The Book of Flora

by Meg Elison

  “What did you mean by marks?” asked Bodie, patting his full belly. “Forever marks, you said.”

  A bearded man stood on the other side of the fire, smiling the same missing-tooth grin the rest of them had. He rolled up his deerskin pants to show a tattoo, black and grainy, on the side of one tanned calf. It was the image of a wild boar, its tusks heavily exaggerated. “Marks! To show a story of when you were brave. Forever! With needle and ash.”

  Papa Croc stood at once. “I will tell our best story. The story of how I killed a god. The god whose skins I wear now, as my mark.”

  He walked close to the fire so that the orange light lit his face from below. He spread his arms wide and began. “In the old time, when women still walked the earth, they called them crocodile.”

  “Caimans,” Flora muttered under her breath.

  “When women walked the earth,” Connie whispered back, puzzled.

  “Crocodile were small then. People kept them in their homes. They taught them to play games and eat from their hands.”

  “Corruption!” A man yelled from the far side of the fire; Flora could not see his face.

  “We live not in the shadow of corruption,” Rocky piped up in response.

  “Exactly,” Papa Croc went on, smoothly. “In the corruption, croc was everywhere. Small and insidious, under your beds. Then, when women leave the earth, crocs grow large. They eat up men. They eat up corruption. They eat up old world until nothing left. They grow big so they can rule. This was in my father’s father’s father’s time.

  “Then came the god. The god’s name was Attila, and she was bigger than big. Big as a tree! She’d lay her eggs and wait for us. Wait for Dellacraw. She swallow up children, she swallow up men. Her nest full of eggs of gods, someday as big as she.

  “Dellacraw was a young boy. Young like Rocky. He go to Attila, with his knives.”

  Croc pulled his long knives from their leather sheaths and showed their finely honed edges. “Dellacraw say, come get me. And Attila, she come. He stab her in the mouth!”

  Croc illustrated this by thrusting his long knife up into the air, its blade reflecting firelight as it quivered in his sinewy arm.

  “But Attila smart. Attila roll and roll. Dellacraw hold on. Dellacraw wait until she roll over, and put his other knife in her belly. Dellacraw pull his knife up, spilling Attila guts in the mud. He slay Attila the wicked, and dead men spill from her guts. Dellacraw free them in her death. He take her skin. He guard her eggs until they hatch. He make the next god, Camilla, who grow as big as her mother. He become Papa Croc, and lead his people.”

  Croc puffed up his chest at this, putting both hands across his wide pecs.

  “Forever with the skull of Attila!” the yell came from one, then from many.

  Alice laughed and stood. “Wonderful story! But tell me, why do you speak of the time when women walked the earth? Women still do.”

  Eddy shot her a look, but she did not sit down.

  Flora arose as well. “Surely, each of you had a mother. You know women walk the earth.”

  Laughter rose up like embers from the fire. “I am born of crocodile egg,” Papa Croc said.

  “I am born from bees!” Rocky’s voice was always tuned to pure joy.

  “No, but . . .” Alice glanced around. “Really, though. You came from a Mother and a father. A man and a woman.”

  “No women,” Papa Croc said almost dismissively. “No more.”

  Alice began to unbutton her cotton shirt, dingy now, but new from Ommun. She was still laughing. “No, really. Maybe it’s been a long time since you’ve seen one.”

  Eddy stood up. “Alice, don’t.”

  Alice shrugged, pulling her shirt open and exposing her freckled breasts. Bodie smiled in open admiration.

  “See?”

  Papa Croc laughed, scoffing. “Not real.”

  “Big deal,” said the grapefruit man. “Anyone can have those.”

  Alice looked around at him. “What?”

  “Not real woman. Never real woman.”

  Flora looked around at her company. “What’s a real woman?”

  General laughter greeted her question.

  “A real woman. One who can do it. Give life.”

  Alice and Flora looked at each other.

  “How do you know one of us can’t do it?” Alice’s smile was faltering. Flora looked into the fire.

  “Do it!” Papa Croc stood, chest forward. “Show us you can do it. Then, you are woman.”

  “No one here has ever seen a child born?” Alice looked around the circle again. She tried to meet Flora’s eye, but Flora would not look up from the heart of the fire.

  “Never. No women left. No one can do it.”

  “How do you know I’ve never done it before?” Bodie put his hand on her, but Alice stepped away, letting it fall.

  “Show us the mark!” This came from the man who made marks, who carried his tool over his shoulder even now. “Your forever mark, that shows you gave life.”

  “What mark?” Alice pulled at her skirt a little. “You mean—?”

  “Your lightning,” Papa Croc crowed. He clawed his fingers across his own belly, scratching zigzags over his skin. He held out his hand to a man at his right, who put a tiny wooden carving into his dark palm.

  “Here,” he said. Alice looked down. Flora came a little closer to see the small effigy. It was the body of a woman, with heavy breasts and a pregnant belly as round as the full moon. The belly was shot all over with tiny, intricate stretch marks, white in the pale wood. The body had the tooth-ridged head of a crocodile.

  “No lightning, no baby. No baby, no woman.” Croc folded his arms, turning away from her and ending the discussion. “A story! A story of bravery!”

  “Ah,” Bodie said, standing. Alice sat down in his place, buttoning her shirt. “I’ve been brave so many times. If I had a mark like yours, I would need more than one. A mark of an octopus. And a shark. And a storm. And monsters. And a great many men.”

  Papa Croc laughed loudly at this, with the other men joining in after him. “So brave,” he said. “Tell us a story!”

  Bodie cleared his throat. “Alright, alright. Once, I was on the deck of my ship. The Ursula. It was a gray day, and the air was heavy. I was alone. I could feel that the sea was uneasy, like a man spoiling for a fight. I turned around to look behind me, where I had come from, and a tentacle shot up out of the sea. It wrapped itself around me and pulled me into the water. It was the most terrifying creature the sea has to offer: the giant squid.”

  He put his scarred arms into the air, showing how the tentacles fought him, wrapping around his body and dragging him into the deep.

  “I pulled the knife from my boot,” he said, doing so and showing it to them in the firelight. It was shorter than Papa Croc’s but viciously sharp and with a set of teeth down low, near the handle.

  “The beast pulled me close and made to eat me, but I plunged this into its eye. Its black-blue blood dribbled out into the water, and it dropped me. I had won, but I was lost.

  “I fought to swim instead of drowning, but the current took me away from my boat. I wrecked on a beach and my boat did, too. I coughed up bloody water, but I was alive.”

  Eyes grew big all around the fire. He had them spellbound.

  There’s no way that happened, Flora thought. But what if Eddy told his story? What if he talked about killing the Lion’s lion? Who would believe that? Or if I told them I came from women who whisper to pregnant horses and make boys into women with their magic?

  Flora schooled her face. She listened.

  Why don’t we tell? I’ve sat in these circles so many times. It is always the men who tell. There are women in these stories. There have to be. But I never hear it from them.

  Bodie was crouched down now, showing how he woke up afraid. “I awoke on the beach of a great city. It had shining towers and flying machines. And the king of that place found me, and I told him I had killed a sea monster. So
he told me that a terrible monster was attacking his city at night. It was as tall as three men. And it ate babies. And no one could defeat it. So I spent the night in his house. I met his beautiful wife.”

  “Not real,” said the grapefruit man, dismissively. “The wife was not real.”

  “What?” Bodie asked, derailed.

  Papa Croc was sucking the meat out of one last cold bug. “Was she big in the belly? Did you see her give life?”

  “No,” Bodie said uncertainly.

  “She was a man,” Croc said, throwing the shell into the fire. “King had a husband.”

  Bodie shrugged. “She looked like a woman to me. Anyway, I met the monster that very night. He was huge!” Bodie bent backward, looking up as if meeting the eye line of the towering monster. “His teeth were the size of my hand, and dripping with red blood. I stuck him in the leg with my knife, but he didn’t even feel it. The blade was trapped in the bone and I was defenseless. He swiped his big hands after me, but he was slow. I ran between his legs. I dodged and jumped and ran. Then I picked up a stone from the ground. I used my belt and I slung it up at him. The stone hit him in the eye, and just like the squid, black blood came pouring out. He was a monster too, but on the land instead of in the sea.”

  Bodie bent forward and put his hands on his knees. “The king thanked me. The people wanted to make me their new king. The king’s wife came to me and . . . uh . . .” He glanced at the grapefruit man. “She blew my dick off,” he said.

  A cheer went up around the fire, accompanied by a number of unmistakable gestures.

  That got them going, Flora mused.

  “But I couldn’t stay. I went back to my boat and made repairs and sailed away. And that was the story of how I became a monster-killer.”

  There was applause and some hooting and stomping. Papa Croc stood up and pounded Bodie on the back with affection.

  Bodie held up his hands for them to stop. “Alright, alright. Trade. Someone else has to tell a story.”

  Papa Croc looked over his shoulder, fast, whipping his head as though he heard something in the gathering gloom.

  “Hunters,” someone else said. “Back early.”

  Flora heard them then, a group of men in soft deerskin boots, good at being silent but picking up speed as they homed in toward the fire.

  They were ragtag and bloody, carrying several boars tied to spears, swinging with their skins split and their guts missing. The men parted to welcome them, and they ranged in, chests out, proud of their kill.

  One of them stared at the visitors a little longer and more intently than the others. He was middle-aged, with gray hairs in his rough beard and dry rivulets in the skin around his eyes. His once-black hair grew wild and long under his raccoon cap, and it was braided with crow feathers.

  Alice moved closer to Bodie, instinctively shielding herself from his gaze. Flora stood. Eddy ignored them.

  “Etta? Is that you?”

  Eddy looked up and squinted at the man with the feathers in his hair. “Who the hell?” He stood up, still straining to see.

  “It’s me, Etta. It’s Errol.”

  Eddy went around the fire to look the older man in the face. It took him a long minute.

  “What did you give me when you left Nowhere?” Eddy stared the man down.

  The man gave a short laugh. “My map. And every fucking thing I knew.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “It’s me!” Errol was fairly crowing now. “It’s you! I never thought I’d see you again!”

  They caught each other up in a fierce, tight hug. Flora watched them through the heat shimmer of the fire.

  Coincidence, she thought. The things we see too many times, and the things we only see once. That’s what we make into religion. Those are the things we have to struggle to explain, so we make something up.

  Even from where she stood, Flora could see the plain wonder in Eddy’s relaxing face. He looked younger, wilder.

  Alice had detached herself from Bodie and slunk closer to them. “Errol? Really? Where’s Ricardo?”

  “Alice,” Errol said, his voice full of plain awe. “Daughter of Carla. Last time I saw you, you didn’t have any front teeth!” His smile faded a little. “Ricardo’s been gone four summers now. Snakebite.”

  Alice hugged him suddenly, and Eddy wrapped his arms around them both. It was a little knot of Nowhere, made up of loose threads. There was nothing for the rest of them to do but stare.

  “I don’t understand,” Connie whispered to Flora. “They used to know each other?”

  “A long time ago,” Flora said in a low voice. “Errol helped train Eddy to be a raider. They lived together in Nowhere.”

  Connie nodded, remembering only the stories they had heard about Nowhere. “Should we leave them alone?”

  “Maybe,” Flora said. “But I really don’t want to.”

  “Come on back to my place,” Errol was saying with a broad gesture. “We’ll catch up.”

  The walk was short, and frogsong carried them there.

  Alice introduced Flora, Connie, and Bodie as they settled in Errol’s hut.

  Flora put her hand against the curved wall of the simple little house, looking around at its humble dimensions. It was framed with sticks, she saw, and filled in with mud and grasses.

  Must have been built in the summertime. And you’re out of luck if it rains at all. Why would you do this? There are brick houses not far from here that are safe to live in.

  She pushed against the wall and felt its uncertain give. She tried not to show the distaste she felt for sitting on the dirt floor.

  Why be indoors at all? It’s like being outside.

  Errol was smiling at her. “Yeah, I know. It’s not much. I miss the big houses back in Nowhere sometimes, too.”

  Flora blushed a little, taking her hand away from the wall. “It’s just . . . why? There are houses all over the coast, nice ones. Enough for everybody and then some. Why build like this?”

  Errol sank down easily, long accustomed to the hard earthen floor. He crossed his legs and comfortably pulled one bare heel up high onto his thigh. Out of the corner of her eye, Flora saw Connie attempting to do the same.

  “It’s the way here. Papa Croc and the ones before him. They decided that living in the bones of the old world means that we can’t grow a new one. They tell each other ghost stories. Say that the old places are haunted, filled with the spirits of the dead. They scared each other out of the old towns, and said it was better to start over clean. New.”

  Eddy was still standing. “Isn’t it cold? Rainy? What about when it snows?”

  Errol shrugged. “We have skins. Deer and boar. Some of us have taken a bear. We get together, and we manage.”

  Eddy did not sit, but he looked down at Errol, shaking his head slowly. “What happened to you? Why didn’t you ever come back?”

  Errol shrugged. “Since then? So much. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. I’ve done some things I can barely understand. And . . . I couldn’t go back. You know that, right?”

  Alice blinked. “What do you mean, you couldn’t?”

  He tossed the black feathers back off his shoulders. “We couldn’t go back because we were tired of pretending like we weren’t in love. Ricardo and I. We just wanted to be together. And they made it impossible for us.”

  “Who did?” Alice fairly demanded.

  “You know who. You can’t tell me you never had this problem with your mother. Did she know about you?”

  Eddy was shaking his head harder. “There were people like us in Nowhere. Fancy boys. Me and Alice. They didn’t like it, but they tolerated us. We just didn’t talk about it. It wasn’t anybody’s business.”

  Errol chuckled a little. “They tolerated you. Because we left. We fixed that for you.”

  Eddy did sit then, slinking to the floor. “Were there others?”

  He was nodding. They were locked eye to eye now. “Every raider who left and didn’t come back, basically. S
ome of the guys who trained me. It was like this piece of us that we couldn’t put anywhere. So many places have . . . rules about it. Laws.”

  Connie was red in the face already. “Well, they have to! Everybody wants to have new babies, and there’s only one way to get them. So they have to have laws about . . . unnatural things.”

  Flora looked over and saw they were fuming. Shaking.

  “You don’t have to justify what they did to you,” she said gently.

  That was the wrong thing to say.

  Connie stood up, stormy and ready to run out the door.

  “I wouldn’t,” Errol said. “We get wolves after dark.”

  Connie stood with their back to the earthen wall, arms crossed.

  “You’re right, kid. Every place is out to ensure that babies are born. But there’s never enough women. So how bad can it be if a couple of guys pair up?”

  “That just leaves women to deal with this,” Alice said tiredly. “I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had this fight. If women are obligated to have children, then we may as well be in chains.”

  “I don’t understand,” Flora spoke up. She was digging one of her books out of her bag. “The Midwife. She was like us. And there were others in Nowhere, at the very beginning. Breezy! Don’t you know about Breezy? How could Nowhere turn you out when it was founded by someone who accepted this?”

  Eddy sighed. “Those books. They change all the time. Ina used to call the short version ‘the canon.’ They’d leave out all the stuff where the Midwife fucked women, or wanted to. They’d definitely leave out Breezy.”

  “Who was Breezy?” Connie was interested in the book, but their reading skills weren’t yet up to the task of the diary.

  Errol sighed. “I haven’t thought of her in a long time. Breezy was a boy who became a girl.”

  “Breezy was always a girl,” Flora said. “Maybe that was just the time that she was safe enough to show it.”

  “I didn’t know that could happen,” Connie said.