Siberia by Ann Halam Page A

the bed walls came out to bite, but I was too tired to notice them much. When I woke the room was dark and cold, but I could tell that the night was rising toward morning. I jumped off the bed. I’d left everything where I could find it by touch. As soon as I had my lamp alight I opened the locker, shoved everything aside, and hauled out the nail box. I lifted out the case, and opened it. I didn’t need gloves, the kits couldn’t be harmed by contamination now.
    Maybe I should leave it for longer. But I had to find out.
    If they had survived. If the seeds had not died. It was the difference between having nothing, and having a reason to live.
    I ran my fingertips around the seam of the nutshell: it opened. The kits were alive. They looked up at me, through the clear shield, with their pinhead eyes.
    I took the nut back into the bed-cupboard, set my lamp on the little shelf on the inner wall, and sat cross-legged in the warm hollow my sleeping body had made, staring at the living treasure. How
tiny
they were! Six identical miniature animals, each no bigger than my thumbnail. They scrambled over each other, trying to get a better look at me. How miraculous and strange, the way they grew from seed powder and new-treat, and tumbled about and seemed perfectly happy in their little home. I tried to look at them properly: checking them for signs of damage and deterioration. But they kept climbing over each other and confusing me. I’d have to take them out, and examine them one by one.
    I was nervous about doing this. I knew how to handle the kits: but they were so
tiny
. I told myself there was plenty of the seed powder, so I could always start the process again. Mama had never had to do that, but she’d told me it would sometimes happen. Not all of the seed would be sound. . . . I opened the membrane by running my fingertips around it. But I hadn’t had enough practice at this part! While I was picking out one kit, the other five bubbled up, and they were free.
    For a moment I panicked. I visualized them vanishing into the cracks in the walls, my big hand
crushing
them, breaking their tiny bones as I tried to catch them.
    But the Lindquists didn’t run away. They tumbled out of the nutshell, fell off the edge of my skirt, and dived into a bundle on the lumpy mattress, their almost invisible whiskers quivering madly, ten tiny berry eyes shining.
    My heart welled up with love and tenderness.
    “It’s all right,” I whispered. “I’m here. I’m your guardian now.”
    Mama had said I should talk to them. They would hear my voice as a distant booming, but they would feel—by magic, I supposed—that I was telling them things, and they would like that. It worked. The kits slowly dared to unbundle, and began to creep around: making tiny forays, and scuttling back to huddle again.
    I had not remembered how sweet they were. They were
lovely
. They had whiskery snouts and tiny pink noses, black eyes and round ears set close to their heads. Their limbs stood out at the shoulders and the hips, so they scurried like bugs, not slinking or striding like a dog or a cat, but there was nothing disgusting about them. Their tiny tails were covered with fur, not naked like rats’ tails. Their coats were bright brown, with minute bars of darker brown across their backs, and running down their arms.
    I felt a tickling on the palm of my hand. I opened my fingers, and saw the sixth Lindquist busy licking up a smear of berry jam from my finger. Its tiny claws caught on the white raised lines which were the marks of Nivvy’s love bites, of long before. Without a thought I reached for the jar Nicolai had given to me, which was on the shelf beside the lamp. I dug out a fingertipful, and offered it. The little creature grabbed on to my giant finger with its doll’s house paws, and licked with its doll’s house tongue.
    A tingling shock ran through me.
    I was sure this
special
kit, the kit I had chosen without realizing it, must be Nivvy. It