The Book of Flora

by Meg Elison

  Errol stretched his legs in front of him and grabbed his toes. “Well, you’ve probably heard that the men around here don’t even believe in women. I’m guessing they made the three of you feel pretty out of place.”

  Alice nodded. “Their definition is hard to swallow.”

  “They all are,” Flora said.

  Eddy was rolling his eyes. “Can we ever talk about anything else? Where have you traveled? How did you get here?”

  “Oh boy,” Errol said. “I’ve seen everything. Ricardo and I went back to Niyok and saw the glass towers. The water has risen every year, and even the boat people are gone now. It was totally deserted the last time we went through there.”

  Eddy began to smile. “I remember you talking about Niyok. Where else?”

  “We traveled by boat for a long time, just out on the sea. There’s more sea than I could have imagined, back when I lived in Nowhere. There are people in boats out there who speak languages we couldn’t figure out. They traded us strange goods: coconuts and pineapples and cocoa nibs. They had little brown boys on board rather than women. They brewed liquor out of anything they could get their hands on, all of it sticky-sweet. Some of them wanted to fight. Some of them we had to fight, because they were slavers. We used to take rescued women down to the Republic of Charles. That town was bright and fat. Probably because we brought them so many women.”

  Connie’s eyes were shining now. “What is it like there?”

  “They grow tobacco everywhere. Everyone rolls it and smokes it. The whole place stinks. There was a slaver running the place for a long time, but he was overthrown by an uprising of women. Last I saw, there was a council of old women running the whole place. Trading at the port, sending out killers like Etta, here.”

  He smiled at his former pupil, who did not smile back.

  “Eddy.”

  He looked Eddy over quickly, getting a feel for every eye on him. “I taught you this act. I know what you’re doing.”

  Eddy dropped his head to his chest, putting a hand on the back of his neck. It made Flora ache to see him like that.

  “No. You don’t.”

  Alice saw the tension and sought to break it. “So, are you going to stay here? Is this it for you, or do you still go raiding?”

  Errol folded his legs again. “I’m not young anymore. The road is dangerous. I think this might be it. I like these guys. And what else is there?”

  What else is there? Flora thought. What a question.

  They talked long into the night. Errol wanted to know about Estiel, which he had seen, and Ommun, which he had not. Flora told about Jeff City, and Bodie told more stories about life on the sea, some that seemed true and some that did not.

  When everyone was settling down, Flora saw Connie with the Midwife’s book. They were working to sound out the words, finger traveling along below the lines. Their brow was furrowed and they were hunched around it, like it needed protection.

  She decided not to ask for it back, though she preferred to sleep with her bag fully packed. In the morning, Connie had packed it into their own.

  The minute Flora saw Errol and Eddy, she knew they had stayed up most of the night talking. They were both soft around the eyes, puffy in the face.

  She walked over quietly. “There’s dandelion, if anyone wants it.” The drink, made of toasted flower roots, was a favorite in many of the villages they had seen.

  Errol shook his head. “I drink pressed apple in the morning. Sometimes fresh, sometimes funky. Depends on the morning.”

  Flora smiled. “What kind of morning is it?”

  He looked Eddy over as they both stood. “Funky.”

  The three of them drank from the body of a dried gourd, once Errol had pulled the cork from its belly. The drink was hot in the mouth, funky as promised, and immediately went to Flora’s head.

  “How long do you ferment that?”

  Errol pulled the gourd back and looked at it. “It’s young. Maybe a moon? It goes bad fast in the summer.”

  Eddy took a pull and grimaced. “How can you do this for breakfast?”

  He grinned. “Remember the time Ricardo and I found that wine cellar? We brought back all those bottles.”

  Eddy’s grimace only deepened. “Most of it was sour. Gone over. Not fit for pickling in.”

  Errol nodded, looking down at his gourds and bottles. “Yeah, but the stuff that was good was incredible. I never forgot it. I keep looking in burned-out basements, hoping for more. But that hardly ever happens anymore.”

  “Why not make wine?” Flora asked.

  Errol shrugged. “Grapes grow where it’s warmer and drier. Out west.”

  Flora nodded. “That’s the way we’re headed.”

  He looked between Flora and Eddy, his brow lowering. “Why? What for?”

  “To go back to the beginning,” Flora said.

  “To see the Midwife’s city,” Eddy added. “Maybe find some people there who were like her.”

  Errol was already shaking his head. “We were there. Ricardo and I. There’s nothing. I mean, there’s people. But they’re barely human. Chanting and drumming in the hills. Burned bodies hung on poles. The whole place was a bad dream. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”

  Eddy looked at him in disbelief. “That can’t be everywhere. The map says there’s days and days of coastline. Did you give up after just seeing one place?”

  “You don’t understand,” Errol said, taking a step toward his former apprentice. “It’s the weather out there. It’s awful. Hot and wet, with water flooding the old cities. Storms. Earthquakes. Bugs. It’s worse than Florda ever was. It doesn’t ease up until you get way up north. I can show you some nice spots, if you want to go west. Don’t go to Midwife’s Bay. I’m begging you.”

  Eddy and Flora looked at each other. When they had left Ommun, this had been the one thing they could agree on. They didn’t know where they were going, but they both thought that would be the right place to figure it out. They both wanted to see what the Midwife saw when she set out. They wanted to find the people there, to see if things were better. Freer. Different.

  Errol was still shaking his head. “You’ve never once taken my advice,” he said to Eddy. “Why would you start now?”

  They left him at his hut, with no promises they’d ever see each other again. Nowhere was a memory they held between them, but Errol would not follow where they were going.

  The travelers bartered a little with Papa Croc and his people. Alice traded medicines, and Bodie helped out with some boat repair. Flora was just about out of silk, and Eddy hadn’t much to trade these days. The two of them sat with Connie.

  “We’re going to head back to the ship soon,” Flora told Connie. “We’re going south so that we can go west.”

  Connie nodded. “Why not stay here?”

  Flora looked around. “Do you like it that much?”

  Connie shrugged. “I kind of like the way they look at things. I mean, things would be better if women didn’t exist. We wouldn’t all fight over it so much.”

  Flora looked them over. “You really think that?”

  Connie looked away. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s just . . . it’s like they’re right, you know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Connie looked from Eddy to Flora and back again. “Well, it’s like you two. Eddy, you’re a woman. Except you’re not. Because you decided you’re not.”

  Eddy stiffened and Flora saw him clench his fists. But he didn’t say anything.

  “And Flora, you’re a woman because you say so. Because you’re cut. Because whatever.”

  “That’s not exactly it,” Flora said gently.

  “Yeah, okay, everybody says it’s complicated. And I was a woman, until I wasn’t. Because there aren’t actually any rules, and none of this matters. The only thing that matters is who can bear. And if not one of the three of us can, then nobody here is a woman, are they?”

  The three of them sat in s
ilence while the trading carried on.

  CHAPTER 33

  The Book of Flora

  Somewhere

  Cold rain

  104N

  I don’t know how to help Connie finish growing up. I think about what Father did for me, but he mostly just put me with people like me so I could learn from them. He made me feel safe, made me get a trade, made me think about respect. But I was already me before then.

  There is nobody like Connie. The people in Florda said this happens sometimes, but I’ve never heard of it before. There aren’t any horsepeople for this. I don’t know how to help them become a person that is neither woman nor man. I don’t know how to tell them that their way of looking at this is narrow. Cruel, even. That this is the kind of thinking that allows men like the Lion to exist.

  Can a thought do so much? It must. Thoughts do everything, in the end.

  I watch Errol and Eddy say goodbye. Eddy seems so softened, so saddened by this meeting. It’s like he lost something rather than gained it back. Errol did nothing to connect him to the man he wants to be; he was a sad reminder of all that is lost. We didn’t even really talk about bringing him along with us.

  Eddy has nothing to tie himself to, no way to define himself. He’s lost. I remember that feeling, after my father died. Like the earth has shifted beneath your feet and there’s no safe place to stand. I hate seeing him suffer. I hate seeing the way Connie confuses him. Even hurts him. I don’t think they’re good for each other. I don’t know who is good for Connie. They look up to Bodie, at least a little. I think I’ve seen them looking at Alice the way I look at Alice. I don’t love that.

  The more people in a group, the more complicated things become. There’s no way around that, it seems. We did it wrong in Jeff City, they did it wrong in Nowhere. They’re doing it wrong in Ommun, and all over the world, I’m sure. Maybe there is no right way to do it. Maybe this is just what we are.

  We’re back on the sea, heading south. Bodie says that this time of year, we might be able to cross something he calls the narrow jungle sea. If not, we’ll be another couple of moons headed south, toward terrible cold, before we can cut up north toward Midwife’s Bay. We hope that the water is high.

  Bodie’s maps make no sense at all. They’re fragmentary, taking in only those towns on the edge of the sea. He has long paths marked off for sharks, others for slavers and something he calls “bad rivers.” He says he can navigate by the stars, but when Connie asked to be shown, he said he didn’t know how to explain it.

  I watch Connie try on each of us in turn. They stand like Alice, hip cocked to the side, chest forward, lithe and loose in the neck as she stares up at Bodie as if he were the sea and not a man upon it. They always shake this pose off as if it were a chill.

  They fall right in behind Bodie; Bodie the utterly oblivious sees nothing. He teaches them to steer the boat, to work the sails, or to read the sea. He notices not at all when their eyes fill up with admiration, their mouth softens and smiles for him. He treats them like something between an inconvenience and a pack animal. They adore him for it.

  I watch them try to become Eddy, box up their shoulders, and help him haul a net full of fish on board. Watch them become neat-handed with a knife, following Eddy’s gruff instruction and building up thumb calluses. I see them throw Eddy off like a coat that’s heavy with rain. Take a deep breath. They never mirror Eddy for long.

  It’s hard to know when they’re mimicking me. I’ve heard them pick up words from me, especially as they learn how to read. I see contempt on their face when we both piss over the side of the boat. For me or for themselves, I’m not sure. They clearly think I am something lesser, something unreal beside Alice’s legitimacy or Eddy’s strength.

  They don’t love me. I suppose that was too much to hope for. I’ve invested in Connie all the things that went unloved in my younger self. I’ve given them my orphan sadness and tried to show them the same kindness my father showed me. I gave that man reasons to love me, but he did it up front, like a credit. I’ve given the same to Connie, but they don’t know how to accept it. Maybe that will never change. It would be enough if they trusted me, but we’re not there yet. I don’t know what it will take.

  So they bounce around between us. I try to remember that it has nothing to do with me. They’re not doing it to hurt me. They’re just figuring themselves out.

  There’s only so many examples of how to be a person on this boat. I hope that when we find someplace to settle, they have more choices. There are a thousand ways to be themselves, but they have to find their own.

  CHAPTER 34

  The Bambritch Book

  No more fog, late fruits in

  144N

  The council met today to discuss what we are going to do when the army reaches the island. If they don’t stop, it will be tomorrow.

  We sat down at the big round table, Zill holding her head, I think with hangover. She drinks her own honey mead whenever she’s alone—and she’s been alone too much lately.

  Hortensia turned her back almost entirely toward Zill, pointedly ignoring her. Hortensia thinks that Bambritch should outlaw everything: old-world drugs, pipeweed, drinking, everything. We’ve talked about it, and drunkenness certainly contributes to a little bit of chaos around here. But time and again we come back to the question of whether we can attempt to control anything people do with their own bodies that doesn’t hurt anyone else. So we do not, and Zill drinks on.

  Eva has clearly gone without sleep these last few days. She’s been caring for refugees with Wallis in tow, and the thin skin beneath her round brown eyes is dark as a bruise. She holds her chin in her hands and stares at me.

  Alice came in late, as usual. She was still as beautiful as ever, her freckles as perfect in her skin as stars in the night sky. Her ringlets she had tied back, working as hard as she was to secure her vault full of emergency drugs and her precious recipes against whatever might come. She told me she had lost twenty years’ worth of work in the wreck of Nowhere and would not lose it again. She buries everything now, carefully sealed and daubed with wax. If the whole place burned down, she could always go back and dig. Or tell someone else where to find it.

  Alice has been my love all these years, though it has changed shape in that time. Like a child, our relationship was small and fragile in the beginning. It grew up, developed a mind of its own, changed into something we could not predict. She keeps a Hive of men and women both to rival the size of any here on Bambritch—it might be the biggest. She has had three living children. She is beautifully generous with her whole being, and I cannot help but worship her still.

  She sat next to me, letting her long-fingered hand slip over my knee for just a moment before she settled in.

  “Speel said they do have an airplane,” she said without preamble.

  Zill’s head came up. Hortensia sat bolt upright in her chair.

  “What?” Eva’s eyes were already bright with tears.

  Alice nodded. “They didn’t see it in the air, but it’s moving with the army. They’re towing it behind a truck. Sometimes they start its engine. That’s that whining noise. They’re running it to scare us. So that we know they’re coming.”

  I turned to Zill. “Are all the boats moved out?”

  She nodded miserably. “And the bridge is ready to blow. We will probably never be able to rebuild it, but I don’t care.”

  “Did Speel say whether they sent a messenger ahead?”

  Alice shook her head, looking down. “They looked for one, but there was nobody out there. No rider, no bicycle. The other towns . . .” She cleared her throat a moment.

  Eva broke in. “The other towns reported no messenger. No message. They have no demands.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “They must want something.”

  I stared at the wood-grain patterns in the table. They looked like long, stretched-out faces, screaming in torment. “They must want something,” I said again.

/>   “We need to talk about plans to refugee,” Alice said flatly. “We can move people toward Torie.”

  “And then what?” Zill asked. Her breath was like bile. “We can’t get more than a little head start. They’ll just follow. They’re cutting up every little town in their way. Where can we go?”

  “Okay, then we’ll just stay here and die,” Alice said. “Is that your plan?”

  “We have weapons,” Hortensia offered up. “We can arm a reasonable number of people.”

  “With handguns,” Eva said. “Rifles. Bows. They’ve got so much more than that.” She put her hands down on Speel’s drawings of the advancing army. “And there’s no way that we’re better armed than every other town they’ve put down. They’ve faced armed resistance before.”

  “Then what is there left to do?” Zill said. “Surrender?”

  I shrugged. “We could try talking to them.”

  Hortensia and Zill both rolled their eyes. I wish they knew how alike they really are.

  “What good is that going to do?”

  I shrugged again. “It’s worked for me before. I don’t see that we have a lot of options. Those who want to refugee should do so. Eva, can you lead that? Make sure Mothers and children get the first spots on boats.”

  Eva nodded, already gathering up to leave.

  “Hortensia, Zill, will you figure out who all has guns and get them to high places in time for the arrival? If we’re going to have a shoot-out, let’s claim the advantage early.”

  They turned toward each other and began arguing at once.

  I turned to Alice. “Is your vault ready?”

  “Ready as it’ll ever be. And there’s enough space to hide me in it.”

  I put my hand on her hair and looked into her eyes. “That’s my girl. Looking out for herself to the very end. Who’s got the boy?”

  Her youngest living child, Calyx, was only ten.

  “He’s with Shannon. She’ll go to Torie, I bet.”

  “Make sure we find out.” I loved that kid, the little cross-eyed boy who called us both Mom. Nobody had ever done that, not even Connie.

  “I will, of course.” Alice kissed me on the cheek with dry lips.