Siberia (13 page)

My top skirt was red, with sprigs of flowers. I loved it.

Satin and Emerald had been guarding my sledge from the other children. When I came out, wearing my new clothes and with my face and hands pale as milk, Satin cheered and tossed his red cap in the air.

“Now we’ll have a bonfire!” said Emerald.

I felt a pang when I saw my New Dawn uniform go. A lot of my life went up in those smoky, greasy flames. Not just the part that held Rain and Rose, and so many bad memories, but the schoolroom hut in the Settlement, and Mr. Snory. The pride of getting good marks, the thrill of thinking I had won a chance in life. And I would miss Storm’s jacket. Emerald and Satin had wanted to put my filthy knapsack on the bonfire too, but I’d refused. Baba had washed it instead. The kits were safe. I’d managed to slip them into the nail box, along with my map and the compass, when the knapsack was emptied. I’d told Baba it was where I kept clean cloths for when I got my period: she understood how a girl would cling to that.

But I wondered how long I’d be able to keep any of my secrets.

“How do I pay for my ride?” I asked. “Is there work I can do?”

“Little Father’s rich,” said Satin. “He’s generous, he likes giving.”

“We work around the camp,” explained Emerald, because she could see I wasn’t happy about being a beggar. “It’s not hard, but there’s plenty to do.”

When the bonfire had died down it was dark. The truck where I’d been bathed was Little Father’s own. He lived in a room at the front, behind the driving cab. Emerald and Satin lived in the back, with Baba to look after them, and that was where I would travel. The other children drifted off, the old woman called us indoors. She served us bowls of hot kasha porridge, with syrup and cream trailed over the top, which we ate sitting by the stove on a silky warm rug. Then we talked, and played (Emerald and Satin had a box of toys and puzzles) until Baba said we must go to sleep. She’d made up a bed for me, in one of the bunks that were hidden by the curtains that hung around the walls.

I waited till the truck was quiet, except for the old woman’s rhythmic snores. The big tailgate was fastened up, but there was a little door in it, covered by a felt curtain, that was only bolted, not locked.
. . .
I slipped down, barefoot, wrapped in a blanket, into the freezing night, and went to my sledge. It was still standing where we’d left it, by the embers of the bonfire, but all my bundles were gone. Anything of use had been taken into the general stores, and the rest thrown away. When I’d planned to hitch a ride, I hadn’t imagined anything like this. I had thought I would still be in charge of my own destiny. Now my clothes weren’t even my own. I felt very strange.

“Do you want to keep it?” said a soft voice beside me.

Satin had followed me. He sat down on the sledge.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “You people are too generous.”

There was a long silence.

“Don’t worry,” said the boy, at last. “We understand, Emerald and me. We’ll keep your sled, Little Father won’t notice. Then you’ll know you can get away.” He touched my shoulder, shyly. “It’s good to promise yourself that. Even if it isn’t true.”

The day after I joined the caravan the weather broke up. The clouds had been thick and angry when we started off, but nobody had cared. When the storm broke, the trucks drove straight through it. We got up onto the upper tier of bunks, and sat there safe and warm, while a blinding, whirling whiteness scoured the double-glass windows in the side of our speeding haven.

“If we were out there,” said Emerald, grimly, “we’d be dead.”

I didn’t think of the weather. I thought about hiding in plain sight, like the wild animal I had called my prince of peace. To survive without a home, in the wilderness, you must be able to take shelter on the open ground.
. . .
I decided that falling in with Emerald and Satin was the best thing that could have happened to me. I wasn’t dressed like Sloe, I didn’t behave like Sloe. I was part of Little Father’s family. No one could mistake me for a lone fugitive with a secret!

I didn’t have any trouble hiding the kits, or keeping my nail box safe. Little Father never came poking around in the back of the truck, it was our territory. And old Baba was half blind, while Emerald and Satin never tried to pry. I kept my knapsack in my bunk, but whenever we stopped to do business, or to camp, I would carry the nutshell with me. Sometimes—not every day, but often—I would manage to slip away, between sunset and dusk, when the camp was at its busiest. I would walk off into the snow, and then I’d be able to open the shell and talk to them.

And be Sloe again, for a short while, alone in the cold immensity.

Emerald and Satin didn’t like me doing this. They were afraid Little Father would notice my “wandering” and he’d be angry. They seemed to love and fear their dadda about equally (I supposed their mother was dead or taken away: I never asked about her). But they sympathized, especially Satin, so they protected my strange ways.

Our trucks kept to the ice-rutted road, but whenever we were moving, there were outriders patrolling the waste, on powerful heavy-duty motor sleds. Nomadic life was supposed to be illegal, because it counted as unauthorized travel, but of course these scouts were watching out for rival bandits, not the law. The Settlements Commission (Mama had told me this) didn’t really care what happened in the wilderness, as long as the people didn’t try to get into the cities. Emerald and Satin and I, and the kids from the other trucks, would hang around when the scouts came in at dusk, to report to Little Father. We were fascinated by the motor sleds, and the swaggering young men with their long rifles and tall boots.

One night, they brought in Yagin.

I had been accepted easily by the other kids, though I couldn’t even talk to some of them: they spoke a different language in some of the trucks, an old bandit language. We were all playing football in the dark, when we heard the scouts’ sleds. We’d stuck rag-and-oil torches into the snow, and were running around our shadows, yelling and squealing, and losing the ball.
. . .
We abandoned the game and gathered near Little Father’s picnic table. One of the scouts was riding a motor sled that we hadn’t seen before, and there was a stranger walking with them, between two of our young men. The grown-ups had gathered too. An actual
stranger
was rare—bandits all seemed to know each other. Whoever we met, someone in our caravan was a cousin, or knew a connection. I saw that the man was Yagin, and this time I wasn’t even shocked. I just felt doomed. Of course he had found me again. He would always find me.

Things looked bad. He was walking free, chatting confidently to the young men. They had guns trained on him, but that meant nothing, it was normal bandit manners. I didn’t know if I should just run for it, or stay and try to look innocent. I didn’t look like Sloe! He might not recognize me.

I needn’t have bothered with the “looking innocent.” I watched him take off his cap, in respect for the bandit king. I watched him being invited to sit down at the table, like an honored guest
. . .
and soon I heard him telling Little Father that he was looking for a girl. A ward of the state, who had run away from the New Dawn College. Black eyes, dark hair, white skin, rather tall: about
so
high (he measured me, setting his hand in the air); a tendency to limp with the right leg. There was a generous reward for her safe return, and he would share it with anyone who could give him information.

“So you’re a bounty hunter,” rumbled Little Father, stroking his beard. “What crime has she committed, the little snow bunting?”

“Serious
crimes,” declared my so-called guardian angel. “Sedition, subversion, and poisoning the minds of her fellow students. It is a dangerous offense against the Settlements Commission to give her any assistance.”

“Well, that’s very bad,” said Little Father. “And how much is she worth?”

I saw Yagin bring out a black purse: I saw the rough-made gold coins of the wilderness spilling onto the tabletop. He was a bold man! Didn’t he know that the bandit king could just have him killed, and keep the lot? But something in the way Little Father looked at Yagin, and in the feeling of the crowd, told me that wasn’t going to happen. My guardian angel seemed to have put a spell on them
.

I walked slowly backward, out of the gaggle of children. I knew where my sledge was. It traveled hooked up on the side of the truck, with other equipment: skis and sticks, shovels and brooms. I thought I could get it down alone. I had the nutshell with me. I would have to sneak into the back of the truck to get my knapsack, and maybe get some food.
. . .
I crept past old Baba, who was dozing by the stove, and collected the knapsack. I was quietly, quietly opening a food locker, when I heard Emerald’s voice right behind me, and jumped a mile.

“Sloe?” She stroked my cheek, and squeezed my hand.

“It’s all right, Sloe. Little Father’s sending him away.”

“I don’t believe you,” I croaked.

“Come up and see.”

We climbed the ladder to the second tier, the row of bunks that nobody slept in, and peered out through the double-glass windows. Yagin was still there. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I saw Little Father shake the gold back into the black purse, and toss it across the table. My mouth dropped open. Yagin started arguing, Little Father laughed. Yagin got angry. He waved his arms. The crowd stirred ominously, the scouts raised their long rifles. But Little Father did not give the order.

Yagin took his purse, and left on his sled, pursued by warning volleys.

“They won’t shoot him,” said Emerald, in a matter-of-fact tone. “He wasn’t in uniform, but he’s the police. You can always tell. But he’d better not come back.”

I didn’t often get close to Little Father. When Emerald and Satin spent time with their dadda I stayed discreetly out of the way. Instinct made me afraid of someone who had so much power over my fate. But after the Yagin incident I went to him, first chance I got.
“Thank you,”
I said, and I curtseyed and kissed his hand, the way I’d seen his own people do when Little Father had granted them a special favor.

His big hand smelled of herbal soap, it was soft and strong, with hairs growing over the knuckles. He laughed, and raised me up: smoothed his big thumb over the place where my cheek had been cut, and nodded in satisfaction.

It was mending well, I wouldn’t have a scar.

“Little snow bunting,” he rumbled. “You’re a good girl.”

Sometimes we thundered along at a terrific pace. Sometimes we camped for days, for no good reason. I wasn’t worried. There were months and months of winter ahead. We were heading north, with all the halts, much faster than I could have managed on my own. We three helped Baba with the chores, we played together; and sometimes played with the children from the other trucks. I found out that Emerald and Satin weren’t Little Father’s own children. Quite a few of the kids with the caravan were strays like me, that the bandits had taken in along the road. I thought this was very kind. I told Satin I wished more people in the Settlements knew that the bandits could be kind as well as ruthless. He shrugged, and said coolly, “I suppose they are as kind as most people in the world.” I wondered why he wasn’t more grateful.

We were friends, but Emerald and Satin often puzzled me. Of course I didn’t tell them my secrets, and they never talked about what had happened to their families. That seemed all right. It was best to live in the present. But there was something
empty
about them. They had no purpose in life, no dreams beyond keeping warm and having nice food: and secretly I pitied them, although they were so rich.

The bandit tribes agreed with my mama: winter is the time for travel. We were heading for a great meeting, the winter fair: where there would be feasting and trading and a big exchange of news. My map stayed in my knapsack with my compass. I didn’t want anyone to know I had things like that. But I had a good idea where this fair would take place, and I’d decided that was where I would leave the caravan. It would be time for me to start heading west, to reach the narrowest point of the narrow sea. I wished I could pay Little Father something. But the back of our truck, behind the curtains and under the hangings, was
stuffed
with bales and boxes, and I had seen his contempt for a purse of Settlements Commission gold. I had nothing except the map and compass, and my Lindquists. I just hoped that one day I would find my mama again, and we would trace Little Father, and make some return for all his kindness.

One night, safe in my curtained bunk, I took out the nutshell to say good night to the kits, and noticed that the shell had crumpled a little, and started shading back from yellow to brown. The kits were curled up. They raised their heads very sleepily, and blinked at me. I said good night, and shut the shell, and lay down, very shaken.

“It’s for the best,” I whispered to myself. “It won’t be forever.”

I didn’t get a chance to check them, all the next day. When I opened the shell to say good night again, they were dead.

I lay and cried, without a sound. I thought of that night in my mama’s hut, when they had played on the lumpy mattress. The freight car, our big adventure at the fur farm, the smelly packing case where we’d lived with Nosey
. . .
Most of all, our crossing of the snow
. . .
I had never been lonely, never once. I was supposed to be the guardian, but I would be lost without them.

I had no family now, no companions. I would just be carrying a box of seeds.

I harvested the cocoons, returning the powdered seed to fresh tubes; which I put away carefully in the base of the lab case. I tried to behave as if nothing had happened, and failed miserably.
. . .
But it was easy to get away with being sad. We were getting close to the big meet. Other streams of vehicles were moving with us now, converging from other roads. Everyone was busy: there was no time for play. Baba spent hours polishing Little Father’s brass and silver goods, work she didn’t trust to anyone else. Emerald and Satin had been set to make lists of the contents of those mysterious bales. There were more guns about, and we children were kept inside the trucks: no more games of football.