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The Sleeper

Sonia Segura

    One wrong move and I was for sure going to end up flat as a pancake! While the climb up the Ural mountains of Russia had seemed like a piece of cake, the inside of the tallest peak Mount Naordnaya was another thing! What had I been thinking?! Obviously I hadn’t! Or else I would not find myself in this predicament!
    Okay, let me back up to a year ago when I was at my Uncle’s deathbed. My name is Danielle Lang, Dani to my friends and family, and to my uncle, being the person that raised me when my father, his brother, and my mother died in a car crash. I was five years old and he was my only family in the whole world! I was never exactly sure what my uncle did for a living. I know he always brought me the most wonderful gifts, while I attended school and he wandered the world. I always thought he was some kind of archeologist, but he turned out to be a treasure hunter, finding artifacts and selling them to the highest bidder.
    I had just turned eighteen and graduated high school and I didn’t expect I would be loosing the only family I had. I loved my uncle with his incredible stories, that ignited my imagination and made me realize that I had the same adventure genes as he did.
    As I sat by his bed in the hospital I listened to him asking a last promise of me. I thought how could I deny this wonderful man? My uncle started telling me a story that seemed unreal. He had been traveling in Russia after he had found some old manuscripts. They mentioned a legend about the some ancient people that lived in the mountains of Russia and about the two ruling twin brothers, Darr and Kieff. They told of the jealousy of one brother towards the other and the plotting and planning of Kieff to make Darr, the one with magic abilities and popular with the people, disappear. Apparently Kieff used the help of an evil priest to get rid of Darr and keep all the riches and the power for himself.
    As the legend went, Darr and Kieff had inherited their throne from their parents after they had died from an avalanche. Darr, older by two minutes, loved his brother and tried to overlook the fact that his brother was always scheming against him. It was always known that the the oldest of the twins would inherit magical powers, like being able to manipulate the elements, like calling the wind, water and fire to do his will. This is what Kieff wanted most in life and he didn’t care how he got it. Even if meant killing Darr to get what he most desired.....the power.
    They turned twenty and were at the height of their rule when Kieff decided he needed to carry out his plan to be the sole heir and possessor of the power of the elements. He didn’t know that there was no way he could obtain those powers. Only the first born could, which was Darr. This is when he decided to enlist the help of the evil priest, who knew that Kieff would never get those powers. The priest had hated Kieff’s parents, the king and queen, and coveted the power they possessed for himself. Of course Kieff thought in his vanity that the priest was helping him because of his loyalty to him. The priest came up with his own plan to kill both Darr and Kieff and keep all the riches for himself while making Kieff think he was helping him destroy Darr. The plan was to send Darr to the secret caves in the mountain to search for a lost child. When he got there he would be manacled and a ritual would be performed that the priest had been working on. The ritual itself would put Darr to sleep for all time and make the cave his tomb.
    Of course Kieff didn’t know he would also be in that tomb, the ritual would take place that evening and Kieff had been beside himself, thinking of how great everything would be after the power passed on to him, because this was the way he thought it would happen.
    When evening came, Kieff went looking for Darr to notify him of the disappearance of a child. And of course Darr’s first reaction was to go search for the child! Kieff accompanied Darr on the search, directing him towards the place that had been agreed upon with the priest. They climbed the icy mountain and headed into the frozen caves, because that’s where Kieff told Darr the child had been spotted. When they arrived and entered the cave, the followers the priest had enlisted helped him subdue Darr and Kieff. Kieff could not believe he had been tricked! The priest performed the ritual of putting them to sleep, starting with Darr. He would be the most trouble because of the power. Darr struggled, but because he was stunned and would never have believed the betrayal of his brother he loved so much, he was fast overtaken and put to sleep. Kieff managed to get himself free and told the priest he would not be entombed. No one knew for sure how it happened, maybe Darr still managed to get a hold of the elements but the icy cave collapsed. Everyone in the cave was buried in the ice never to be found. Darr himself was already frozen and remained asleep forever.
    The story was incredible! I told my uncle that I had loved it! All at once with the most serious face I had ever seen on my uncle, he told me it was real! He told me how he had found those manuscripts, while exploring a cave in the mountains in Russia. Even though he lost the old manuscripts in a cave-in and almost lost his life, he had read them and they told of the story of the two brothers. He had also done some asking around at the village located at the bottom of the mountain. The villagers were not very forthcoming in their answers. They were very superstitious. The story had happened about four to five hundred years ago. Some of them spoke of how a few years ago, one of the elders had come across a tomb made of ice in a cave.
    In that tomb was a man that looked as if he had died yesterday, time not having ravished his youthful appearance, the ice keeping him and his treasure in its hold.
    My uncle wanted me to go back and find this treasure. While he didn’t believe that there was a person still in an icy tomb, especially the way the villagers had said the elder had described the person in the ice. He told me he didn’t have anything to leave me for the future. He felt he could rely on me to find this treasure and it would help my future and he could die in peace.
    And this is what finds me here with my life now in jeopardy, on a ledge that is crumbling beneath my feet. What had I been thinking to journey all the way to Russia from America? But, how could I not keep my promise to my dear uncle that took the responsibility to raise me and love me after my parents’ untimely death? I was so sad when he passed away in his sleep. And here I was with my life literately hanging by a thread. or should I say rope? I knew the rope was not going to hold me much longer. I don’t think I had ever been so scared in my life as I was at this moment!
    All of a sudden I felt the air shift! I felt like I was being lifted in mid air, but I just couldn’t believe what I was experiencing, and somehow I was being held gently and felt safe. Next thing I knew I was in a room in a lower part of the cave. There was ice all around and in the middle was what looked like an Egyptian sarcophagus but made of ice, so it was transparent. And in that sarcophagus was a man! At that moment I thought about the story that my uncle had been told! I was actually seeing a legend and couldn’t grasp it! It was the stuff of dreams! I walked towards him and I felt as if I had no choice. I wanted to go to him, I was compelled to go to him. When I was close enough to really see him, I was shocked! He looked like he was just taking a nap. And that’s not all, he was beautiful!
    Suddenly his eyes were looking at me! He had the most incredible sea green eyes with a tilt to them. His hair was silky black and so long it seemed it reached his lower back. I was awestruck! I felt a sudden shift in the air and he was standing right next to me! He said to me in a strange accent “I have been waiting for you.’
    All I could stutter back was, “You have? Why?’ He told me what had happened and it was almost the same story my uncle had told me with a few exceptions. At the end when the evil priest had cast the curse, Darr was able to make a change that had been a risk for him to take. The change he made was for his one true love to find him and the curse would be broken. He had saved me from falling to my death in the abyss of the cave. And guess what? I was his true love! Hurray for me! I had never thought about dating an older guy. Especially four hundred years old! But he was well preserved for his age. The treasure had also survived and he was loaded! I think my uncle would have been happy with me just having the treasure. But, hey I don’t think I could any happier then I was at this moment. Life was really looking up. But first things first, we would have to spend the night in the cold cave. While accommodations weren’t the best, the company sure was. I was warm all night long. The sleeper had awakened.

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