Siberia

by Ann Halam

  I felt like Mama in the Settlement: safe in the place of greatest danger.

  Like me, Nosey was most active at dusk. When I returned from one of my expeditions she’d come trundling out of the dark, snuffling and grunting, and climb into my lap (I was glad I had my thick uniform skirt, to protect me from the prickles). She’d stand up with her paws on my chest, to give me kisses with her wet berry-nose. She got fat as butter from feasting on roaches . . . unfortunately she also picked up a horde of fleas. But I was soon just as verminous, so we matched. I never undressed, of course, and I never washed. I got used to being filthy.

  During the day we stayed in the packing case, unless I had to visit my latrine hole. I’d stolen a whetstone: I used it to rub the rust from my sledge’s runners (most of what I’d stolen was in poor condition). I was making myself a hat as well, to replace Storm’s fleecy cap, which I’d left in Mr. Ismail’s office. I had not been able to find needles or thread, so I was trying to stick fur scraps together, skin to skin, with glue. It was a messy business. While I worked, Nosey would snuffle around after snacks: often coming over to touch my hands with her nose and make sure I was still there. The kits played in the nutshell, or sat watching us. I rarely opened the shield, in case there came a moment when I had to grab everything and run. They didn’t seem to mind. They were lively and content, and had almost reached full size.

  I told my family we were not wasting time. “We’re waiting for the weather,” I said. “It’s much easier to travel in the ice and snow, and the cold is not an enemy if you’re prepared. Wait and see. You’ll like it when you can ride on the sledge.”

  It was as if the years at New Dawn had been a nightmare. I was safe again in Mama’s care, getting ready to follow the route we’d planned long before; snuggled together on winter nights, in our cupboard-bed. The dreams I’d had then had been a lot different from the filthy, smelly reality, and yet I was happy.

  I started training Nosey to eat the same food as me, because she wouldn’t be able to find bugs when the ground was frozen. She liked jerky, very much! She didn’t like con cheese, but she’d munch dried tomatoes or bread.

  I thought she would be with me for a long time, all the way to the frozen sea and the city; and after that. I thought she would live as long as my Nivvy: but I was wrong. On the fifth day after our adventure with Mr. Ismail she was out of sorts. I thought maybe she’d eaten too much. When I came back from my foraging I found her lying uncurled in our fur-and-sacking nest, shivering. Then I was worried, so I lit a candle for warmth (I tried to make sure no light could escape). I saw she’d grown again, and she was losing her spines, they were changing back into fur. But her whole body was shaking, and she whimpered when I tried to lift her. All I could do was kneel by her, stroking her and talking gently, and feeding her drops of bottled water. As the night passed she changed again, from this large, hairy shape to stranger forms, and then she started getting smaller fast, shuddering in a fever of change.

  She knew me, all the way through. She would still touch her nose to my hand, and grip my finger with her claws. By the time she died she was a tiny thing, the same dim-eyed creature I’d met when we were riding on the freight train. I didn’t cry, though it hurt very much to lose her. She had been so brave, and clever, and funny. I held her in my hand, the way I’d held her when she was little. I told the kits she was gone, then I kissed her velvet fur and laid her down. I burrowed into my smelly heap of furs and fell asleep.

  When I woke there was a crackling rime of ice over my bedding. Winter is here, I thought. I must leave soon. In Nosey’s part of the nest there was nothing left but a slim, dry, tapered pellet, the length of my fingernail.

  “A Lindquist cocoon,” I whispered, remembering my lessons.

  I told the kits, and they looked at me solemnly: almost as if they understood. It was so strange. An animal that turns into other animals, and then withers into a little roll of powder. What can you call that but magic? I was almost afraid to touch Nosey’s remains, and I wondered if this had happened to Nivvy. I couldn’t remember if Mama had let me see him dead. . . . I did what I had to do. I took out the nail box, unfolded the white case, and prepared myself with my gloves, my mask; and a prayer. I collected the cocoon, put it in a fresh tube, and sealed the tube with the color that meant Insectivora. I could hear Mama’s voice in my mind, saying, Be careful you don’t mix them up at this stage. We can sort it out if you do, but it’s better if they’re not mixed up. There were six colors. There should have been eight. . . .

  I wondered what had happened to the ones that had been “lost”?

  I wondered what it all meant, and I thought of Yagin the guard with longing. Could he answer my questions? Was he the person Mama had sent to help me?

  All I could do was trust my mama, and guard the treasure with my life.

  I spent that day packing, and eating: stoking up the fire inside. I let the kits out for an adventure, as a treat. Once we were crossing the snow it would be far too cold for them to come out of their nest. I didn’t let them off my lap, but they didn’t mind that. They were full-sized now, but still small enough that I was a wide territory. I tried to pick out which was Nivvy, but they all seemed the same: mischievous, inquisitive, affectionate, and bold. At night they got back into the nutshell, and I slept with it hugged in my arms.

  When I woke there’d been a real, heavy fall of snow. It had drifted into the packing case, covering me: my furs were frozen stiff and caked white. I lay there, breathing air purified by the cold, and feeling a great change. No more half measures: this was winter.

  The fur farm was no place for me anymore. No matter how careless the guards were they’d surely see my tracks in the snow, and the workers would be more careful about locking doors. I crawled out of my smelly nest, ate some jerky, and drank some tepid water. I kept a water bottle inside my clothes at night, so it didn’t freeze. I tucked the nutshell into my (stolen) overshirt, and fastened a belt around my waist. I put on Storm’s jacket, my homemade hat, and some stolen gloves (that were too big). The sledge was already loaded: it was time to go.

  I was pulling uphill at first, over rough ground, trying to keep to cover and convinced that someone back at the farm would spot me and let the dogs out. But when I stopped and looked back the farm was already out of sight. So was the railway track. I was alone in the white emptiness, the way I had always longed to be.

  The plain opened, and I found my rhythm.

  I wasn’t cold. I’d stolen good clothes, including some waterproof overall trousers which I wore over my school drawers and under my dress. Actually, when I was sledge-pulling I was always far too warm, and had to wear my coat flapping open. I kept going for a long time, that first day. The snow was fresh and smooth but already frozen hard, and good to walk on. I’d use the compass to pick out something north of me, a boulder or a stand of reeds, and make for it. When I reached my mark I’d stop and pick out another. Soon I realized I could line up two marks with the compass, and then I could keep going for longer without having to check my course.

  I didn’t think about the hundreds of miles. I just marched, on and on under a clear sky, hypnotized by the emptiness: until the ache in my shoulders vanished, and my legs seemed to swing, unevenly but strongly, of their own accord. Every so often I’d stop, sit on the sledge, and eat something, and then I’d open the nutshell to reassure the kits. They pushed at the shield with their little paws and noses: they knew there was something exciting going on. But I didn’t let them out. It was far too cold.

  Once a flight of small birds crossed overhead: I saw no other sign of life. I watched the sun’s steady fall on my left-hand side, and kept the dark line of the forest ahead. How far away it was, farther than I had ever dreamed. How long would it take me to reach that friendly darkness? Weeks? The sky changed color, from blue to turquoise, the sun went down in red-gold clouds: a silver moon rose, nearly full, almost as bright as daylight on the snow, and I kept going.

  But I walked more
and more slowly. Finally I shrugged off the sled harness. The sky was like an enormous bell, deepest blue overhead, shading through green to lilac above the horizon. The moon made violet shadows in the whiteness. I walked away from the sled with my head tipped back, counting the pinpricks of stars, and as I watched a veil of shimmering silver was shaken down over the blue. Curtains of light, first pink, then green and gold, swept across the sky and then drew back, to show a huge ring of bright golden light. It was the aurora borealis.

  Mama had said that long ago, you could only see the mystic lights if you were so far north the sun never rose in winter. She said our world had changed in other ways besides the coldness. The envelope of particles out in space that made this beautiful show reached down farther from the poles, in our time. But I had lived under a cloud of smog every winter. I’d never seen this before. I had never seen anything so beautiful, or so immense. I stood there, alone with majesty, and forgot about everything. I forgot the cold, my chafed shoulders; forgot my trek, forgot the Lindquists, even forgot my mama.

  When the aurora faded at last, I saw something whiter than the snow, sitting on a rock a little distance away; like a fallen star. I went over there, my boots going crunch, squeak in the utter silence. It was an animal. He waited, and let me come up to him, fearless as a Lindquist. His fur was white, his face was long but not pointed, and he had a gentle expression. He had his long ears laid back, but when I was close he raised them, so they stood tall above his head. He sat up on his big back legs, his front paws placed neatly together, and watched me with quiet dark eyes.

  “Are you a mutie?” I said. But I was sure he couldn’t be.

  His ears turned, swiveling toward the sound of my voice.

  “Are you a real wild animal?”

  The white fur shaded to blue-gray on his flanks. His amazing ears—they seemed half the length of his body—were pure white, tipped with sable. In the beauty of the moonlight, I thought he looked like a prince of peace.

  “If you were a Lindquist,” I said, “you would be the one called Ears. The Lagomorph who runs like the wind and hides in plain sight.”

  I sat on the snow beside his rock, and we shared some bread and cheese. His front teeth were like sharp-edged chisels, but I wasn’t afraid he would bite, and he had no fear of me at all. The stars shone down, and the snow hissed with bright, fierce coldness, but he wasn’t afraid of the cold, and he didn’t need shelter. I started to think I would tame him and take him with me, and he would teach me how to live in the beautiful emptiness. But as if he’d read my mind, he suddenly dropped down from the rock and shot away, leaving a trail of prints like splashes of indigo.

  Then he stopped, and looked back.

  “Goodbye!” I shouted. “And thank you!”

  I think he was the only true wild animal I ever saw.

  I went back to my sledge, and pitched my bivvy-tent. It was hard work getting the tent up, finding everything I needed in the bundles, and stowing it all inside. By the time it was done I was very, very tired. I thought how hard it would be to do this all alone, every night, and nearly cried. But I had the kits, and they comforted me.

  I slept with the nutshell inside my covers.

  I woke late, still extremely tired. By the time I got going the sun was past noon. I kept marching, heading north, into the pure white. . . . Sometimes I felt I was walking in my childhood dreams. Sometimes it was just hard slog. My prince of peace could run like the wind and sleep under the stars: I couldn’t. Every night, I had to pitch the tent. Every morning, I had to pack the sled. All day there was no sound but the crunch of my boots and the scwish, scwish of the iron runners. Sometimes I tried singing, or talking to the kits aloud. But soon I’d lapse back into a trance of strangeness, a white, waking dream.

  I did my best to travel light. Half a candle burned in the bivvy warmed it enough for the whole night. I ate little and often, and sucked frozen snow to save my bottled water. I felt frightened (all the time!), but I felt strong.

  On the fourth day I started to lose my nerve. I had supplies for a month, but I couldn’t walk for that long. My weak leg already had a slow-burning ache that I tried to ignore. I was looking for a caravan route, one of the bandit “roads” that crossed the wilderness plain. There was one marked on Mama’s map, which I had hoped to meet, but I was afraid I must have crossed it without noticing. Unless I met other travelers, and they gave me a ride, I would have to camp and stay put until my leg stopped hurting; or risk not being able to go on at all. But if I camped for long, I would run out of food, and then how would I survive?

  On the fifth day I spotted a clump of tiny cones off to the northwest, barely visible against the sky. I knew at once what they were, because there were no natural hills on this plain. Those cones marked a big waste tip, a relic of long before, when there were still cities outdoors. When I narrowed my eyes I couldn’t see any smoke yet, or any vehicles or tracks, but I could see the wheeling motes of gulls.

  “Come on, kits. See over there! Dumps! We’re saved!”

  By the time I reached them the cones had grown to monstrous size. They loomed over me, snow-shouldered, pocked with dark hollows, steaming where heat from toxic stuff undergound was rising. Long before, some city or town had stood near here, and sent its waste out to the tip in giant Dumpsters. Now only the rubbish remained. I dragged the sled in among them, and sat on my strapped bundles, trying to spot a likely seam. I meant to stay here until other travelers arrived, and try my luck as a dump hunter. You could not find food on the dumps (there might be canned stuff, but it wouldn’t be safe to eat); but there were rich pickings of other kinds. The bandits found things here that they traded for Settlements Commission supplies.

  I took out the nutshell and opened it. “I’ll be careful,” I promised the kits. “I know dumps are dangerous. But we need things. I need a hat, my homemade one stinks. We need something to use for a stove, and some fuel. And we need trade goods, to buy more food. Look at the gulls. They wouldn’t waste their time if there was nothing but toxic waste here.”

  Five pointed faces peered out at me: I thought they looked disapproving. Maybe they were right, and I was just a fool for plunder, but we did need things. The great cold had hardly begun, and we were running out of candles. We had to have fuel soon, and something we could use for a stove, or we’d perish.

  “All right, come with me,” I told them. “To make sure I don’t do anything stupid.”

  I left the sled, tucked the nutshell into my overshirt, and climbed a steep slope, until I found a hopeful break where old layers had been opened up by a dump-slip. First I picked up a strip of metal, rust free, with a sharp edge, that made a great digging tool. Then I spotted the sheen of steel and dug out a big saucepan, with no handle but otherwise perfect, complete with its lid! If I could find some fuel, I had a stove. . . . I looked for the brown stain of tailings. If I could have a sack of coal waste, what luxury! (I didn’t think about how I’d pull the extra weight.)

  I didn’t notice the other children until they were right in front of me. There were two of them, a girl and a boy. The girl was younger: she had long black curly hair, a green dress under a fleece-lined, embroidered coat, green trousers, and thick felted boots. The boy was maybe fifteen, brown skinned, with slanting black eyes. He was dressed in black, but his clothes were equally fancy. He had fine red boots, and a red leather cap on his head. They were obviously scavenging, same as me, but they looked like a prince and a princess.

  I stared, and they stared back. They didn’t speak, so neither did I. I moved off, farther along the gulley. I knew what I looked like, and what I smelled like. I didn’t want to hear their comments. But they must have some grown-ups with them. They must have transport. They hadn’t walked here, dressed like that. . . .

  I went on poking and digging, wondering how I could get a ride, until a big gull landed a few feet away from me and stood there, a patch of scarlet like blood on its wicked beak. I didn’t like the look in its eye, so I threatene
d it with my digging stick: which turned out to be a big mistake. It raised its wings and lunged, striking me on the cheek. I hit back, but I missed, and suddenly there were gulls all round me.

  I circled, swinging my weapon. The birds screamed and whirled, but they didn’t fly away. They closed in, flailing with their wings. I caught one of them a glancing blow. It wheeled and ejected a squirt of acid white bird dirt that hit me across the eyes. I dropped my metal strip, and they moved in. They beat me round the head with their hard, heavy wings, so I didn’t get a chance to wipe my blinded eyes or grab my weapon. I grabbed my steel saucepan, I had to abandon the lid, and began to scramble down the gulley. But the fancy children were there, heading up.

  “Get back!” shouted the boy. “They’re massing down there!”

  He was right. The cleft below was churning with wings.

  “What’ll we do?” gasped the girl.

  “Backs to the wall,” I cried, yelling to be heard above the screams of the enemy. “If we all three keep hitting at them, they’ll give up.”

  “No!” cried the boy. “They’re too smart! They’ll bomb us with their dirt to blind us, and make us easy meat. We have to go up. Over the other side of the cone, we’ll be safe once we’re in sight of the trucks, they know about guns.”

  We scrambled, in danger of causing a catastrophic dump-slip that would kill us anyway. I had to chuck my saucepan, but at least it hit one of the gulls and I think it broke a wing. We were about to pitch ourselves into a narrow fissure on the other side, when the girl yelled, “Oh, no! Rats!”

  There was a gray horde of them, swarming up from below. They’d seen that the gulls were attacking some major prey, and they’d come to share the feast.