by Meg Elison
He couldn’t kill the men. He knew shooting his way out was a dream that ended in the nightmare of capture or maybe even being eaten by one of the Lion’s dangerous pets.
But he couldn’t refuse, either. He looked at the women, evaluating.
No good answer.
The woman in the bonnet was singing in some foreign tongue to Myles and rocking her slightly. He wondered what happened to the children she must have had since she got her blood. If she was still alive, she was probably a safe Mother. Maybe many times.
Don’t use the baby’s name.
“I’ll take the little one,” Eddy said as evenly as he could. “And I want one more thing.”
The Lion put up one red-gold eyebrow. “Well then, you had better offer one more thing.”
Eddy pushed the catch on one of the secret drawers, kneeling before the box. He stood up, holding a vial of Alice’s best painkiller. “I want bullets. I know they’re made here.”
Alric, Eric, and Anric all shifted, somewhere between discomfort and fright.
“You have a gun?”
It was a gamble, letting them know that he was carrying. He had Jaden back home, but Jaden’s bullets often didn’t fire at all. There was an opportunity here to get more and better ammunition than he had ever had. Eddy also guessed that this might raise his status in this place. If they didn’t rob him of it immediately.
Eddy nodded, eyes on the Lion.
“Let me see it.”
“Once our deal is struck,” Eddy said, his face like stone.
The Lion gestured with his hand, a little clutching as if to say Give it to me.
Eddy strode forward and put the vial in the Lion’s hand. Both of the big cats stiffened, lax muscles suddenly turning to steel beneath the skin. Eddy did not retreat.
“That’s the best painkiller we can make. It comes from the pods of a flower, and it looks like milk. It’s called—”
“Opium.” The Lion turned the vial over in his hand.
“Somniferum,” Eddy finished softly. “Som.”
The Lion stood up and towered over Eddy.
“Do you have more of this?” His eyes were like those green cats’ eyes Eddy had seen in the night.
Shit. That’s the thing he wants.
“Two more vials. Sir.”
“Get them.”
Eddie sprung the same catch again, feeling the Lion’s eyes on the back of his neck as he bent to the task. He cleared the compartment, bringing out the other two glass vials.
He handed them over and the Lion took them ungently, snatching them from Eddy’s outstretched hand.
The line of women was quietly disappearing. The woman who had been holding Myles looked over her shoulder forlornly before vanishing around a corner.
“I need more of this. Much more. I can send men to your village to get it, or I can trade you for a drug maker to come here. I am rich for trade, you will find.”
Eddy shook his head. “This can only be made where the flowers grow, and they’re difficult to transplant. Picky. I can send traders to you with more, as soon as I return home. We do no trade with strangers who come to us. Security, you know. Sir.”
The Lion looked at him and Eddy knew he was being measured. He looked back without flinching.
“Bullets and females, every time you send me opium. You understand?”
The Unnamed would free every woman you’re holding here. She’d find a way.
“I’ll find a way.”
The Lion held out his hand to Eddy, who stared at it, not knowing what custom he was being asked to participate in. The Lion saw that and enveloped Eddy’s small hand in his two huge paws, still holding the chains. He pressed Eddy’s hand between hot skin and cold metal and pumped it up and down.
“Then we have a contract.” The Lion snapped his fingers at Anric, who was at his side in an instant. He dug into a pouch at his waist and pulled out one of the claws on a leather thong and held it out to Eddy.
Eddy stared at it.
“Put it on,” the Lion said. “It will open doors to you, wherever you go.”
Eddy took the piece of jewelry into his hand, willing it not to shake. Not taking his eyes off the Lion, he said, “Flora, collect the girl. We’re going to get my bullets and my truck and be on our way.”
The Lion nodded, his sharpened smile returning. “Eric, see that he gets his goods.”
Eddy made Eric leave the room while he showed his gun to the bullet maker. The man was old and leathery and handled the gun like an expert. He gave Eddy a rough wooden box filled with two hundred bullets.
“Not all will fire,” said the man in a quavering voice. “But most will.”
Eddy had never had so much ammunition in his life. He thanked the old man and left, totting up in his head the number of bullets he had just seen. He couldn’t count high enough to explain it to Flora.
The truck was much harder. Eric took them to a warehouse where armed men guarded dozens of trucks. The one that Eric showed him was mostly rust-colored. The cab was roomy, and a wooden bench ran the length of it. Eric showed Eddy how to crank-start the engine and made as if to leave before Eddy stopped him.
“I don’t know how to drive it,” Eddy said desperately. He looked at the stick that shifted the gears, the wooden pedals that controlled the fuel, with terrible dread. Eric looked at him blankly.
Flora stepped between them, Myles asleep on her shoulder. “I do. We’re all set here, Eric.”
Eric nodded and walked away, explaining to the guards that the trio would soon be on their way.
“Sit inside with the baby,” Flora said. “I’ll be in in just a minute.”
Flora restarted the truck with the crank, and then the door gave a metallic groan as she wrenched it open. She slid onto the buckboard and shifted the truck into gear.
“How did you learn this?” Eddy asked her.
“I learned as a child. On the road.” Flora had been quiet nearly the whole time they had been in Estiel. Eddy thought it was possible that Flora was more afraid of the place than he was.
“Oh.” Eddy held Myles on his lap. The child was quiet, too. She seemed sleepy all the time.
The truck drove noisily, bumpily, and getting out of Estiel was slow and tiresome going. More than once the raw chopping noise of the engine cut out and Flora had to restart it with the crank. The motion and the smell of the fuel made Eddy feel sick, but Myles stayed as deeply and easily asleep as if she were in a soft bed.
Once they made it to the open road, Flora asked to see the map.
“We can get back to Jeff City and take Myles to her mother.” She looked at Eddy, suddenly unsure. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
What else would I want?
“Yes.” Eddy laid a tentative, gentle hand on the sleeping child. “Of course that’s what I wanted.”
“And after that?”
Eddy thought about it. “Do you still want to come with me?”
Flora smiled as Estiel faded behind them.
“You’re going to need a driver.”
CHAPTER 6
They made Jeff City in the middle of the night. The main gates were closed and manned by archers, and Flora climbed out of the still-running truck to give the password. By the time they found Deborah’s house, it was dead quiet through the whole town. Flora shut off the chugging engine near the market and they walked, Myles asleep on Eddy’s shoulder.
They stood on the doorstep for a moment before knocking.
“Listen.” Flora stood with her head inclined to the house’s old wooden door. Her gray eyes caught the moonlight; all her careful ink and paint was gone. Eddy stared at her naked face and heard nothing.
“What?”
Flora clucked her tongue and whispered to him. “She’s crying. I can hear her sobbing. Can’t you hear it?”
Eddy shook his head and rapped smartly on the door. He hadn’t known he was hearing the woman crying within, but he sensed something cutting off as heels pounded t
he wooden floor on their way to the door.
Deborah appeared, looking decades older than when they had last seen her. Her eyes clapped straight onto Myles’s curved back as she slept, and instantly Deborah was on Eddy, clambering to take the child out of his arms.
Behind her, another woman appeared looking just as haggard. Eddy saw that her skin was unnaturally pale, as though she had never seen the sun.
“Myles!” Deborah cried. “Oh, my Myles, my baby! Oh, my baby! Oh, how did you find her? How did you get her back here? Oh, my Myles!” Deborah was clutching the baby and whimpering, crumpling to the floor with Myles held tight against her. The other woman joined them, fairly crushing the child between their bodies.
The other woman had the same face as Myles, Eddy could see. He looked back and forth between the three of them, the two adults distorted by their weeping relief, and the child still apparently too sleepy to react.
Flora gently got them to move inside to a sofa. Eddy followed and closed the door behind them.
“Eddy traded for her. With the Lion.”
Deborah grew very still. The other woman looked over at her.
“The Lion himself had her?”
Flora nodded. “Whatever they were giving her hasn’t worn off yet, she slept the whole way here.” She inclined her head to the still-groggy child, now starting to make sleepy babble in her mother’s ear.
Deborah patted Myles all over, as if checking for injuries. The other woman kissed the baby’s plump cheeks.
“Gave her?” Eddy asked. “You mean drugs?”
“Of course.” Flora was looking at the floor. “That’s why he wanted your opium so badly. It’s for the breeders, and for the girls just brought in. To keep them quiet and calm.”
Eddy went hot and then cold all over. He sat in stunned silence.
“What can we do? What can we ever do to make it up to you?” The other mother was standing now, reaching out for Eddy.
Flora put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I’m going to be gone awhile, traveling with Eddy. Look after my house for me? It’s right next door, so you won’t have to go far, Lily. Alright?”
Lily looked back at Deborah, as if seeking permission. Deborah nodded vigorously over Myles’s head.
“Your house and your garden, as if they were my own. I swear it.” Lily dropped her head and kissed Flora’s hand. “I can never thank either one of you enough. Our baby is home. I’ll never let her out again.”
Eddy said nothing.
Flora moved toward the door. “Let’s leave them alone,” she said to Eddy. “Come on.”
Eddy stood dumbly and moved toward the door as if in a dream.
As they walked to Flora’s house, he found his tongue.
“How does Myles have two mothers?”
Flora looked straight ahead while she answered. “Deborah is a horsewoman. She’s not cut, though. She can still have children.”
Eddy shook his head, not understanding. “No, but how did it happen?”
“I wasn’t in the room when they conceived the child. How should I know?” Flora sounded annoyed, distracted.
“Why isn’t Lily allowed out of the house? Why did she have to ask for permission?” Eddy ground his teeth. He didn’t understand anything he was hearing.
“Because it isn’t safe. The Lion can take any woman his Paws see, so it’s better not to be seen. She’s right to keep the baby home from now on. It’s better if every child in Jeff City is a boy. Hiding in plain sight is too risky.”
At the mention of the Lion, Eddy grew hot again.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” he said through clenched teeth.
“We shouldn’t have rescued a baby?” Flora’s eyes were very wide.
“We shouldn’t have done any business. You let me trade with him. I know I can never go home and tell them I paid for a slave, that I bought a girl and didn’t kill the man who was selling her. But you let me trade him som, knowing he would use it on the others.” He held fists at his sides and looked up at the moon.
Flora shrugged. “What will happen to them will always happen. They’ve probably been breeders all their lives. The opium just makes it easier on them.”
Eddy couldn’t answer. His throat felt closed. He wanted to scream.
“I told you,” Flora said softly. “I told you there was more than one way to see this. It isn’t simple.”
The ring. The patch. The pill. Eddy turned them over in his mind, thinking of the casual, offhanded way they were written about in the history of Nowhere. He knew that the Unnamed had traded birth-control drugs sometimes when she couldn’t save them. She had made it easier on them.
No. I am not a Midwife. I should never have . . .
He thought of Myles, returned to her mothers. The way the child, even through her haze, had curled with perfect trust into the two women’s arms.
“It is simple,” he said. “Working with people like the Lion is wrong.”
In the corner of his peripheral vision, Flora shrugged. “It’s all wrong. What we did, what you did, what the Lion does. Things can’t be right again until the balance is restored.”
The balance.
They didn’t talk again. In Flora’s little house, there was one bed. Eddy slept on the floor in the kitchen.
They did not rise until it was nearly noon.
By the time they were preparing to leave, half the town had turned up to see them off. Eddy shifted his weight from one leg to the other, trying to look very concerned with his pack.
Thea and a handful of other women loaded bundles of cloth into the back of the truck, tying them to the pitted, rusty bed. People brought them dried food and water jugs, blankets and hats, warm clothes to suit them both. Eddy packed and repacked gear, waiting for Flora to say her good-byes.
People wanted to grip his arm, call him a hero, and thank him for returning Myles. He couldn’t stand it at all, couldn’t make any response. He endured it.
Yes, I’m a successful slave trader. I returned someone who should have never been stolen in the first place.
He climbed into the cab long before they were done speaking to him. The truck had holes where once glass windows had been; there was no barrier. People gripped his shoulder through the opening on his side, they spoke to him through the windshield. He was frantic to get away.
Finally, the crowd parted and three women approached Flora.
They wore their hair shaved on the sides and in braids in the centers of their heads and down their backs. All three of them had visible horse tattoos.
These must be the horsewomen, Eddy thought. He watched them carefully.
They all spoke quietly to Flora, and each of them gave her a ceramic pot stopped with wax. Flora took these and touched foreheads with the women to say thanks.
Eddy could hear them saying, “The balance, the balance.” He rolled his eyes.
“Flora! Let’s make some distance before nightfall?”
Flora nodded and came toward the crank. She got the truck roaring, and the small crowd cheered. She climbed into the cab, pushing her pack ahead of her.
“Let’s go!” She was alight with happiness and adventure. Eddy remembered his first raid, his first time out of Nowhere. He had had that same feeling.
It had nearly gotten him killed.
“Let’s go.”
Eddy discovered he hated the truck. The board they rode on in the cab was hard, and nothing he put under his ass seemed to offer any padding. The roar of the engine was so loud that any conversation had to be shouted to be heard. The wooden wheels bumped over the terrain, sending up the shock and vibration of every rock and rut they rolled over. The deez was hot and stank sweetly, with rich exhaust seeming to pour off in every direction. The smell of it made Eddy’s head swim, and he stuck his head as far out of the portals as he dared, holding on to the metal, desperately seeking fresh air.
“—to your village?” Flora was shouting over the rumble.
“What?”
“Do you want to tell me how to get to your village?”
Eddy bit his lips and settled his sore hindquarters back on the board. He didn’t answer right away. The map was spread out against the wooden dashboard, pinned down with thin metal tacks. His eyes traced the routes that moved south out of Estiel, taking a long time to measure the distance between Nowhere and the nearest outpost of the Lion.
He put one finger to the map and shouted toward Flora. “We need to go to this fuel station here, and then we’ll head for a place I know. I don’t want to go home. I have work to do.”
“What work?” Flora bellowed back.
“The same work I’ve always done.”
They drove all day, refilling the deez tank from one of the plastic barrels the Lion’s men had tied down in the truck bed. As the sun started to set, Eddy was desperate to stop the awful rocking and rolling and to just sit still. They slowly crossed a bridge of cracked and ruined asphalt, rolling in the dead center and looking ahead with trepidation. The bridge was whole but listing to the right. It would not stand forever.
On the other side, Eddy pointed out a stone cottage with an intact chimney. They parked the truck in the dirt and waited to see if anyone came out to see what made so much awful noise.
Nothing stirred, but the woods on either side of the river were deep and alive with the sounds of insects. No doubt that night they would hear dogs and wolves howling at the summer moon.
“Get the gear inside,” Eddy said. “I’m going to sit out and see if there are any deer at dusk.”
“Can you really use that thing?” Flora eyed him as he pulled his bow free of its bundle in the truck bed. He had managed to make three shafts, straight and slim.
Not many, but all I need is one.
Flora fought with the front door for a long time before dropping her bags and climbing through a window.
She came back out through the door of the cottage and got the rest of their gear inside.
“We’re going to have to block some windows,” she called out to him.
Eddy nodded back, standing in the open truck door. He waited for her to go back in and then climbed atop the roof of the cab.
He sat very still, absolutely silent. He held the claw around his neck and thought of the stink of cats.
