by Meg Elison
It was all of them at once. It was the storm so near that the lightning and thunder and rain all crash into one another in the same instant. They howled together like a pack of wolves, their heads tilted up toward the moon. Their breath became a single hot rush, their sweat a single salty river.
“We are so lucky,” Alice whispered, collapsing onto Eddy’s chest. “This is something only women can do.”
Flora and Eddy stared at one another as only women can do. They shared this moment, not arguing with Alice about what they really were. Eddy reached out his hand and their fingers twined together, locked in the perfect understanding that only lovers can share. He sank his other hand into the chaos of Alice’s hair and sighed.
CHAPTER 24
The Book of Flora
On the road
Cooling, winter coming
104N
We’ve been on the road for months now. I keep reading the Midwife whenever we’re at rest and the three of us aren’t fucking. So much of her story is just her and the road. She was alone so much of the time. I can’t imagine her heartbreak every time she thought she had someone and had to lose them. How could she stand it?
We travel south and it gets more humid and more desolate. We haven’t seen anyone in over a moon, but we’ve avoided anything that looked like it was once a city.
Eddy pores over his map and makes notes. He doesn’t write. Alice collects plants, takes cuttings, gathers up what she can. Eddy and I hunt and we eat. There are deer everywhere. Muskrats. Geese. Wild horses and cattle, now and again. We’ve heard rock cats in the night and huddled away from their awful screams. We’ve been lucky. I hope we stay that way. I think of the horses Eddy and I lost to the wolves. I’ll never forget the sound of their teeth scraping the bones.
Alice tries to talk to Eddy, but she goes about it all wrong. How is it that they’ve known each other all their lives and she can’t read him at all? Alice, he doesn’t want to talk about Estiel. Ever. He doesn’t want to talk about Ina. He barely wants to talk about Nowhere. His whole body says No whenever she starts. Alice, my darling, he really doesn’t want to talk about being pregnant. That happened to somebody else.
And if it had happened to me? I’ll never know what that’s like. I wonder if I could stand it. If I could get pregnant the way she did and endure it, bring a child into this world knowing it was conceived in horror and might mean the death of me? Could I stand any of that? I have accustomed myself to letting someone else have the use of my body; surely a child inside can’t be much worse.
I’m not jealous, and I try not to measure anything I have against any other woman’s body. But I do wonder what it is like to live with that possibility. I imagine there is good and bad to it.
We’re going to reach the sea soon. We’ve all started to smell it, but I can feel it. There’s almost nothing left around here that will tell us where we are. Signs are overgrown and rusted and faded beyond all recognition. There’s hardly a road, and we’ve been on foot. Eddy reads the stars and says we’re headed east and south.
And still Alice doesn’t let up. She wants to know, would Eddy ever want to have a child? What would he name it? Would he want a kid to grow up and be like him? I try to jump in and change the subject, or answer for myself. But she won’t let it go. Maybe she wants something badly herself and can’t say it. Maybe she’s thinking of all the people back in Ommun who will or won’t have a child come next spring.
I think about Eliza miscarrying back in Ommun and having to share her news with Alma, who always seemed pregnant or nursing or both. How differently that goes, depending on what you wanted. Maybe wanting is the real mistake.
Two moons on the road and we’re headed into the city called Vana. I remember it, a little. Vana’s signs are new, painted in white and blue, and the road is in good shape. We catch a truck headed for the fish market and ride behind an old man named Darius. He seems a little too eager to give us a lift, and would not accept a trade. But I’m so glad to be off my feet and bouncing over this road I can’t care about it. I sit between Alice and Eddy to keep them from talking, but I needn’t have bothered. The roar of the truck drowns us out. I take my pack off my shoulders and Alice rubs the sore spots for me. Eddy doesn’t take his off. He never does.
CHAPTER 25
VANA
The driver dropped them on the south side of town, and they began to walk toward smoke up ahead. He didn’t say much to them as he sped away, and they weren’t sure why he had stopped there. He kept driving in the same direction they had been headed.
“Vana is a slave-trading city,” Flora told them. “I’ve been there more times than I can count.”
“It’s not marked on the map,” Eddy said again, tapping his finger on the little dot on the coast. “Maybe it used to be a slaver city, but it isn’t anymore.”
Flora shrugged as they walked on. “The road looks good and the signs look new. There will be some kind of trade there.”
Alice jogged ahead, spotting a plant along the path that caught her interest. “I’m excited to be headed into another town,” she said. “It’s about time we saw some new people. And that fellow who picked us up seemed fine.”
“I don’t know why he wouldn’t take a trade,” Flora said, her brow lowering. “Doesn’t make any sense.”
Alice plucked some little purple flowers and held them up for inspection. “Who cares,” she said.
Flora and Eddy exchanged a look. Alice was much too carefree when they let her be the center of their attention too often.
As if coming a thousand times were any kind of proof against danger, Flora thought. She watched Alice decide the flower was not as useful as it might have been and thread it into her curls.
Vana was spread out on a long grid, with crumbling houses and ancient trees that dripped to the ground with the moss that was slowly killing them. Most of the population seemed packed along the sea, and the three of them headed toward the most concentrated areas of smoke they could see.
They came to a series of squares that thronged with people, where meat was smoking in a succession of grills and metal enclosures. The whole of the area smelled like food, and they all saw each other licking their lips.
Eddy caught up to Alice and put a hand on the small of her back, checking out the crowd. Flora closed in behind them.
Everyone they could see was a man.
This was not without precedent. Many cities held at least some manner of segregation, or women were more likely to group themselves indoors while men were outside. But it put all of them on guard.
“That’s them,” a man’s voice called out. “That’s the three of ’em. I told you.”
Flora looked toward the sound. It was the man who had given them their ride almost into town.
Eddy looked sick. He reached for his guns, but it was already too late. The crowd was upon them, running them toward a pink stone building, pushing them through the doors. They pulled the three of them apart, putting Alice and Flora into a wooden enclosure on one side of the large room and holding them there at the point of a rifle.
Eddy they pushed roughly toward a raised box at the front, holding several guns on him as well. Eddy kept his hands off his weapons. He watched. He waited.
Flora put her hand to the bump of one of her guns hidden in the folds of her silk and thought carefully, meticulously about how to free it.
Can we shoot our way out of here? Can I cover Alice, who has no gun on her?
Silently, Flora and Eddy had this conversation across the room.
“Who’ll start the bidding?” the bearded man who had driven them in called out.
“Wait,” Eddy said. “Just wait.”
But he was drowned out at once by offers: Rifles. A boat. Someone offered horses, but everyone around him laughed. The room was in total chaos.
Flora watched. She watched attention swirl and move throughout the room. She watched Eddy’s eyes darting, calculating. She watched the laughter and the ribbing and sa
w that they were becoming something much less than real to these men.
They have no idea we’re armed. She turned the thought over and over in her mind.
“Oughta undress her,” yelled a man who had just wagered a boat and two goats. “Just to be certain of what we’re getting. These are good goats.”
Another laugh followed, and Flora saw the rifle that was pointed toward her list away and droop toward the ground.
“I’ll do it,” called out a clean-shaven man who was close to where Eddy was standing. “Don’t you bite me, now. The wild ones, they like to bite.”
He turned toward the crowd to accept their laughter and in that instant, Flora’s and Eddy’s eyes locked. This was the moment and they both knew it. Time dilated, and everything seemed to move as slowly as sap down a tree. Eddy had his gun out first, but Flora was right behind.
Despite her lack of training and shaking hands, Flora found she could pull the trigger at the critical moment. She shot the man who was just turning back to Eddy. Her shot tore through his neck and he stood a moment, spraying blood over those nearest him.
Eddy shot the man holding the rifle on Flora and Alice, who had not yet reacted to the sudden change. Alice dropped when she heard the first shot, hands over her head.
Good, Flora thought. Stay down.
Eddy got his second gun free and unloaded it into the crowd. Flora emptied one before shoving it back into the folds of her silk and withdrawing the other. She was watching for more armed men.
She held her loaded pistol out before her and reached for Alice’s hand. Alice took it, standing slowly.
Eddy clambered down and joined them, and together they began to walk toward the door.
Flora faced the men, Eddy faced the way out. His gun was empty, but he held it in front of him as though it were not.
“Nobody needs to follow us,” Flora was saying. “We clearly ended up here by mistake.”
Nobody moved. The shock in the room was absolute. The dead and wounded lay untouched, and the survivors did not run. Their eyes followed the three women leaving the building as if they were seeing horses dance or fish fly.
Outside, Eddy pulled the other two into a carriage that had been tied to a post. He untied it and tapped the reins against the backs of the two horses, unsure of whether they’d respond.
They set off at a leisurely pace and Flora sat up on her knees, keeping watch behind them.
Within moments, there were two riders after them.
“Eddy,” she said in a warning tone.
“I know,” he said. “I hear them.”
“Go faster,” Flora said. “Hit the horses harder, they’ll run.”
“Where the fuck are we going to go?”
Alice had one hand digging into Eddy’s arm and the other into Flora’s leg. “Head for the water,” she yelled. “Maybe we can get to a boat.”
“They’ll just follow us there, too.”
“What else can we do?”
“Shoot them,” Eddy yelled back, pulling the coach around a sharp corner.
Flora took aim at one rider, but between his movement in the saddle and her own in the bouncing carriage, the shot went wild. Alice screamed when the gun went off.
“Shit,” Eddy said, seeing that the road came to a dead end ahead of them. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Now would be a bad time to say I told you so, Flora thought, taking aim at the rider again. She didn’t want to waste another shot, but he wouldn’t know that. She thought she saw him slow up a little.
Eddy pulled around the next corner and Alice yelled, “There! That boat there!”
They pelted down the cobbled slope toward the waterfront. The riders were close behind, but Eddy pulled the horses to a stop and jumped out anyway. Flora got out behind him and he snatched the gun from her hand in an instant.
He took aim at the nearest rider and put a bullet through his shoulder. The man fell from his mount messily, bellowing. They turned and ran for the boat.
It was long and slim, built for speed. It had two masts and looked well cared for. Eddy found its mooring rope and threw it onto the deck. “Come on!”
Flora and Alice climbed over, Alice wobbling and nearly falling. Flora caught her.
Eddy stood on the dock a moment longer and took a shot at the next rider who appeared. He missed. He vaulted over the edge of the dock into the ship, which had begun to drift just a little. He found a pole on board and used it to push them away from the edge, trying to make it too far for a man to jump.
When the man came up from below decks, throwing open the hatch and yelling, Eddy nearly shot him just for startling them.
“What is all this?” yelled the grizzled old sailor, looking around at the three of them. His face was as creased as a dried apple, but he was muscular and hale. His age was impossible to guess.
“Sail this thing,” Eddy roared at him. “We need to get out of here!”
The man opened his mouth to protest just as a bullet buried itself in one of the masts of his ship. Eddy looked back and returned fire into a knot of four men on the dock. They scattered.
The old sailor was already hauling up his sheets. They pulled away from Vana and out into the tides smoothly, quickly.
When they were far enough away to feel safe, Eddy aimed his gun at the sailor.
“Are you a slaver?”
“No,” said the man, seemingly unimpressed to be held at gunpoint.
“What were you doing in Vana?”
“Trading rum,” he said.
“What do you call yourself?”
“Bodie.”
Eddy nodded. “Well, Bodie, you’ve got yourself some passengers. We’ll work out a trade, we’ll pay you.”
Bodie nodded. “Fine by me.”
“We need to sail north,” Eddy said.
“Nope,” Bodie said simply. “My route goes south.”
Eddy set his jaw. “Fine.”
Flora and Alice made their way over and introduced themselves. Bodie’s eyes were immediately glued to Alice. Alice took notice and smiled at him.
And now we are four, Flora thought, seeing how Eddy already hated the look the other two had shared. As simple and as complicated as that number always is.
They looked back on the coast of Vana as it receded. Eddy took out his map and marked the city with a pair of black manacles. He carefully folded the paper and put it away.
CHAPTER 26
The Bambritch Book
Fog rolling out
144N
Raiders from here in Bambritch tell me that they’ve heard stories about this army combing through towns and villages as far east as Demons, but it’s so hard to know what’s true and what’s being exaggerated by people swapping stories.
They say the army moves mostly on foot, led by a commander in a tank. Reports vary on how many tanks they have, how many guns. Terror fuels memory like nothing else, but it also fuels invention. The commander has become a figure of legend: sometimes a woman, sometimes a man. Always tall and imposing, always said to be dressed in black with a red sash or a scarf or something. I doubt it’s a single person. More like a handful of leaders taking turns playing figurehead.
Always, always people tell us they have a plane. No one has seen it take to the sky, but they say it looks good. Not much rust, wings on straight. No one knows what to ask; none of us has ever seen a plane fly. We wouldn’t know by looking whether it was skyworthy or not, so we ask the questions we would of a boat, of the wheels on a truck. It can’t be the same.
My thinking is that if they could fly it, they would.
They collect women, that much seems clear. They have gathered up women and girls from every town they have wiped out, but the reports on that don’t make sense, either. They will also take men, and they have a reputation for killing anyone they find pregnant. But others say that pregnant women are taken up and kept. The reports fall apart, they contradict each other.
The commander or commanders don’t answer question
s. They ask for one thing, over and over again. Frags. Fragging. I have only heard or seen that word a handful of times in my life. I don’t think frags exist. I think about the people I’ve known and all the things they believed about childbirth. I remember hazily from childhood that Archie took me into a village once where they thought children came from the moon. People will believe anything if you don’t teach them how to reason for themselves.
They must be after something that doesn’t exist. That’s the only explanation for the scale of destruction they’re bringing into the world. What do you do with a desire that can never be satisfied?
I cannot sleep. I pace my library and think of what will be lost if we lose Bambritch. I think of Eddy, out there somewhere, my opposite and my twin upon the sea. Is his home safe? Can someone keep telling the story? Can one story-keeper make it out alive?
If fragging was real, then Connie could have been mine. But they never were. Never could be. Never will be again.
CHAPTER 27
The Book of Flora
Florda
Warm winter sunshine
104N
Florda is almost exactly as I remember it, but wilder than I knew it then. There are wrecked towns everywhere along the river, some abandoned for years but many more freshly burned. Several times a day we pass hanged men, flyblown and rotting, twisting in the wind, strung from metal posts.
The sea has risen over much of what used to be forest and jungle and beach. Caimans are everywhere, lurking like logs and waiting to strike. I see long, thick snakes in the shallow water, hunting fish and beavers. Falling in would mean death by teeth long before drowning.
Bodie says he doesn’t worry about caimans anymore. He’s covered in scars. Now that it’s hot, he’s nearly naked all the time. (Alice loves that.) He’s all toothmarks and old gashes in his brown, leathery skin. This morning he’s got the sails furled up and we’re poling through the shallows. He’s wiping sweat off in little rivers, cursing. He curses even more than Eddy, and that’s saying something. Some of the words he uses are ones that Eddy didn’t even know, but he’s now taking to them like they were always his. “Cunting,” for example. “Sonofabitching.”
