Free Siberia by Ann Halam

back alive. Rose and Bird and Tottie jumped on me, the first moment they had a chance.
    “What happened!” Rose gasped.
    “We thought you were a goner. We thought we’d next see you on a plate.”
    I shrugged. “Nothing much. We chatted. I think she used to know my mama.”
    I didn’t understand.
    News of my experience spread: I was famous. Some Bugs thought I would be taken to the city next, and have expensive treatment to fix my knee. Some were saying the principal wanted to adopt me. Suddenly I had a crowd of friends, wanting to get close to me, in the hope that my luck would rub off. Bird and Ifrahim and Tottie weren’t so sure. Nor was I. A visit to the principal’s office could not be good news.
    But I seemed to have got away with it, whatever “it” was.
    March began, and I had my eleventh birthday. I didn’t tell anyone; nobody celebrated birthdays. My trip to the principal’s office faded from my mind, except for a strange, nagging uneasiness. . . . Then there was a blizzard that went on for days. The running club was suspended. When we had to cross between the buildings we were lost in a world without outlines, where the air you breathed was made of snow. If there were buds on the branches of my tree, I would not have been able to see them. One evening in the blizzard we walked from the study hall to our dormitory, the night warden swinging her keys behind us. When we got into the room, I saw that my bed was stripped. My things had been turned out of my locker and put on the mattress. A strange warden, with different flashes on the collar of her white coat, was folding up a sheet. The other girls looked at each other, and went very quietly to their own beds.
    I heard someone murmur,
Is she really going to the city?
Someone else muttered,
Shhh!
    The strange warden set down the folded sheet, stacked my things on it, and briskly tied the small bundle. She handed it to me.
    “You take that with you to Permanent Boarders, Sloe.”
    “Permanent Boarders? Wh-why do I have to go there?”
    “Because you’re a Permanent Boarder.”
    “But why am I suddenly a Permanent Boarder?” I quavered, tears beginning to start in my eyes. I had never cried at school, but I had such a sense of utter doom.
    The warden’s mouth was a hard line. I could see she was one of the soft ones. Some of them were like that: they had to be on their guard, or they’d have been tempted to protest at the harsh way we were treated.
Trouble rubs off,
and you can’t be too careful. They were always the worst kind.
    “It’s not my business, and it’s not yours, but I believe it’s something to do with your mother. She’s been practicing her profession, although she was disgraced: and that’s forbidden. She’s been taken away. There’s no home for you to go to, and you’re a Permanent Boarder. Get a move on, I haven’t got all night.”
    In a dead silence I limped out of the dormitory, clutching my bundle. My mama had been taken away, like my dadda. She was gone.
    I suppose days went by, and nights passed. I suppose I went to lessons, sat in the canteen, finished my food. I know I was taken to the principal’s office a second time, and told officially that I was now a Permanent Boarder, because my mother had taught me science, and they had a recording of me saying so, so there was no way Mama could deny it. It was a grave crime,
an act of criminal insanity,
for someone sentenced to exile in the Settlements to teach science. What if she had taught dangerous rebels how to make a bomb? But it was all right, it was over now, and my mama was getting the appropriate treatment.
    The principal said I mustn’t worry, I was not in trouble. New Dawn was proud to be teaching the daughter of such distinguished scientists, even though my mama and my dadda had fallen into wicked error. I could have a shining future, and make up for their unfortunate crimes. I could be Rehabilitated Settlement Child Number One. I suppose I said thank you. . .