by Meg Elison
So I’ll let myself be drawn a little.
He knew when he began seeing small household gardens that he had come to the right place. The town looked orderly, even cheery. Window boxes held flowers, and houses had curtains that were whole or well mended.
He was standing and admiring when he got that feeling that people were near. He laid a casual hand against the butt of his gun and waited.
Out of the door of a house not far from where Eddy was standing came a young woman with a little girl. The child was new to walking, chubby-legged and unsteady. They wore matching simple dresses of dark-green homespun. As they came closer, Eddy could tell there were good weavers here.
The woman and child looked alike. They also looked well fed and walked without fear. He let go of his gun and held up his hands, calling out.
“Good woman? Good Mother? I am a traveler from far away who means you no harm.” Eddy smiled.
The woman tightened her grip on the child and then pulled the little girl up onto her hip. Eddy saw a flash of the little girl’s bare butt as her skirt rode up.
That’s just so the child can pee, he thought. Doesn’t mean anything but convenience.
Despite the protective gesture, the woman came closer. Eddy could see that her skin was clear and moisturized and her teeth looked strong.
They do well here.
“My name is Eddy, son of Ina, and I’m from a place far, far south of here. I am traveling and trading, and I wanted to know if you folks trade, too.”
Under her green bonnet, the woman had calm brown eyes and a square jaw. Her straight brown hair was bushy and came around her shoulders, getting caught up in her bonnet strings.
“My name is Deborah,” she said slowly. “This is my daughter, Myles. We . . . you’re on the wrong side of town for trade. But we don’t see many travelers.”
I can’t believe I met two women first.
“Good Mother, I would be happy to talk with the men of your village and not waste any more of your precious time. I’m sure you have many things to do.”
Deborah stiffened her neck slightly, but she seemed amused by Eddy’s careful approach. She looked Eddy up and down.
“Can you behave yourself? Are you an outcast?” Deborah pursed her lips.
Eddy held out his hands and pushed up his sleeves. He smiled.
“Look me over, good Mother. No lost fingers, and no big scars. If I’m an outcast, I have no mark of it, right? If I’m dangerous, I’ve never gotten hurt, see?”
She looked over his skin and teeth. She drilled him straight in the eyes. Eddy knew that as a man he should drop his gaze in deference, but she seemed to be searching them. He held contact for as long as she looked.
“Alright,” Deborah said with a shrug. “I’ll take you to the square.”
She gestured for Eddy to walk beside her and she put the chubby toddler back down.
“What do you trade?” Deborah’s voice was light, curious.
“Goods from the before. Books. Anything you need, really. I’m a raider.”
“I see.” The child distracted her a moment and she looked away. “No, Myles, you cannot eat that stick.” She turned back to Eddy, sighing. “And what do you want?”
“Metals. Vegetables and herbs that we don’t have. Information. Skilled tradesmen, if they want to move on.”
“Women?” Deborah was looking straight at him, her head turned full to the side.
“Only those who wish to come, or are in need of rescue, good Mother,” Eddy said humbly. “I am no slaver, and I do not steal girls.”
“Good.” Deborah pulled up on Myles’s arm when the child tried to crouch to the ground. “Do you have to potty? If you don’t have to potty, we need to keep going. Oh. Alright then.”
They waited while Myles relieved herself. Eddy looked carefully away.
They walked a while in silence. When the sound of music grew louder, Eddy asked, “What is that?”
“It’s the pipe organ in the old church. It’s a waste of work, but some of the ladies wanted to hear it. So they worked on it and cleaned the pipes out. It’s a beautiful thing, but they left off their spinning for nearly a year to do it.”
Eddy listened to the sound, alien yet appealing. “You make cloth here, I take it? Spinning and weaving?”
“Yes, it’s one of our best enterprises. The trade we do is mostly in yardage.”
Eddy didn’t know that last word but extrapolated its meaning from context. “May I touch your sleeve, to get a feel of the work?”
Deborah smiled somewhat wickedly. “You were brought up right. Yes, you may.”
She offered the arm that was not attached to the child. Eddy fingered the tight green weave.
“That’s very good. I would like to see how this is made.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged. Here’s the square. I’ll introduce you to someone in charge.”
Eddy looked up from the cloth and blinked hard.
The square is full of women.
The space was wide and flat, with green lawns spreading out around a very old domed building, supported by columns. Eddy walked into the square, taking note that the lawns were planted with new tomato and strawberry plants. Everywhere he looked he saw signs of irrigation and constant maintenance.
Everywhere he looked, he saw women. He had never seen so many women at once in his life. Most of them dressed the way Deborah did: a long dress of homespun in brown or green and a bonnet. A few of them played with children of various ages, all of whom were girls.
How in the hell . . .
An older woman in a short-sleeved green dress crossed the square on the cracked paved path, shielding her eyes from the sun.
“Deborah? Who’s that you’ve got with you?”
Deborah set down her child and reached out as the older woman drew near. They held each other’s forearms at a distance for a few seconds. Eddy noted it, thinking it was their greeting. When they dropped arms, Deborah put her arm around the white-haired woman and gestured to Eddy.
“This is Eddy. He’s a trader from the south.”
“Hello, Eddy.”
She held out a long, spotted arm. Eddy reached back, uncertain. She gripped him briefly above the elbow and he clumsily tried to return the gesture.
One arm for me. Two for Deborah.
“Hello.”
She looked him up and down with blue-gray eyes, squinting. “I’m Thea. Where are you from?”
“South. Far, far south of here. Another city.” Eddy shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“I see. I can’t blame you for keeping a few secrets. So, what are you looking for?” She watched him carefully.
“I didn’t know there were people here until today. I’m out raiding, this trip—that is, in the old cities. Not in fine, lived-in places like this. And it’s always good to find . . . people.” His eyes darted around the open area and he struggled to make sense of what he was seeing.
If I ask right away, it’ll scare them. But they have to know how weird this is, right?
“I can tell you have questions,” Thea said. “I may or may not be able to answer them for you. We don’t get many strangers here. You should have come in on the east side.” She and Deborah exchanged a look.
“I’m not from Estiel.” The name of the place tasted bad.
Deborah picked up Myles. “Well, we have to be on our way. Good luck, traveler.”
“Thank you, good Mother.” Eddy bowed his head to her as she left. He turned back to Thea. They stared at each other a minute.
“I have an idea,” Thea said slowly. “Why don’t you come inside?”
Eddy nodded, and they walked into the building with the huge columns. Up close, it felt to Eddy like the open door was a mouth behind giant tusks, and he was being swallowed up into the dark space within. He shifted his pack so that it ground his gun against the small of his back.
I have that, at least.
Inside, the space was lit by candles that sm
elled of tallow. Eddy immediately thought of the larger buildings in Nowhere and their daytime gloom. They had this same smell.
Thea led him into a smaller room, behind a heavy wooden door. He could hear voices on the other side.
As they came in, a man was drawing on a chalkboard on one wall.
“If we move composting to the east end of the airfield, we’ll be able to—” He looked back at Thea and then did a double take.
“Who’s this?”
Around the table, heads turned. Five men and two women. The man standing at the chalkboard was wearing a pleated skirt and a loose, open tunic. The other men appeared to be dressed the same, including a black man with an enormous beard. Eddy breathed a small sigh of relief.
Not another all-white town. Old women still prospering, not dead in childbirth. Thea is as old as Mother.
“We have a traveler from the south, everyone. This is Eddy.”
Eddy nodded to greet them. A few nodded back, but mostly they stared.
Thea went on lightly, as though everything were under control. “I thought we could all ask Eddy to tell us about his city.” She turned back to him. “Nothing too specific, I can tell you’re squirrely about revealing its location. But we have questions. Don’t we?”
People around the table looked at each other. Eddy looked at the windows, patched and broken.
“We do.” It was the black man with the beard who spoke. He stood up at his chair and his belly rose huge and round above the table. “I’m Wilson. Will you sit and talk with us, Eddy? Have some water?” He gestured to an empty chair.
Thea slid into a chair and looked excited, as though anticipating a treat of some kind.
Eddy read the room.
They’re shocked to see me. But nobody’s tense. If I walked out right now, nobody would stop me. They’d be mystified, but a little relieved.
Safe enough.
He took his pack off slowly and hung it on the back of a chair. He pulled it out and sat.
“Alright. What can I tell you?”
Three voices spoke at once, and there was a small titter. Eddy smiled.
One of the women spoke up first. She had long hair pulled back in a ponytail and big black eyes. “I’m Athena. I’m in charge of schools here. I used to be a teacher.”
“My mother is a teacher,” Eddy said.
She smiled. “How many years of schooling do your children get?”
Eddy shrugged. “It depends. We all go to school until we can read and write and keep ourselves safe. Then there’s apprentices, scribe training, people learn to work metal or chop wood. I became a raider at fifteen, so I went straight into training in the woods.”
“What do you do, as a raider?” This was another man, with yellowed skin and cloudy eyes.
Sick. Probably dying.
“And you are?”
“I was the only doctor in this city, until I trained my replacements. My name is Bill.”
“Well, Bill. I search for valuable things, from the before. Good tools and useful metal and machine parts. Sometimes other things. Books. You know how it goes. You get surprised by what you find.”
Bill nodded and swallowed like it hurt him. Eddy figured he could ask whatever he liked, so he did. “Bill, are you sick? You look to be sick. Do you folks keep sick people working?”
Bill grimaced and Athena reached over and took his hand. “Bill has cancer. We can’t do much to help him, and he wanted to keep working.”
“Oh. I’ve seen a few old folks die of cancer. I’m sorry. Do you all make pain drugs?”
Athena nodded. “Are you comfortable, Bill?”
He smiled. “As comfortable as I can be and still keep my wits.”
Eddy nodded. “We do, too. We have growers and chemists who make good stuff, sophisticated stuff. Better than most places I’ve seen on the road.”
Nobody else has Alice.
Well, Sylvia does.
Stop that.
“How do you govern?” That was from Wilson.
Eddy sighed. “We have a council that’s mostly Midwives and Mothers. Most of them are older, since that’s when they have the time. The council has thirty representatives, all men, who handle contact with outsiders and peacekeeping.”
“Do you have a lot of trouble keeping the peace?” Wilson’s eyebrow was up.
“Every once in a while. A fight breaks out in a Hive, or something gets stolen. For the most part—”
“I’m sorry, a Hive?” Eyebrow still up.
“Yes, a Hive of men?” Eddy looked around the table and gauged puzzled faces. “You all don’t have Hives here, do you?”
Here it comes.
Eddy began slowly. “So, in most places there aren’t as many women as you all have here.” He glanced up and then looked down at the table. “And Hives are a way for a woman to keep a number of men. So they work for her and take care of things for her, and she takes care of them. You understand?”
He felt rather than saw a number of them shift in their seats. There was some silence.
Thea broke it. “Yes, that makes sense. But as you’ve seen here, we have quite a few women.”
Oh, so we’re just going to say that like it’s normal.
“Yes. Yes, I see that.” Outside the cloudy window, green and brown shapes passed by. “But how?”
“Just as you don’t want us to know where your people are,” Wilson said evenly, “we would rather not have anyone know what we have here. You follow?”
“I follow.” Eddy exhaled long and hard through his nose. He felt very out of his element. “Well. Well, I’m planning to move on toward Estiel.”
Bill gasped a little. Wilson’s eyes went wide, but he did not look at Eddy.
Eddy continued. “I haven’t been in the city in a long time, only near it. But every time I get near, I find someone in trouble. Sometimes it’s someone I can help. But you all are closer here. Can any of you tell me anything about it? I’m after some things I know I won’t find anywhere else.”
“Don’t go there, son.” It was a man who hadn’t spoken before. Eddy looked up to meet his eye and found that he was a middle-aged man, with bright-green eyes that were wide with fright. “I mean it. I came from there, seventeen years ago. I wandered out with nothing, and I was nearly dead when some people from Jeff City found me and brought me here. There’s nothing good there. I . . . I meant to get much farther away than here, or die trying.”
Breathe slow. You’re safe. You’re here, not there. It’s now, not then. Eight in, eight out.
There’s nothing good there.
“What happened?” Eddy asked. He watched carefully as the man struggled with the question.
“It’s not a story I like to tell.”
Wilson put a gentle hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezed it. “It’s alright, George. Tell him so he knows.”
George took a deep breath. “I was born in Estiel. I never knew my mother, I was brought up with all boys. All the women there are . . . well, you hear stories. I never saw any. Not once. But every year we’d get a few new baby boys, so the women were somewhere. I apprenticed in electricity; they have some there based on old solar panels. Or at least they did then. But there were fires and killings and no kind of law. We’d fix something and it would just burn down or be stolen. I finally left after . . . I escaped. I was being held with a group of other boys who . . . we were all smaller. Feminine. I escaped. That’s the important thing. It’s the kind of place you can’t just leave, you have to escape it. You follow?”
Yes I just have to escape I can run I’m free to run.
Here. Now. Eight in, eight out.
“I follow.” Eddy watched George calm himself down slowly and tried to do the same. Wilson squeezed his shoulder regularly, and George put his hand on top of the other man’s.
“Why would you go there?” Thea was watching him carefully. “What are you after?”
“Women.” Eddy didn’t hesitate. He knew by this point they must know that. �
��But only women or girls who need somewhere to go. I have no indication that anyone here needs rescuing. But someone in Estiel might.”
“Have you had much success?” Athena looked skeptical.
“Yes.” Eddy returned her gaze steadily.
“How long have you been doing it? Maybe four years?” Thea asked it with amusement.
“Seven years. Six women and two girls. Most of them made it.”
“From where?”
“All over.”
“From Estiel?” Thea’s eyes were narrowing.
“From near there. Camps along the road, people trying to reach the city. I’ve seen the Arch.”
“Mmm,” Thea said noncommittally.
Eddy thought he saw George flinch.
Here, now. What can we turn the conversation to?
“So, I see that you make good cloth here. I don’t have a wagon to take much back, but I’d like to see how it’s made. That’s something we struggle with. We have good leather and other things we could trade, if you all were interested.”
The air cleared a little. Wilson took his hand off George. Athena rose.
“I can show you where the spinners and weavers work. The dyeing is done a little farther out, because the smell is so sharp. You can talk cloth with Arabella, she’s the foreperson of the guild.”
“That’d be great.” Eddy rose as well.
“Stay with us, if you’d like.” Thea spoke with her chin raised. “I can arrange for space for you, and give you a night or two off the road.”
Eddy nodded. “That’s very kind. I’m happy to help in any way I can and earn it.”
“You’re earning it already.”
Athena led him out the door and back into the sunlight.
They came through a wide barn door into a darker room. Eddy’s eyes took a moment to adjust. Forty spinning wheels whirled inside the large space. One woman was singing in a low, husky voice. The wheels were all different; some were raw wood while others were ancient-looking lacquered rigs. Some had clearly been made of scrap: bicycle tires suspended over pedals made of hunks of plastic. Beyond the wheels, five more people worked drop spindles, pushing them deftly down the insides of their thighs, bringing wool over their arms and down to fattening bunches of yarn. Eddy looked around, mesmerized.
