by Meg Elison
“Silence is the way of women.” Her teeth were perfect.
“Silence is our gift,” Kelda said in a rush. “This is—”
“I can see that you’ve brought me a stranger, Kelda. I am not too old to know a new face when I see one.” The old woman studied Etta’s brow. Her own eyes had the same upward tilt as the woman in the woods. Etta wondered if they were mother and daughter.
“I am Sharon. And I assume you know Kelda, since she cannot hold her tongue. What’s your name, and where are you from?”
“Good Mother, I am—”
The old woman raised her hand to her lips again. “We are not Mothers here, stranger.”
Kelda huffed her obvious displeasure. Etta stared back and forth at both of them.
“Good woman, I am Etta. I come from a place south of here, south of the Black Mountains, the Odarks. I am looking for places that will trade.”
The old woman’s mouth scrunched to the side like a drawstring bag pulled tight. “If you wanted trade, you’d be in Estiel. Why are you really here?”
At the sound of the place’s name, Etta’s calves began to cramp.
Eight in, eight out.
“I’ve been to Estiel, Moth—good woman. I was seeking new places. New people.”
“For what?”
Sharon’s eyes held Etta’s, wouldn’t let her slide away from the question.
“I don’t know.”
“Mmm. Kelda, why did you bring her here?”
Kelda seemed ready to burst. She pushed herself up on both knees. “Sharon! This means there are other women, in other cities. We aren’t the last!”
Sharon sighed and Etta watched the woman’s ribcage settle like an old dog when it’s done too much walking. “Of course we aren’t the last.”
“But everyone says—Doctor Eames says—” Kelda was spluttering now, indignant and red-faced.
“You might be too young to understand this,” Sharon said, “but Doc Eames is a fool, even if he and all his folks are docs. He doesn’t know the world.”
Kelda’s eyes turned wildly to Etta. “Did you have the plague there?”
“The Dying.” Etta wondered what else people might call the event that separated the old world from the new. What other word was there for death?
“Kelda!” Sharon’s voice was sharp and they both turned to face her. “The plague was everywhere. I know you know that.”
“Yes, but if there are women there . . .” Kelda began. Her childlike hope was plain on her face, as unshadowed as noon.
“There are women all over the world. Every man thinks he has seen the last. You’ve been taught better than to believe those old men’s tales.”
Etta stared, stupefied.
Kelda began to drop back, her excitement snuffed.
“You’re like a little girl,” Sharon said disdainfully. She turned to Etta. “Are your people slavers?”
“No,” she said without much force. She gathered herself again. “No, we shoot slavers.”
“Mmm. Are you cutters?”
“No. No, I find girls sometimes who were cut, mostly from the south. And now I know they cut boys sometimes, too.”
Sharon nodded, thoughtful. “Oh, yes, they did that in my day, as well. Fancy boys, you know. But my grandmother came here from Estiel, in the old world. She said that living among the women would be easier for me, because I was born to it. She never really adjusted to living apart, but at least she stood against that cutting nonsense.”
Sharon’s eyes were dreamy, faraway. “She would never let them cut my mother. Said it might kill any girl they did it to, and she was right. So they never cut my mother, and they stopped long before me.”
Etta was nodding.
Sharon shook her head as if to clear it. “Are you a hunter?”
“No, I’m a raider. I find things from the old world that can be of use, like good steel. And I trade drugs made in my city.”
“Mmm. Are you a breeder?”
Etta found herself tongue-tied for a moment.
the chair
“No, I have never been a Mother—”
Around the room, the old women shushed her.
“A breeder. I have never bred. I don’t . . .”
Kelda gripped her shoulder, startling her. “I don’t breed, either. Too dangerous.”
Sharon pursed her mouth at the two of them again. “What do you seek here?”
Etta sighed, looking at the floor. When she looked up, she imagined she was speaking to Ina.
“I just want to trade for some food and a place to sleep. I’ll be on my way tomorrow or the next day.”
And just like that Sharon was Ina, her eyes narrowing at the lie, knowing Etta down to her core.
“Very well. Kelda, I charge you with taking care of our traveler.”
Kelda dipped her head. “Sharon, this traveler does not know the way—”
“You don’t have to keep silence with her,” Sharon said.
Kelda sprang up in place. “Great!”
Great.
Kelda led Etta to her own home, an enormous stone cottage with deerskins tacked up on every side, drying in the sun.
“You must be a good hunter,” Etta said, her eyes on the skins.
“The best!” Kelda swung her wooden door open and made Etta a plate of venison jerky before setting up a pot to make herb tea.
“I can trade you for food,” Etta began. “I have itchweed—”
Kelda put two rough-made mugs down on the table hard. “All I want is stories. I want to know everything about your people, and the other people that you’ve met.”
“Haven’t you ever left here?”
Kelda shook her head. “Not allowed. No woman can leave Manhattan.”
“But you go hunting!”
Kelda was nodding, throwing dried leaves into the dented old teapot. “Only in the forest, and if I see any man I must run from him. Doctor Eames says all men are slavers.”
They’re not all slavers, but I see why he’d say that.
“Is Doctor Eames the Midwife? The . . . The one who helps with childbirth?”
Kelda nodded, her chin down.
“Is he in charge here?”
“Not . . . Not exactly. He’s in charge of our breeding and health. He’s the only man who comes among us for anything other than summoning.”
“But he tells you about the outside world?”
“Well, he tells me because I ask. He really did say that we are the only women on earth.”
Etta laughed a little. “I hear that a lot. Men say it everywhere. But I’ve seen women in Estiel and Jeff City and other places. I’ve found them on the road. And I’ve heard from other raiders who have gone far, far away and seen more women there.”
Kelda was nodding. “Really, if we were the last women on earth, we wouldn’t be safe.”
“We’re not safe anyway. There aren’t enough anywhere.”
They sat with that while the water boiled. Kelda poured steaming tea into both mugs.
“You drink hot tea in the summer?”
Kelda shrugged as she sat astride one of the stumps at her table. “It doesn’t taste as good cold.”
Etta waited, watching the steam coil above the cup.
“How many women are here?”
“Seventeen.”
Not enough.
“I see. And babies every year?”
“One, usually. Sometimes two.”
“And how many not breeding, like you?”
“Well, the four old women. The two little girls who are too young. I’m the only one of age not breeding.”
“Why?”
Kelda stood up and walked to the wall, touching a rabbit skin there. “It’s how my own mother died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not easy. I still have to take part in the three days of the moon. I just don’t breed.”
“What?”
Maybe they have it here. The thing that the Unnamed gave. Birth contro
l.
“I provide release.” Kelda said it as carefully as anyone who had ever been coached in a euphemism.
“I don’t understand.”
“Like a fancy boy.” She was furiously blushed, the effect like a burnishing of her coppery skin. “There are other . . . you can . . .”
“Oh, oh yes. I see. Why do you . . . Why would you do that if it doesn’t lead to pregnancy?”
“It’s women’s work. Keeping them healthy, you know. If they don’t come for the moon sometimes, it makes them crazy. They can’t help it. Doc Eames says it’s the worst for the young men. He sets the schedule, since he knows how we bleed.”
The manwife stays busy.
Etta nodded.
“But I want your stories! Do you have a doc? Do you have a schedule, in your city?”
Etta laughed a little. “No, we have Hives.”
Kelda sat back down, her deer leather creaking. “What are Hives?”
“One woman, like the queen of a beehive. As many men as she wants, all at her disposal for breeding or labor. It’s very sensible.”
Kelda stared. “Do you have a . . . ?”
“No. My mother has a large Hive, and my friend Alice has two men. But I’ve never thought it was for me.”
“Wow.” Kelda’s eyes were wide and glorious amber brown.
She’d tell me anything I asked. There’s no lying in her.
“Why do you live separately from the men?”
“It causes fights. Killing, sometimes. Men are like that. They can’t make peace if there aren’t enough women. So we give them some distance, some order to it.”
Etta shrugged. “There’s no killing in No—in my town.” She recovered quickly, taking a sip of the still-scalding tea. “Men get into Hives, or they . . . they, uh, fancy-boy with each other.”
“Is that allowed?” Kelda’s eyes were as big as chicken eggs.
“It’s . . . It’s frowned upon, but people understand why it happens.”
Even if they never understand me.
The room was hot and fragrant with steam. Kelda stood and blithely peeled off her leather vest. Etta could not help but watch.
“You can, too, you know. I don’t know if your people are very modest, but . . .”
Etta put her hands against her damp shirt. She glanced over her shoulder at the door.
Why the hell not? Eddy’s not here.
As Etta rose, pulling her woven shirt over her head, Kelda grinned and set about untying the laces of her pants, as well.
When she was fully nude, Kelda stood and turned so that Etta could see all of her. Kelda’s body was muscular and all-over brown. She looked as though she ran among the deer as naked as they, as wild.
She wants me to look.
Kelda dusted her calves. “My hair gets stuck to me. Feels good to let it breathe.”
They were both dewy with sweat. Etta stood and slid her pants off. She hadn’t had a shave since she was in Nowhere, but it hadn’t been that long. She had barely regained a little fuzz.
“How are you so hairless?” Kelda closed in, openly marveling. “I’ve bathed with very dark women before, and they have more than you!” She pointed playfully to Etta’s nearly bald vulva.
“I have the bathers shave me, at home. There are bugs on the road, and shaving helps keep them off me. I also just like the way it feels.”
Giggling like a giant little girl, Kelda leaned down and gently touched Etta’s leg in the hot room.
She knows exactly what she’s about. How long will she play this game with me? How long has she already?
Etta looked over her shoulder again, at the door.
Kelda walked over to it and barred it with a huge split timber.
“Look,” she said, her eyes overbright. “I know what you are. I knew it the moment I saw you. I only ever knew one other, and she’s gone now. Can I just? Can we?”
I know what you are.
Etta reached up to cup the taller woman’s cheek in her palm.
Kelda melted immediately, obediently, like butter in a hot skillet.
Etta poured herself into the taller woman’s body, tasting all the strangeness of being away from home and back to the first kind of sex she knew. She brought Kelda to a quick crest, making her shake and cry out, muffling the cries with a free hand. Together, they sweated an ocean into Kelda’s deerskin bed.
With her hands on Kelda’s muscled thighs, she thought of Flora.
I know what you are.
She thought of herself as Eddy and invited his ghost, pretending for just a moment that he was born a man, that he was here, that his spectral sex was grafted onto her and pushed the thought of it into Kelda as she moaned.
the chair the chair the chair
Her legs cramped immediately and she found a way to stop gracefully, to stand up and lift her toes against the wooden frame of the bed.
Kelda lacked the capacity to notice. She threw a massive forearm over her eyes and panted, splayed across her hides.
When Etta could calm her calves, when she could breathe eight in and eight out, she lay down beside Kelda again.
When Kelda spoke, Etta was steeled for some declaration of love or sameness. She had had that before, she knew what to say.
“Can I go back with you? To a place where there are more of us? I want to be somewhere where we can be this way always.”
Etta breathed in sharply and sat up.
“There’s nowhere to go with this,” she said, her voice like lead. “We have Hives. A Hive has one queen. That’s it.”
“But if boys can be fancy—”
“Boys can be anything. Girls can only be one thing. Like everyone says here, women’s work.”
“But you can be a raider, and I can be a hunter, and neither of us breeders.” Kelda was sitting up now, her whole simple soul back on her trusting face. “Can’t we be this, where you’re from?”
Those two women who tried it, they couldn’t do it. Alice. When her mother caught us, Carla looked like she wanted to eat me alive. What was it she said? That we were wasting something, like kids who ate all their honey at once.
“We can’t. There’s nowhere I’ve seen or heard of where we can be this. I don’t even know what it’s called.”
Kelda kissed her shoulder softly. “Lie down with me.”
Etta did, making a note of where her gear lay. She watched the bar on the door until she fell asleep.
There’s nowhere. Nowhere.
The attack came in the hour before dawn. Etta woke without knowing what had roused her, blinking in the darkness of Kelda’s house. She rolled out of bed and pulled her pants on. By the time the screaming really got started he was bound and had his boots on. He was pushing his gun back into his pants when Kelda awoke.
“Here. Here. Here.” She was pushing him through a small door at the back of the cabin. The small space on the other side stank. Eddy breathed shallowly, trying to place the smell.
Kelda found her bow, not bothering to dress. “Stay here,” she said. She closed the small door.
Eddy groped at his pack in total darkness. His gun was loaded. His knives were on him.
Outside, he heard the sounds of struggling. Someone ran past the exterior wall. He tried to breathe through his mouth around the stink.
She’s tanning hides. That’s the smell. What the fuck is going on out there?
Kelda’s door thundered as someone tried to push it open against the bar they had set the night before.
Eddy held very still.
The door boomed again as someone large threw a shoulder against it.
“Open up in the name of the Lion!” The voice was muffled, but Eddy made it out.
Shit it’s here I’ve got it.
His hands plunged into the bag again and felt around. He found the claw by the cold, smooth, foreign feel of it. He yanked it out and tied it around his neck in the total absence of light. He pushed the tanning-room door open.
Kelda stood in absolute tension, bo
w pulled back to the depth of her long arm. She was ready to kill whatever came through the door.
“Wait, okay? Wait. I can help.” He couldn’t tell if she heard him at all.
Eddy got close to the door, clearing his throat. “Get back and I’ll open it. Get back!”
He waited a moment, then lifted the bar from the door. He opened it all at once and stood there, blinded by torchlight.
The man holding it was not one he had met in Estiel.
“This town is taken in the name of the Lion. All females are tribute.”
Eddy laid his hand on the claw, praying for steady fingers. “I understand that. But this female is mine.”
Behind the man with the torch, Eddy could see the summoner being led out in her black cloak, her head bowed. He looked back over his shoulder and saw that Kelda was still ready to strike.
He continued, “The Lion and I have a deal—”
“If you’ve dealt with Himself, then you know he doesn’t make deals that deprive him of his claim to females. You can come and make a case for this one, if you want. But we’re taking her.”
There’s gotta be something I can say. Some password.
Too late, he realized the man with the torch was shoving past him, into the cabin. Kelda’s arrow sprouted from the man’s chest an instant later.
“Kelda!”
“Run!” Kelda herself ran over the man as he fell, glancing off Eddy’s shoulder.
“Kelda, wait!”
Kelda did not wait. She charged forward, nocking the other arrow she had carried from her cottage as she ran.
Eddy realized too late that the roofs of the mud houses were on fire. He ran along a disordered path, not knowing the town well enough to find his way.
A chunk of something heavy hit him on the back of the neck, just below his skull. He swayed a moment, woozy, trying to look behind him.
A group of the older women were throwing rocks. They caught him with another as he turned, just above his left eye. Blood ran into it, hot and salty, blinding him. He put up both hands.
Not me. Not me. I’m not one of them.
The claw at his throat.
“Kill the men! Kill all the men!” The screech came from all of them as they fanned out, throwing more heavy stones.
Eddy turned and ran. He made for the woods, barely keeping his feet as the ground sloped down and away from him. He didn’t know he was headed to the river until his feet were in it.
