The Book of Flora

by Meg Elison

  Alice was distilling something, watching the steam collect in a broad-bellied glass vessel and drip into the next. Alice’s hair was tied up in a messy bun, curls falling out to frame her face. She was lovely in the firelight, the freckles on her nose and cheeks fading as she lived more and more of her life out of the sun. She wore one of the long cotton gowns that the women of Ommun slept in. Flora had hand-washed her own silks and kept exclusively to them, despite the fact that she knew they made her look foreign.

  Or maybe because they do, she thought.

  Alice did not look up as Flora came through the door. Flora sidled up behind her and put an arm around her waist, pulling her back and smelling the nape of her neck.

  “I couldn’t sleep, either,” she whispered.

  “It’s never really night here,” Alice said softly back. “I used to paint half my room with glow-paint, but even that would fade after a few hours. These nightlights and candles drive me crazy. It’s never dark. I miss the stars. I miss my house. I even miss my mother.”

  Carla had been killed when Nowhere was taken. One of the many casualties of that day.

  Alice turned and took Flora in her arms. “What do you miss?”

  “My father,” Flora said. “Though he’s been gone for years. My silkworms.” She thought a minute, biting her lip before going on. “I miss Eddy,” she said finally.

  Alice, ever immune to jealousy, was not upset. “Etta’s right here,” she said. “We didn’t lose her.”

  “We did,” Flora said. “We lost him. I did, anyway. I love him, and he thinks I betrayed him.”

  Alice sighed. “Nobody can love Etta the way she wants to be loved. She wants too much. She wants to own somebody but tell them that they’re free.”

  Eddy would hate hearing that.

  “He’s not himself lately.”

  Alice scoffed. “Of course she’s not,” she said, leaning into the pronoun. “She’s pregnant.”

  Flora pulled back and looked at Alice, shocked. “What?”

  Alice made a face and looked away. “I shouldn’t have told you. I shouldn’t tell anybody. But she needs to come to a decision, and she’s making me very nervous by waiting this long.”

  Flora blinked and blinked again. She shook her head. “It’s the Lion’s, isn’t it?”

  Alice bit her lip. “I think so. If she was raped by anyone else, she didn’t tell me that. I don’t suppose it matters.”

  Flora thought hard, pushing herself past the places she kept out of her own memory, recalling Eddy helpless, chained, kept. “I don’t think anyone else had access to him,” Flora said. “Has to be.”

  “So she wants to kill it, because it’s his. And she wants to keep it, because it’s hers. And pretty soon it won’t be up to her at all.”

  Flora had a sudden physical craving so strong that her abdominal muscles nearly cramped with it. Her arms ached as if they were not holding Alice, as if they had never held anything at all. Her chest tingled. She had wanted a child before, but never like this. She had felt a pull in her heart, a sympathy for lost children. She had taken care of the younger kids Archie had taken on, tried to teach them and protect them where she could. She had felt the normal human pull toward babies, taking communal responsibility for them and pleasure in their coos and cries.

  But never had it roosted in her body with such force. If her belly had had hands, it would have snatched the unwanted child out of Eddy and put it into herself, without hesitation.

  She laid her head on Alice’s shoulder and said nothing.

  “What are you brewing now?”

  “That’s the stuff,” Alice whispered. “I’m brewing poison and death. That’s the smell of the end of a pregnancy.”

  Flora sniffed the air. It was a little acid, like sour fruit. A little rotten, like wet fallen leaves. And yes, underneath it, there was the metallic smell of blood, the spill when it was all over and hope was gone.

  “For Eddy?”

  “She’s not the only one.”

  Flora crept quietly out of the lab. She needed to think.

  Dinner was subdued the next night. Flora answered questions about Shy for the mish, who had heard stories about it but had never gone themselves.

  “Look, you really shouldn’t plan to stop by there. I mean it. I don’t think it’s safe for you.” She didn’t mention the casual slavery of Shy, or the execution of men. She still did not know what should be done about it, or what could be.

  “No place is safe for you,” Gabriel said, looking into Flora’s eyes. “Yet you go.”

  Flora swallowed a mouthful of cornbread. “I don’t go where I know for sure I’m not safe,” she said in her low voice. “I do sometimes end up there by accident.”

  She looked over to Etta for her support. She often weighed in on subjects of raiding. Tonight, she was absent from conversation. She had barely touched her plate. She was staring at Alma.

  “You can’t eat her,” Ina said next to her living child’s ear.

  “What?” Etta turned to her, her eyes wide.

  Ina pointed her chin down and looked up at Etta sternly, her forehead a stack of wrinkles. “You can’t eat Alma, so I don’t know why you’re looking at her right now. You can eat this pile of good food on your plate. That’s what you need to be doing.”

  Etta looked down at her cold food and stabbed a fork into a serving of iron-dark greens. Her expression was sour, but she said nothing.

  “I could live in a city of nothing but women,” Ina said, looking down the table. “After this life I’ve had. Sounds like a great idea.”

  “Me too,” said Kelda, smiling. “What a lucky life.”

  “Not me,” Alice said. “I like having men around.” She smiled at one of the young men who was eavesdropping from another table, and he blushed from his collar to his hairline before looking away.

  Flora was looking at Etta. How does it feel to know all the people closest to you want to go somewhere you couldn’t be?

  She saw Etta flinch and put a hand to her belly.

  Oh. Oh, shit.

  Flora glanced from Alice to Kelda. They both looked away. They knew.

  Flora looked again at Etta’s untouched plate. Etta caught her staring and looked at her with sick, sunken eyes.

  Ommun had a wealth of berries in the summer, and dessert saw everyone with their own small bowl. Flora watched Gabriel and Rei smear the red juice on their lips, laughing, staring at one another. She saw Kelda tip her bowl into her mouth and crush them all at once between her teeth. She saw Etta eat a small handful before passing the rest off to one of the catamites, who was doing the same trick with his lips, trying to get Gabriel’s attention. Gabe pushed his long golden hair off his shoulders and ignored the boy. Rei looked up and smirked.

  Etta was one of the first to get up. The people of Nowhere had a hard time adjusting to the rotating groups of boys and young men of the Leaf Society who served food and cleared plates. They typically stacked and gathered and began to clear their own places, and the boys would have to shuffle in and remind them to leave the dirty dishes where they lay. Flora saw Etta take advantage of this and go. She followed her out.

  She was not headed toward the east-side quarters she shared with Kelda. She walked toward the library and pushed open the unlocked door. Flora slipped in behind her.

  “You brought back a lot of new books,” Etta said as Flora joined her in the darkened room. Her voice didn’t echo; it was swallowed in the rows of shelves stuffed with pulp and paper.

  “I certainly tried to. And I told the mish that there’s plenty more to raid in Demons, and the city is abandoned.”

  “Do you ever think of going to one of those empty old-world cities and just starting over? Just build your own town, with your own rules?” Etta’s face was invisible to Flora, but her tone sounded dreamy. Musing.

  “You mean like the Lion?”

  Flora felt Etta turn, felt the change in the air in the room. “No, not like the fucking Lion. Like the Unna
med.”

  “Oh. I never had thought of that, no. It’s an awful lot of work to start from the ground up. And you’ve got to have people to do it with you. The first twenty years are probably hard, lonely labor.”

  “Sure,” Etta said. “But then nobody can tell you who you are.”

  “Do you want to do that?”

  Etta’s breath hitched and she made a short grunting sound. “I don’t know what I want to do.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “No,” Etta said much too quickly.

  “You barely ate at dinner.”

  “What are you, my mother?” Another low grunt, almost long enough to be a groan.

  Flora took a step toward the slight shape of Etta, the sound of her voice. “I’m someone who loves you. Same as always. Even though you tried to shoot me in the face.” She smiled as though she could see her.

  “I was out of my mind,” Etta said. “I . . . had been through a lot. I’m glad my mother stopped me.”

  “Me too.”

  Flora put a hesitant hand on Etta’s shoulder. Etta did not flinch.

  “Really, are you okay? Do you need to go see Alice?”

  Etta groaned for real this time. “No, Alice can’t help me. It’s happening.”

  “What’s happening?” Flora smelled blood when she inhaled, unbidden and absent from the breath before it.

  “The same thing that happened before.” Etta doubled over and began to moan.

  Flora managed to get Etta back to her own quarters with a minimum of people seeing them. She put a long, thin piece of silk beneath her right shoe and swept it along behind them as they walked slowly, cleaning up the trickle of blood coming off the back of Etta’s right heel.

  The room that Flora shared with Alice sometimes was empty; Alice was elsewhere. Flora helped Etta get out of her pants and shoes, but she would not take her shirt off. She lowered herself into the tub and sat there, looking dazed.

  Flora had already used her allotment of power for the day, so she couldn’t run the small electric coil that would have heated water for the tub.

  “I could ask someone—”

  “No,” Etta told her, bearing down.

  “Your mother—”

  “Especially not her. Just sit with me, okay? Please just sit with me. It won’t take long.”

  Flora sat on the rim of the tub. Etta reached up and took her hands. “Okay?”

  Flora nodded.

  Etta put her teeth together and bore down. She took long breaths, held them, and bore down again.

  Flora saw sweat bead on Etta’s forehead, despite the cold of the cast-iron bathtub beneath her. “It’s okay,” she whispered.

  “I know. I know. I know. I know.” Under Etta, a thick river of blood streamed toward the drain.

  “What if you bleed to death?” Flora’s eyes were wide as she watched the blood river widen and swirl around the drain.

  “I won’t,” Etta said shortly, then grimaced again. “There it is. There it is.”

  She reached between her legs and pushed forward a shapeless, clotted mass. It was dark as liver and the size of her fist. It was life and it was death. She sagged backward in the tub. She dropped Flora’s other hand.

  “That’s the worst of it. The rest is just bleeding.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve done this before,” Etta said, not opening her eyes.

  Flora did not want to look at the lump of flesh but found that she could look nowhere else. “What should we . . . what do we do?”

  Etta sighed. “Fuck, I don’t know. Take it out and bury it, I guess.”

  Flora was up and nodding, grateful to have something to do. She took one of Alice’s precious jars, the glass without a chip and the lid in perfect shape. As she walked back into the room, the smell hit her in the face again.

  It was the smell of the sea, from when she was a child. It was childbirth upside down: no milk and no tears. It was the smell of a pack of dogs in heat, yelping as they passed in the night.

  Etta saw what she had and held out her hands for it. She pushed the lump into the jar and shut the lid, smearing bloody handprints all around the glass. Flora took it from her, hands shaking, and rinsed the outside in the cold water in her sink.

  “You have to get cleaned up,” Flora said. “Are you sure you don’t want help?”

  “I’m fine,” Etta said in a ragged but forceful voice. She turned on the cold tap and began rinsing the bottom of the tub. Flora turned and left the room, carrying the jar.

  Where do I put this until tomorrow? On the nightstand, where I can stare at it all night? Do I hide it in a drawer? Will he want to see it? What will it do while we dream? Did it ever have dreams of its own?

  Flora looked up when Eddy emerged from the bathroom, naked from the waist down and shivering. He had bound himself, despite the pain he must be in and how tender his breasts must be. Flora saw the change all over him, the shift in his posture and the width of his stance. Even through the agony of labor, Eddy’s presence was as clear as the sun breaking through clouds. In the midst of miscarriage, Flora could see the relief all over him. He was himself again, alone in his body, sovereign. She put the jar on the dresser and forgot about it. It no longer mattered. Eddy mattered, and she didn’t want to leave him standing there, bleeding and cold. She wrapped Eddy in the clean sheets the people of Ommun had given her. His teeth clacked together as he shivered.

  Flora looked into his red-rimmed eyes. “Eddy?”

  “Yeah,” he said at once. He nodded, swallowing. He looked back at her. “Yeah. Can you . . . I need . . . my moon cup. It’s in my pack. Can you go get it?”

  Flora nodded. “You need to lie down.”

  “Get that first.” Eddy stood sagging in the doorway, bloodied but whole.

  Flora went on feet that barely touched the floor. Kelda was reading in bed and started when Flora burst in without knocking.

  “I need Eddy’s bag.”

  “Why, what’s wrong? Is she taking off? Is she leaving? Is she?” Kelda had stepped out of bed and Flora saw that she was naked, her muscular body oiled and completely shaved, like Eddy’s.

  “No, he’s not leaving. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you any more. Just trust me, okay? Where’s the bag?”

  Kelda went with wide eyes to the closet and brought out the dusty, careworn backpack. She handed it over.

  Flora tried to smile at her. “Don’t worry. You’ll see him in the morning.”

  Kelda nodded and watched Flora go, shutting the door behind her.

  Flora found Eddy curled up in her bed, tight as a pill bug, fast asleep. She put the bag on his side of the feather-stuffed mattress, where his hand would find it if he reached out. Under the blankets, Flora shored him up on both sides with a towel and a sheet, trying to contain the blood that would likely flow all night.

  She lay rigid beside him, listening to him breathe. He might develop fever. He might die. You can die of this. He might be very cold. I covered him up. Is he covered enough? Would he like to be held? I probably shouldn’t. I don’t know what he’s feeling right now.

  She awakened from a thin sleep hours later, her hand on Eddy’s shoulder.

  “Don’t touch me,” he mumbled. She withdrew.

  Sometime before dawn, he inched across the bed and curled against her back. They awoke together later, separate and whole, covered in Eddy’s blood. Wordlessly, Flora got up and began to heat some water. Eddy did not move until she told him the tub was warm.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Book of Flora

  Ommun, where the sun never rises and there is no weather

  104N

  The minute I saw Alma, I knew she was up to something.

  Alma always dresses like a person who has no labor to perform, though that isn’t true at all. She works constantly, in supervision and assignment of tasks. People seek her out daily for judgments and advice. Her word is the last in any dispute, and the people of Ommun trust her to literally speak for
God Herself. I’ve seen her nursing two babies, obviously exhausted, pregnant, and listening patiently to a group of mish who wanted to know whether they could bring back someone who wanted to help farm sweet potatoes, but would only agree to live on the surface and not in the city below. I’ve seen her use reason and divine revelation in her own strange braid of leadership, making it nearly impossible to tell what is her own opinion and what is the word from their final authority.

  She works hard, and maintaining that image is an obvious part of the work. She has to look larger than life so that they will believe in something larger than life. So every day, she wears one of her long, white, gauzy dresses. I’ve touched it—it’s just woven cotton. My fingers itch sometimes for my old silk tools. I could make her something that would convince people that she is God, rather than just speaking for Her.

  But tonight she was wearing her whitest, most otherworldly gown, with old-world threads of some shimmery golden stuff worked through it so that it caught the light when she moved. She had had someone dress her hair into intricate braids that piled on either side of her head, with loose escaped curls draped down in front of and behind her shoulders. No one in Ommun paints their face, but I think Alma has a secret stash because her lips looked berried and her eyelids seemed yellow-gold like she used crushed flower petals. Just looking at her tonight in her braids and her regal mien made me miss the horsewomen so much that my throat closed up.

  But once I got past it all—her beauty and her power and being awestruck by her—I realized that it’s never just pageantry with someone like her. It’s politics. I suppose the way we present ourselves always is, but for leaders it’s even more important. I know before she says anything that she’s got something to say.

  It’s the usual feeling when Alma says we all need to join her at her fireside. The people from Ommun are excited and everyone else is wary. But we go, and we sit and stand all around the room and wait. Alice sits beside me on cushions on the floor. I can see Eddy and Kelda, standing beside a column, half-hidden, across the room.

  Alma stands before us, beaming. There’s no fire lit; it’s too warm this time of year. Instead, someone has filled the fireplace with tallow candles, and their glow lights up the translucent material of Alma’s gown. She raises her hands for quiet.