Siberia (12 page)

“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 threatened 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.

“Up again! Retreat!” shouted the boy.

“We can’t!” I yelled. “The gulls will pick us off! Forward! Charge!”

Gulls and rats had no fear of humans. They had learned to regard us as just a nuisance, unless we were carrying guns; or maybe prey. But we three stuck together, pelting them with any rubbish that came to hand: mud, metal, festering old rags. The gulls couldn’t dive-bomb us once we were in the fissure, and the rats gave way before our onslaught.

Then suddenly, the enemy vanished.

“That was close!” said the boy. He flopped down on a pile of old bricks: taking off his red cap and wiping gull dirt from his face with a blue handkerchief. “That was close! The Little Father was right, we shouldn’t have come scavenging unarmed.”

“Would they have eaten us?” asked the pretty girl.

“Yes they would,” I said, “I’ve heard of that happening.” I looked down, and saw why the vermin had given up. I had found the bandit road. A swathe of ruts cut through the white plain, curving round the waste tips and heading for the horizon. There were six trucks parked together below us, and people moving around, men and women with rifles; and children too, all dressed in bright, flamboyant clothes, the kind of clothes you’d never see in a Prison Settlement.

“Where’s your family parked?” asked the girl.

I shook my head. I wrapped Storm’s filthy, ragged coat around my filthy, mud-colored shirt, hugging the comforting outline of the magic nutshell, and walked away. I kept on walking, round the base of the cones, until I was back where I’d left my sled. At least it was still there. I sat on my smelly bundles, and put my head in my hands. “I’m lucky to be alive,” I whispered. “I know I am. You were right, I shouldn’t have gone dump-hunting. But we’re finished, kits. I can’t ask for a lift.
I can’t.
”

“Who are you talking to?”

The two fancy children had followed me. It was the girl who’d spoken.

“To myself,” I said. “You do that, when you’re traveling alone.”

“Where are you from?” asked the boy.

I shrugged. “Nowhere, really.”

“We’re with the caravan,” said the girl. “But you’re not one of us. We’d know you. Where are you going? There isn’t anywhere. It’s all empty land around here.”

“I’m heading north.”

“D’you want a ride?” said the boy. “My name’s Satin.”

“I’m Emerald,” said the girl. “We’re heading north too. We’ve got trucks.”

“Sloe,” I said. “I saw the trucks.” I swallowed my pride. “Yes, I need a ride. But I haven’t any money and I don’t have anything to trade.”

They smiled. “You don’t need money,” Satin assured me. “You’d better come and meet Little Father.”

“Your father?” I said, doubtfully. I knew how disgusting I looked, and I imagined these children must have a father like a king.

“Come on,” said Emerald. “He’ll pretend he doesn’t want you, and say we’ve no room: but don’t worry, we’ll persuade him.”

“Little Father” was a big man, with thick dark hair curling to his shoulders, and a thick dark beard. Among the brightly dressed people he was drab, because he wore an overcoat made of sacking and tied with rope round the middle. But there was richer clothing under the dirty outer layer, and his hair was sleekly cut and combed. When we children came up he was sitting with some other men at a folding table, by a very big long truck. The table had been picnic furniture for a stylish city patio once; it looked strange in the snow. I saw the gold rings on his big fingers, as he listened to Satin’s story and stroked his beard. I knew he was a bandit, but he looked kingly. He came to have a look at me: and quickly backed off, pulling out a handkerchief.

“Faugh. She smells like rancid meat.”

“Please,”
coaxed Emerald. “She saved our lives, truly, and she’s healthy.”

Little Father went back to the table, and fetched a cup of hot water from the teakettle. He sopped his handkerchief in it and rubbed at my cheek. I stood there, feeling terribly embarrassed, desperate to be accepted.

“Oh, hohoho,” said the big man, smiling with a flash of teeth in the dark of his beard. “How long has this princess been lying on the midden, eh? Peel off the crust and she’s a little white loaf, with eyes like black cherries.”

“She’s strong and hearty,” promised Satin. “And she has spirit.”

I didn’t like being described as if I couldn’t speak for myself, but I kept my mouth shut. Emerald and Satin seemed to know what they were doing.

“Hm,” said Little Father. “Walk about, my dear. Just walk about a little.”

Then I knew he’d seen my limp. I walked about, the men and women of the caravan gathering, watching me. I tried to move as normally as possible.

“What a shame. That’s permanent, I can tell. It spoils her.”

“Oh
please,
” cried Emerald, clasping her hands under her chin, and batting her eyelashes shamelessly, as if she were about three years old. “For your baby Emmy?”

Little Father laughed, and cuffed her gently around the head. “You’ll have me taking in every stray in the north. Augh, go on, have Baba heat some water, see if she can peel off that stinking crust. Oh, and
burn
her clothes. We have plenty.”

Emerald took me to the back of the truck. The tailgate was open. Inside, it was like a treasure cave of colors: curtains and bright blankets hanging on the walls, rugs on the floor. There was a stove with a chimney, and an old woman sat beside it, knitting. She made a big fuss, but she did what Little Father wanted; shutting the tailgate to give me privacy. I had to sit in a cut-down barrel of hot water, while the old lady scoured me with a scrubbing brush, and washed the grease and fur farm muck out of my hair. It took three changes of water, but the water was
hot
and she used real, sweet soap. I hadn’t been so clean since I was a baby. She tuttutted at the cut on my cheek I’d got in our fight with the gulls. She put ointment on it and fitted the edges together, very carefully, with two clean paper-plasters.

I was given underwear and clothes, several layers of skirts, leggings to go underneath, a new jacket, and felted boots. Baba even tried to put a ribbon in my hair, but it was still New-Dawn short, so she had to give up that idea.