Siberia Read Online Free PDF Page A

city clothes long ago. No more little red shoes: I was on my third pair of Settlement-store boots. They looked thick and tough, but they weren’t. They hurt my feet and the soles were worn through. Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford a new pair this winter.
    “One day we’re going to run away, aren’t we, Mama? Why doesn’t
everyone
run away? I don’t understand it.”
    Mama laughed a little, wryly. “Where would they run to, Rosita? It’s hundreds of miles to the nearest city, and the cities are closed: no one from outside can get in. If they tried, they would be shot down without mercy. The people of the wilderness have their own way of living, they wouldn’t support a prisoners’ revolt. Some do run away, and some of them even survive. But most of us just endure it. We have food and heat, we have work. We’re better off than many ‘free’ people out here.”
    “But you and Dadda didn’t do anything wrong!”
    “Didn’t we?” said my mama: talking to me but really talking to herself, as she sometimes did, and it gave me shivers. “All the time that we were living inside, where it’s warm and bright, with good clothes and plenty to eat—”
    “And hot water,” I murmured, “and proper soap, and no bugs—”
    “Yes. We knew about the Settlements, and the many, many innocent people who lived outside: all the children who were hungry and dirty and cold, and dying of diseases. We thought we were
good,
Rosita, but we did nothing.”
    She hugged me again, and then let me go. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Look, it’s dark, and my quota time is over. Let’s have a magic lesson.”
    We went into the workshop, and got down on the floor with the lamp turned low. Mama took out the secret nail box, and the white case. She opened the case, into its white flower shape. The nutshell was smaller now, it had shrunk because there were no tiny animals inside it. The seed-stuff that would grow into animals was kept in the little glass tubes, each of them with a colored cap.
    Each of these tubes had a strange name, which I had to remember (I knew how to read quite well, but nothing about the magic was written down).
Insectivora . . . Lagomorpha . . .
Rodentia . . . Artiodactyla . . . Carnivora . . . Chiroptera . . .
    “Tell me about them, Rosita,” said my mother.
    “Inti-sectivore is most often small and her fur is like velvet,” I said, feeling very important. “You will know by her long nose and her poor eyes. She eats bugs, she has the best sense of smell. I call her Nosey, is that all right, Mama?”
    “It suits her. And
Lagomorpha
?”
    “Lagomorph is very few, there are only two kinds. I call him Ears because he has big ears. He has big back legs so he can kick and run. One of them lives in burrows, one of them has no home but the open ground, and he turns white in winter.”
    I picked up the third tube, carefully. “This one is the Rodents, they never stop gnawing with their teeth, and they multipulize very fast—”
    “Multiply,” said Mama. “They multiply.”
    “A lot. You get a lot of them, very, very quickly. I call her Toothy.”
    The fourth tube was
Artiodactyla
, the word that gave me most trouble. I couldn’t find my way to the end of it. I called her Article: she was big, and she went in herds. The fifth tube was my favorite, because
Carnivora
was Nivvy’s order.
Carnivore
means “eats flesh,” but I called this seed tube Nivvy, of course.
    Lastly there was the
Chiroptera
. . . a furry animal that had wings and could fly. Which was thrilling, but frightening, because it sounded like a mutie monster. I called that one Cheepy, because it could find its way in the dark by cheeping (I didn’t understand how).
    “Very good!” said Mama, when I had finished my roll call.
    Then we went through the drill that I must learn, although I wasn’t old enough to do the real magic yet. You had to put a few drops of the dark liquid food (called
new-treat
) into six little dishes, sprinkle