by Ann Halam
The men jumped back into the big car and it thundered away. My neighbors came leaping from their huts, shouting and carrying buckets. They had to put out the blaze, to save their own homes. For me, there was nothing left to be saved. I straightened my stiff limbs and limped away, in a daze, still under my tarp. No one noticed me.
By the time I’d left the last huts behind it had started to rain: the hard, biting rain that comes before the first snows. Sleety drops rattled on my carapace. Once I stumbled into a pothole that sent water spilling down inside my boots. I kept going until I reached the potato patches. I had remembered the blackthorn hedge: the only shelter I could think of, between here and the distant forest, where I would not be turned away. I burrowed under the branches, my stiff cloak protecting me from the thorns. I tugged a fold of it between me and the wet ground, and it made a good bivvy. I longed to make sure the Lindquists were safe, but I was afraid to get them out, in case something else suddenly happened . . . so I just cuddled the knapsack in my arms. Soon I was even warm.
I must have dozed, listening to the machine-gun rattle of the rain. I didn’t notice when it softened into a gentle, cat’spaw pattering. When I roused myself and looked out, it was full daylight and everything had changed. The sordid mud and withered litter had vanished, the ground was pure, smooth white. I sat under my snail-shell tarp, and thought about my options.
I was afraid to go back to the Settlement. I had nothing left there: nowhere to live, no work; nobody who would take me in, and the Mafia would be back, looking for me. They knew I hadn’t been in the hut when they torched it. What would they do when they caught me, or when my neighbors handed me over? Maybe this is it, I thought. Time to lie down and die.
But I was too proud to die right there.
It came over me that there was only one thing left to do. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. . . . I had the Lindquists, I had the map and the compass. I had a bit of food. I had everything of value I possessed, right there in my arms. Obviously, I must go north. North to the forest, through the forest to the sea. I had thought of waiting until I was grown up, but there would never be a better time. I would take my mama’s mysterious treasure to the city where the sun always shines, and maybe, who knew, she would come and find me there.
It was a plan, anyway: better than having no plan at all. I took out my hunk of con cheese, broke off a fragment, and ate it while I thought about how to start.
The first thing was to get right away from the Settlement, before anyone came looking for me. Then I’d need somewhere to regroup, and collect supplies. I couldn’t start on a journey of hundreds of miles with just a few scraps of food. When Mama and I had planned our trek we’d imagined saving up for years, putting together stocks of cans, rope, lamp oil, all the things we might need. . . . I couldn’t do that, but I knew where I should head for, though the thought of it scared me.
I didn’t mind being on foot for a while. I had a limp, and I was certainly slow: but I was strong, after the years at New Dawn. The snow was more of a problem. Every step I took I’d be leaving a trail visible for miles. My tarp was another poser. Though it had kept me warm, it was completely sodden: but I was determined to take it with me. I crawled out from under the hedge. There was no one in sight, and there’d be no reason for anybody to come to the potato patches this morning, so I felt reasonably safe. I spread my sodden house and folded it into the neatest bundle I could manage, which I tied to my knapsack with the string.
I’d hardly started walking, trying to keep to puddles and stones where I’d leave less of a trail, when I heard the tractor. I ran for cover, dodged down behind the nearest heap of boulders, and looked back. I could soon see that the driver wasn’t Nicolai. It was a boy, a teenager: someone I recognized. I ducked out of sight, and looked up into the gray sky. There would be more snow. My trail would be covered: but I would be out in it, without a coat, a wet mountain of tarpaulin on my back. Just getting as far as my boulders had shown me what it would be like trying to tramp across this country before it was frozen. . . .
I made up my mind and set out at a trot, cutting across the next bend. Then I stood and waited, the bundled tarp in my arms. The tractor stopped, and Storm looked down from the cab.
It was four years since he’d tried to help me over the plain names business, when I was a conceited kid. He must be sixteen now: I wondered why he hadn’t run away. Wasn’t he afraid of being taken to labor camp? I couldn’t tell anything from his expression. In the Settlements we didn’t show our feelings very much.
“I heard you were back,” he said, dryly. “Word got around.”
I nodded. “What’s my mother’s house look like this morning?”
“Like a hole in the ground,” said Storm. “You’re in trouble, girl. They all think you’ve got some secret stash. Have you any plans?”
“Yes. . . . I have a plan. What are you doing, driving Nicolai’s tractor?”
“Delivery run.” Storm glanced over his shoulder, and grinned. The cart was half full of bulging sacks. No more needed be said: we both knew how our world worked. He was part of an empire like the one Rose and I had made, involving an unofficial trade in Settlements Commission supplies.
“Will you give me a lift?”
“Where to?”
“I want to get to the railway.”
He shook his head, joggling the earflaps of his fleecy cap. “Can’t do that, Sloe. I’m not going that way: and if I was, you should stay away from there. They’d never let you on a train, and that’s the first place anyone’ll look for you.”
“I don’t want you to take me to the platform. I know that’s no good. I want you to take me to the cutting where the freight cars have to slow down, on the fur farm spur. There’ll be a train, probably, tomorrow or the next day, because it’s the end of the month. I’m going to jump a ride.”
“Right, I get it.” He thought about it. “You know there’s guard dogs, don’t you? They attack to kill.”
“I can look after myself,” I said. “I’ll be all right.”
“My mam would let you stay with us for a while.”
“Thanks, but I’d just be an extra mouth to feed, until the police came to take me away. Unless the gangsters came around first, and your hut got torched.”
“All right then, up you get.”
It was warmer in the cab than outdoors, in spite of the broken window. I tried to spread my tarp out on the engine housing, so it might get a bit dry. Storm didn’t talk and neither did I. After a few minutes he reached for a bundle of jerky sticks, stripped two off, and handed me one. I chewed, and my mouth ran with saliva. Now that is meat, I thought. I knew I was chewing on a strip of salty, smoke-dried cat. Or maybe rat: I wasn’t fussy. The tractor juddered on. I kept wanting to look over my shoulder: I felt as if the Mafia must be close behind. I looked at Storm’s cap with the earflaps, and thought of the lookout on the corner, when my mother’s hut was being trashed. Someone with a cap just like that . . . I wondered if I was a fool to trust him. But you can’t tell somebody’s loyalties by what they do for pay.
At last we reached the place where the fur farm spur, heading north from the main railway line, ran in a cutting, no more than a half mile or so from the tractor track. I started bundling my sodden tarp: it wasn’t any drier.
Storm shook his head. “You don’t want that crap. It’s a liability.”
“I do. I left my coat in the hut. I don’t have anything else to shelter in.”
He reached behind him, to the shelf under the broken window, and tugged out a spare jacket that must have belonged to him, not Nicolai, because it was fairly clean. It was brown, slick on the outside, and it had a fleecy lining.
“You can borrow this.”
He wanted me to get out first, and he would hand me my stuff, but I wasn’t going to let anyone else touch the knapsack. I scrambled out, in my new jacket.
“Thanks for the loan, and the lift. I’ll pay you back, soon as I can.”
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br /> “Did your mother leave you anything tasty, girl?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing but a few tins of food, which I had to leave behind. It was just one of those rumors that gets around.”
Storm looked at the knapsack, and shrugged. “Well, if anyone asks, that’s what I’ll tell them.” He took his cap off, leaned down, and dumped it on my head, and then, as an afterthought, plonked the rest of the jerky strips into my hands. “When you get where you’re going, send me a postcard, eh?”
I nodded, and walked off into the snow.
I made my camp in a stand of tall dead reeds. I ate freely of my food, because food is like having a fire inside, and I had to keep warm. I also burned two of my candles, which kept my tarpaulin bivvy cozy at night. The Lindquists were all right, in their nest. I opened the nut and talked to them often; but I didn’t open the shield, so they didn’t get cold. It was a great comfort having them there, even though I was scared the whole time that the bandits would turn up. I hoped I’d see them coming, and have a chance to bury the nail box (I had a place ready) under a cache of stones, before they reached me. I would never tell them where.
No one came. I would never know who had tipped off the Mafia that I was coming home (I suspect it must have been old Nicolai). But it seemed Storm hadn’t told tales. The sun was an orange split in the clouds, getting on toward setting on the third day, when the freight train turned up at last. I was waiting by the line, wishing I had some more jerky. My feet were blocks of ice, I didn’t know if I could jump onto a freight car. I only knew that if I didn’t make it, I was probably done for. The engine came in sight, rose up like a snorting, choking old dragon, and hauled itself by. I’d broken out in a sweat despite the cold, but then the long trucks started crawling past me, groaning like old ladies with rheumatism, and it was no problem at all. The fourth truck had an open gap in the side. I threw my bundle of tarp and scrambled on board after it, onto some piles of old sacking.
I flopped down, incredibly relieved and triumphant. Sacking! What a luxury! And dry shelter! Maybe I could take my boots off, and get my feet dry. . . . Somebody coughed. I realized I was not alone. My eyes got accustomed to the darkness and I saw that the shadowy length of the empty goods truck was littered with bodies: tramps like me. Someone even had a little brazier going. I remembered what my mama had said: the country looks empty, but it isn’t. Some of the people will help us. . . . Already Storm had helped me, and my neighbors had given me food.
I’d been thrown out of school, burned out of my home. I was sore and filthy, cold and wet, and I knew I should be terrified of the vast journey ahead. But I had hope. It came to me that this was my mother’s gift. It was because she gave people hope, because she glowed with it, that our neighbors had cared about her, and felt that she mattered. I didn’t understand what the Lindquists meant, and I longed for peace and quiet so I could try to put together what I had learned as a child. But I felt that I was carrying that hope with me, like a burning flame.
The goods truck rattled on, slower than Nicolai’s tractor. None of the other unofficial passengers took any notice of me. I unfastened my knapsack, and lifted the lid from the nail box. The magic nutshell had grown, the wrinkles had filled out a little. When I opened it the kits looked up at me, with identical pointed faces. Five of them were just slightly bigger. The sixth, the one who’d eaten the jam, was about as big as the first joint of my thumb. The last time I’d looked, this morning, it’d been only a little larger than the rest.
Oh, this isn’t good, I told myself. Now I have a second-stage Lindquist to look after, and it’s soon going to be too big for the nutshell. But really, I was delighted. I felt that my mama had given me a faithful friend.
“Nivvy?” I whispered. “Are you Nivvy, come back again?”
No, this wasn’t Nivvy, pressing tiny naked paws against the shield. It was a different animal, with a drooping nose, a pelt dark as ditchwater, and a skinny naked tail. Teeth glinted white under the curling edge of its whiskered lips.
I opened the seal. Confidently, it hopped into my palm. The rest of the kits huddled down and didn’t try to follow. I was holding what looked like a rat, a miniature rat with a drooping nose, and there was something wrong with its eyes, I didn’t like its bleary little eyes.
“You’re not Nivvy. But who are you?”
The memories began to come back. The orders, those strange long words.
There was a phlegmy, throat-clearing noise next to my ear. I jumped, and found an old man’s face peering over my shoulder. I glared at him, and closed my hand over the Lindquist. The tramp retreated, muttering, but I saw other faces turned toward me from the shadows: dark eyes, gap-toothed mouths. People were supposed to kill muties on sight. Would tramps do that? I slipped the creature back into the nest and sealed the nutshell again, trying not to let anyone see what I was doing.
My spine tingled. What kind of magic treasure is this?
* 6 *
Insectivora
The sacking was full of bugs. I dozed and scratched in misery, somehow never getting warmer. The thought of the miniature rat kept me awake. I was afraid something had gone wrong. . . . I’d made a mutie, instead of making Nivvy, and it was because I was a bad person, because of all the awful things I’d done at New Dawn. In the end I sat up. The tramps all seemed to be asleep. I got the makings of my lamp out of the knapsack pocket, and took out the nutshell as quietly as possible. I lit my lamp, and opened the shell. The strange kit was awake, the others were snuggled down asleep. I opened the shield and picked it out. It peered at me, with those dim, sunken eyes I didn’t like. I checked it over and couldn’t find anything wrong, except that it looked like a doll’s house rat. “It” was a she, a female.
She liked to sniff and nuzzle, and like my Nivvy she had no fear. I let her investigate me a little. Instantly, she crept up my sleeve and found a louse: brought it out and sat on her haunches chomping neatly. “Is that what you do?” I asked her, softly. “You’re a bug-eater?” Nivvy had never eaten bugs (in spite of what Mama had told Nicolai the Nail Collector once). He’d sometimes kill roaches, but never to eat: you could see they disgusted him. The new creature sniffed at me, that nose going up and down, as if it was nodding its head. I felt the presence of a little person, a living, animal person, trusting me to be its friend.
The magic lessons were coming back to me, things I’d learned by heart before I was ten years old. It all sounded so different now. Insectivora, that was the long name for the bug-eater Lindquist. I’d shortened it to Nosey, when I was a child.
“You are Nosey,” I whispered. “And you’re all right, just not what I expected.”
I woke again with a shock. Something was clanging and banging. For a moment I didn’t know what was happening or where I was: I couldn’t remember going to sleep. . . . Then I remembered. My lamp had gone out, and Nosey was curled up in Storm’s cap, beside my head. I nearly sat up, terribly shocked that I’d been so careless. Then I realized there was somebody walking through the truck. A man with a light was shaking the tramps by the shoulder, one by one. I tried to see what was happening. Were they giving him money? Could there be a ticket collector on a freight train? Did tramps have to show their papers? I saw the outline of a peaked cap, and knew that this ticket collector was in uniform.
That decided me. I stuffed the lamp away, put my cap on my head with Nosey safe inside, grabbed my precious knapsack (I’d have to leave the tarp behind), and began to edge toward the opening in the side of the truck. I almost made it, I was ready to jump . . . but I couldn’t see what was out there. I hesitated too long. The light shone in my face, dazzling me. The man’s words ran into each other, the way the fat nurse had talked in the clinic. “What are you doing on this train?”
“I’m traveling north.”
“You have no business on this train.”
I didn’t have any money, prison scrip or any other kind. I didn’t know what to say: I could hardly see the man’s face. The light jer
ked at me. “Up. Come.”
I had to follow him. At the end of the truck he threw the bolts in an iron plate, with a lot of clanging and banging, and it opened like a door. We had to step out into the night air to cross the coupling. I stood clinging to an iron ladder, while he opened another plate in the back of the next truck. I thought of jumping: but wouldn’t you know it, just then the train was rattling down an incline, faster than it had moved all night. I’d have been mashed to bits, and I wasn’t as desperate as that. We went through another empty truck, which had closed sides and no tramps in it, and over two full ones, and so, by swaying ladders and rusty, greasy handholds, down to the fire cab, where the stoker was tending the orange cave of his furnace—and to the engine driver’s swaying den.
It was a steam engine, burning brown coal. The driver’s cab was very dirty, and choky with coal smoke, but warm and dry. There was a teakettle sizzling on a hot plate. The driver, a thickset man with a black mustache and rosy cheeks, turned from his dials and levers. My ticket collector muttered something I couldn’t make out, poured himself a mug of tea, and settled on a metal seat bolted to the wall. He started to roll himself a cigarette. The driver looked me up and down.
“What are you doing on this train?”
“I’m traveling north.”
“Do you have money?”
“No.” I wrapped my arms around my knapsack and glared, silently daring him to take it from me. Behind me, the ticket collector laughed.
“You can’t travel on this train,” said the driver.
“What about all those other people?” I demanded. “Why can they ride?”
“You’re a child,” said the driver. “We have to turn you off, next stop. It’s the law. . . . Give her a cup of tea.”