by Ann Halam
It wasn’t Nivvy. Its fur was brown and white, its body soft and plump, its eyes like two red berries. It had round naked ears, little pink paws, chisel teeth, and no tail.
“Will it grow into a dragon?” asked Emerald, hopefully.
I had a terrible feeling I’d let my secrets out for nothing.
“This might take a while,” I said. “The magic needs time to work.”
My lamp was dying. I snuffed it out and packed it away. The room became utterly black. I lay down, facing the corner: making my body into a barrier so I could let the Lindquist run on the floor. The others settled round me. Satin and Corn Braids took first watch, guarding the bundles and facing the twin dangers of the door and the slave children. Emerald curled up against my back: Tanya and Bakkial muttered to each other, and fell silent. I kept on feeding the kit, dipping into my food stores again and again; in a trance of cold tiredness. She kept vanishing into the blackness and coming back. Then I heard her gnawing at the logs. She’s trying to break us out of jail, I thought. But it’s going to take weeks. I reached out, and stroked her with one finger, and discovered something that made me jump. Where there’d been one little animal, there seemed to be several. . . . My Lindquist had had babies.
The gnawing went on, and became a chorus.
I groped again, and found there were more, and more.
“Impossible,” I muttered.
But I had always known the kits were magic.
The black hours passed. I never truly slept, but everything ran together: the groping attacks of the slave children, the stink of that bucket, the cold: and the sound of gnawing. We hit the fumbling hands, and they went away. The Lindquists kept coming to me to be fed, and then hurrying back to their work. On and on. The touch of whiskery little noses, a scuffle behind me as the others fended off another attack; more food out of my pack, the weight of Emerald’s head on my shoulder.
I woke hugging my knapsack. It felt emptier, and the blackness had turned gray. It was the cold that had woken me. The corner was a mass of sawdust. There was a gaping hole, easily big enough for my head and shoulders, gnawed through the log wall, and a seething carpet of small brown and white furry animals.
“Wake up! Everyone, grab your stuff! It’s time to go!”
Satin was already awake, and staring at the horde. Emerald lifted her head and peered through her tangled black curls, shivering. Bakkial woke with a start, and gasped, and crossed himself against the evil eye. The girl with the corn gold braids said, in a scared, awed voice, “What are those things? Are they muties?”
“No,” I said. “I promise you they’re not. They’re very important, and I have to take them somewhere. I have to go north, but you can all come with me.”
Five faces stared at me, dirty and weary in the gray light.
“We’d die of cold,” whispered Emerald.
“But we won’t be slaves. . . . We won’t head off straightaway. It’s a fairground. It’ll be full of stuff we can steal, and people not paying attention. Come on!”
“I can’t,” said Tanya, her eyes fixed on the Lindquists. “I don’t dare. I’m afraid. It isn’t so bad here. I might get a good master.”
“We can’t run away,” said Bakkial. “Little Father would lose face, and be mad as fire. He’d hunt us down, and what would happen to us then?”
“Who cares? They won’t catch us if we go now.”
There was a low muttering from behind us. Then one of the slave children said clearly, bitterly, “They’re breaking out. They’re getting away.”
Another voice took it up. Somebody started to bang on the floor. Soon they were all banging on the floor and chanting, “They’re getting away, they’re getting away, the pretty ones are getting away!” They didn’t care that we were children like them. They were so sunk in misery that we were just the enemy. . . . In another minute the auctioneers would come to see what the noise was about.
“Please!” I begged. “Please don’t make me leave you behind!”
“You have something important to do,” said Satin. “You should do it.”
“Go on, Sloe,” said Tanya. “You’re a good kid, but we’ll be all right.”
The Lindquist horde was already pouring through the gap like a furry waterfall into the gray space beyond. “I’ll pay you back,” I wailed. “One day, I promise!”
There was tremendous rattling at the barred door, and the chanting rose to a shout as I dived through the hole.
I’d forgotten that the hut was on stilts. I fell about two meters onto frozen snow and got to my knees. The Lindquist horde swarmed around me. But they were withering like dry leaves, only faster, they were shriveling up: they were nothing but little gray pellets of dust. There was only one brown and white animal, with her tiny paw on my knee, looking up in total trust, her cranberry eyes like drops of shining blood.
There were trucks parked next to the hut on stilts. I could see the underneaths of them, at my eye level. I scooped my Lindquist up, tucked her into the front of my clothes, and swarmed across the snow on my belly, dragging my knapsack with one hand: under one truck, then a dive and a roll under the next, and so on. A couple of times I was nearly spotted, by people lighting fires under their engines to get them moving after the night: but nobody really saw me. I reached the end of the row, got to my feet, and quickly walked away.
Somewhere behind me I could hear shouts and pounding feet. Maybe that was for me, but I didn’t run. I buried myself in the crowd. I found a black waterproofed blanket, that someone had draped over a parked motor sled to keep it from icing up. I wrapped myself in that, and my bright clothes disappeared. I wandered between rows of flaring torches, turning pale in daylight; I lingered by the hiss of bonfires and braziers. An old woman cooking maize cobs gave me one for free. I tried staring at another man who was grilling dog meat, but he didn’t give me anything. Once, I found a roost in a big stack of rapeseed oil drums, and felt safe enough to take my Lindquist out and stroke her. She was bigger than Nivvy’s small form, but not so big as spiny Nosey. Her red eyes were rather strange, but she had a very gallant, cheery air. “I know who you are,” I said. “You are the Lindquist who becomes many, order Rodentia. I called you Toothy, when I was a little girl.”
I stroked her and praised her, and gave her the last of my corn. I was slightly afraid that she would become many again, if anything threatened us. If anyone saw that happen we’d be in big trouble. She’d be killed with all her children, and so would I, probably. I tried to be very calm. I told her I was an expert thief and I’d soon collect supplies for the next stage of our journey.
It was about twenty-five, maybe thirty below. I wasn’t dressed for the cold, and I was very tired and hungry, but I didn’t know it. I thought I hadn’t been doing anything, I’d just been sitting in that hut for a day and a night. Something dangerous happens when you get very tired and hungry, and it’s really cold. You stop thinking straight; and you don’t feel it coming over you. I decided to go back to Little Father’s trucks, and steal my own sledge. I knew exactly where it was, hooked up on the side of the truck with the short skis and their poles.
I needed my sledge so I’d have somewhere to put the food I was going to steal. I’d given all the food in my knapsack to Toothy, when she was rescuing me from the slavers’ hut. I needed to start the stealing soon. My teeth were chattering, the wind went through my raggy old blanket and my pretty clothes like a knife. Maybe it would be easier to steal from Little Father’s tribe, because I knew everybody’s habits.
It took me ages to find my way back. My head was swimmy, and it was getting hard to concentrate. At last I saw the trucks I recognized. Little Father must be at his picnic table, because everybody was gathered around there (unless they were off at the fair). It hurt me to see the familiar scene. I wanted so badly to climb through the felt-lined door in the tailgate, to sit by the stove in that cozy, colorful cave, and eat porridge with Emerald and Satin. Instead, I walked round the back and took down my sledge. N
obody saw me. I slipped my shoulders into the harness, and wrapped the black blanket over my head again.
Then I decided I’d better see what was going on at the picnic table. I casually drifted to the edge of the crowd, and found a place where I could get a good view. Not too close, but with nothing in the way . . . I saw a group of four men in long, sweeping dark coats, standing in front of Little Father’s table. I saw the colored flashes on their collars, and the blazons on their sled helmets.
Fitness Police!
That looks like trouble for Little Father, I thought. The Fitness Police were the only authority the bandits feared. They didn’t just hunt for muties. They were entitled to search any vehicle, and confiscate the goods of anyone suspected of trading in factory animals, or transporting them without a license. These were the worst crimes you could commit in the wilderness, aside from trying to get into a city.
Then I came out of my daze, with a jolt. What if the Fitness Police were looking for me? What if they already knew what had happened at the slavers’ hut? I had to get away at once! Forget about stealing, I would head straight for the forest. I had my fine felted boots, my sledge, my blanket. I would find food and warmth and shelter somehow. My magic Lindquist would save me.
I walked away, trying not to hurry. I circled around the edge of the fair, until I came to a break in the ring of snowy slopes, where a road from the north entered the arena. The sky had been thick and low since daybreak: snow started to fall as I left the crowds behind. Before long, the great blot of the fair had been wiped out behind me. I was alone in a whirl of white.
I was so dazed, I thought that was a good thing.
They’ll never find me now, I thought, as I headed into the blizzard. Soon I realized I’d lost the road. I took out my compass and found north instead, and kept on. The Lindquist was getting heavy. She was so heavy I had to hold her in my arms, with her head over my shoulder. Her fur had turned dark, and her whiskery face was chunky, her teeth were big long yellow chisels. At least she was keeping me warm.
“Are you going to get too big for me to carry?” I muttered. “Right now, it would be good if you were big enough to carry me.”
I hoped she would not change too much. I remembered that Nosey had changed too much, and Nosey had died. . . . My head was very swimmy. I should be in the forest by now, but it had melted away. When the wind parted the snow I saw only a tree here, a tree there, with starved and leafless branches. The trees were sick, like the tree I used to watch when I was at New Dawn. Mama had said that the forest would shelter us. . . . I couldn’t take another step. I sat on my sledge at the foot of one of the sick trees, with my blanket over my head and under my bum, and Toothy in my arms; the only warm patch in the world.
“The trees will shelter us, Toothy. We’ll make a shelter of branches.”
I could see nothing but whirling powder, it was getting in my eyes.
“I’m very tired,” I said. “I’ll lie down.”
I curled up on the sledge and closed my eyes. Toothy climbed out of my arms. I heard the grind, grind of her teeth. She was attacking the sick tree! I tried to sit up, mumbling, “No! It will shelter us!”
She just slapped her fat, flattened tail against the snow, and went on gnawing.
“Not enough to eat,” I muttered. “Not enough to eat. I have no fire inside. Mustn’t go to sleep. If I go to sleep I’ll never wake up.”
The snow fell. I thought about Emerald and Satin, and Tanya and Bakkial, and the girl whose name I couldn’t remember. I hoped they’d be sold together. Toothy kept on working, like a creature with an important plan. She was a very purposeful Lindquist, but her purpose was always the same. Gnaw . . . The tree was not very thick in the trunk. She gnawed until it was near to breaking, then she stood on her hind legs and pushed. The torn wood screeched, and the tree fell down. She had made a house for us, a log cabin with only one log. She dug the snow and shovelled it over me and the sledge and the fallen tree together. I would be cozy and warm.
“Not enough to eat. No fire inside. Mustn’t sleep without eating.”
But when she’d made the house and burrowed into it beside me, I couldn’t help falling asleep. I hugged Toothy’s warm body, with only my nose and a scrap of blanket peeping out of a breathing hole, and it was blissful.
I stayed asleep for a long time. First I was truly asleep, then I was in another state, where I knew I was drifting close to death. I wasn’t cold. There was no difference between warm and cold. I was like a stove with only the faintest thread of red on the dial, and that faint thread was fading. I passed from there into a deep blackness, without dreams, without feeling.
I woke suddenly, all of a piece. I thought I was in the dormitory at college: soon the warden would come along with her jangling keys. But I could smell a wood fire. I opened my eyes, enough to see I was lying on a bed piled with blankets, in a little room with a fire glowing in the open stove. There was a man sitting near it. He must have heard me move, because he turned to look at me.
It was Yagin.
* 9 *
Artiodactyla
He had looked round, but he hadn’t seen that my eyes were open. He turned back to the fire. I was still dressed, except for the outermost layer of my pretty clothes. My red sprigged skirt, and the ruched blouse that went with it, were hanging over the back of a chair beside Yagin’s chair, close to the stove. My boots stood on the floor, steaming. My knapsack was on a table that stood in the middle of the room, and Toothy was lying beside it on a clean white cloth. She had changed back to her soft, small brown-and-white form. She was on her side, her upper lips retracted from the brave stumps of her gnawing teeth. I could see that she was dead. I had distressed her, she had changed too much and this had killed her.
I wished she was not dead. I wished my mama’s magical creatures did not keep having to die to save me. I was supposed to be their guardian.
Yagin looked up. He didn’t say anything. He came over to the bed, with a steaming mug. I sipped the heavenly sweetness of fruit tea with honey in it. He’s drugging me, I thought, and fell back into a deep sleep.
When I woke again my head was clear. It seemed to be night: there was a lamp glowing on the table. Yagin was sitting by the stove reading a book, with a pair of spectacles on his nose. My red skirt and blouse lay at the foot of the bed. I got up, very quietly, and put them on. My boots were there too. I looked at the door of the room. It was bolted and barred, and sure to be locked as well. My sledge was propped against the wall; which was made of rough logs, like the slave-auction hut. My knapsack was still on the table. On the white cloth beside it, where Toothy’s body had been, was a small gray cocoon. Yagin knows everything, I thought. He knows everything. . . . Oh, Mama, I’m sorry. I padded over in my socks and stood looking down at what had been Toothy, tears stinging my eyes.
“Are you going to harvest that?”
His hair had grown. It was rough as dog’s fur, a mixture of black and gray. He looked healthier than he had looked at New Dawn College. His face was ruddy: his eyes had a light-colored, penetrating gaze, and the crease between the brows that I remembered. I stared at him, and said nothing. I was in his power and maybe I had nothing left to hide, but that didn’t mean I was going to cooperate.
Yagin laughed. “Come and eat.”
He had a pan of con stew bubbling on the stove. I realized I was terribly hungry, shrugged, and went to join him. He handed me a spoon, took another for himself, and we ate, passing the pan between us, until the savory mixture was all gone. I felt the warmth of it running through me, and hope returned.
What if I’d been wrong? What if I could trust him after all?
“Who are you? Why have you been following me?”
“My name is Yagin,” he said. “I am your guardian angel. I am here to help you fulfill your quest. What more do you need to know? Nothing! That’s plenty.”
“Where are we?”
“Safe in a cabin in the forest, as you see.”
“B
ut there was no forest. The trees were sick.”
“The forest is sick at the margins where I found you, but now we are much farther in. I brought you here. Don’t be afraid, no one will find us here. There’s a hell of a blizzard going on, it has been snowing for two days, it could snow for a week. I only just found you in time, girl. You’re lucky to be alive.”
“You got me expelled,” I said. “And you . . . you tracked me to the fur farm.”
“If you hadn’t been expelled,” said Yagin, “you’d have ended up in the Box yourself, or worse. I think they’d have sent you to an insane asylum, since you’re too young to go to prison. It’s very difficult to get someone out of one of those places. If you are not crazy at the start they keep you in a rubber cell, they put poison in your veins until you are really crazy, then they throw away the key.”
I had worked this out, or something like. I nodded, warily.
“That’s what would have happened to your mother,” said Yagin. “When they took her from your Settlement, they put her in a secure hospital. But friends spirited her away from there, she’s safe now. And I came to New Dawn, to watch over you.”
Mama was alive! Mama was safe! I don’t know how I stopped myself from crying out. My head was spinning, but I just nodded again, straight-faced. He had given me hope at New Dawn, and that was all he’d given me now. Hope, and a whole lot of unanswered questions.
“You tried to buy me from Little Father.”
“Ha! You mean I tried to save you from being sold as a slave. You’re lucky I stuck around. I’ve been looking for a chance to get you away from that nice, kindly child thief of yours. That’s how I came to find you in the snow.”
He got up and went to the table, opened my rucksack, and took out the nail box. It was a shock to see him do that, even though I knew he knew about the Lindquists. I had to follow him to the table, I couldn’t stop myself.
“You really must harvest that pellet, they shouldn’t be exposed to the air for long, the DNA will deteriorate. So you grew another kit, eh? What a reckless girl you are. Didn’t your mother tell you, never take a kit to second stage unless you are perfectly secure? You can’t tell what will happen to a second-stage Lindquist under stress! You’re supposed to be keeping a secret, not playing games.”