Siberia (2 page)

Nivvy jumped. I could see the hat jerk, and I knew he was twisting around up there, biting fiercely and gripping the enemy with his claws. I prayed harder, to all my mama’s magic. . . . It was no use. The Nail Collector got a very puzzled expression, he set down his cup, reached up and took his hat off. His head was round as a ball and smeared with black streaks of hair. He held the hat, his eyebrows coming together in a frown; his face, seamed with dirt in the creases, screwed up in amazement. Although I was terrified I had to bite my mouth harder, to stop myself from laughing. I
prayed
that Nivvy would not attack those tempting fat bare fingers.

Nivvy stared back at the man for two seconds, no fear in his bright eyes, and then he vanished: a streak of brown too fast for eyes to follow.

“What the devil was that?” cried the Nail Collector.

Mama was perfectly calm. “I don’t know. Some kind of rat that lives in the walls. Don’t all the huts have them?” She shrugged, as if this subject was completely boring. “I think it keeps the bugs down.” There were a lot of big, mean bugs in our hut. They bit us when we were asleep, and the bug poison you could get from the store was useless.

“I could get you rat bait,” said the Nail Collector, shrugging the same way, and putting his hat back on. “It would cost you, but good product, real poison, not like the store stuff. Only, we keep it quiet.”

Mama smiled again. “Thank you. Maybe next month.”

When he had gone, taking her boxes of nails, Mama came and sat with me on the planks by the bed, with her knees tucked up: there was just enough room for the two of us, on the warm wooden shore beside the icy concrete sea. The smell of Mr. Nail Collector lingered, almost stronger than the smell of an excited Nivvy. Mama put my princess doll’s tiara on my head, and pulled a funny face at me.

“Are you frightened of the Nail Collector?” I asked her.

“No,” said Mama, putting my red dressing-up cloak around her shoulders, and fastening the jeweled clasp, which would just about fasten around her neck. “He doesn’t mean us any harm, Rosita. This is the safest place in the world.”

I knew she had been terribly scared, but I didn’t blame her for lying.

“What does ‘increase your quota’ mean?”

I had heard the Nail Collector say that. He would increase Mama’s quota.

“It means I have to make more nails, and I get more scrip. It’s kind of him to offer. But it’s not true that it would help us to buy extra jam, the jam is rationed.”

I nodded, as if I knew what
rationed
meant. My mother put princess bracelets on her arms, looking at them carefully as she fastened them. Her wrists were thicker than mine, but the bracelets fitted. I thought she looked very beautiful. She raised her eyes, which were clear and dark like mine. “Toys and books,” she sighed, “toys and books. I brought what I thought was precious, and nothing that we needed. I didn’t know, I didn’t think. . . .You have a very silly mama, Rosita.”

“The guards were in a hurry,” I said. “They didn’t give you much time.”

Nivvy came bouncing up and skipped onto my knee. I could tell he knew he’d been naughty, so I told him off. “No biting hats! Don’t bite hats!” I said, shaking my finger at him. This was a dangerous thing to do (I think I was trying to distract Mama from her thoughts); but Nivvy was not in a biting mood. He grabbed my finger and wound himself around it, licking and purring and tickling with his whiskers.

“Mama,” I asked, “why did we call him Nivvy? Did I think of that?”

“No, it’s his proper name,” said Mama. She touched my darling Nivvy’s sleek nose with her fingertip, and he purred louder. He loved my mother. “His whole true name is
Mustela
nivalis vulgaris,
it means he’s the king of the snow.”

“But he must never tell anyone his true name,” I whispered. “Except us.” I knew, from the fairy tales Mama used to tell me at bedtime, that true names are magic.

“That’s right. He must never tell, and neither must you, Rosita.”

That night, or maybe the night after (I know it was before I had my boots), Mama woke me up long after I had gone to sleep: and this is the fourth treasure. She made me put on my coat over my pajamas, took a blanket from our bed, and carried me into the dark workshop. She set me on the floor, wrapped in the blanket.

“Now,” she said. “Remember how you asked me if I had made Nivvy? I’m going to show you. Are you ready, Rosita?”

Sometimes Nivvy slept with me, but he was sleeping in his grain jar that night.

“Are you going to hurt him?” I whispered.

Really, I was sure my mama would never hurt Nivvy, but I was frightened.

“Of course not. You stay there.”

Mama went and fetched our oil lamp and set it by me on the floor, turned low. Then she reached under the workshop bench, and pulled out a nail box from under the other battered boxes that were piled there. It looked like all the rest. When she opened it I saw the round white shining case.

I didn’t say a word. I was shivering in awe. Mama looked at me and nodded, so I knew I should keep quiet. She did something to the case and it unfolded, making a flat, white shining flower. Mama started taking things from inside, showing them to me and setting them out on the spread petals. There was an envelope, which was full of slim white packets that had a clean sort of smell. I got an odd feeling from that smell, like a memory trying to be born: about another time, another place, my mama and my dadda. . . . Then came the doll’s house droppers and tubes and dishes, in a little rack just the right size for them, and last of all a small box shaped like a wrinkled nut, a nut big enough to fit snugly in the palm of my mama’s hand.

The other things were city things that brought fuzzy memories of our old home. I was so little, everything before our tractor ride was already dim and long ago. But I
knew
the nutshell was magic. It was exactly like something in a fairy tale.

There was a thin dark line around the middle of it. Mama ran her fingertips around there: the nut came open in two halves, and inside, snuggled in a nest of silky stuff, I saw tiny, furry living creatures. They looked up at me, with eyes no bigger than pinheads. The boldest stood on its hind legs and reached up its miniature paws, whiskers that you could hardly see quivering with excitement.

They were so tiny, like pets for a doll’s house! They couldn’t get out, there was a clear barrier in the way. But I wanted to touch them. I wanted to hold them, and I knew they wanted me to stroke them, with the tiniest tip of my finger.

I stared, my heart beating hard with longing.

“Do you like them?” came my mama’s voice.

“I
love
them.”

“Good,” she said. “It’s good that you love them.”

“What are they?”

“That’s what I’m going to tell you. But first you have to know that one day you might be their guardian. I’m their guardian now, one day it might be you.”

She closed the nutshell, and set it down. I was terribly disappointed, but I trusted my mama. I knew she wouldn’t tease me. She would let me touch those little fairy-pets soon, if I was good and kept quiet and listened.

“Now,” she said. “Do you know why there are hardly any wild animals?”

Of course there were no wild animals in the city, it was all indoors. But I had been told there were no nice ones in the wilderness either. There were only
vermin,
and
muties
: nasty names of nasty things. I had heard about them at my crêche.

“Is it because of the vermin and muties?”

Muties were horrible creatures, ugly monsters that would eat you or give you diseases. I had never seen one. I’d never seen a rat or a cat or a gull (these were the
vermin
) in the city either: but I was scared of them.

“No, though that’s a good guess. You’re a very clever little girl, Rosita. It’s because of the cold, and because of other things that people did, a while ago, that took away all the places where wild animals could live freely. The only animals that thrive now are the ones that can survive on our garbage. But the spring will come again; the true spring. The little creatures in the incubator, that’s the case I just showed you, are like seeds. They are the seeds of all the wild animals that once lived in our land.”

I nodded solemnly, although I didn’t understand.

“We must look after them, and tend them, until it’s the season for their return. They’re safe here for the moment. One day, maybe quite soon, or maybe years and years from now, when you are grown up, it will be time to take them to the city. . . . Not our city, another city; where the sun always shines. It’s a long journey, hundreds of miles to the north and west, through the wilderness and the forest, through the forests to the sea, and across the ice to the other side.”

I was overjoyed. There was nothing I wanted more than to go running into the roaring silence of the wilderness. Then my heart sank.

“Oh . . . But we can’t walk that far, Mama.”

“We won’t have to walk, Rosy. The country out there looks empty, but it isn’t. There are many people living in it, and some of them will help us.”

I was doubtful about this. I believed that the only people who lived in the wilderness were the ugly Toyland people in these huts.

“Will the ice on the sea be strong enough?”

“There’s always ice on that strait. In the summer, special ships can sometimes get through it. But we wouldn’t get tickets. If we cross in winter, the ice will be safe.”

“When can we go? Tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow. I don’t know how long.” She smiled at me. “But I’m going to teach you how to look after the Lindquist kits, that’s what we call the seed creatures. Only, you must promise never to tell anyone else. You must never, never talk about these things to anyone except me. You understand that, don’t you?”

I nodded firmly. “I won’t tell.”

“Good girl.” She looked at me, with that solemn,
magical
expression again, the same as when I had asked her did she make Nivvy. Then she raised her hands, and opened the collar of her nightgown (shrugging aside her coat, which she was wearing over her nightclothes the same as me). “Look here, Rosita.”

I got up and looked, holding on to my blanket, and I saw a pattern, marked on her white skin by the base of her throat. There was a pretty circlet of green feathery leaves, spoiled by a black cross.

“That’s the Chervil Ring tattoo,” said my mama. “Chervil is the herb that old-time people used to plant first in the spring, or when they came to live somewhere new. It’s the sign of life. It means that I’m from the Institute, a place for people who have vowed to learn about life, and serve and protect all living things.”

“What is the black crossing-out for?”

“It’s not for anything,” said Mama. “It’s to show that I don’t belong there anymore.” She spoke so calmly that the loss in her voice didn’t worry me.

“Can I have the life mark?”

Mama smiled. “Maybe, one day, who knows. . . . Remember to keep secret the things that are secret, Rosita, and we can live here. I think no one means to hurt us, not even the Nail Collector. We’ll have to be careful, and no one must know about Nivvy, but I will quietly teach you what you need to learn, and all will be well.”

When I had my boots and I could play outdoors, I didn’t mention Nivvy to the other children I met, and I never spoke of Mama’s magic. There are things small children understand better than most grown-ups think. I didn’t know why we had come to live here, but I knew we were in hostile territory, my mama and I. And though I was not naturally a good little girl (I was often very naughty, I couldn’t help it), I knew that a promise is a promise.

Nivvy was my best friend and dear companion. I would wake up on the coldest nights, when the heat was so low it barely made a thread of red on the stove’s dial, with a warm silken weight in the hollow of my collarbone, and it would be Nivvy, snuggled tight. He made tunnels behind the planks of our walls and I would chase him, tapping and whispering, “Where’s Nivvy?”; until I pretended to give up. “Oh well,” I’d say, in a mournful voice, “Nivvy’s gone! Bye-bye, Nivvy.” Immediately his head would pop out of one of the cracks. He’d laugh at me with his chirring noise, come jumping across the room, and bounce into my hand—and curl up there, cuddling my finger and purring like a kitten.

The months passed, with no incident except for the supply trucks, that arrived with troops of armed guards and brought food and goods to our stores, and visits from Nicolai the Nail Collector: who was our “Brigade Chief,” and the nearest thing our Settlement had to a prison officer. The spring blizzards came, and at last the thaw; and again I couldn’t go outdoors, because the mud made our street into a disgusting oozy river. I cried because the beautiful snow had gone, and then I was
astonished
to see the blank emptiness grow green, and dance with the flowers of a wilderness spring. We had gardens in the city, but I had thought it was always winter outside. Nicolai the Nail Collector gave Mama and me a vegetable plot, out on the edge of the Settlement where people were allowed to grow extra food. We didn’t have much success, not that first year, but we tried. Then in a few weeks summer was over, and another long, hungry winter began.

The little king of the snows lived with us in secret for a year and a half, then he got old and died. Mama had given me several lessons in magic by then. She tried to tell me that Nivvy, the real Nivvy, was
not
gone forever, no more than a plant is gone forever when it sets its seed and withers at the end of the growing season. But I cried and cried, and wouldn’t listen. It was summertime. Mama wrapped the poor little remains in one of my city mittens, and we buried him among the dwarf willows, out by the vegetable patches. And life went on, day after day: a hard, empty, and hungry life, but the only one I knew.

* 2 *

The year after Nivvy died,
at the end of the summer, I had to go to school. I didn’t want to. Mama told me it would be like my crêche, but I’d forgotten all about the city, and I
knew
the Settlement children would pick on me. I got on with them all right playing in the street, but that was because I could run home when they started calling me names. But Mama had kept me at home as long as she dared. I was six, and I must be schooled. When she told me she would get into trouble if I stayed at home, I had to give in. If a grown-up “got into trouble,” Nicolai the Nail Collector would make a call on his radio. Guards would come and take the person away, and they would never be seen again. . . .

It turned out that the children weren’t so bad. They would say,
You’re not so special, now, are you, snottyboots?,
because I had lived in the city: and hit me, or spoil my work, or steal my food. But I had friends as well as enemies. I was small, but I didn’t mind hitting back if I had to, and I could run like the wind. The worst thing was Miss Malik, the teacher of the junior class. She was tall and thin and dried-up looking, she had bushy black hair and she wore red lipstick, which made her different from most of the women in the Settlement, but didn’t make her any prettier. I
hated
her. She didn’t know anything. She didn’t know the earth went round the sun, she didn’t know there had once been dinosaurs. She was stupid as mud, and she knew I despised her, so she punished me whenever she had the chance. She had a metal ruler, called
the
rule,
which was her favorite weapon. She would call you out, and you had to stand with your hand spread so she could whack you on the palm. If you’d been really naughty, it was both palms.

I trudged back to our hut after one of my tussles with Miss, feeling very bitter. It was the beginning of winter, a fairy time: everything ugly hidden under a cloak of new snow. The smoke from the power station turned the murky air of the afternoon into a mysterious gloom, in which our few, yellow streetlights were hovering globes of gold. . . . I didn’t care. I was only wondering how I could bear another day with Miss Malik. I couldn’t understand why my mama wouldn’t stick up for me, why she was on Miss Malik’s side. One day, I thought, I’ll be big enough and I’ll run away.

Mama was working, as always. I knew she couldn’t stop to come and greet me. She had to be where the red light could see her, all through her working hours, or we got no scrip, even if she had filled her quota. I still couldn’t forgive her. I opened the sliding doors of our bed and sat there staring at the cold, miserable, lonely room, until the blood all rushed to my head.

“I hate this place!”
I screamed, as loud as I could, and flopped down and howled, kicking at the wall at the back of the bed until the planks rattled.

“I want Nivvy!
I want my Nivvy, I want to go, go,
go
away!
”

Mama came out of the workshop. When I opened my eyes, which were screwed up tight in misery, she was standing there with her dirty apron wrapped round her, and her greasy work gloves on her hands. I had broken two of my big promises (the one that said I wouldn’t be naughty when she had to work, and the one where I would never, never talk about Nivvy so people could hear). But she didn’t look angry, at least not with me.

I sat up, ashamed of myself.

“Mama,” I said, “I’m sorry I screamed his name, but
please
make Nivvy come back. I can’t bear it here without him.”

She sat on the bed, and pulled off her gloves. “I can’t, Rosita. I can’t let another kit grow. We got away with it once, but remember when Nicolai saw him? What if people thought we had a mutie in our hut?”

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.