by Meg Elison
“I give birth to guns. I bleed bullets. I was born to destroy men. Like you.”
He looked away, disappointed for a split second before turning back to her with a predator’s grin.
The Lion of Estiel blew out the candle and climbed into bed with Etta.
CHAPTER 18
Etta was born in the bed.
She was not born right away. She was conceived over and over, and the Lion always asked the same questions. Her answer changed, but she never told him the truth.
He worked on her the way a man chops down a tree, cutting wedges out of every side, trying to make it fall in the direction that he wanted. She knew she would fall, eventually. All she could do was hope to take his house with her when she went.
A few of the times she thought she would get loose, he noticed. He saw the strain in her muscles and laughed at her, buckling her restraints down until they bit into her skin. Then he took his own bites.
She vacated herself. Eddy sat beside the bed, in a chair, taking it all in.
They would not die, he told her. The Lion would not kill them. They were useful.
Etta did not want to die. Eddy wanted to leave. Together, they decided what they would do.
Flora came one day to clean Etta up. Flora disinfected the places where Etta was wounded and put a steaming hot cloth between Etta’s bound legs, pressing the heat to her torn and aching flesh.
Etta watched Flora’s face as the woman looked dispassionately down on her body. She tried to lie still, not to flinch or tense up. She was worried Flora would see how much weight she had lost.
Flora caught Etta staring up at her intently and flinched herself. She looked back into Etta’s eyes for a searching moment.
She can see us planning, Eddy mused from his chair. She knows us.
Etta hoped Flora could see every moment of what she was planning to do. She hoped Flora would be ready when the time came.
Two endless nights later, Etta could rotate her bony wrist inside the restraint cuff, even buckled to its smallest diameter. She had everything she needed. Her body was slick with sweat and blood and the mess that a man makes. Etta’s own sweat slipped one bruised arm out of the leather that held her and slowly, meticulously, she freed her other limbs without a sound.
The drawer rolled out slickly and the Lion’s breath did not even hitch in his deep sleep. Etta had the gun in her hands and under the covers in one fluid motion. She rested the barrel against one of the low dimples near the base of his spine and pulled the trigger.
The gun dry-fired, loud in the dim room.
Too light you should have known it was too light oh fuck oh fuck.
“Your breathing changes when you’re awake.” The Lion’s voice was calm and unsleepy.
Etta kicked at the sheets and furs on the bed, trying to get to her feet. She was stiff and clumsy and succeeded only in landing on the floor, shoulders down, ankles still caught.
She kicked again as he rose on the other side of the bed, smooth and calm.
She pulled the drawer of the nightstand out and it clattered to the floor. Smooth, old-world bullets hit the carpet with small thumps and rolled away unseen.
The Lion circled around the wide, low bed and stood over her.
“You are wasting my time. You’re not even an amusing waste of time. Why don’t you tell me what I want to know?”
He leaned down over her and she clutched her gun in both hands. He did not attempt to take it from her.
He wrapped his hands around her bony ones and pushed them to her chest, the gun an unyielding weight between them. He leaned on it with all his weight, moving one leg over to straddle her trapped feet.
“Where did you get them?”
Etta said nothing, fighting to breathe around the crushing weight on her chest.
“Where. Did. You. Get. Them.” With each word, the Lion let up a little and then pushed back down, forcing air out of her lungs in agonizing rhythm. The weight sunk in lower and lower as her ribs collapsed. She could not breathe in.
“I’m going to let you breathe in just one more time. If you tell me what I want to know, you can go sleep in the harem. Your mother is there. I’m sure a few friends of yours, too. If you don’t, that’ll be your last breath. Ready?”
Etta smelled him, his hot heavy breath and the scent of his skin. She smelled it on herself and she thought of hunting in the early morning.
The smell of men. The smell of predator. Flora, asking whether I want to be hunter or hunted. I want neither. I want to be something else.
When he let up, breath rushed into her as unwillingly as the filling of a bellows. Her mouth and nose filled with him, with his cats, with her own terror.
“I’ll tell you!” Her voice was pinched, afraid. “I’ll tell you where.”
He pushed down hard, the gun grinding into her sternum. She felt something pop inside her chest and knew he had broken a rib. He knew it, too, and he smiled.
“Where?”
“Get my map and I’ll show it to you. It isn’t a town. I have to show you.”
He stood up, pushing off her chest, and she wheezed her high-pitched agony. She pulled the gun off her chest and felt the imprint of it in her skin. She laid it down on the nightstand and struggled to breathe, swaying on her way to her feet.
From the collection of her belongings on the desk across the room, the Lion found her stack of folded paper maps. He unwrapped them.
“Show me.”
Etta walked unsteadily toward him, her eyes held wide.
If I got into the harem I could come up with a plan. More of us there. Maybe Alice. She could poison him, I know it.
“Show me.” His hand covered the back of her neck and pulled her down toward the papers. “Right now.”
“Alright!” She squeaked the word and felt shame cover her in fire. She touched the maps, spreading them out, looking for the right one.
“And if you think you can just put your finger on the map at some unknown spot,” the Lion said, his mouth beside her ear, “and expect me to run out the door and go looking for some made-up place, think again. You are going to mark the route. You are going to get buckled back in for the night. Then you are going to ride on the hood of my truck until we get there. And if we don’t find it, we are never going to find out whether you’re a breeder or not. You understand me?”
She opened the map that showed Ommun and its armory, marked in the symbols of Nowhere’s raiders. She saw her notations for food and safety, and the symbol she had made up for their wealth of weapons: the peaked shape of a bullet. She leaned forward, her hand hovering over the map.
“It’s right here.” Her finger extended to point to the spot. She put her other hand down for balance so she could lean forward.
Maybe Ommun can protect itself. Maybe Alma really is . . .
Etta shook all over, unable to control herself.
Don’t do this. Eddy’s voice was hard beside her. We said we’d die before we did this. All those girls in Ommun. Sheba. The baby with our name.
She drew in a shaky breath, deciding.
As she leaned forward, she felt a lump under her left hand. Something was folded into the map. What was it? Her mind raced, trying to place the feel of it.
“It’s this road,” she began, her voice husky and barely audible. “South of . . .”
The Lion leaned closer, his grip on her neck weighing her down. “South of what?”
Her right hand was pointing out the road that led from the Misery to Ommun.
Her left hand was squeezing the lump through the folds in the old-world paper. The object poked through, then slid as its sharp edges sliced through the map.
Once her palm was on top of it, she knew what it was. An arrowhead. Made from folded scrap metal and sharpened to a fine, thin edge.
Etta’s voice grew stronger as Eddy situated the arrowhead in his palm. “The city is called Ommun,” she said with some strength returning to her voice. “It’s underground, right here.”
Right hand guiding. Left hand rising.
The Lion was staring intently at the map, looking at her hand-drawn symbols.
“Is that a bullet?” He reached with his free hand and tapped the map.
“Yes, that’s what it is. That’s where they are.” Driving upward, Eddy thrust the arrowhead with the heel of his left hand, slamming it into the Lion’s armpit.
The grip on her neck loosened as the Lion staggered back in shock. Etta pushed him in the center of his chest while he was vulnerable and ran for the gun.
He clawed with both hands at the arrowhead, trying to get a grip on it in the slick warmth of his own blood. Etta hit the floor, sprawling, trying to find the bullets that had gone wild.
The Lion made for the door, slipping in his own blood. Beside it stood a rifle. Eddy had put the arrowhead into the underside of the Lion’s right arm. He could pick up the gun, but he fumbled with it, bellowing.
Etta found one bullet and Eddy fitted it sightlessly into the chamber. Eddy stood up and Etta took aim.
Across the room, the Lion’s blood poured out of him. There were sounds on the other side of the door.
The rifle slipped and slipped again in the Lion’s grip, but his finger was on the trigger. The shot was deafening in the small space, but the bullet sank into the bed a few feet in front of Etta.
Eddy shot and Etta saw the bullet take the Lion’s nose, crumpling his face in the center. Blood poured from the hole, cascading over his white lower teeth. He sat down hard.
Etta sat, too, shock taking over. Still naked, she could feel a bullet under her thigh. She loaded that into the gun and cast about for others. She found four.
Shouts filled the hallways and lights danced crazily on the peeling wallpaper. She fired at a shadow and ran in the opposite direction.
She didn’t know where she was going. She thought maybe the women were kept on the same floor, but she had no way of knowing where. Looking down, she tried to see where the tracks in the ancient carpet were heaviest. Eddy tracked the footsteps of men as he tracked deer in the woods.
The hunted, now. He saw a man standing above a chair that blocked a pair of double doors.
The man guarding the harem was ready for her. Eddy came striding down the hallway naked, past all thought, and shot him in the throat after he missed her by inches.
The harem was awake. There had to be thirty of them, sleeping grouped and doubled in the beds that seemed to fill the room. Ina saw her and whooped, somewhere between joy and anguish. Etta’s mother made her put on a robe.
When Etta spotted Flora, she raised her gun and fired again, aiming for the horsewoman’s eye. Ina grabbed Etta’s elbow and the shot went wide, all of them cringing away from the sound.
“No,” Ina told her. “We need her.”
Eddy believed that.
Etta had no words. Across the room, she locked eyes with Alice. Alice looked away hurriedly.
The harem left their room, the smaller ones carried and wrapped in sheets, and made their way down the hall. Etta went first, knowing she had two more shots. Ina followed behind, whispering to Flora.
“Here,” Ina said, pointing to a closed door.
Etta tried to open it, but it was locked. They heard the tumbler turning and Etta stepped back and shot the man who threw the door wide. They had to shove him out of the way to get into the armory.
Almost every woman got a gun. Etta found the one that had belonged to the Unnamed and took it back. As they pillaged, Etta dimly recognized Kelda in the crowd. She had found a bow and was easing a tight quiver onto her back.
Back in the stairwell, they shot two more. Ina, whispering to Flora, stopped them at the doorway on another landing.
“Here.”
The direction was unneeded; the stink told Etta this was where the cats were kept. She knocked on the door and shot their keeper as he bellowed and tried to raise his gun. They shoved his corpse back into the room where the animals were caged in huge welded scrap-metal enclosures.
“We should free them,” a dark-haired woman said.
Etta found a few words, parceled them out grudgingly. “Let them starve.”
They closed the door.
The women poured out of the ground floor into the warm night air. They shot more guards and picked up a couple of confused catamites on their way to the truckyard. Word spread fast among the catamites and they came teeming, shouting, toward the street. The boys of Nowhere who had lived ran to join them.
Eddy stared around, dumbstruck. Where is everyone? Why aren’t we being shot at?
Etta looked around, dazed, tried to remember how many men had been here. How many had she killed? Escape couldn’t possibly be this easy.
Maybe there are a lot of them out raiding right now. Eddy was not interested in analyzing this too long. He jogged across the truck lot. Maybe not that many men want to live like this.
Etta looked ahead, watching Flora’s faded red hair bouncing on her back beside Alice’s matted curls.
The yard was deserted and most of the keys were hung on a pegboard. After a few minutes’ discussion, they found that only Flora knew how to drive.
“See,” Ina said. “I told you.” She was so small without her belly, her triumph so pitiful.
They piled into a yellow bus that roared to life and blew black clouds out of its exhaust pipe. Etta told the directions to Ina, and Ina sat behind Flora to help her get there.
In one of the sagging seats, Kelda opened her arms and Etta sat down beside her, not giving in to her embrace.
“I thought I would never see you again,” Kelda said, her voice thick.
“You won’t.” Eddy stared out the window. Etta felt herself crying and didn’t bother to wipe her face.
They rode the bumpy road without talking for a while. Around them, women and girls and boys wept and talked and slept and whispered.
Alice came and sat in the seat in front of them, pushing a sleeping boy toward the wall.
“Why did you try to kill her?” she asked.
Etta did not raise her head. “She wouldn’t help me. She was there, caring for me, so that I could be kept.”
Alice put her hands against the seat and leaned forward. Etta could see how dirty Alice was, how thin.
“I made the drugs that kept you under,” she said. “Kelda washed your sheets. Even your mother cooked the food you ate. We all helped. None of us could get you out.”
Etta said nothing. Across the aisle, she could see her mother’s head bent forward as she slept. The back of her mother’s neck was too thin, too fragile.
“Flora was the only one who would do it. Everyone else was too afraid. The Paws who took her were awful, and they’d bring her back hours later. She . . . She took the worst of it. Because they knew what she was. They knew she wouldn’t get pregnant. Etta, she . . . she doesn’t deserve this. Not now.”
Etta didn’t answer her. She shrugged Kelda’s arms away. As she stood, she saw Alice take her place beside Kelda.
She walked up to crouch beside Flora in the driver’s seat. They didn’t speak for a long time. The bus crawled over the rough trail in the darkness.
“They burned Nowhere,” Etta said.
Flora snorted a little. “I hardly got to see it at all.”
Looking up at her, Etta saw finger bruises low on Flora’s neck.
“I’m not going to apologize,” Etta said. “You could have helped me. But I’m not going to try to shoot you again. I . . . I understand. Doing what you have to, to survive. I understand better.”
Flora nodded after a moment. “I could have. You’re right. I was so scared, Eddy. I just wanted to live.”
Eddy stood up beside her. Gently, moving slow and with the beats of his heart, he put his hand on Flora’s shoulder.
She sighed deep as a sob.
Eddy spoke after a while, when he realized he didn’t know where Flora would try to take them. “Do you know the way?” Out in the night, the moonlight green flashe
d in the eyes of some animal as it crossed their path.
“Back to Nowhere?”
“No.”
They talked for a few minutes, Eddy giving every landmark he could think of to help her. Flora promised to wake him if they got lost.
Eddy came back to sit in the seat that Alice had vacated. She was asleep, but Kelda’s eyes were big in the dark.
“Where are we going?” Kelda finally asked.
Etta stared out the window, trying to figure out how long it would take to get them back to Ommun.
“Toward destiny.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2016 Devin Cooper
Meg Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. Her debut novel, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award. Its sequel, The Book of Etta, is the second novel in the Road to Nowhere trilogy. The author lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes like she’s running out of time.
