The Book of Etta (The Road to Nowhere 2)

by Meg Elison

  Bronwen stood at the front of the room, flanked by Carla and Emory. She raised her hands and waited for quiet.

  “I won’t keep you all from eating while it’s hot,” she called across the room. “But before dessert, we will have some community announcements. Dig in!”

  Etta filled her plate with piles of everything, including a huge joint of meat with marrow showing in the cut bone. She had essentially eaten nothing that day and felt starved. As she gnawed the bone, she saw Alice and Flora involved in animated discussion with Sylvia on the opposite side of the room. She watched them as she began to feel the stirrings of indigestion.

  “That is a proper dinner,” Ina said, wiping grease from her mouth. “I don’t come to these things enough.”

  Etta nodded but didn’t have anything to say. She was looking at the mural on the wall; this one was a tall, willowy pregnant woman with her hair caught like a flag in the wind. In the distance, children danced in rings on the hillsides and a foal ran alongside a fully grown roan.

  When conversation had returned to a continuous buzz and the dishes had been cleared, Bronwen spoke again.

  “Let’s have announcements. Children born since the last community supper?”

  Sylvia stood. “One boy, Kip, son of Druz. And one on the way, right, Janet?”

  Janet waved shyly but did not speak.

  “Refugees taken in?”

  “One girl, Chloe, daughter of the Road, adopted by Ani.”

  Etta’s eyes swept the hall until they landed on the little girl. Her cheeks had filled out and she looked like a different child entirely. Chloe did not see her.

  “And one woman, Flora, daughter of the Road. Staying in the home of Alice, daughter of Carla.”

  Flora raised one hand briefly but did not rise.

  “Both of them brought to us by Etta, the greatest raider of the last decade,” Sylvia said indulgently.

  Etta didn’t know if that was true, but she rose half out of her seat to some applause.

  Bronwen waited for the cheers to die down. “Trouble? Slavers?”

  Rob rose and Etta could tell from there that he was stoned. “None since the last winter, Mother Bronwen. We’ve been very lucky.” He swayed back down into his chair the way a feather drifts to the ground.

  All over the room, people checked in. Crops were doing well, livestock was flourishing. The minutiae rolled on and the kitchen sent men out with bowls of fruits and cream.

  Etta leaned close to her mother. “I’m too full for this. I’m going for a walk.” Ina squeezed her hand in response and let her go.

  Etta breezed past Flora and Alice without even attempting to eavesdrop. She stepped out into the wan light of a new moon and walked without a destination. She heard music and headed toward it without thinking what it might mean.

  When she drew closer, she stopped in the street and tried to quiet her own breathing.

  That’s old-world music.

  Old-world music was incredibly hard to come by. It existed mostly in recordings that could not be replayed, made for machines that had long been forgotten. Etta had heard it only a few times in her life, when someone could make an ancient machine work fitfully for a few seconds.

  This music had that otherworldly depth, like a tiny orchestra was playing from inside a box. She followed the sound, being drawn to a house on the far end of Nowhere. She could see light spilling out of a storm-cellar window around the rear of the house. She crept toward it and lay on the ground, putting her eye to the tiny opening filled with yellow light.

  She held perfectly still, listening to the song. The words were in another language, most of the time. She couldn’t follow it but the sound was intoxicating. A woman with long, blonde hair swirled past her field of vision and she strained to see who it might be.

  I thought I saw every woman in Nowhere at dinner, she thought rapidly. She would have missed anyone who wasn’t there.

  A deeper terror punctured her assurance for a moment.

  What if someone is keeping captives right here? In my own city.

  She pressed her face to the small section of glass, straining to see the blonde again.

  No argument about it. I’ll just break in right now.

  She felt for the knife she kept in the back of her pants.

  When the woman appeared again, her hair was in her face and she was laughing. Etta squinted, trying to place her.

  Maybe it’s someone I’ve never seen before. Maybe she’s—

  The woman was Tommy, the bather.

  Breezy.

  Tommy was lip-syncing with the song that was being played somehow in the basement. He was so drunk that he swayed on his feet. Etta realized that the redhead beside him was another man, some young thing in a wig. They danced together, pretending to sing the song.

  Drunk as they were, they clearly knew the words. The nonsense lined up precisely with their slurred cadence, and Etta could eventually tell that some of their dancing was choreographed, after a fashion.

  The song ended and another began. There was cackling laughter from the cellar, followed by a shushing. People had begun to trickle out of the hall and these hidden revelers must have known they couldn’t count on hiding for much longer tonight. The music ended with a scratchy screech and Etta got up, dusting off her clothes.

  What was that?

  As she walked away, she couldn’t help but look back.

  Etta slept alone.

  Outside the gates of Nowhere, walking away from the first light of dawn, Eddy tried to remember why he had returned home.

  They were never going to come with me. They would never have attacked the Lion, even if Flora hadn’t talked them out of it.

  He walked with his hands wrapped around the straps of his bag, hunching away from it. He was carrying the short version of the Midwife’s tale, but even the canon meant six books weighing down his bag.

  Find the city. San Francisco. Just walk until I find the ocean. I’ll find it. I’ll walk her way, maybe take me a year. Do what she did, and read the book again. Know what she knew. Find what she found.

  At once, Eddy regretted not taking the truck. He didn’t know how to drive, and he would have run out of precious deez anyway. Still, as the sky lightened behind him, he compared the progress he was making to the way the distance had slid by outside the roaring truck just the other day.

  Maybe find San Francisco by winter, at this rate. Wonder how cold it is there.

  But before it got cold, he knew, he could make the most of the summer. He camped by the side of the road that night and roasted early wild corn for supper. For three days he traveled easily, catching fish in streams and gathering berries by the handful as he passed.

  Maybe one more day before I come to country I’ve never seen before.

  Eddy consulted the map. Errol and Ricardo had headed west on their last raid and not returned. Their notes on the fuzzed old paper grew sparse as the roads headed toward the sunset. The last places that had any notation were in the Rockies. Eddy squinted and saw that Errol had written the word steep in his slanting, left-handed print.

  On the other side there will be Utah. California. The places she had come through before she came to Nowhere. When she was just herself.

  He thought of the shrine, the candles. The hand-copied books, all full of her old-world words.

  Will I become a book, too?

  He slept in the open, arms crossed over the gun on his chest and bag under his head. He dreamed of the Lion and of Alice and Flora. He woke up not knowing where he was.

  Almost nothing of the old world was left standing out here. The land was flat as far as the eye could see, the horizon the same green with the bowl of blue upended over it. A few rotted posts stuck up out of the ground and Eddy knew they had once held signs, but nothing remained.

  In Eddy’s life, he had seen twisters. Large and small, singles and sisters came every few years near and around Nowhere. Out here, he could see the way things had been torn apart and blown ar
ound with no one to rebuild anything. Out in a field, he saw the sun winking off an old bathtub, liberated from its home.

  He walked all day, following the sun. He watched for a good place to sleep and found a low block building a little after nightfall.

  He didn’t see that there were bones in the room until after he’d lit his fire. A skull in the corner grinned, a gold tooth bright in the light. As the fire caught and bloomed, he saw there were maybe ten of them.

  Eddy wasn’t scared of human skeletons. Raiding old-world goods sometimes meant finding them—some dried-out and wearing rags of clothes, shut up in locked rooms for a century of forgotten time. Others, like these, were spread out in disorderly numberless pieces, with only what was left of their heads to remember them.

  “What happened to you?”

  The sound of his own voice surprised him. He touched the gold tooth and saw that another was wearing an old-world ring. He methodically picked through, pulling metal from the dust that used to be people, knowing that grave goods were valuable for trade. Long ago, Errol had told him about a time he and Ricardo had spent a summer digging among the fallen gravestones of an old-world cemetery.

  He grinned, remembering Errol’s long hair and his merry prankster’s eyes.

  “It was incredible. They buried people wearing shoes—good shoes! Gold, diamonds, little clocks on their wrists. And beads, all these beads with crosses on ’em. Find those all the time. Lots of work, but there’s treasure every time.”

  Errol, where the hell are you now? West? I’m going west, too. Maybe I’ll find you. Pick the gold off your bones.

  One of the dead had worn a bracelet of polished metal—Eddy thought it was steel. He rubbed it with his fingers, seeing that it was engraved with words.

  He spat a little, rubbing harder.

  STERLING MANDELBROT

  652-91-0004

  DIABETIC

  That must be a name. Sterling.

  Is that a woman or a man?

  In Eddy’s mind, Errol’s long black hair became the wig he had seen on Tommy the bather.

  He stowed the treasure he had found and his hand touched his journal. He drew it out and sat with his back to the wall.

  The last page he had written was badly blotted, but he knew what the words were there.

  Eddy was born in the chair.

  He found his pen and ink and began again.

  The Book of Eddy

  Spring Passing into Summer

  I have decided to head out west. I am going to follow the Unnamed and watch for sign of Errol and Ricardo. Errol has long, beautiful hair, and Ricardo has pox scars. Someone might remember them, if I ask around.

  He looked up and saw the words Eddy was born in the chair and had to count eight in, eight out.

  He gripped the pen.

  The Unnamed lost herself, too. She became a man, out on the road. The people who saw her believed. She could change. Like Flora. Like me.

  So I’m going to do what she did. Go as far as—

  Eight in, eight out.

  It isn’t a lie. Etta is a liar. I’m not.

  Go as far as she always says I’ve gone.

  My name is Eddy, son of the Road, and I’ve never been farther from home than Estiel. I’ve killed men. Etta always lies. She says she’s been all over. She’s been to the cavern and to Estiel and the roads between. Always the same way. She says she’s killed dozens, but it was always me, and only a few. One with poison and two with my hands. Three or four with the gun.

  Etta, daughter of Ina, wants Alice to want her, but only her. The two of them, together.

  I know better than that. I know that women need more than one, and that it’s a waste not to try and be a Mother. I know that a Hive is the most sensible solution.

  Etta doesn’t know anything.

  I wasn’t born in the chair. I was born when she was; I have always been with her. That’s just when she let me out.

  Eight in, eight out. The chair did not come clear in memory; it was only a separation between before and after.

  I was with her before. Inside. Then, outside.

  The metaphor was simple but Eddy resisted it, as he had all his life.

  It isn’t like birth. It’s like splitting. Like in the books. Mitosis. Two splitting into one. Two lives, two books. I’ll keep this journal, because I want to be like the Unnamed. I’ll follow her road.

  Eddy cleaned his pen. He was enormously calm, like the surface of a frozen lake. He cleaned his gun after that, and got comfortable.

  Look at this bed of bones, he thought as he slipped into sleep.

  The Book of Eddy

  Spring Passing into Summer

  If I’m reading this map right, and if I don’t get into trouble, I can reach her city, San Francisco, by winter. I can find someplace to hole up and turn back after spring.

  This part of the map is in bad shape, but I know I have to pass through some serious mountains to get there. I think if I swing north, I can avoid the worst of the part that’s called ROCKY MTNS on the map. They look like trouble.

  If I come to a place where I can trade for a horse, I’ll do it. I don’t know much about them, but I could learn.

  I’m Eddy. I can do anything.

  The Book of Eddy

  Starting to Feel Like Summer

  I am really good at shooting rabbits, so I’m not hungry.

  I want to read the canon, but I’m waiting until I know I am somewhere that she was. Not much to do, but I think I’m going to start tanning skins off my kills. They’re always useful.

  CHAPTER 9

  As Eddy was tanning a rabbit skin in the basement of an old house in what used to be Kansas, Alice was brewing som. She lined up rows and rows of glassware filled with the grain alcohol she’d bartered for all around town. Slowly, patiently, she cut the poppy pods and scraped their weeping milk into the grain alcohol. She distilled and packaged enough to fill a crate she would put in the back of Flora’s truck.

  Flora had woken up first, meaning to head over and see Etta. She wanted to apologize, to see if they could start over. She wanted to see Nowhere.

  Alice was awake already, working in her lab. She saw Flora making her way toward the door.

  “Etta?” Her voice held no accusation.

  Flora sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Do you want to have something to eat first?”

  Flora adjusted her bag. “Do you think she’s not up yet?”

  Alice shrugged. “She usually sleeps in when she’s home. No rush, really.” She set down the glass jars she was holding. “Come on.”

  Alice’s kitchen looked like a different kind of lab, nothing like Flora’s kitchen back home. She brewed strong tea made of toasted dandelion roots and set out a pretty loaf of brown bread with butter and honey. Flora ate a thick slice while she waited for the drink to cool.

  “Who does she live with?” Flora chewed on one side of her mouth, where her good teeth were.

  “Her mother, mostly. Ina.”

  Flora nodded, swallowing a too-large bite. “Why does Ina wear that black belly?”

  “Because she’s the Mother of a living child,” Alice said patiently. “You’ll see them on more women, out in town.”

  “What if you haven’t ever had a living child? What do you wear then?”

  Alice shrugged, pouring more of the steaming brown flower tea. “Just clothes, I guess.”

  “What do you do after your child grows up?”

  Alice took a sip. Flora tried her cup again and found it still far too hot.

  “Ina teaches the scribes,” Alice said. “Some Mothers are on the council. Some work on the farms, or they spin wool. Different things. Mostly the men do that kind of work, though.”

  Flora nodded, blowing across the top of her cup. “What would I do, if I stayed here?”

  Alice gulped again, impervious to the heat. “What you’re best at, right? You should make silk here.”

  Flora laughed a little. “I’d have to bring th
e moths. And they have to have the right kind of tree. It’s not as simple as that.”

  Alice thought that over. “Other cloth, then. We have few skilled weavers. You could teach boys to weave better cloth.”

  Flora nodded, taking another fingertip of honey on her tongue. “Only the boys.”

  “Probably, yes. Girls learn to be Mothers or Midwives. It’s not really a good use of their time to learn things like weaving.”

  Flora cleared her throat. “So, will I have to explain to people that I can’t be a Mother?”

  Alice cut her own slice of bread and began to butter it. “No, at your age you’d know for sure. Many women cannot, and they stop trying.”

  “So they don’t have Hives?”

  Alice shifted in her seat. “Well, some Midwives have Hives, yes. But they count their moons and send them away when it might be their time. They try not to.”

  “What happens if they get pregnant by accident?”

  Alice sighed. “There are things you can do.”

  Flora nodded. She took a sip of her tea. It was terribly bitter even after the honey. “So you do that here?”

  Alice nodded, her cheeks coloring. “It . . . It’s been part of Nowhere’s laws since the Unnamed. She did it, too. But not everyone agrees with it. We . . . We don’t talk about it. It’s done very quietly, and the woman usually tells her people that it was a miscarriage.”

  They were quiet for a minute.

  “Does . . . Do your people in Jeff City do it?”

  Flora sipped, her gray eyes holding Alice’s over the rim of the cup. “I’ve heard stories. But it’s not allowed. The Lion says abortion can’t be practiced in any tributary cities.”

  “Abortion.” Alice said the word as though it were unfamiliar to her. “I haven’t heard the word said in a long time. It’s one of the lost words.”

  “Lost words?”

  Alice nodded, chewing more bread. “A few years ago, the council at the time decided to remove some words from our books. Words that they said had destroyed the old world. I was really young, and I didn’t understand. But I heard women talking about the word abortion. It’s not really a lost word, because it’s in the book.”