Please, let’s go home.”

Before she could respond, the Dalmirian growled and slashed one of its paws against her cheek. Her blood began to mix with mine on the ice between us, but she didn’t seem to notice. She unsheathed a vârsun knife from her belt and sliced off one of the Dalmirian’s ears. When it screeched in response and held up its hooves for another assault, Burrha chopped those off as well.

A crowd of twenty spectators had gathered around the fisherman’s stall. The beings peered out from under furry cloaks, their cheeks flushed from the cold and their own amazement. Several Volrûk looked on in obvious disapproval.

“MREK-OZZEN!” Burrha bellowed.

The Dalmirian stumbled over to another stall, awkwardly retrieved a basket of muskox meat, and threw it in front of my sister as blood poured out from its wrists. Burrha nodded a thank-you, clipped her knife back onto her belt, and grabbed the basket. I stood up and followed her out of the marketplace, leaving a trail of navy blue behind us as we headed home. Somewhere along the frozen banks of Lake Taymyr, I fainted.

♟♟♟

“Astŕida,” my father’s voice whispered in the darkness. Familiar fingers squeezed one of my hands. “Prúh oen sheỉn?”

Can you feel it?  The question flowed throughout my brain, weaving this way and that. I slowly opened my eyes, struggling to form words as I found myself staring at my new prosthetic. My father repeated the inquiry and I managed to nod.

“Burrha would like to speak with you,” he told me. Groggily, I moved my head up and down again, and he left to go find her.

It had been weeks since the accident--weeks since my sister and I had talked. Our silence was mostly due to the fact that my fingers had ended up so frostbitten and absent of blood that my left hand had to be amputated. Upon hearing this news, I became angrier with Burrha than I had been in a long time, and silence infested itself in my rage.

The door to my bedroom opened and Burrha entered. She stole over to my bed and sat on the edge, looking at me with a mix of pity and amusement. “You look awful.”

“Thanks-s,” I slurred. “It’s probably… The drugs.” Burrha reached over, took my prosthetic hand, and stroked it curiously. “Ar-r-r-re you sorry?” I knew better than to expect an apology from her, but my sister was unpredictable.

“No.” Burrha shook her head, stirring the silver waves of hair that fell across her shoulders. “I fought that Dalmirian in the market because I love you.”

“S-some love.” The haze that clouded my senses was beginning to fade. “I lost-t my hand, and… The Brotherhood…”

“I don’t care about the Brotherhood,” she replied. “Ever since the peace treaty, everyone’s been afraid to stand up for himself. So what if I offended a Dalmirian? We all know those b******s deserve it.”

When dozens of endangered species were first escorted across the galaxy to Earth, the Dalmirians had claimed Svalbard before the Volrûk. It was precious land and our kind still lusted for it, even after a millenium of world peace. Sometimes a group of Dalmirian nomads would be seen here, in Siberia, and it was always hard to treat them with respect.

Hard, but not impossible. “My hand,” I said again.

Burrha’s lips curled over her teeth. “Even you’re afraid of speaking your mind.” She stood up from my bed and left the room, muttering English curses under her breath. In that moment, and from then on, I found it impossible to love or understand her.

♟♟♟

I had never seen a soldier before. Even Burrha, who knew how to say the word in fifty different languages, was unfamiliar with the concept. It was a word we learned but never used, sort of like abacus or Internet.

With the emergence of Sarne, however, it seemed we spotted at least one soldier every few days. We would be on the way to or from Cape Chelyuskin when we would see an individual in white camo shouldering an army pack and heading west, toward the Kara Sea, where all the intercontinental freighters were docked.

Kendrid Sarne, like my father, was a descendant of a member of the Brotherhood--one of the founding Fathers. Unlike my father, he was the leader of South Africa. Three months after I received my new hand, news came in that Sarne had begun to massacre the entire Wỹrk population living in his lands.

I had just finished stitching up a torn sleeve in one of father’s old cloaks and Burrha had returned from a hike near the Byrranga Mountains when our parents confronted us with the news. We all sat at the dining room table and stared at the ground, unsure of what to do.

“What does it mean, Påfui?” Burrha finally asked.

“Sarne has broken the oath of the Brotherhood,” my father replied. His entire body seemed numb, aside from his lips, which were drawn into a thin line. “The kappa mines installed by the Fathers will take care of him.”

Kappa mines were nuclear, but only within a specified radius. One thousand years ago, each of them had been adjusted to the perimeter of the country in which it was placed. Suddenly, I understood why my father was disheartened.

“So they all die,” Burrha said, her voice bitter. “Sarne, the humans, the Tałi… The Wỹrk.”

“The price of war was made severe so that no one would dare break the peace.” This was my father’s fatal attempt at rescuing Burrha from the pit of her anger, which was visibly brewing. “The Brotherhood never thought--”

“Of course they didn’t,” my sister interrupted. “Nobody ever thinks on this damn planet.”

“Burrha…,” I began.

“Astŕida, don’t pretend you’re any better,” she snapped. “You’ve always been weak, just like everyone else, worrying too much about yourself and whom you offend. Millions of beings are going to die because of our ancestor’s choices, and all you’ll do is sit here. I know you.” Burrha looked around at each of us, displaying cheeks stained with indignant tears. “I would rather be on Volrûkh, now, in the black hole.” After receiving no audible response from any member of our family, she stood up, grabbed her coat, and sauntered off into the cold.

She left in the night two weeks later to join a group of rebel soldiers who planned on sneaking into South Africa and disarming the kappas. I woke around midnight to see her vârsun knife resting on my nightstand. Hoping to catch a glimpse of her before she was gone, I tip-toed out into the hallway and watched her and my father’s shadows along the far wall of the dining room.

“Goodbye, Påfui.” Her voice was distant.

“If you leave now and follow through with your plans, you violate the treaty and shame your ancestors,” my father replied. “And you break the heart of your sister.”

“Astŕida’s heart has never been in favor with me,” Burrha said. Her shadow adjusted the bag that was slung over her shoulder. “Kendrid Sarne already disregarded the oath. If you want to see something shameful, I suggest turning your eyes to South Africa.” Her shadow disappeared behind the front door.

I lay in bed three hours later, unable to sleep. A slight creaking sounded as my door opened and light spilled into the room, illuminating a masculine figure who stood in the doorway.

“Påfui?” I murmured, sitting up.

He walked over to the edge of my bed and sat down, just like Burrha had, and wordlessly wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I reached out and held him against me as he began to weep, wetting the hairs on my neck with cold tears. Terrified, and relieved that he was finally feeling something, I rocked us back and forth until morning.

♟♟♟

It’s the end of June, now, and I’m caught in the week before summer, when the air gets warmer and a lot of the snow melts, revealing a light green blanket that stretches for miles. Most of the ice around Cape Chelyuskin has melted and the fishermen have brought more fish than ever to the markets. Unfortunately, laptev walruses are a rare sight in summer, so finding more salve tends to be difficult.

“Hello, Yairov,” I say in my best Russian as I plop my satchel on the wooden table of a market stall.

“Good day, Astŕida,” the human replies cheerfully, hanging a gutted taimen on his display line. The string bends from the weight of the large fish. “The usual?”

“Yes, please.” I watch as he walks over to a makeshift shelf, grabs two bottles of red-orange spices, and then returns to me. “Thanks.” I place a handful of coins into his palm.

“My pleasure, as always.” He smiles, deepening the wrinkles in his darkened face.

I take the ruthyn and turn to leave, but pause and whirl back around. “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone selling laptev salve, would you?”

“Ah.” Yairov scratches his head. “I think there’s a Grollox who’s--”

A Dalmirian runs in from the outside of the stall, ramming against Yairov’s display line and sending all the taimen flying. One fish lands in its dog-like paws and it quickly scuttles away, snorting and panting.

“Damn!” Yairov spits. “What an a*****e.” He begins to pick up his catch but stops at the sight of me. “Going somewhere?”

I don’t know if it’s the pre-summer breeze or my sister’s absence or my newfound anger, but I’ve unclipped the vârsun knife from my belt and held it up in a ready stance. I don’t bother to answer Yairov; I take off after the Dalmirian and chase him throughout the marketplace. We dodge fur traders and weave through spice stalls until I finally reach him in the center of the market.

“Stheen-huén,” I spit, launching my knife from my prosthetic fingers in a surprisingly beautiful throw. The edge of the blade lands with a decisive splat in the center of the Dalmirian’s back and the creature falls onto the grass, bleeding profusely. I step on its carcass and bend over to retrieve Yairov’s taimen. “Stupid, filthy pig.”

The beings around me stop to look on in wonder as I hold up the fish victoriously. Yairov makes his way through the crowd and walks up to me, his eyes wide.

I hand him back the fish, but he still has the same shell-shocked appearance. “What?”

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” he asks.

“Yeah.” I begin to smile as it dawns on me. “I do.”

“You’ve violated the treaty,” he continues, pointlessly. He begins to push me away from the crowd and out of the market. “If I were you, I would run. Leave Taymyr Peninsula now, before the rumors reach your father’s ears.”

I don’t plan on going anywhere. Maybe I won’t be an intercontinental soldier like my sister, but I’ll be here, on the inside, pushing society to its limits. One day, others will join me and we’ll envelop the earth, like the swollen edges of a blister waiting to burst.

Then, perhaps, in the midst of chaos, the world will find peace.