by Meg Elison
The crowd’s reaction was thunderous; they were good and lit, too. Flora swallowed hard.
They’re not expecting me. They’re having a good time. I can’t do this. I can’t just spin it around and make them angry, make them sad.
But the emcee was striding over to their side of the stage already, priming to introduce her. Flora patted her silks and smoothed her hair. She put up one of the long loops that covered her head.
Like Archie said. Always have something to reveal. Always have a secret.
“Tonight we have a special visitor, here as a guest of our fine mayor, Madam Max!”
On cue, Max rose and waved to the crowd, throwing kisses to the balconies. Women whistled and stomped. Yon and Anya dimpled on either side of her, preening to be seen as well.
The emcee went on and Max sank back down, her hand sliding into Yon’s skirts to slip between her thighs.
“Tonight’s guest comes from another town. Somewhere not as grand as Shy, but there is no city in this blighted world as grand as Shy, is there?”
The cries of No no no came from all around. The emcee held her arms out.
“This stranger comes from a city of brave fighters. She herself was one of them. She herself was part of the battle that killed the Lion of Estiel.”
The crowed hissed and Flora could feel their collective energy contracting and going colder. She watched the emcee with awe. This woman knew what she was doing.
“This stranger helped rid the world of one of its great monsters. Slavers. Killers. And tonight, she has agreed to tell us the tale. Shy women, I ask you to welcome Flora of Jeff City!”
The emcee reached out her hand and Flora took it, coming up the four steep stairs that led from the mayor’s private table to the stage.
Flora’s heart pounded in her chest. For an instant, she could see eyes all over the room, taking her in as a stranger. She felt them look her over, make their decisions about her. She heard the rush of polite, encouraging applause.
She faced out, still holding the emcee’s hand. The taller woman bowed and slipped away, leaving her alone.
In the glare of the long flames, Flora floated alone on an island of light. She felt like she was behind a white wall, like a clean sheet of silk hung up for her privacy.
Good. That’s perfect.
She reached up and pulled back her hood, showing her intricately braided hair. She heard a few gasps and it made her smile. She held up her hands.
“Good women of Shy! Thank you for having me here tonight—”
“Louder!”
“Speak up!”
The voices came from the upper balconies and the far back. Flora swallowed and began again, speaking from her belly and pushing her voice to the rafters.
“Good women of Shy!”
Cries of approbation answered her, then died down.
“Thank you for welcoming me to your city tonight. Thank you, Mayor Max, for your hospitality. Thank you, Can, for bringing me here.”
She cleared her throat and laid her shaking hands on her hips, trying to look confident.
I have faced people who wanted to eat me alive. Surely I can do this.
“I come from Jeff City, a small town formerly in tribute to the Lion of Estiel. We sent him all kinds of tribute. Weaving, like my own work. Crops and bullets and arrows. But most of all, his tribute was women and girls.”
Flora took a few steps forward, lifting her head. “Paws of the Lion would come to Jeff City whenever they wished and take whatever they wished. We didn’t fight them because they would have killed us all. They burned other villages that didn’t give him tribute. They burned down Nowhere, the village my friend Edd—Etta came from.
“We brought him trade of strange drugs. Etta’s lover Alice is a skilled drugmaker. She distilled milk from flowers that can make a person sleep through sickness. She is so clever, she has saved many lives. But that was not enough for the Lion. He stole Alice. And Etta. And me. We were all part of his harem.”
Flora dropped her head for a moment, trying to remember enough of the story to make it feel real, but not so much that she could not escape her memory.
“Go on,” chanted a few women in the front row. The chant picked up and echoed throughout the house. “Go. On. Go. On. Go On.”
It gathered strength and so did Flora. She held up her hands.
“Thank you. So, we were in his harem. There were women from all over, women from places I’d never heard of. Little girls, some still babies. The Lion kept killer cats, bigger than a man. He kept Paws all around him at all times, so he was never alone. He kept Etta in his own apartments and tried to make her tell him all she knew. Etta is a great raider, and she knows where weapons are hidden all over around the Misery.
“Etta is the strongest, cleverest person I’ve ever known. She stood up to things that would kill most people. She endured and she fought. When she had an opportunity, she fought the Lion, hand to hand. I didn’t see it happen, but I heard she put a knife here—”
Flora thrust a hand hard into her own armpit to show them. She became the Lion, staggering a little. She stalked to the far end of the stage, grasping for invisible weapons.
“And still he fought. He sent his great cats to kill her. She killed them instead.”
Now she was Etta, crouched low, hands out before her like a set of claws.
“She killed him with a thousand wounds. She cut him and bit him and stabbed him and shot him. She skinned him and took his hair for a trophy on her belt. She lit his house on fire. She made sure he would rise no more.
“The Paws tried to stop her, but she killed them as she went, stealing guns and cutting them down without a look.”
Flora strode back to the center of the stage, both hands raised in finger guns, thumbs acting like hammers, her mouth set in a line.
“She came to the harem. She said, ‘Come with me, for we are free and no man owns us.’”
She also tried to put a bullet in my eye and called me traitor, Flora thought.
“And she gathered us up. Her mother and me and all the women she did not know. She found the boys who were kept as catamites and brought them, too. She saved us all and took us to Ommun, a secret place. She was following her hero, the Unnamed. Do you all know the Unnamed?”
“No!” A few scattered cries. Mostly silence. She held them in her hand.
“The Unnamed lived through the Dying. She kept a chronicle of all her days, from the old world to this one. She founded Nowhere and made the place safe for women. Her story should be in the library here. Maybe you have a story of someone who helped to build Shy? Someone who was a hero to heroes like Etta? I hope that you do. Stories like that one teach us how to be.”
Flora settled at the center of the stage. She put her hands together in front of her, modestly. “I didn’t kill the Lion. But I know that he is dead and his power is gone. I saw the end. He will trouble people no more. There are other men like him, but at least that one is gone. Thank you.”
She bowed slightly at the waist, dropping her head down.
The applause started slowly, but it gained enthusiasm and swelled. Flora began to leave the stage.
The emcee skipped up to meet her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Flora. Thank you. How long will you be with us?”
“I leave tomorrow,” Flora said, forgetting to tell the house and just answering the other woman. Remembering, she turned her face out to the crowd. “I leave tomorrow! I have enjoyed my time here!”
The emcee put a thin, light hand between Flora’s shoulder blades. “Please take our thanks and our love with you. Give it to Alice and Etta and all your people. Tell them what they have done affects us all. Will you do that?”
Flora nodded. The thin woman swept her into a spidery hug before pushing her out at arm’s length and holding her there. “Flora! Shy women, give your thanks to Flora!”
Flora used the renewed applause as cover to leave the stage. As she walked down the steps, her legs wo
bbled and threatened to give her up.
Mayor Max had refilled a glass with golden mead and was pushing it at her the instant she rejoined them.
“Excellent tale,” Max said richly. “Truly excellent.”
Flora ducked her head and drank. She struggled to get her breath back as the next act took the stage. Children and teens seemed to stream up the stairs on all sides but the mayor’s private one. More came from backstage until they crowded to the footlights, ranged out in radiating lines like a fan.
The emcee raised both hands. “Shy women, this is your story. This is the story of Shy!” She bowed and stepped nimbly backstage, disappearing in a flash of long legs and strip-skirt flaring.
Four girls sat down immediately in front of the footlights, their faces bathed in the firelight. Each pulled a drum on a strap from her back to her front and sat it in the space she made between her crossed legs. Flora saw that two of the drums were newly made from wood and animal skins, while the other two were made from old-world metal. The four girls banged the drums with their hands, making the warm sound of skin on skin spiked with the colder, harder sound of bones finding metal. Flora jumped a little on the downbeat.
The drummers moved their hands from center to rim, following each hard beat with a tapping of their fingers. A girl with long braids strode out from the rows to center herself between the drummers. Her voice was low and powerful and carried across the theater, which was now as silent as hundreds of breathing bodies can be.
“The world was dying but Shy didn’t die.”
Flora was certain that the girl’s well-pitched voice could be heard by all assembled, but the entire group on stage repeated it, word for word, in the rumbling, excited tone of thunder anxious to catch up with the lightning as the storm rushes in.
“The world was dying but Shy didn’t die.”
The girls on the stage moved as one, couples joining arm in arm the way that drops of water join together. They swirled two by two, serpentine around one another.
One by one, the dancers began to drop. The ones that remained upright stepped over the dead.
“The world was killing, but Shy didn’t kill.”
The dancers repeated the narrator’s words again, and began to catch one another in headlocks, shoot one another with finger guns. Flora saw one grab her partner and perfectly pantomime slitting her throat. The girl dropped.
When only a few were still standing, they stopped. They looked around. The narrator did not turn to see them.
“The world was falling. Shy did not fall.”
The dead began to rise. The girls began to climb on top of one another. The biggest and most muscular knelt on the stage, boosting smaller girls onto their knees, holding and anchoring them by the hand. Other girls climbed on to that second row, balancing on shoulders and reaching back to pull up smaller and smaller still. One tiny girl climbed up the tower of bodies without fear, coming to the very top as though she were climbing a tree. They held her aloft, shaking a little but perfectly solid. She raised her arms and held them there.
On the far side of the stage, Flora saw an identical tower taking shape. Arranged in just the same way, the girls lifted one another up and built the structure. However, as the girls climbed, they pinched one another. They withdrew their hands and wobbled one another on purpose. Girls tripped and fell. The little ones scrambled over one another, trying to rise to the top first, to secure the ultimate position.
“Shy did not fall. Shy did not fall. Shy did not fall.” The cant rose between them.
On the far side of the stage, the tower began to collapse. Destabilized girls fell out of place clumsily, kicking one another as they came down. Flora saw one girl catch a bare heel full in the mouth and was surprised to see her spit a little blood after the offending foot. Bodies hit the floorboards with bangs and thumps. Girls landed on top of one another, slapping the stage with their hands to take the impact. Skillfully, they tumbled to hit the ground without real injury.
“Shy did not fall. Shy did not fall. Shy did not fall.”
On Flora’s side, the tower stood steadfast. The girls holding the littlest in her place moved their hands to her knees and the small of her back. They lifted and flipped her suddenly, sending her high into the air and catching her in a basket made of their arms. No sooner had she landed than they tossed her again, catching her this time on a single leg, the other raised up to her head and held there in her small, strong fist. The projectile girl grinned, then fell backward, twisting again into their arms.
The tower of girls began to carefully sort themselves into another shape, coming down into a wide ring, arms crossed over arms.
On the other side, the pile of disorganized and fallen children had begun to fight one another, pulling hair and elbowing to prevent one another from rising. Anyone who got up past her knees was fairly tackled and dragged back into the writhing mass.
The girls in the ring began to lean side to side, their ringed arms forming a pulsing snake, rising and falling in smooth undulations. The drummers changed their beat again, surging in a round from left to right, making the room pulse like a heart.
“Why did the world die?”
The girls in the ring did not echo the speaker; their heads were bowed together. Instead, the girls in the roiling pile echoed her, calling out in distress. “Why did the world die? Why did the world die? Why did the world die?”
Flora felt the energy thrumming across the whole theater. The crowd was part of the show; this had become less spectacle and more ritual. The mayor and her women were swept up in it, their hands still on each other, their eyes closed in rapture. Flora could see the mayor’s wide, pillowy breasts rising and falling rapidly in her tight gown as she gasped along with the chant.
The caller spread her arms wide and the chant changed. “Men. Men. Men. MEN. MEN. MEN.”
The mayor’s fist came down on the table as the chant spread across the theater. “Men,” she cried. “Men. Men. Men.”
The words came apart from one another, beads on a string with too much room between them. Interspersing the shouts of MEN MEN MEN, the caller interjected.
“They kidnap. They rape. They slave. They steal. Rape boys. Rape girls. Rape the world. Kill the world. Killed the world. Made guns. Made plague. Made sick. Made death. Killed the world. Killed it dead. Killed us all. But we rise. Yes we rise. Rise again. Rise in Shy. Rise and shine. Rising Shy.”
The girls began to rise again, building one huge structure of their bodies, its base wide and its upper level so high that Flora had to tip her head all the way back to follow. On top, smaller girls were launched high into the air and caught, over and over and over.
The caller stalked the front of the stage, reaching out her hands to the house. “Women build. Women make. Women birth. Women keep.”
The orchestra struck up a wheezing but spirited song. Everyone in the theater not already on her feet leapt to them, and the anthem of Shy rang out to the rafters.
Flora didn’t know the words or the tune, but she found it stirred something in her heart. She was choked up, caught in the wave of shared feeling in that place.
As the song ended, the wave began to dissipate. People settled down.
The mayor sank back into her chair, clucking her tongue to her two attendants.
“Is there anything left in that bottle? Have it this way?”
Flora passed it over. “Is that the end of the show?”
Mayor Max laughed a little. “What could possibly follow that?”
Flora could say nothing back. As the crowd began to thin, she gathered herself, looping her silks around her head again.
“Thank you for having me as your guest,” she offered to the mayor by way of parting. “It was an honor.”
Max reached out and took Flora’s wrist, looking her over. “It wasn’t an honor; I wanted to get to know the mysterious stranger I was promised. I see now that there wasn’t much chance for that here.”
Flora looked down at her. �
��I have to be on my way soon. I am expected home.”
Mayor Max nodded. “Tomorrow, then. Meet me at the baths. I start in the early morning and spend most of the day.”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t worry. I won’t bite.” Max bared her teeth as though giving away her lie already.
Flora started to object again, but the woman was moving quickly now, extricating her large body and even larger skirts from her position on the far side of the table. Her ladies followed her a few paces behind, bustling away toward their own private exit.
Flora stared after them.
A few minutes later, Can appeared. “Could I walk you back to your room?”
Flora nodded, wrapping her silks tighter.
Can got them clear of the building, but the crowd was thick. The night was warm and humid, and Flora could smell the river. Lamps were lit on the tall posts that lined the street, and the odor of burning animal fat added another sickening layer to the night.
Flora knew well the humidity of summer nights, having lived her life in warm, wet places. But she felt as ill as if she had never breathed air this heavy before in her life.
“Did you eat too much? That mayor sets quite a table.” Can was lighting a fat cigar that smelled of herbs and sour, spoiled tobacco.
Flora fought the urge to retch. “No . . . no, I just need some fresh air.”
“Oh, let’s go through the park, then.”
Can cut them a path toward a dimmer space: a flat area between the buildings that held rusty, ancient playground equipment. Flora saw that some of the pieces had been welded and others built up with wood. It was quieter here, and a little easier to breathe.
“Mayor Max invited me to the baths tomorrow.”
Can smiled, her fat cigar clenched between her teeth. “The baths are lovely. You may have baths back home, but nothing like this. There’s a whole guild who just takes care of these. The old mayor, Ang. She decreed it. Greatest idea of my lifetime.”