Burrowed


 
 
 
 
 
 
 ANGRY ROBOT
 An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd
 Unit 11, Shepperton House
 89 Shepperton Road
 London N1 3DF
 UK
 angryrobotbooks.com
 twitter.com/angryrobotbooks
 I am but a dullard
 An Angry Robot paperback original, 2023
 Copyright © Mary Baader Kaley 2023
 Cover by Apostolos Gkantinas
 Edited by Gemma Creffield and Alice Abrams
 Set in Meridien
 All rights reserved. Mary Baader Kaley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
 This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
 Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
 Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkins Media Ltd.
 ISBN 978 1 91520 214 7
 Ebook ISBN 978 1 91520 215 4
 Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Ltd.
 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 
 
 To my father 
 who survived polio as a child. 
 To my daughter 
 who survived meningitis when 
 she was only weeks old. 
 And to the medical workers 
 who made them well again.
 CONTENTS
 CHAPTER 1
 CHAPTER 2
 CHAPTER 3
 CHAPTER 4
 CHAPTER 5
 CHAPTER 6
 CHAPTER 7
 CHAPTER 8
 CHAPTER 9
 CHAPTER 10
 CHAPTER 11
 CHAPTER 12
 CHAPTER 13
 CHAPTER 14
 CHAPTER 15
 CHAPTER 16
 CHAPTER 17
 CHAPTER 18
 CHAPTER 19
 CHAPTER 20
 CHAPTER 21
 CHAPTER 22
 CHAPTER 23
 CHAPTER 24
 CHAPTER 25
 CHAPTER 26
 CHAPTER 27
 CHAPTER 28
 CHAPTER 29
 CHAPTER 30
 CHAPTER 31
 CHAPTER 32
 CHAPTER 33
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 CHAPTER 1
 Horrific Thing to Say
 Ghosts roam the shadows of our Sublery’s walls. Or, at least, that’s what some of the younger sublings claim. I don’t normally see them – the withering souls reaching from the shadows – but today I do. My mind tells me they’re not real, but the icy tendrils of fear reaching through me scream otherwise.
 My nurserymaid snaps my travel skirt in the air, sending enormous shadows cascading down the slate walls of the underground room. Even the ceiling lights flicker as if to complain from the sudden breeze as I shiver in my underslip. They’re not real, they’re not real, I chant silently to myself, even as these shadowy ghosts and flames reach for me one last time to claim me as their own before I can leave this place. As nursery lore tells it, they’re the spirits of deceased children wailing in the crematorium, screaming for the lives they don’t get to live, and cursing the rest of us who remained healthy enough not to die. We believe they want to steal life from the surviving children, not realizing that once a life is separated from a soul it cannot be used by anyone else. Robbing a life only creates another dead child, and the cycle starts again, much like the plague that sent sublings underground in the first place.
 “Stop your whining,” Na’rm Anetta says as she snaps the skirt again.
 I flinch, but neither she nor the ghosts can spook me much longer. I’m leaving today, I remind myself over and over. I take my deepest breath.
 “May I wear a cap?” I try to smooth my wispy hair, but my goggle straps get in the way, and it sticks out in confused directions.
 A scowl grows on my nurserymaid’s face. “Hats are only for boys, and only because they have no hair,” she says to the beat of her up-and-down skirt snapping, and then holds it out for me to step into. She’d taken the hem up and adjusted the waist so that it falls exactly at midcalf-length.
 Across the room, another nurserymaid sings a melody while brushing her subling’s long, white hair. I begin to hum with her but she’s singing at a slower pace, and the usually comforting song now has a hymn-like lilt to it. The subling girl wipes tears from her cheeks, her voice crackling as she tries to sing along for the last time. I’m sad for her, but she’ll be okay at the burrows. She’s a good size, has never been to the infirmary for longer than a week, and she doesn’t wear goggles.
 “Pay attention.” Na’rm Anetta holds out a starched blouse. Her gaze bounces across the room and back to me. “I don’t suppose we’ll miss each other as they will.”
 I straighten my body like she’s taught me – as if a giant Omnit is pulling me up by the roots of my hair. “I will always be grateful to you for your dedication in raising me to my seventh year,” I say perfunctorily, as I hand her my good-bye gift. The traditional hand-painted bead will be her first ever memento, so I used the finest brush to paint a design that the artmaid ooohed over – she said it reminded her of a mist of water frozen in the air.
 My na’rm isn’t moved by my masterpiece, though, and drops the bead onto the wheeled dressing cart. It falls with a tinny clank next to the brush that we don’t need.
 On the other side of the room, my roommate’s na’rm kisses the simply striped bead she’s been given and strings it onto her necklace – which now has two beads – before replacing it around her neck. The two of them weep, embracing as if they could never be separated by something as slight as Sublery Graduation.
 I tilt my head at my na’rm and blink really hard, testing if tears will sprout from my eyes. I’m too excited, though; glad we’re leaving a