The Faarian Chronicles: Exile (3 page)

Chapter 3: Snow, Sunshine, and Supercuts

At fifteen, I still didn’t understand. I’d begged Dad to
renege, to not make me go. But after two years of delays, the plan was set and
my mother was sending people to
fetch
me. Part of me was curious,
excited even for the adventure, but most of me didn’t want to leave everything
I knew, all my dreams and goals, my family, my friends, everything, behind.

Outside, Dad looked up and saw me standing at the window
with my arms crossed. He gave me a sad kind of smile and turned back to the
barn, his shoulders hunching. He didn’t like this any better than I did.

I sighed and gave in, going outside to sit on the steps with
him. I kicked at the dirt with the toe of my sneaker and tried to figure out
how to say goodbye.

“They’re here,” the Professor announced, his hovering
holo-projector scuttling up next to me. “Setting down in the meadow past the
tree line.” Professor Obot, aka Obot the Robot, was my absentee mother’s
version of the Video Professor, but worse, a boring hologram who half the time
forgot he wasn’t a real person.

I squinted at the trees.
It must be something big.
The horses thought so too, going wild in the paddock. After a few minutes,
something trundled past the trees, taking the long way around even though there
were gaps more than big enough for what looked like… a VW bus?

Yep. Okaaay. They must have left the main spaceship in the
forest. Maybe they thought they were being stealthy or something. But the van
was leaving an oddly wide, flattened trail behind it. Definitely not stealthy.

There was something strange about how the vehicle moved,
hovering almost.

 “I’m leaving to meet my mother for the first time in a
hippie van?
You’ve got to be joking,” I said, wondering for the millionth
time what the people on Macawi were like. Probably mostly normal I guessed,
like Sensei and the Robot. It wasn’t like Macawans were little green men or
anything. After all, they had come from Earth originally. Thousands of years
ago they were known as the Amazons from an area near the Black Sea.

I watched as the van parked in the exact center of the barn,
with help from the Professor and Sensei waving it forward as if directing
planes at the airport. Dad shut the big barn doors, leaving the interior
swirling with dust and dark in the artificial lights.

An enormous woman stepped out the sliding door of the VW.
She was literally the biggest woman I’d ever seen, almost seven feet tall and
muscled. She had a heavily pock-marked face and wore desert fatigues and combat
boots. She looked around, assessing things and tucked a few unruly strands of
bright green hair under her stocking cap.

***

A few weeks after I learned about the custody agreement from
h-e-double-hockey-sticks, we returned to the slopes with Andi and her mom
Judith in tow. They'd lost Andi’s dad at about the same time as my mother left,
around my first birthday. Dad was in over his head with me, the house, and his
business, so he hired Judith to be our live-in housekeeper and nanny. Andi and
Judith have lived with us ever since. My mother may have given birth to me, but
Judith was the only mom I’d ever known. At one time I'd hoped Dad and Judith
would get together and Andi would be my real sister. But now that I realized
Dad was still in love with my mother, it made sense why he and Judith had
always been just friends, and why he'd agreed to this awful custody agreement.

Andi and I left our parents on the bunny slopes where Dad
was teaching Judith to ski, while we headed out on our snowboards and met up
with some other kids. I don’t remember whose idea it was to ignore the warning
signs and go out of bounds. All I know is the deserted, pristine powder made
for the best snowboarding ever – right up until it suddenly wasn’t.

We found an amazing jump and I went last, throwing a totally
ridiculous trick I had no hope of landing. I made it snow all around me as I
crashed into the soft powder. I looked around for the score on my epic fail,
but the others weren’t where I thought they’d be. I shook snow out of my face
and spotted them racing downhill. They weren’t even waiting for me. Ru-ude!

The shaking ground under me registered for the first time. I
heard a sound like the rumble of thunder.

My breath caught and I jerked around to look behind me. All
I saw was white - a rolling, churning, tumbling wave bearing down on me. I
gasped and pushed myself up as fast as I could, hopping to get started in the
soft powder, and following Andi and the others downhill. They’d almost made it
to the tree line, but I couldn’t get going fast enough after my fall. I wasn’t
going to make it.

Turning toward the safety of the trees slowed me down when
what I needed most was speed. The ground was trembling so badly that it was a
miracle I was still upright. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the enormous
wave of bright white snow about to wash over me. Deadly tree branches showed
themselves amongst the roiling tumult.

I was almost to the trees when I saw Andi and the other
kids, their faces horrified, hands waiting to catch me, to pull me in. I was
still ten feet away when the avalanche broke over my head, sweeping me up and
pulling me under.

I tumbled blindly for I'm not sure how long and tried to
swim toward the surface, remembering that’s what you were supposed to do. But
it was impossible. I fell end over end, not sure which way was up as the bright
white of the snow turned into the pitch black of burial. Eventually I became
aware that I had stopped and opened my eyes to see… nothing. I pressed out
against my entombment, struggling and panting frantically, starting to
hyperventilate.

I tried to concentrate on breathing slowly and figuring out
which way was up in the darkness. Gravity, I thought. Okay, gravity. I felt my
left side pressing into the snow inside the little bubble created by my
struggle. That must be down.

I tried to sit up but only ended up falling over. It took a
few more adjustments to be able to sit upright.

Something hard poked into my thigh, and I found a jagged
edge. Digging produced a divine gift – a ragged, six inch slice of snowboard. I
worked my way upward as best I could, but my warmth was turning the snow into
an icy wall around me. My progress was almost non-existent. How long had it
been?

Over and over, I buried myself in snow from my short,
personal ceiling. It was freezing, and I had lost one of my gloves. My hand
hurt from the cold. How did Eskimos do it?

Surely everyone would be looking for me. Andi would call Dad
and 911 on her cell. I screamed, but heard no response, only my own muffled
yell. I kept digging, burying myself and wriggling up, again and again, for
what seemed like hours. My right hand was completely numb now, beyond pain. I
didn’t care. I was so frantic to get out, I barely noticed its uselessness.

After what seemed like an eternity I heard dogs barking
above, and people calling my name. I tried to scream again, but couldn’t seem
to drag enough air into my lungs. How long had it been? How long could I
possibly stand? I was running out of air, and fast.

My heart went into overdrive and I scrabbled at the icy
ceiling with my makeshift trowel, beginning to see points of light in the dark,
hoping they were the sun, that I was almost there. But they faded and strangely
reappeared in different spots.

It took my fuzzy brain a minute to realize they were
starbursts in front of my eyes. My hands and legs were all tingly and numb. My
hearing was growing even more muted. This was asphyxiation.

I couldn’t move my fingers anymore. My tingling hands
cramped into tight claws that I could not seem to loosen, and the bit of board
slipped through my fingers. I couldn’t stop now though. Something pushed me to
continue clawing at the snow, ripping at it, working my way up with every last
bit I had.

I heard a dog barking above me, clawing toward me too, thank
God! And a subdued voice calling to the others; calling not yelling, no
excitement there.

I vaguely wondered why and hoped he’d hurry it up, trusting
the dog to keep digging even as my eyesight got dimmer. I couldn't remember...
what was I....

I awoke to the insistent beeping of a heart monitor pounding
into my skull and quiet arguing on either side of me. The bed I was lying on
jerked from side to side. The crook of my arm felt uncomfortably warm.
Something covered my nose and mouth, pumping warm, moist air at me that smelled
faintly like Judith’s coconut macaroons.

“This is ridiculous! You can’t just park her out in the hallway,
for God’s sake. This is a hospital!” said a man's voice I didn’t recognize.

“Then get her a room with direct sun. I told you, she has an
extreme form of SADs.” Sensei won the tug-of-war on my bed and rolled me out
the door.

What was she talking about? I wasn’t extremely sad, although
some sunshine would be nice right about now.

 “We’re treating her for hypothermia! I think that’s a
little more important than seasonal depression at the moment,” sputtered the
pompous voice from the foot of the bed. He was in between me and my doorway to
sunshine. “Just who do you think you are, anyway? If you don’t stop interfering
with my patient, I’ll have to have you thrown out.”

“I’m her Karate instructor, and I’d like to see you try,”
Sensei said in a calm voice with an edge of steel. I snorted. So would I.

“Doctor,” I recognized Dad’s soothing, let’s-be-reasonable
voice and tried to open my eyes. “It’s only temporary. We’ve already sent
someone to get her full spectrum lights from home, and I’m just going to roll
this IV cart along with us. I’m afraid you’ll have to listen to Sensei on this
one.”

“Are you people mad?! How am I supposed to treat her for
hypothermia in the hallway?”

“Be creative, Doctor. Be creative,” Sensei advised as she
wheeled me to the end of the corridor and parked me next to a huge window in
the blessed sunlight, stripping off the layers covering my head and arms.
Ooooh. It felt sooo good. I never wanted to move from that spot.

“She’s lucky to have survived that mountain, and now you two
are going to kill her.” I could almost hear the doctor throw up his hands as he
walked away muttering something about “crazy foreign punk-haired militant
feminists.”

Some hours later, I was back in my hospital room, the sun
having shifted to stream in through its window. I was sitting up now, thanks to
the nifty raise-able back on my bed, and scarfing down warm tofu pudding and
almond milk cocoa. It wasn’t as good as Judith’s, but I was surprised the
hospital even had stuff for vegans.

A new doctor squinted through my personal spotlight of
full-spectrum lights to explain that I’d been buried for two and a half hours,
much too long to have survived with no oxygen.

Dad looked haggard but happy, slumped in a chair at my
bedside. Andi and Judith's eyes were red from crying. Sensei was the calmest of
the bunch, looking proud and almost… smug.

Everyone said I must have had an air pocket. The doctors,
nurses, and the technicians too. Or, there must have been some small hole to
the surface allowing air in…. Or, it was a miracle. They all had some way of
explaining it to themselves, since it didn’t make sense otherwise. I did have a
twisted knee and a mild case of frostbite on my right hand, but all in all, I
was lucky – or something.

Dad and Sensei agreed with the others, but didn’t voice any
theories of their own. While everyone else was busy, I overheard Sensei whisper
to him, “You see? This proves she’ll be fine. Now you have to tell her.”

Odd thoughts kept running through my head about how it
didn’t make sense. Every time I glanced over at Dad he seemed to be avoiding my
gaze. The whole thing was strangely suspicious. What was seasonal depression,
and why did I never know that I had an extreme case?

After the doctor and nurses left, resoundingly assured that
I wanted all the lights left on, I leaned back and soaked up the rays. I could
almost imagine I was lying by the pool in summer. Even having to ignore the
Robot’s droning, nasal voice helped set the scene. Dad put him under strict
orders to stay by the door and disappear when any of the hospital staff came
around.

After a while, Andi went to check out the cafeteria. Judith,
who’d been fidgeting in the corner for hours, announced, “I can’t take it
anymore.” She rummaged through her shoulder bag, producing a comb. “Your hair
is a rats’ nest, Sunny. Do you know how much debris you have stuck in there?”

She reached over and pulled out a six-inch twig that I
didn’t realize had been poking me in the scalp until she removed it. She began
attacking the snarls with a vengeance, as if personally offended by their
presence. I tried to relax and let her have her way.

After ten minutes of tugging and “cursing” (shuckers, shoot,
and crud were the extent of Judith’s swear vocabulary) she shook her head.
“These knots are impossible. We’re gonna have to cut these puppies out.” She
rummaged again in her oversized bag and pulled out a small pair of scissors.
Judith was such a girl scout.

“Uh, Judith…,” Dad began from his seat by the window.

“Yes, I know you and her mother have some weird agreement
about never cutting her hair, but look at this! There’s no way I can get this
out.” She grabbed a sticky mat of hair full of pine sap and shook it at him.

“Judith, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the Robot
declared pompously. “Not unless you want to hurt her for some reason, as a
punishment for going out of bounds in the first place, perhaps? If so, I wholly
concur. Please proceed.”

Apparently he was still holding a grudge from the time I
tried to “accidentally” lose his projector out the car window at 60 mph. Sigh.
He was never going to forget that.