by Meg Elison
The woman who sat across from her was indeed in leather armor, but her arms were bare. Flora could see the definition of her muscles, with long lines of stick-poke tattooing marching up and down. Her head was shaved. Her lips were thin, a disapproving cut in a hard face. Her eyes were brown and flinty. Her eyebrows were shaved, as well.
“What’s in your pack?” she asked. Flora could see her shift a lump of something between her bottom lip and her teeth.
Flora sat up slowly, with balance and grace. She tucked her hands into the deep and secret folds of her silk clothes.
“Careful there,” the bald woman said, moving her hand to the grip of a knife in her belt.
Flora relaxed and showed her hands again. “My pack is full of books. I raided an old library last night.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m trying to learn about medicine.” Flora had spoken to some of the mish in Ommun. They told her never to reveal that she came from a city full of people. Always pretend to be alone, to protect those behind. Eddy said the same thing.
“Medicine?”
“Yeah. You know, what plants can be used to—”
“I know what medicine is,” the woman said, spitting a stream of dark juice from her jutting jaw. “No weapons?”
Flora shrugged. “I’m not much good with them.” She had two guns on her body, but it wasn’t a lie. Her training had been brief, and even at this range she doubted her accuracy. She had never used them, even to catch food. She hoped she’d never have to.
“Why are you out here all by yourself? Where’s your keeper?”
“I have no keeper,” Flora said quickly. Not for a while now, anyway. “I’m free and I belong to myself. My name is Flora.”
The bald woman looked her over, considering. “My name’s Can.”
“Can? Like ‘Yes I can’?”
“Yeah,” the woman said shortly. “Because I always can.”
“Alright. Good to meet you, Can. Why’d you sneak in here while I was asleep?”
Can shrugged her shoulders, relaxing a bit. “I saw you on the road last night, in that open truck of yours. I’m out this way an awful lot, and I’ve never seen a woman on her own. I couldn’t believe it. Where did you come from?”
“Jeff City,” Flora said.
“You’re a ways from home.”
Flora shrugged back, mirroring Can’s loose, slack posture. “Things weren’t so good there. Had trouble with a guy who called himself the Lion.”
“Called?” Can’s eyes were suddenly sharp. “He change his name?”
“He’s dead,” Flora said. “You know him?”
“Everybody knows him. He’s a slaver. The slaver king.”
Flora sighed. “Well, he’s not anymore. There was an uprising in his own harem. He’s dead, most of the Paws are dead. That’s all over now.”
Can looked shrewdly at Flora, clearly not believing.
“So are you headed home to Jeff City now?”
Flora shrugged again, trying out her slow smile. “Not yet. Summer’s not over, and I have plenty of deez. I’m going to keep raiding for a bit.”
“You’re not afraid?”
Flora laid her hands on her thighs and smiled a little wider. She was seeing a small gleam in Can’s eye now. “Afraid of what? I’ve been a slave. I can survive anything but death, and if I’m dead, I’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Can smiled back, the gleam becoming more evident. “No, not if you think about it that way.”
“What are you doing out here? Where are you from?” Flora tossed the questions back, seeing the sudden warming in the woman’s face.
“I’m from Shy, and I’m out here looking for you.” Her smile was speculative, almost flirtatious.
Flora’s smile turned full on. “Now there’s one I haven’t heard yet. Where’s Shy?”
“East of here. Big place. Women only. We’ve been planning to kill the Lion for over a year now. I know people who would feast you well to hear the story of how it happened. Would you come?”
“How far east?”
“A ways,” Can said, looking in the direction of the long-gone dawn. “You don’t have to come. But I think you’d like it. I’ve never brought a woman home who didn’t.”
“I have people waiting for me,” Flora began.
“Of course you do. We all do. We won’t keep you. But all the same. Flora.” Can said her name deliciously, like it was a slice of new fruit she was rolling over her tongue. “Come for just a few days, get some more deez, and go home with a story. What do you say?”
It’s a waste of fuel to drive the truck out there, Flora thought. But if I leave it here, it might disappear. Or I might not be able to find this place again.
“What about my truck?”
“I can tow it,” Can said, pushing herself up with one fist against the floor. “Save you the fuel. Then you have it when you want it.”
Flora stood with her, uncertain. She watched Can closely for a long moment. In the end, her curiosity won out.
But her truck was too heavy for Can’s car to pull, so they had to leave it. Can helped her push it to a culvert and cover it with brush.
“It should be safe here,” Can said decisively.
Flora felt better when it was hidden. Settled. She was glad to be with someone, even if it scared her.
“Women only. The whole town?”
Can nodded, sliding into the dark cab of her car. The interior was well preserved, with padding on the seats and much of the plastic intact. Flora ran a hand over the smoothness of it, sighing.
“You like that old-world feel, huh?”
“It’s soft,” she said. “Comforting.”
Can winked at her in the semidarkness. “If you like comfort, you’re going to love Shy.”
Flora was nauseated when the car started to move. She fought back the memory of the bus out of Estiel, the long dark road to Ommun. She felt that she couldn’t breathe in the closed-in, chugging coffin of the car.
Can saw her distress and popped open a wooden louver that brought fresh air into the cabin. “Can’t keep that open all the time. But if you feel like you’re gonna yak, get a few breaths in, then shut it again.”
Flora nodded, pressing her face close to the intake point for new air. She gulped and gulped. When she felt she could, she closed the slats. Can nodded.
“Were you born there? In Shy?”
“No,” Can said. “I was liberated from a slaver somewhere in Iwa, not far from where I found you.”
“Demons.”
“When I was just a kid.”
Flora nodded, not sure if Can could see her. “Me too. Liberated. When I was a kid. I came to Jeff City from someplace far, far away.”
“Have you always been a raider?”
Flora laughed a little. “No. No, I have friends who are raiders. But I throw silk.” She held out one arm to let Can feel the material.
“Whoa, how do you make that?”
“With worms,” Flora said, grinning.
“Ick. Never mind. I’ll stick to leather.”
“If you’ve been wearing it all summer, I’ll bet that leather sticks to you.”
Can laughed. “It is good to have company. I haven’t seen a woman or a girl on the road all this long summer. I guess that’s thanks to whoever killed the Lion.”
Flora wanted badly to tell her it had been Eddy, brave Eddy, killer of men and freer of slaves. Keep everyone safe. Don’t tell anyone who’s at home.
But I’m going to have to tell them something.
Wait. Wait and see what kind of people they are, then decide what to tell them. They’ll let you know what they like.
By the end of that first day, Flora knew that Can liked to answer questions about herself, and would always turn them back on Flora. She knew that Can drove with a careful alertness that Flora lacked in herself. She knew that Can did not drink enough water and scoffed at the idea that it was bad for her.
“Just means stoppin
g more times to piss,” she said ruefully.
When they did stop, Flora took care to get far, far away from Can before squatting down to piss carefully, concealed under many layers of silk.
Three days later, she knew Can snored when she slept and sang in a terrible, tuneless voice. She knew that Shy was not far away then, and that Can brightened little by little as they approached. She knew that Can was an experienced raider, able to navigate by the stars and avoid the worst parts of the road through a combination of feeling and memory.
What Flora did not know and could not tell was whether Can was a horsewoman, like her.
There’s no way there is a city of all women and none of them are like me. Some of them must be.
She looked Can over constantly, tracing the line of her jaw and lingering on the defined muscles in her arms, the thick curly hair in her armpits. She smelled her. She listened carefully to the sound of her voice.
Horsewoman. No, not like me. Yes, she is. No, she isn’t. Maybe she came from those horsewomen in Demons. Frags. Maybe she knew them.
Can did not mention her blood, nor did she obviously carry rags or a moon cup like Eddy had.
But that might just be timing, Flora thought desperately.
They gave each other privacy. Neither one of them ever disrobed, or washed more than face and hands. They talked little. Can preferred to watch the road with total concentration. Flora read books from her bag, sunlight slanting yellow through the slats of the car’s armor. They rolled into Shy on the fourth day at midmorning.
When Flora saw the size of the city, she gasped out loud.
CHAPTER 11
The Book of Flora
Shy
Hot and sticky
104N
After the emptiness of Demons, Shy is so incredibly full and loud. I’ve never seen a city this big. Can says there are a thousand or more here. There are no men, but not like that split city that Kelda comes from. They never let men in, not for any reason. I asked what happened if someone gave birth to a boy, but I didn’t get an answer.
Much of the old city still stands here. It is as big as any I’ve seen, even when I was traveling with Archie. The towers sag against the sky, some with great rusty blades punching outward and upward from them. Shy women don’t live in any of the tall buildings, but they use them for lookout and some for farming.
The city sits upon a river, and they row and pole boats with the current to move goods and to travel. The river meets the sea to the east, through narrow channels and a long journey. They have more fresh fish and mussels than they can eat, and that fish ink that Ina loves so much, and they tell stories of towns under the water.
I wish I had brought silk to trade, because none of them have ever seen it before. Someone asks to touch my clothes three times a day, but at least they ask.
They have a good library here. I have come to measure every town and village by whether they keep books and how well they keep them. Shy measures like a giant any way I look at it.
They also brew beer here, raise goats and cattle and pigs, weave wool, and tan good leather. I will likely trade one of my guns for a good pair of boots. I lost my last good pair in Estiel, and the old-world boots I’ve been wearing are cracking and will not keep out water.
No one in Shy knows that Ommun exists. Living below ground is the ultimate advantage, it seems. They know of Jeff City, of Nowhere and Jamestown and Womanhattan and places I’ve never heard of. Their maps are better than Eddy’s. I could put my finger on one and show Can the place where I was born. She asked me if I ever wanted to go back there. I told her there were trees full of big orange fruits that tasted like sunshine when you bit them, but there were also monsters in the water and sickness on the air. She laughed and told me I couldn’t have come from a place like that, but I’m all those things, too. She just doesn’t know that yet.
I wonder what Father would have thought of a place like this. He loved that so many in Jeff City went as women in the street. He loved the horsewomen and the little boys dressed as girls. He always said he wished he could live in a city of nothing but women, but he figured that must be what comes after death. What could be better?
I don’t know if Shy is where I’d like to go when I die. I don’t think you go anywhere but into the ground or up in smoke. But there’s something about this place I like better than Ommun. Ommun always makes me feel like I’m holding my breath and waiting for something to happen. Shy just feels like everything is alive and I’m allowed to be part of it.
I’d love to bring Alice here. Or Eddy, if he would . . . I don’t know if he would. Could. I couldn’t ask.
I intend to head back before it gets much colder. I wouldn’t want to be caught out in the snow. It’s terribly windy here, and the cold off the water bites at night. I can’t be long now.
Tomorrow, I’m to tell the story of the Lion to an assembly. Can and her friends are passing the word and inviting everyone. After that, I’ll be on my way. Can has the location of my truck marked on her map. I’ll go home to Alice with stories to tell.
CHAPTER 12
The Bambritch Book
No fog now
144N
Refugees came in yesterday and this morning. I know we won’t get many. You need a boat to reach the island, and we don’t make it easy. With the blackout in effect, it’s difficult to spot a landing, unless you arrive in broad daylight, and many won’t take that risk.
Raiders tell me that there are dozens coming into Settle, maybe hundreds. The few who came to Bambritch have pieces of the story, so I’ve worked to spend some time with each of them. The vast majority cannot read or write, so I’m recording here. The Midwife did this, too. I tried to show some of them, to explain that I’m keeping up her work.
I wish Eddy was here to see it. Eddy would understand. I wonder where he is now. I think about him carrying the gun that belonged to the Unnamed Midwife, carrying her book after we left Ommun for good. Entrusting the books to me.
In the end, almost none of them saw the value. They’re all so concerned with survival that the spirit in Nowhere that guarded their history is extinct. I told them I was keeping a record so that those who come after us can learn from what we’ve already done. They are all convinced that there will be no one after us. Too many of them came from cities where there were no babies last year or the year before that. They’re all just living day-to-day, wearing rags and eating what they can find. Almost none of them brings a valuable skill.
The few of us who first came to this island, we promised we wouldn’t let ourselves get that way. We were a strange bunch, motley outcasts from Settle and other villages, but not for things we had done. People who had left places like Ommun, for the same reason we walked away from safety. Because safety is sometimes a cage. I remember when we first founded Bambritch, we used to talk about a test. Hortensia had these ideas. We would ask people if they had ever sold a slave or bought one. We talked about barring anyone who had a mark that meant they were an exile. We argued into the night, trying to decide how we’d keep bad people out.
Alice was pregnant then, and she kept having the same nightmare. She dreamt that the Lion wasn’t dead, that he had grown to three times the height of the giant he once was, and that he was coming for us, walking straight across the water toward the island, unstoppable.
She had dark circles under her eyes and she looked so thin it made me guilty just to glance at her collarbones. We had plenty to eat, even in those days. I couldn’t understand how she was diminishing even as her child grew.
“We have to keep out people who might turn out to be like him,” she said, choking back sobs. “We have to. After all we’ve been through, I think you, of all people, should know that.”
I tried to address everyone, but ended up looking mostly at her. “I know you’re just trying to protect yourself and your child,” I said. I had to gulp water. My throat wanted to close like a cave-in. “But if we’re going to keep out anyone who’s ever dealt in slave
s, then I’ll have to leave.”
Alice blinked, her thin, birdlike arms crossed over her belly. “But you were just a child,” she began. “That’s—”
“It’s always going to be something,” I said. “Some reason. Some circumstance. Some way that they didn’t know how bad what they were doing really was. We have to give people a chance to show us who they are now. Some people will have nothing to do with slavery, if it isn’t common around them.”
“No,” Connie said quietly.
“What?”
“You’re wrong, Flora. They’re still the same person, even if they never have the opportunity. They still don’t understand what it means to be a person, even if they don’t have a chance to take that from anybody.”
Connie never liked to talk in front of a crowd, and they reddened as all eyes turned to them. Hortensia was smiling behind her hand.
“You don’t have to ask whether they have or whether they will. You just have to ask them whether they think it can be justified. If they say yes and start to give reasons, they can’t come. If they say no, they probably can.”
That still ruled me out, but I couldn’t say that to my only living child, who had seen through a lie of their existence and found a way to cut it clean in two.
Connie was so much like Eddy. I used to imagine the two of them together, Eddy teaching Connie how to handle a gun or gut a fish. I used to imagine a third between them, a little shadow of a person. The person Eddy’s child might have grown to be.
But I haven’t dreamed that way in a long time. What is, is. What time we have is all that we have. Everything comes to an end eventually. Eddy did. Connie did.
I remember thinking in those days that Connie would grow up to be a leader, take my place on the council, and I would teach them to braid their hair.
What we want for our children and what they want for themselves are so different, I don’t know how two such animals live together. They chafe against one another like a fox in a dark henhouse. Feathers fly. Everyone bleeds. And in the end, one of them is lost forever.