Free Siberia by Ann Halam Page A

. You have to say thank you. It isn’t enough to nod and look at the floor. You can’t keep anything for yourself, not even your anger. They want it all. They want everything.
    She didn’t tell me where my mother was. I didn’t ask.
    She’s been taken away.
    She’s been taken away.
    Taken away like my dadda, and hung, or shot.
    And I knew who was to blame. Not the police, or the Commission for Settlements, or Madam Principal: it was me. I was eleven years old, and I had killed my mother. She was dead for two pieces of cake, and a taste of fake berry jam.
    At the end of March there was a day of blue skies. The town’s waste tips, which you could see through the mesh of the main gates, were smudged with brown where smoldering rubbish had melted through the snow. Scavenger gulls were on patrol, screaming to each other in a harsh, alien language. I huddled in the place where the running club stopped for a breather. My leg had stiffened badly since I’d given up running. Today the physiotherapy teacher had ordered me out with the others: but he hadn’t forced me to keep up. . . . I could see my tree, but I couldn’t make out if there were buds on its scrawny branches. I tucked my cold hands up into the sleeves of my uniform coat, and pressed my face against the icy mesh.
    I wondered what I would have to do to get myself shot.
    “Better off staying here,” said a gravelly deep voice, behind me.
    It was one of the guards. They all looked the same in their gray uniforms: heads shaved to stubble, big shoulders, hard faces, but I thought I hadn’t seen this particular man around before. He was tall. A pair of deep lines pinched the flesh between his arched brows, his nose was long and straight. He looked quite old, for a guard. He had his rifle slung on his back, a gun in the holster at his waist, and a bottle tucked under his arm. His uniform tunic was open, as if he didn’t feel the cold. The shirt under it was very dingy.
    “You’re called Sloe,” he said, with a grin. “From Wilderness Settlement 267, Third Brigade, East Sector?”
    “What if I am?”
    He slipped the bottle from under his arm, popped the cork out with his thumb, and took a big swallow. Then he handed it to me.
    “Yagin’s the name. You look as if you’re planning a break-out, that’s all, and I’m saying you’d be better off staying here.”
    “What’s it to you?”
    “Oh, nothing. But think about it. Forget the lessons.
    Think about three meals a day, a dormitory bed, vitamin pills. There’s the physio too. You know it’s done you a lot of good. My advice is, stay put until you’re grown. You won’t be ready for the trek before then, and where could you live better? Back in 267 you’d starve. You wouldn’t last a winter, without her to support you.”
    I shrugged. I was too deadened to be surprised. The smell of liquor stung my nose: I wondered what I was supposed to do with the bottle.
    “You don’t know if you can trust me,” said the strange guard. “I know. So let me put it this way. Spring’s a dangerous time for little animals. Worse than the winter, in many ways. The safe blanket of snow is melting away, and all your enemies are hungry. But things aren’t as bad as they seem.
It’s not
as bad as you think, little girl.
You hang on, you’ll see. Hang on, and lie low.” He tapped me on the head with his hard fingertip (he wasn’t wearing gloves). “And I’ll be here. Look around, anytime, and I’ll be watching over you.”
    I took a swig from the bottle, handed it back, and started to limp off toward the school buildings. I heard him laughing, deep and strong, behind me.
    I didn’t know what to make of this strange meeting. But later, as the day went wearily by, I realized that somewhere inside me the flame of hope had started to glow.

* 4 *
    After they took my mama away, I gave up the idea of getting an education and having a chance in life. I kept the hope that Yagin had given me, but I hid it deep in my