by Meg Elison
Until today. Eddy sounded almost smug.
Bullshit. I didn’t see anything.
Didn’t see three living babies come at once. Didn’t see her lay her hands and make wounds heal up.
“Fuck.”
She had stood up and walked to the dresser. She opened the drawer and put her clothes back on, wanting to be out of the gown now that she could move freely, without pain.
Fine. Fine. Fine.
She held her bindings in her hands and thought about it.
Come on.
Not yet.
They put their hands on their gun and slept fitfully the rest of the night.
They knew it was morning because Neum came to get them. They were already up.
“Someone’s doing better,” Neum exclaimed maternally. “Are you ready?”
They knew they would be taken to Alma once again. They weren’t ready to settle for anything else.
They walked with Neum, arguing.
Let me do the talking, Eddy’s voice said. I know what this is about.
Ha. Sure you do. You know what I know.
I listen better than you do.
It was Eddy who spoke to Alma, as she lay in bed with her hair spread out around her. Gabriel and Rei were there, combing her golden hair on either side of her bed. The three babies were in the enormous bed with the prophet, who gazed serenely up at Eddy.
“How are you feeling today, sister?” Alma’s voice was soothing, baby-soft.
“Much better.” Eddy stood still, trying to size her up.
“I knew as much. I knew that Her will would be done.”
“I don’t know what was done, or how, but I feel better. And I thank you for that, and for treating me as a guest here. But I have to know, today, right now, what you want from me. It’s hanging over me, and I can’t stand it anymore. What is it?”
“She rose again on the third day,” Alma said, nodding to Eddy.
“What?”
Rei and Gabriel exchanged looks.
“It’s only important if you know the story. Etta, come here, sit with me and my babies.”
Eddy did not want to go but found himself walking forward anyhow. She was too lovely, too motherly, to refuse. He tried to harden his face.
She laid her soft hand over his. He shivered, despite its immediate warmth.
“You must lead the young men on their mish. You must go tonight, while the power is still in you. You must be Moroni, and lead them into battle.”
“What? Battle with what? With who? I’ve never—”
“Shhhhhh.” Alma’s full pink lips pushed forward as she put her hand on one of the babies, who had begun to stir. “That’s not for me, that’s for the mish. It’s only for me to lay your calling on you.”
I wonder if these Mormons are even the same people that the Unnamed knew. But he knew they were. There was something about their assuredness, their earnestness, that rang the same bell.
I want to leave this place, anyhow. If this is how it happens, then fine.
Alma nodded to Gabriel and Rei, who dropped their work and rose. “These two will be your companions. You may take all the Aarons and Deks you like. No other women must go among you, however. You are the only one like you.”
That’s the truth.
He didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t want to accept what she clearly thought was his duty, but he didn’t want to reject it, either. He wanted to follow these boys out, but after that, who knew. He raised a hand to her, almost a wave.
“To the square,” she said, smiling, and waved back in the same way.
Mystified, he followed the two younger men out into the steel hallway.
Eddy saw people carrying enormous quantities of food, roast ears of corn and smoking sweet potatoes. He saw a cow and a goat carved in white butter on slabs of wood. He heard people singing and followed the boys toward the songs.
The children seemed to be leading, singing a silly-sounding song about popcorn growing on a tree, using their hands to tell the story. Everyone looked clean and freshened, bright faces smiled everywhere around the large spaces. The main hall overflowed with people, and Eddy stared at so many women, so many children.
Alma walked onto the dais, serenely and without any sign that she had given birth to three only the night before.
She doesn’t even look pale.
People grew quiet. Alma wore the smallest strapped to her chest and had the other two in her arms. On the stage, two young women took them from her gently and held them. Alma put her hands up and silence reigned.
“We gather here today for the naming and blessing of my three, and to send out a mish!”
Applause came from everywhere and a group of men shoved one of their own forward. A tall, gangly man-boy stumbled up toward Alma, grinning and trying to regain his balance. Women laughed a little, but Eddy could see more than a few of them sizing him up.
“This Dek, Shemnon, fathered the three. And so he will help us bless them, won’t you, dear?”
Shemnon grinned and Eddy saw that his two front teeth had been knocked out.
The two women holding the babies brought them in front of Shemnon, who laid one pale hand across their two foreheads. Alma came around and he reached over shyly, putting his palm against the baby lump slung low across her chest.
Tension gathered as they waited.
Alma’s voice was soft but low, and carried miraculously well in the open space.
“Dear most loving, most fertile Heavenly Mother. We thank thee for thy endless bounty of children, particularly on this day when thou hast seen fit to send us three blessed girl children. We ask you, in the presence of their father the Dek, to bless them each in turn.”
She laid one hand on the child she wore. “Bless Alma the younger, who will carry on my work and be a Mother to many.”
She lightly touched the next child to her right. “Bless Emma, who will be a prophet in her own time and lead the people with wisdom and gifts of healing.”
A sigh rippled through the crowd at that.
Alma ignored it and touched the last child. “And bless Etta, who takes the name of a stranger who will carry our story to places and people far distant, who will be a story keeper as well one day.
“We pray these things in the names of thy children. Amen.”
The tension broke and a celebratory mood returned as people began to fall to the feast that had been laid. Eddy watched as the children were given bracelets that tied around their tiny wrists.
Now that their names have been given and their fates laid, they have to be marked.
He thought of Ina, telling Etta as a child that she could be a Mother or a Midwife, but the choice would not really be up to her.
Does anyone get to choose what they are?
He thought of the bindings waiting in his bag. He thought of Flora.
Doesn’t seem like they choose here, either. Men are “Deks” and boys are “Aarons.” Everybody is “leaf.” This is all arranged for the many, and the few have to fall in line.
No different from Nowhere. Or Estiel. Or Manhattan.
When Gabriel found him, Eddy was sitting with a piece of buttered bread, not eating.
“I’ve got two Aarons who want to go,” Gabriel told him breathlessly. “And six Deks, including me and Rei. I told the Aarons to pack our supplies. Alma says we leave tonight. Are you prepared?”
Eddy looked around, feeling supremely out of place.
“Yes, I’m prepared.”
Gabriel’s excitement was clear in his wide blue eyes and easy grin. But Eddy thought it was more than that. He looked eager, like someone who looked forward to relief rather than adventure.
Eddy didn’t want to endure any sort of good-bye. He didn’t want another moment’s nonsense, another ritual that made no sense to him. He was tired of references to stories he’d never heard and feeling like an outsider who was a little too welcome to stay.
The hell did she name the baby after Etta? What was s
he trying to achieve there?
The boys and men joined the three of them as they gathered a pack and a bedroll for each.
Rei led them to a doorway and looked over the group.
“Alright, Aarons and Deks, I know nobody wants to leave when they’re putting together such a mighty party. But the spirit says we’ve got to go today. So we go. Etta is our leader. Gabriel and I are her companions. The rest of you must stain us, and follow. Agree?”
Heads nodded. Eddy looked them over, nonplussed.
Stain? I think he means support, somehow.
He turned to Rei. “Where are we supposed to go?”
He looked blankly back, his dark eyes trusting. “You’ll know the way. You’ve been appointed to take us there.”
Eddy felt something flop over in his belly. “Take us out of here, Rei.”
Rei turned to the door and wrenched it open, using the big handle as a lever. The room was very small, and they crowded into it so that Gabriel could slide the door closed behind them. Rei put his mouth to a horn in the corner and hollered into it.
“Take us all the way up, men!”
When the room jerked upward, Eddy was the only one to yell out his fear. The others laughed a little.
“It’s only a lift,” Gabriel said, pulling his long blond hair out of the straps at his shoulders. “Don’t worry, we’re fine.”
The motion of the small room smoothed out and Eddy fought the feeling of unease as they gained altitude.
Eight in, eight out.
They ascended a long time. When he could trust his mouth, Eddy asked, “How does this work? How far down are we?”
“It’s pretty far,” one of the younger boys said. “I made the climb lots of times. Takes about an hour. This here lift has to be pulled up by three men who know how to work the pulley. They’re just about the strongest in Ommun. You just tell them how many are going and when, and they hoist you.”
By a subtle shifting of pressure, they knew they were reaching the top. The lift juddered to a stop, lowering back down a small measure to line up with another door.
Eddy prepared his eyes for the blinding sunlight, but it didn’t come. They were still below ground.
A long grotto extended ahead of them, with spaced support columns erected throughout. In it, Eddy saw carefully tended patches of vegetables and grains.
“How . . . ?”
Gabriel came up behind him. “There’s vents to let in light, and a very careful schedule. This way, no one can tell we’re here.”
They followed the others toward a short staircase that ended in a flat door overhead.
Eddy squinted up in the dark and saw that Rei was turning small metal wheels in a lock to make a pattern that would spring it open.
The sunlight did cut in then, pure white and dazzling.
Out on the ground, Eddy staggered. He looked around, taking in the wild-seeming fruit trees, the smell of the nearby creek. He turned in circles, trying to find any sign at all that hundreds of people were living below their feet.
He remembered what it had been like, waking in a strange place. He had known they had to be hidden, probably underground. But he had never imagined that secrets like this could exist. How many other cities had he walked over? How many of them were full of women?
When the entire party had come through, Rei set the door down. The door itself was metal, caked over with a heavy couple of inches of soil. Grass and weeds grew all over it, and as it flattened it became almost indistinguishable from the earth that surrounded it.
“Who locks it behind us?” Eddy almost whispered.
Rei shrugged. “One of the farmers. They saw us go.”
“How do you get back in?”
“You have to know the signal.” Rei stared straight ahead, but when Eddy looked at Gabriel, he winked.
“Which way?”
Eddy’s head spun. He tried to remember what he had been told, where he was. He wanted to head for home.
Destiny my ass.
“South,” he said.
They walked south all day.
The Book of Eddy
Maybe you just show up one day and everyone thinks you’re part of a story that’s already happening and what you really think doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s what happened to the Unnamed. I wonder if she ever thought we’d be reading about her, years later, trying to be like her. Did she even want that?
She says she wanted to give people birth control. But when that was gone, she wanted to bring babies or maybe keep them from dying. She didn’t want to be any kind of story. Did someone make her into it, like Alma is trying to make me?
Make me. I was made. I made me.
What was in him that was Etta looked sideways at that, but he ignored it.
They walked a long time. As the men began to talk in small groups, Eddy came to realize they had all traveled this way before. Even the youngest of the boys had remembrances of where they went, what they found to eat.
She turned to Gabriel and Rei, whose spoke so softly and so closely that their hair almost touched as they walked.
“What do you search for? Are you raiders?”
Gabriel nodded, then tossed his long hair over both shoulders. “We raid old-world goods. And we rescue people who need rescuing. But Ommun is rich, and we don’t need for much from the old world anymore. Lately . . .”
He bit his full lower lip and looked to Rei.
Rei filled in. “Lately, we’ve lost most of the mish to the Lion.”
Eddy’s body was cold all over.
“The Lion of Estiel?”
“You know another one?” This from a wry, grinning preteen. Eddy fixed his gaze on the kid and the kid looked away, abashed.
“He’s all over these towns,” Rei explained, “taking all the women from the ones that will surrender. Burning out the ones that won’t. And most of these places hardly have a handful of women or girls, they get left with nothing at all. Manhattan—”
“I was in Manhattan. I was there when it was taken.”
Dark looks circulated through the men.
“They didn’t have much to begin with. They had worked out a hard system. I couldn’t have lived there, myself. But it worked for them,” Gabriel said, looking chastened.
Rei’s voice was uncertain. “Was it burned out, or did they—”
“It was burning when I left there. They gave me this.” Eddy poked the scar in his forehead where the rock had left its mark. He felt no pain, no echo from the back of his head at the sudden impact.
“We ought to go that way, to see if anyone is left.” Rei pulled a long, rolled piece of hide out of his pack and laid it on the ground, kneeling.
Eddy looked it over, not understanding at first. It was a map, but it was so different from the old-world paper maps he had tended carefully over the years that he didn’t recognize it at first. Leaning down, he saw that it encompassed a large amount of land, spanning from Estiel to south of the Odarks, and east to a body of water that he knew from maps was called the Atlantic, but he had never seen it.
The boys and men crowded around, discussing the best route to Manhattan. When they had settled it, referring to incomprehensible symbols used to mark food, shelter, and danger, Rei rolled it back up and they got moving again.
In some deep woods, they reached a stone cottage that was known to all of them. The younger boys split up to gather wood and build a fire, fetch water, and catch something for dinner.
Eddy squatted in the dark little house beside Rei and Gabriel. “Can I see your map again?”
Rei unrolled it and Eddy stared again. “What is this?”
Gabriel laughed a little, following Eddy’s point to a black blot on the map. “Niyok. It used to be a huge city, but it’s mostly burned. Not much raiding there, but every mish eventually goes to see it. Nobody believes how big the buildings are. And there’s this woman in the water. Green. Huge, taller than a tree.”
Eddy shook his head. Nothing these guys say sounds real.<
br />
“Where else have you gone? Have you been to Utah?” Eddy was thinking of the Unnamed, trying to make her map overlap theirs.
“Sure, we’ve been to Uta, that’s where the Prophet used to live.”
“Alma?”
Rei shook his head. “No, the old Prophet. The two of us have been to Ido and seen the farms there. Lots of people living there. Good land, and they do alright.”
“Have you been to an old-world city called San Francisco? Where the western sea is? The . . .” He struggled to remember the name. “The Pacific.”
Gabriel shook his head again. “I’ve never been to the Spific, but other mish have told me they went there. But the cities on the sea are all crumbled, and at the edge the water is rising. There’s nothing there. The water rises in Niyok every year, too.”
Eddy’s heart sank just a little. He hadn’t known he hoped to see the Unnamed’s city some day until he knew he never would.
They looked over the map in silence for a moment, until Gabriel’s finger landed on a point near the Misery.
“We’re here.” He dragged his finger up the map and tapped a star-shaped splotch a little north of where they were. “This is Jamestown. Jacob and Esau said it’s been taken, but the Paws haven’t set out to return to Estiel yet, so there’s still time.”
“Time for what?”
Everyone turned to look at Eddy. Gabriel’s eyebrow came up. “To save them. What did you think we were going to do?”
Eddy swept his gaze around the knot of men and boys. No one had a trace of mirth. “How . . . How are we going to . . . Have you done this before? Do you know how many men the Lion has?”
Rei came forward smiling and put his hand on Eddy’s shoulder. Eddy shrugged it away and crossed his arms.
“Of course we have. This is our mish now. It has to be, or the Lion will take every town along the Misery and eventually come to us. We’re hidden and protected, but like you said, he has a lot of men. We’ve had trouble with the Paws since my first mish, seven years ago.”
“Yeah, me too. So what do we do?”
Gabriel grinned a little, his gold cap of hair catching the sunlight. “The same thing we always do, but with you, this time. Like the Prophet said.”
