by Ann Halam
Mama had explained why muties were so feared . . . although I’d still never seen one. Things that were once tame animals were grown in factories now, for food and other important things like wool and fur and leather. They’d been changed so much, to make them easy to use, that if they escaped and bred with the wild animals that were left, the result would be a plague of monsters. That’s why nobody was allowed to take the factory animals out of their factories, or buy and sell them. There were special police, called the Fitness Police, who patrolled the wilderness, making sure everybody kept the law, and killing any muties they found.
I was afraid of the Fitness Police, because everybody was. I was afraid of vermin too. The rats and gulls and feral cats, that haunted the stores and the tip where we piled our rubbish, would not attack humans—except at the end of winter when they were starving; but they were dirty and savage. I was also afraid of dogs, a kind of tame vermin-animal that I’d never seen except in pictures. There were dogs at the fur farm; which was a wilderness factory and the nearest human habitation to our Settlement. We could smell the stink of it sometimes, in the summer: and the guard dogs featured largely in stories told by Settlement children. They had fiery eyes, huge teeth, and stinking breath, and they would eat a child like me on sight.
But except for summer midges and the horrible bugs, and the rats and gulls and cats, I’d never seen any animal or bird out here, apart from Nivvy. “I don’t believe there are any muties. It’s just a story to scare us.”
Mama peeled off her gloves and held me warm and tight, resting her chin on my hair. “Shhh, Rosita, don’t talk like that. We have to believe in muties, that’s the law of the Settlements Commission. And people tell tales, you know.”
I knew by this time that the Settlement we lived in was a prison without walls. I knew that the red light in the wall that spied on Mama, making sure she was always at work, was part of her punishment. Of course I believed we had been sent here by mistake, and one day the police would realize the truth, and come and rescue us. I pitied the children I knew, because their mothers really were wicked: they had been married to murderers or robbers. . . . But there were other people who didn’t seem to belong, besides me and Mama. There was Madame Imrat, who lived on our alley and had once been an ambassador, there were teachers (who didn’t teach), and there was a very proud gentleman who had been a chief surgeon. It was all very puzzling, and it got more puzzling as I grew older, and noticed things more.
I sighed and picked at a hole in my jumper. It was a scratchy, ugly jumper, the color of dirt. I’d grown out of all my city clothes long ago. No more little red shoes: I was on my third pair of Settlement-store boots. They looked thick and tough, but they weren’t. They hurt my feet and the soles were worn through. Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford a new pair this winter.
“One day we’re going to run away, aren’t we, Mama? Why doesn’t everyone run away? I don’t understand it.”
Mama laughed a little, wryly. “Where would they run to, Rosita? It’s hundreds of miles to the nearest city, and the cities are closed: no one from outside can get in. If they tried, they would be shot down without mercy. The people of the wilderness have their own way of living, they wouldn’t support a prisoners’ revolt. Some do run away, and some of them even survive. But most of us just endure it. We have food and heat, we have work. We’re better off than many ‘free’ people out here.”
“But you and Dadda didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Didn’t we?” said my mama: talking to me but really talking to herself, as she sometimes did, and it gave me shivers. “All the time that we were living inside, where it’s warm and bright, with good clothes and plenty to eat—”
“And hot water,” I murmured, “and proper soap, and no bugs—”
“Yes. We knew about the Settlements, and the many, many innocent people who lived outside: all the children who were hungry and dirty and cold, and dying of diseases. We thought we were good, Rosita, but we did nothing.”
She hugged me again, and then let me go. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Look, it’s dark, and my quota time is over. Let’s have a magic lesson.”
We went into the workshop, and got down on the floor with the lamp turned low. Mama took out the secret nail box, and the white case. She opened the case, into its white flower shape. The nutshell was smaller now, it had shrunk because there were no tiny animals inside it. The seed-stuff that would grow into animals was kept in the little glass tubes, each of them with a colored cap.
Each of these tubes had a strange name, which I had to remember (I knew how to read quite well, but nothing about the magic was written down). Insectivora . . . Lagomorpha . . . Rodentia . . . Artiodactyla . . . Carnivora . . . Chiroptera . . .
“Tell me about them, Rosita,” said my mother.
“Inti-sectivore is most often small and her fur is like velvet,” I said, feeling very important. “You will know by her long nose and her poor eyes. She eats bugs, she has the best sense of smell. I call her Nosey, is that all right, Mama?”
“It suits her. And Lagomorpha?”
“Lagomorph is very few, there are only two kinds. I call him Ears because he has big ears. He has big back legs so he can kick and run. One of them lives in burrows, one of them has no home but the open ground, and he turns white in winter.”
I picked up the third tube, carefully. “This one is the Rodents, they never stop gnawing with their teeth, and they multipulize very fast—”
“Multiply,” said Mama. “They multiply.”
“A lot. You get a lot of them, very, very quickly. I call her Toothy.”
The fourth tube was Artiodactyla, the word that gave me most trouble. I couldn’t find my way to the end of it. I called her Article: she was big, and she went in herds. The fifth tube was my favorite, because Carnivora was Nivvy’s order. Carnivore means “eats flesh,” but I called this seed tube Nivvy, of course.
Lastly there was the Chiroptera . . . a furry animal that had wings and could fly. Which was thrilling, but frightening, because it sounded like a mutie monster. I called that one Cheepy, because it could find its way in the dark by cheeping (I didn’t understand how).
“Very good!” said Mama, when I had finished my roll call.
Then we went through the drill that I must learn, although I wasn’t old enough to do the real magic yet. You had to put a few drops of the dark liquid food (called new-treat) into six little dishes, sprinkle in a pinch of seed powder from each tube, wait until they began to grow, then put the dishes carefully into the incubator. The next time you looked, six tiny kits would be there. They were called Lindquists, another strange word I must remember. They would live, snuggled up together, and they would die, and curl up in their dishes again, and turn into cocoons (I knew furry animals didn’t do that, caterpillars turning into butterflies make cocoons: but this was magic). Then you had to crumble the cocoons into powder, and put the powder into a new seed tube, with the right colored cap.
When they were kits they all looked the same. When they grew they became different kinds of wild animals. Nivvy had been a full-grown small carnivore. You had to grow them to full size sometimes to make really sure the seeds were in good condition. But we didn’t dare, so we had to hope for the best.
“Once there were Lindquists for all eight orders,” said Mama. “The two missing ones are Cetacea and Pinnipedia. But the marine mammals were lost.”
I nodded, not worried that I didn’t understand. I knew I couldn’t understand magic yet. But I could learn. “How do you mean, lost?”
“They were taken.” Mama’s mouth went tight and hard, and her voice turned grim. “And I think I know who took them.”
“It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t my dadda?” I quavered, frightened at her tone.
I had strange ideas about why Dadda had gone, now that I knew that other mothers were here because their husbands had been criminals.
“Oh no!” said Mama. “It wasn’t your dadda! Don’t think that,
Rosita! . . . When you’re older, I will tell you the whole story. I’ll explain a lot of things that I can’t explain now.” She fell silent then, looking at me seriously, and took my hands, her eyes very dark and sad. “Listen, my baby. One day you may find yourself alone, with no one to help you to decide what to do. Then you must look deep inside yourself. Try to find the spirit of life, that lives everywhere and lives in your heart . . . and try to do what it tells you. That’s your only hope, Rosita. Your only hope.”
I thought she was talking about the magic lessons. Little children understand more than people think. I knew she had trusted me with her secrets, although I was just a baby; and she hoped she was doing right. . . . I wanted to say I would never, never betray her. But her solemn words reminded me of that day when the guards had come, a day that I couldn’t remember, and my mind was filled with a scary, confusing blur.
I knew we couldn’t go back to the city. You had to have a special voucher to ride the tractor to the station platform. Even if we could have got that far, and even if we’d had a cartload of scrip, we wouldn’t be let on the train. We would not be allowed to have tickets. We were the people who were shut out, now. And what would be the use, if we managed to find our way back to the home that I didn’t remember? Who would be there for us?
“Will we find my dadda again?”
“I don’t know,” said Mama, softly.
“Is he in another Settlement?”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t think so. I don’t know where he is. Go and put the kettle on, sweetheart.” She started to put everything away, not looking at me. I saw that her eyes had filled with tears. I saw in them a sorrow that I could never reach, never make better, and my heart burned. I vowed to myself one day I would find my father, and I would bring him back to Mama, and she would be happy.
I was just a child. I was proud when I could remember the funny long words, and I loved to play with the doll’s house tubes and dishes, but I didn’t understand what Mama was teaching me at all. I didn’t tell her, but I thought the “incubator” really was a magic nutshell, like the one in the fairy tale, that the lost princess opens when she has nothing to wear for the ball, and there is a beautiful dress inside, folded up tiny and small. . . . Everything strange and magical entranced me. The puzzling, frightening things she sometimes said went right out of my head in a moment. But that night when we went to bed, I realized that I wanted to ask, Do you think he’s dead? I couldn’t say it. Big sobs came heaving up from my chest, I couldn’t stop them. The weight of what I couldn’t understand, and things I barely remembered, fell on me, and I felt so lonely and helpless, like a baby left on a doorstep. My dadda, my dadda . . . Mama held me in her arms, and rocked me until I was quiet.
We made an agreement that if I was good at school and did not cheek Miss Malik, I would have Mama lessons more often, and if I was very good, we would grow the Lindquist kits again, as soon as it was my birthday at the end of winter. Sometimes I’d wake in the middle of the night and she’d be gone from our bed, and I’d know she was doing magic. I didn’t get up and spy on her, but I’d watch and wonder, after these nights, and try to guess what she’d done, either for us, or for someone else. Maybe she’d caused a snowfall in midwinter, so the tracks were soft and pretty again, and Madame Imrat didn’t have to be so terrified of slipping and falling. Maybe she’d cast a spell to make the Settlements Commission send an unexpected shipment of jam.
I was very muddled. Mama knew it, because I’d ask her about the good deeds that she had ordered the Lindquists to perform. She didn’t correct me. The important thing, I realize now, was that I was practicing the skills I would need: practicing every step of the Lindquist process, with my hands and eyes and mind, over and over, until I couldn’t possibly forget.
After school, when she’d finished her quota for the day, and we’d eaten and done our housework, we’d have a magic lesson (not every night: Mama kept those lessons feeling special). Or she’d tell me about other exciting things. Then we’d go to bed, and she’d tell me stories about our great journey, north across the snowy wastes, through the forest, over the sea: taking our treasure to the beautiful city where the sun always shines. Not now, in a while, when I was grown . . . I would fall asleep to the murmur of her voice, and dream of Miss Malik, and fairy-tale animals; and the far adventure, on the other side of growing up.
Mama and I, alone and free in the wild, white emptiness.
The short summers and long winters passed. Supply trucks came across the hard-packed snow, with their guards (they never came in summer, because then the wilderness was a swamp and the roads were impassable for trucks). Sometimes the bandit families who ruled the wastelands ambushed our supplies, and we went hungry. It was impossible for us to grow enough to eat, in the poor soil of our little plots. Rumors of change reached us, terrible stories of thousands on thousands of “rebels” taken out of the cities; taken to the middle of nowhere and left to freeze in their indoor clothes. But where we lived, nothing changed.
When I was nine I moved up to the senior class. I was very proud, though it only meant moving from one end of the schoolroom hut to the other. I took my two mushy, rag-paper exercise books, my pencils, my old bread that I used for an eraser, and my precious sharpener (one of the few relics of my city toy box). I walked away from the juniors’ bench, overjoyed that I was leaving Miss Malik behind, and feeling the respectful gaze of the children. I walked past the narrow windows that would have inches-deep of ice on the inside in the winter, past the stove in the middle of the room, where the big teenagers spent the day in idleness, and up to the two rows of real desks of the senior class. The senior teacher’s name was Mr. Buryat: everyone called him Snory. He had a lung disease and couldn’t speak without making a snoring noise in his throat. He was kind. He was writing something on the battered blackboard, so I went to the senior bookshelf, which I had often longed to examine. There was a colored globe beside the raggedy textbooks, that had my passionate admiration. I switched it on, and beamed in delight as all the cities lit up like stars.
Then Snory noticed me, and sent me to sit by Rose, a very pretty girl with yellow wavy hair and green eyes, who had previously been the youngest senior. I put the better of my exercise books into the shelf under the desktop, with my extra pencil. Rose ignored me. She was cutting a new point to her pencil, with a blunt penknife. Shyly, I pushed my sharpener across the desk. Rose looked around, a gleam of malevolence in her green eyes. She smiled coldly and turned away, so she as near as possible had her back to me. But my pencil sharpener had disappeared. I never saw it again.
I liked the senior lessons. Mr. Buryat couldn’t breathe without snoring, and we laughed at him cruelly: but he was a good, patient teacher. My playtimes were lonely. The other senior girls followed Rose’s lead, although she was the youngest; and the boys followed the girls. They treated me with complete contempt. I was too proud to go crawling back to the juniors, so when I’d eaten my lunch I had nothing to do but walk around the muddy schoolyard with my arms folded, my nose in the air, and one wet foot where my boot had a big hole in it.
I hoped the ice was melting when Rose came up to me.
“What’s your name?”
“Rosita,” I said, shrugging, not to look too eager. “Same as it was yesterday.”
She curled her lip. “That’s not a name,” she said, loudly. “That’s not a name.”
This must have been a signal, because the seniors gathered. All six of them got in a circle round me, and I was scared. The big teenagers (who were generally kind) weren’t out in the yard. Snory never came outdoors, and I knew Miss Malik wouldn’t protect me. The two top boys, Storm and Soldier, were twelve and thirteen, and looked enormous to me. Rope, who was older, was small, and slow in the head: but he could be violent. The two girls besides Rose were Aspen and Snow. They were both about twelve, tough and vicious in a ruck. Here we go, I thought, and braced myself. Maybe Snory would see through the windows and come out and break it up, if
they all set on me at once.
“You can’t keep your city name anymore,” said Aspen. “We won’t let you, it’s wrong.” She was a very thin girl (we were all horribly thin, except Rose), with a long, pale, yellowish face, and an irritable temper. I kept an eye on her hands, which were twisting and tugging one of her pale braids.
“You have to have a plain name. You can’t have a dressed-up name,” said Snow, who was shorter, and had thick dark hair. Snow was very shortsighted. She peered at me from under her fringe, scowling.
“Rosita is a false name,” said Rose, smugly.
“Who says I’m not allowed? Rosita’s only the same as ‘Rose.’ . . . It’s not as pretty as Rose,” I added, in a hurry. “It’s less fancy, it’s junior to Rose.”
The boys murmured, as if they were half ready to let this thing go. But the girls glared at them, so they stayed in the circle. Storm said, quite kindly, “You can’t be Rose. She’s called Rose. Pick another name. How about Sugar?”
This was meant for a compliment, and I should have seen that he was trying to help me. But I didn’t have any sense.
“I don’t want to change. It’s the name my mama and dadda gave me, and I’ll never see my dadda again. Make me do something else. What else can I do? I’ll give you my lunch, every other day.”
They looked at each other. “Her mama,” muttered Rose, rolling her eyes. “Mrs. Bighead the peepee. Her dadda, not too good to be hung.”
“They act like they’re better than us,” said Snow. “When they came they were rich. They could have given us things, but they sold their fancy stuff to the bandits.”
Mama had given my toys and books to the school, but they had disappeared, like my pencil sharpener. If they’d ended up with the bandits, that wasn’t our fault.
I didn’t say anything. I set my teeth and waited for the thumps.
“Think it over,” said Soldier, and they drifted away.
I asked Mama what it all meant. She said the children of the Settlements knew this was their world, the only world they were going to get, and they wanted to make rules for belonging, the way any tribe or nation will. That’s where the craze for “plain names” came from. She said people who’d been sent here when they were grown up, whether they were ordinary criminals or exiles, didn’t feel the same way.
