by Ann Halam
While I was waiting for dark someone tapped on the door. It was one of our neighbors, an herbalist called Katerina who had been friendly with me and Mama in the old days. She thrust a paper sack into my arms.
“For you, Maria’s daughter. We made a collection.”
The sack was full of food. There was a bag of fruit tea, another bag of herb medicines; dried tomatoes, dried peppers, dried mushrooms, a collection of bread ends, a kilo tin of con stew; and a big chunk of that hard, dry, white kind of con we called cheese, though it had nothing to do with a cow. There were a few sticky, dingy candles too, a slim jar of oil, and best of all, a pack of paper matches.
I knew you don’t give something for nothing. I knew my neighbors had hopes, like Kolya, of getting a share of my “legacy.” I still felt like crying.
“I’ll pay you back,” I promised. “As soon as I can.”
“It’s no matter,” she said. “Everyone had a good harvest. . . . It was a great comfort to us. No, it was an honor, to have your mama living here.”
I nodded, feeling puzzled: I didn’t remember us being honored. I remembered the other kids saying Mama was a peepee, and throwing stones at me. Katerina took a good look around, noticing how little I’d brought back with me, from my great chance. “What did you do, that you were sent home from the school?”
“I got drunk and I was with a boy.”
“Ah. Well, you are young. What do they expect? What good is too much book-learning anyway, it only corrupts the heart.”
“Who took her away? Where did they take her? What did they say?”
Katerina gave me a reproachful look, and shook her head.
“It was a long time ago now. No use in thinking about it.”
I was embarrassed.You don’t ask those kind of questions in the Settlements. When somebody is taken, it’s understood that nobody knows anything, nobody saw anything. It’s dangerous to get involved. I don’t think Katerina blamed me. She stayed awhile, talking to me kindly in the Settlement way: a few simple words, a lot of silence. She said she would come with me to the store, to help me spend my vouchers and see I didn’t get cheated.
When she had left I went into the workshop, where the red light still glowed from the wall like a one-eyed rat. I found a screw-top lid, a bent nail, and a hank of string, and made myself a makeshift oil lamp. I had to cut the string for my wick with my teeth, I didn’t have anything like a knife. I wasn’t afraid of the red eye. I was pretty sure it meant nothing at all: but I thought I’d better not take chances. I waited until it was fully dark, before I crawled back and groped under the bench.
Under the heap of empty nail boxes there was one that felt heavy. I opened it, groped through the crumpled paper inside, and touched the smooth, segmented dome of the Lindquists’ case. Whoever had searched our hut hadn’t looked in here. I could feel some canned food hidden under the bench too, but I left investigating that for later. Back in the other half of the hut, I knelt by the stove and lit my lamp. The white case was roughly wrapped in shabby brown corrugated paper; the packing from a batch of scrap metal for nail-making. When I unwrapped it, a folded paper slipped out, and something small with a round dial. I thought it was a watch, but it wasn’t. It was a compass, and the paper was a printed map.
I set the compass down on the concrete. The needle shivered and rocked, and settled pointing to the corner of our hut.
North. What other direction could there be?
I had never seen a printed map before. They were absolutely forbidden in the Settlements. You could have a light-up globe, but not a map. Even at New Dawn, maps of our own country had been forbidden. Mama must’ve had hiding places I didn’t know about, because I’d never seen these things before. I unfolded the paper and peered at it, fascinated, tracing the fabled landmarks of my world, places I had mostly never seen: the fur farm, the forest, the railway line, all converted into symbols on paper.
I felt dizzy as I realized my mother must have left this map for me.
She had really meant for me to make that impossible journey.
There was no note. When I’d searched and found not a word from her, not one scrawled word, I cried, at last. I couldn’t stop myself from trying to picture what had happened. Did they come for her by night or by day? Did she have any warning, did she try to get away? Did she defend herself with brave, wise words? Did they hit her? I saw my mama tied up and put into something like the Box, before she was taken out and shot. Or they might have beaten her up, with heavy fists and leather straps. But Katerina was right: it was over, no use thinking about it. My mama had been taken from this hut before I was eleven. Now I was thirteen, and a different person. I’d been a thief, and betrayed my friend and let him die. . . . I’d turned into a person my mama would not even recognize.
I cried, and then I wiped my eyes. I could not undo what had happened at New Dawn, I could not know if Mama was alive or dead. All I had was the mysterious words of Yagin the guard, whom I didn’t trust at all. But I could find out, right now, whether the treasure I was supposed to guard still existed.
I opened the case, so that it unfolded like a flower, and set everything out neatly. I put on my gloves and mask, and the glimmering cloak of my mother’s magic wrapped itself around me. Before I began my work I prayed, some kind of prayer without words, to the spirit of life. I don’t know if I believed in this spirit, I was out of the habit of believing in anything: but I think she had my mother’s face. It was a short prayer, because I needed to move fast. My oil lamp’s reservoir wasn’t very deep: if I had to replenish the oil, I’d have to start all over again with fresh gloves. My mind was trembling, but my hands remembered everything. They took me, sure and swift, through the Lindquist process.
When I knew that the seed powders had begun to grow, I set the dishes safely in the magic nutshell, and sealed everything up. I hid the nail box in the locker under the cupboard-bed, and piled the food that Katerina had given me in front of it. Then I put out my lamp and lay down to rest, leaving the cupboard doors open. I wasn’t used to sleeping shut up, it made me think of the Box.
I had no blankets, nor pillow, but I was still wearing my school uniform. The wardens had let me keep it, as there was no way I could fit back into the clothes I’d worn when I was ten. I didn’t like the idea of going around dressed as an expelled schoolgirl, but I knew I’d soon be thankful for the thick, warm clothes. I just hoped I’d stopped growing. I kept my boots on for warmth, pulled my socks over my knees, and lay with my arms wrapped around my head, dormitory style.
It must have been neighbors who searched the hut, I thought. If it had been the people who came to take Mama, they’d have found everything. . . . Our neighbors had searched the hut, but they’d been afraid of the red light in the workshop. Now I was back they’d see I didn’t have anything extra, and they’d forget about my “legacy.” If Nicolai only lets me have our old vegetable plot, I thought, I’ll be all right. Then one day when I’m grown up, if she hasn’t come home, I will take the map and the compass and set off for the city where the sun always shines. . . . The old life folded round me: the old promise as distant as ever, a hope that I could live on for years. My sleeves smelled of cold and dust, and coal smoke, and dirt. I’d been traveling for five days, in frowsty train carriages. I closed my eyes. I was rocking on a “hard class” wooden seat again, falling asleep while the guards sat and watched me.
The bugs in the bed walls came out to bite, but I was too tired to notice them much. When I woke the room was dark and cold, but I could tell that the night was rising toward morning. I jumped off the bed. I’d left everything where I could find it by touch. As soon as I had my lamp alight I opened the locker, shoved everything aside, and hauled out the nail box. I lifted out the case, and opened it. I didn’t need gloves, the kits couldn’t be harmed by contamination now.
Maybe I should leave it for longer. But I had to find out.
If they had survived. If the seeds had not died. It was the difference between having
nothing, and having a reason to live.
I ran my fingertips around the seam of the nutshell: it opened. The kits were alive. They looked up at me, through the clear shield, with their pinhead eyes.
I took the nut back into the bed-cupboard, set my lamp on the little shelf on the inner wall, and sat cross-legged in the warm hollow my sleeping body had made, staring at the living treasure. How tiny they were! Six identical miniature animals, each no bigger than my thumbnail. They scrambled over each other, trying to get a better look at me. How miraculous and strange, the way they grew from seed powder and new-treat, and tumbled about and seemed perfectly happy in their little home. I tried to look at them properly: checking them for signs of damage and deterioration. But they kept climbing over each other and confusing me. I’d have to take them out, and examine them one by one.
I was nervous about doing this. I knew how to handle the kits: but they were so tiny. I told myself there was plenty of the seed powder, so I could always start the process again. Mama had never had to do that, but she’d told me it would sometimes happen. Not all of the seed would be sound. . . . I opened the membrane by running my fingertips around it. But I hadn’t had enough practice at this part! While I was picking out one kit, the other five bubbled up, and they were free.
For a moment I panicked. I visualized them vanishing into the cracks in the walls, my big hand crushing them, breaking their tiny bones as I tried to catch them.
But the Lindquists didn’t run away. They tumbled out of the nutshell, fell off the edge of my skirt, and dived into a bundle on the lumpy mattress, their almost invisible whiskers quivering madly, ten tiny berry eyes shining.
My heart welled up with love and tenderness.
“It’s all right,” I whispered. “I’m here. I’m your guardian now.”
Mama had said I should talk to them. They would hear my voice as a distant booming, but they would feel—by magic, I supposed—that I was telling them things, and they would like that. It worked. The kits slowly dared to unbundle, and began to creep around: making tiny forays, and scuttling back to huddle again.
I had not remembered how sweet they were. They were lovely. They had whiskery snouts and tiny pink noses, black eyes and round ears set close to their heads. Their limbs stood out at the shoulders and the hips, so they scurried like bugs, not slinking or striding like a dog or a cat, but there was nothing disgusting about them. Their tiny tails were covered with fur, not naked like rats’ tails. Their coats were bright brown, with minute bars of darker brown across their backs, and running down their arms.
I felt a tickling on the palm of my hand. I opened my fingers, and saw the sixth Lindquist busy licking up a smear of berry jam from my finger. Its tiny claws caught on the white raised lines which were the marks of Nivvy’s love bites, of long before. Without a thought I reached for the jar Nicolai had given to me, which was on the shelf beside the lamp. I dug out a fingertipful, and offered it. The little creature grabbed on to my giant finger with its doll’s house paws, and licked with its doll’s house tongue.
A tingling shock ran through me.
I was sure this special kit, the kit I had chosen without realizing it, must be Nivvy. It was Nivvy, come again. My mama’s magic had caused me to pick him out, and caused me to feed him so he would start to grow into the second stage. He would be my dear companion. I held my cupped hand close to the lamplight—very careful not to get too near the flame—and examined my new friend carefully, while its brothers and sisters continued their miniature adventures. I wasn’t afraid anymore that they would run away. I knew they would always stay close.
Suddenly a different shock swept over me, a shock like waking up from a dream. I was not little Rosita anymore. I was thirteen. How could I believe in this fairy tale? I had done all the practical things, I’d started the Lindquist process without a slip, but I had been sleepwalking. I couldn’t make sense of what I knew. It was all in pieces, a muddle of childish ideas and bewildering explanations, that wouldn’t fit together. My head started spinning, in wild confusion.
What are these things? Is this really magic?
How did my mother get hold of them? What does it all mean?
The kits got into a very tight huddle. That was the first time I found out how easily they could read my feelings: I’d frightened them. I put the kit that had eaten back with the rest, because my hands were shaking too much for me to hold it, and set the open nut down beside them. Eagerly, obediently, they all climbed in.
“Go to sleep,” I whispered. “We’ll play again in the morning.”
I’d sealed them into their home, with my shaking hands. I got the oil and topped up my lamp, and went through everything again. My heart was beating so it drummed in my ears. There must be a message! A few words, anything, anything, that would explain what was going on. . . . I took out the extra tubes, the tightly packed envelopes, the new-treat and cleaning powders from the base of the white case. There was something else in there, tucked in at the bottom. I pulled it out. I was holding a small photograph: head and shoulders of a man. I’d never seen it before. I thought it couldn’t have been kept in the case when I was a child: Mama must have put it here while I was away. It had been a color photo, but the colors had faded to shades of yellow and brown, and the surface was all cracked. A man with a long straight nose, arched eyebrows, a short dark beard; wearing glasses.
There was no name, no date, nothing written on the back. I could only guess that this might be my father. There was a lump in my throat, as I tried hard to see the person, through the cracks and the fading. When had this picture been taken? What would this man look like now? If Mama had left me a picture of my dadda, what did that mean? But maybe she had not “left me” anything. Maybe she’d had warning that they were coming for her. She’d put all her treasures together, getting ready to escape, but then—
I heard the noise of a motor engine.
A car, not a tractor, was snarling as it struggled up our horrible track. I quickly shoved everything back into the box, shoved it into the locker under the bed-cupboard, and put out my lamp. The room didn’t go dark. . . . There was light outside, which I hadn’t noticed before: and I could tell it wasn’t the dawn. I tiptoed to our hut’s only window, which was small and grimy. I could make out a group of people standing on the corner of our “street” of mud and rocks and holes, carrying flickering rag-and-oil torches. They looked like big teenagers, or very young men. They were obviously waiting for the snarling vehicle, which was getting closer.
There were no vehicles in our Settlement except the Community Tractor, which was Nicolai’s prize possession. The only people in the wilderness who had their own transport were the bandits: who had no fixed towns or villages, they lived in great caravans, continually on the move. Only the bandits we called the Mafia had actual private cars. I watched as a powerful brute of a car came lumbering out of the darkness, its headlights cutting swathes of yellow light. I saw the figures on the corner waving their torches, and the men getting out when the car stopped: the kind who have guns. I knew straightaway that this had something to do with me.
It was mostly women and children who were sent to Settlements like ours: the families guilty of being related to criminals. The few men were either old, or broken in some way, like Mr. Snory the senior teacher with his lung disease; or they were small-time officials like Nicolai. Boys who grew up here got taken off to labor camp when they were about sixteen, if they didn’t run away first. The figures out there, waiting to show the gangsters where I lived, were probably boys I’d gone to school with, boys only a year or two older than me. I didn’t expect that to make any difference.
Mafia.
I backed away from the window. “They’re crazy,” I muttered.
What did they think I had in here? Gold and jewels?
I found my knapsack, put the Lindquists’ box in the bottom of it, then piled in the food Katerina had brought. Better not leave anything: I stuffed the makings of my lamp and my hank of
string into the outer pocket, and added Nivvy’s grain jar. I did all this without pausing for breath, thinking only: I’ve got to get out of here!
Our hut had been searched long ago, but the Mafia have long memories. Someone must have tipped them off that the city woman’s daughter was coming back today. They believed in my mother’s legacy, and they thought I could be made to talk. . . . I tiptoed into the workshop, heading for the back door, not caring about the red light. But where could I go? I couldn’t knock on anybody’s door. If there was any neighbor brave enough to take me in, I couldn’t do that to them. It wouldn’t save me, it’d just mean they suffered the same fate. I’d have to spend the night outdoors, hiding while the bandits ransacked my house. At this season I’d survive, but was there anything I could use to cover me? Yes! There was the tarpaulin that covered the nail machine.
I dragged it off, bundled it up, and slipped out into the night. It was darker and colder than I’d expected. I could hear the men hammering at the door of our hut. All else was silent. The people who had collected their spare food for Maria’s daughter weren’t going to help me now. I wished I could still run like the wind: except there was nowhere to run. . . . My knees got weak, I was so afraid. All I could do was crouch down in the pillar space, under the hut at the corner of our back alley, with the tarp pulled over me like a stiff, thick cloak. The bolt on the door of my mama’s hut gave way soon. I heard them breaking in, and wondered how long it would take them to realize there was nothing to find.
I could see a swathe of the potholed track, and the big black car, all plastered with mud. A lookout, wearing a cap with earflaps, was walking up and down, holding a rifle. I didn’t see how I could get by him. Terrible crashing sounds came from inside the hut. They must be breaking up the concrete floor! “What do you think I’ve got?” I muttered, hiding my face. . . . I don’t know what happened after that. Maybe someone was careless with one of the rag-and-oil torches. Maybe the bandits set fire to Mama’s hut on purpose, out of frustration. All I know is that there was a lot of yelling. Shots were fired, figures burst out of the open door. When I dared to look again, flames were leaping into the sky.
