by Meg Elison
Etta looked up at her and then looked away. “I just thought . . .”
“You thought what? That I’m yours? That we’ll tell our mothers and you’ll move in and my Hive will sweep the floors for us?”
Etta had her pants back on. “Forget it. I came here for some comfort, but I see that’s not something I can get here anymore.”
Alice strode through the beaded curtain and came back as Etta was lacing her boots.
“Here. This is what you came here for. Something that’s only for you.” She held out a small box filled with vials. Each had a cork waxed into the open end.
Etta stared at it, hands still on her boots.
“Oh, you don’t want it? Fine, I can just sell it to—”
“I want it. Thank you.” Etta took the box from Alice’s thin fingers, touching her short nails and suddenly feeling very sorry for herself. She held one of Alice’s hands and kissed her knuckles.
“This . . . This isn’t what I came for. I came for you.” Her eyes were a plea that she couldn’t say.
Don’t want to leave, but I can’t take back what I said. Can’t help how I feel.
Alice sighed. “Yeah. But you want too big a piece. Next time, you knock.”
Etta slipped the vials out of the box and into the inner pocket of her leather jacket. She picked up her pack and left noiselessly. Alice was silent as she went out the door.
The moon was rising. Etta looked up and down the little Nowhere streets. Up in the guard tower, she saw a red glow and rising smoke.
She snorted and climbed the ladder.
When she knocked on the hatch, she could hear them scramble to their feet and get their guns.
“Who—who is it? Who’s there?”
“Oh shit. Oh shit.”
“Relax, Rob. It’s Etta. Let me in.”
Rob, son of Marcia, unlatched the door and Etta climbed through. She threw her pack down and hugged him. “Have you got enough to share?”
Rob looked guiltily to the corner of the room where his joint was smoking still. He scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, we do. You won’t tell?”
“Shit, no. Who’s this?” She popped her chin to indicate the other man in the tower.
“This is Aaron, son of Lisa.”
Aaron was too tall for the tower room and had to stoop a little. Etta nodded up at him and he nodded back. The three of them found comfortable ways to sit.
Rob got the mashed joint lit again and passed it to Etta. She hit it hard and passed it to Aaron. Both of them had been carefully trained not to stare, though they might go days without sitting and talking with a woman. They looked at the smoke, at each other.
“So, how’s night duty?” Etta held the smoke in while she spoke, a croaky whisper.
Aaron took a long, deep hit and looked at Rob.
“Boring,” Rob said, looking over the half wall at his back. “We haven’t had a wanderer in moons. And all the raiders are out. Well, except for you.” He added this last hastily, watching Etta exhale a cloud of smoke dense enough to hide her face from him.
“Did anyone come back after the thaw?” Etta watched the joint as it passed back to Rob.
“Elliot came back before the thaw,” Aaron said hoarsely. “He had skis or something. Anyhow, he shot a boar and dragged it in on a sledge. They roasted it that night. We had a great party.”
Etta nodded. “Elliot is a good raider. I bet he brought back some good stuff.”
“Mostly news,” Aaron said. “He met traders to the south who have a safe road to the gulf. There’s a city there now, more than a thousand people.”
“Bullshit,” Etta said flatly.
“That’s what Elliot said, but the traders were fat and had good clothes. He said they told him a thousand people, more than a hundred women, and five babies last year.”
There were always stories like this. Towns where there were almost as many women as there were men, where the plague had not wiped out the old-world way of living together in the riches and freedom of babies born easily to women who were free to roam everywhere, common as dandelion fluff.
“Five babies a year, my ass.” Etta could feel herself starting to float. She declined the joint when Rob tried to pass it back to her.
“A hundred women, though.” Rob looked dreamy. “Of course they told Elliot they don’t take in men.”
“Of course.” Etta laughed a little. “Those Hives are full.”
“That’s the thing,” Aaron said. “The traders said no Hives. He said the women just take trade when they feel like it. Men bring in fish and furs and whatever, and the women come to the market to choose.”
“Huh,” Etta said.
“Have you ever been anyplace like that?” Rob looked at Etta expectantly, as a child looks when awaiting a bedtime story.
“No, not like that,” she said quickly. “Most people I meet are travelers. In twos and threes. Not many cities to speak of.”
“Oh.” They both said it, disappointed.
After a little silence and another hit, Rob was ready to try again.
“What’s Estiel like?”
Etta looked above the half wall and saw the gibbous moon on its way up. “I don’t want to talk about it. Rob, can I sleep at your place? Since you’re up here anyway?”
“Of course! The bed’s not real clean, but the room is empty. Amy likes everyone to sleep together, until high summer and then she can’t stand us. She says either us or the bugs have to go.” He laughed a little.
Etta was already opening the trap. “Tell her to get bug repellent from Alice. It works. I should know.”
Rob fastened it behind her and Aaron started to snore. Softly, to no one, he said, “She knows where to get it. She just hates the smell.”
Not real clean was an understatement. Etta was glad she was stoned. She fell face-first into the stink of a man and wondered for the thousandth time why the smell was disgusting and comforting all at once.
The smell of men is the smell of danger.
She drifted to sleep and jerked when she dreamed of the black-and-silver arch that brooded over Estiel. She did not wake until dawn.
Etta’s pack was ready; she had been prepared to be gone all summer before her early return. Nevertheless, she observed the raider’s ritual, learned from Errol and Ricardo when she was just a girl.
A raider must be prepared, Ricardo’s voice lisped in memory. You must carry always enough, but never too much.
Think about what you know you can’t replace, Errol added, whispering across time. How long ago had it been? Etta missed them sorely; they were like brothers to her.
Know everything in your pack by feel, know your inventory by heart.
She made Rob’s bed and spread out her belongings on the blank space of his wool blanket. Her clothes were rolled tight, and she concentrated on extra socks. She knew socks were the success or failure of a long walk.
Beside those, she laid her leather journal and a small roll of pencils and a pen. These she scarcely looked at, remembering her mother’s hands on the blank pages. She had loose-leaf paper, as well, in case she needed to leave messages.
Etta carried a few items from the old world. All of them were very costly, and most she had collected on her travels. Anything of value from the before was useful as payment for invaluable services, or as trade for something a person could die without. She laid these things beside each other, marveling, as always, at their smoothness and perfection.
One silicone menstrual cup, in perfect shape and boiled scrupulously clean. Etta had found a case of these on her very first raid and had brought them back to a hero’s welcome. She had hated the rags and pads that women made and soaked in cold water by night. She had opened the case totally perplexed and unfolded an ancient, yellowing, folded paper that explained their purpose with helpful diagrams. Each in its plastic clamshell was pristine, forgotten in the storeroom of an old infirmary. She had carried it out past a chair with rusted stirrups, shouldering by it without
a look. She didn’t know what the chair was for and didn’t spare it a thought.
When she had brought these back to Nowhere, her bag bursting with the small packages, Mother Ina had convinced her to give the moon-blood cups away rather than trade them. With the pliant little gift in her hand, Ina had quoted from the Book and pointed out that Etta was doing the work of the Unnamed.
Etta was sixteen and believed in the story of a hero. So she had agreed.
Beside her moon-blood cup, she laid her set of stainless-steel silverware and a metal bowl. These were plentiful, but good metalwork was always costly. Next to that, she laid her three sharp knives, all meticulously cleaned and maintained. They were always within her reach. Her machete next, with its rusty spots on the hilt but sharp as ever, in its black case that slung across her back.
In the bottom of her pack she kept a cunningly made wooden box full of tiny compartments. Into one of these, she rolled the vials that Alice had given her. Poison and cures and palliatives clinked and rumbled in the drawers, all sealed with wax or wrapped in bundles. Nothing was labeled. Without an explanation, a thief would stake his life on trial and error.
The most valuable and dangerous item was her gun. It was a revolver that had been handed down in Nowhere for over a century. It had been maintained by every owner, and when there were no longer bullets for it, Brandon, son of Bronwen, had figured out how to make more. This process was long and difficult, and the smiths said it was very dangerous. Etta had thirty-six of them—six in the cylinder and enough to load it twice more. No one knew that number except her smith, Jaden, son of Janet. She paid him in lead weights and copper wire to keep her supplied and keep his mouth shut.
The gun itself had been a gift from her mother. It was given to Ina by a Hive whose Mother had died in childbirth, for Ina’s help with their surviving daughter. Ina had passed it to Etta on the day the girl got her first blood and chose her path.
Ina told her that the gun had once belonged to the Unnamed. The first Midwife in Nowhere, who had come from far out west and knew what had killed the women of the old world. The one who had dressed as a man and shot slavers and handed out magic pills that could prevent deadly pregnancy. Ina, never one for superstition, even said that it would give her luck.
Etta knew her mother had expected her to become a Midwife. It wasn’t until years later that she realized her mother had had this gift ready for her, instead of one of the traditional Midwife gifts. She might not be the daughter her mother wanted, but she was evidently exactly what Ina had expected.
Daughter Etta stroked the gun’s oily surface before wrapping it again in the chamois cloth that kept it safe and dry.
Last, she stacked her maps of the old roads, her water bottles, and her stash of food. She decided to visit the storehouse again before heading back out. She had credit there and could get more buffalo jerky and oats. Maybe there would be fresh bread for breakfast.
She packed back up, everything in order, everything accounted for. The storehouse boys were happy to see her and filled her pack to bursting. She got fresh bread with butter and even some early berries on the sly, because they were happy to see her. She got venison and buffalo jerky and a good cake of salt, and considered herself richly provisioned.
Their requests were always the same: cuttings of live herb or vegetable plants that they lacked.
Green beans and wild mushrooms. What they really want me to bring back they’ll never say.
Etta returned to her mother’s house and found it crawling with men from Ina’s Hive. They were pouring steaming pots of water through Ina’s white sheets and scrubbing her bathtub.
Julian, son of Carla, wiped his sweating forehead with his shoulder as he looked up at her. He was almost as young as Etta herself. “Mother Ina went to work, Miss Etta.”
“Thank you, father.” Etta felt supremely uncomfortable and left immediately. She did not go to the schoolhouse where her mother worked. She didn’t want to interrupt class, and she didn’t know what she would say.
She went instead to the shrine of the Unnamed, as she always did before leaving Nowhere. She did not kneel and she lit no candles. She picked up the scribed copy of the Book and opened it to her favorite part, following the neat and even lines with the tip of one finger.
May I be brave where she was brave, she thought.
“Did you bring her an offering this time?”
All her bravery suddenly snuffed, Etta turned to face her mother.
She was surprised to see Sylvia there, too. Behind the two of them lurked Ani, holding the hands of both Belle and Chloe.
“I did.” Etta shouldered her pack. “Come to see me off?”
“Yes, my living daughter, we did.”
Ina took Etta’s half-willing hand and led her outside.
Sylvia hugged her quickly, fiercely. “Alice wanted to be here, but she’s growing a culture.”
Etta raised her eyebrow. “Why would Alice see me off? I’m sure she has better things to do.”
Sylvia smiled enigmatically and walked off. Ani brought the girls closer, and Etta crouched down to meet their eyes.
“Hello, Chloe.”
The child looked much better this morning. Ani had bathed her and braided her hair to match Belle’s. The girls looked like a set of salt and pepper shakers; Chloe, fully clean, was a towhead, and Belle was as black-haired as any girl Etta had ever seen.
“Etta!” Chloe hugged her around the neck. “This is Belle, she’s gonna be my sister!” The child was beaming as she reached back for Belle’s hand.
“I never thought I’d have a sister. Two girls in one house!” Belle grinned, and Etta smiled back at them both.
“You’ll be the most popular house in town.” She kissed Chloe on her forehead and touched Belle briefly on the shoulder, as she did not know the child well.
Standing, she spoke to Ani. “Thank you for accepting her into your house.”
“Accepting? You brought me a healthy little girl! I am going to make you a set of new underwear while you’re gone to thank you.” Ani hugged Etta long and hard. Her braids smelled like the girls’ braids—clean, fresh, and lovely. Etta breathed in deep.
The smell of women is the smell of home.
Her mother came to her last. “Come home safe, child. That’s all I ask for.”
Etta nodded, trying to swallow the unwelcome lump in her throat. She wanted to tell her mother she was sorry they’d fought, or that she was sorry she wasn’t who she was supposed to be. She said nothing. She hugged her mother and felt the wooden baby belly push against her abdomen, hard and all hers.
“I’ll come back.”
Etta waved to the guard tower, where they gave the signal for the boys to open the gate. She stepped out into the seedling pines that crept closer to Nowhere every year.
When she was deep in the trees and could see nothing of the village, she stopped and stripped to the waist. She pulled from her back pockets two long, precious linen winding bandages, and slowly and carefully bound down her breasts.
Eddy stepped out onto the road and headed north.
The Book of Etta
Year 104 in the Nowhere Codex
Early Spring
Walked all day. Headed to old capital. Saw no one.
Early Spring
Walked all day. Found eggs in a nest. Saw no one.
Early Spring
Saw no one.
Eddy wrote in his diary first thing in the morning, to get it out of the way. He wasn’t trying to please Ina, really. More just to prove her wrong. He remembered Errol’s journal, the binding as soft as cooked celery, the pages stuffed with dried flowers and scraps of old-world paper. Errol liked to keep examples rather than describe them.
Ricardo’s journal held maps and drawings, alongside page after page of counts. Every city he saw, he counted men, women, and children. He did sums and averages, trying to figure out if things were better east or west of Nowhere. If anyone had a secret. He had showed Etta the way he
used the symbols that the Unnamed had used, turning words into math and math into words. Etta had watched, nodded, and written nothing for herself.
On the road, Eddy made oatmeal and sometimes had a little jerky. Water ran clear in the streams along the road, and he boiled it every night to make sure it was safe. He avoided all signs of fire and human habitation. According to the old maps, the capital was about a week’s walk away.
He took his time. When he came to the Osage River, he consulted the map.
I wonder if people used to say Oh-sage or Oh-soggy.
He crossed the river. Its name didn’t matter at all. He wrote nothing down.
After eight uneventful and nearly silent days on the road, Eddy heard sounds in the distance.
The old capital had been called Jefferson City. It was Eddy’s experience that places were not often called by their old names, but it was a place to start.
Eddy checked and rechecked his gear. All three knives were hidden on his person. His gun was tucked into the back of his pants. His underwear strained around a pair of worn wool socks that gave him the desired bulge. He was dirty. He had waded across the river, not really bathing.
He strained to hear the far-off sounds again. He was pretty sure he was hearing music. It was a strange, booming kind of music unlike any he had ever heard.
Still, music is a good sign. People making music aren’t starving. Do slavers make music?
Eddy didn’t know if people could be too many things at once. The slavers he had met seemed to do very little else.
He approached the city openly, on a main road. Anyone could have spotted him. He waited to be called out.
As he drew closer to the outskirts, he saw that most of the old buildings were vacant, their roofs fallen in and walls sagging. He assumed there would be a center of some kind, where people clustered together. He followed the sound of music and his instinct. It seemed to Eddy that people drew one another as honey drew ants.
