The Book of Flora

by Meg Elison

  “My father died years ago. I was grown, but it still hurt me.”

  Alice looked up, wiping her eyes. “How?”

  “Twister,” I said. “You got those around Nowhere, right?”

  She nodded. “There hasn’t been a big one in a long time.”

  “This one wasn’t that bad,” I said. “Just bad enough. He was hit by a flying piece of wood, just straight to the temple. He didn’t even look that different. But I was angry for a long time, that he didn’t take shelter with me. When he told me to.” I sighed. “At least there’s no reason to be angry with her.” I gestured to the body, cool but still pliant.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Etta gets mad at everything. She’s probably thinking right now that our time in Estiel shortened Ina’s natural life.”

  I looked down at my hands. “Maybe it did. For all of us.”

  Alice wiped her nose. “Well, if my mother was here,” she said, suddenly resolute. She began to gather the sheet beneath Ina and untuck it from her mattress. “She’d tell me to be about my business. This kind of thing won’t wait, and crying won’t bring anything back.”

  I nodded and stood, trying to mirror her actions on my side of Ina’s bed. Alice gathered the edges of the sheet together and began to sew a shroud.

  When she was nearly done, she told me to go ask Eddy if he wanted to say goodbye.

  I walked back to the room where I had left him, but he was gone.

  Three young men—Aarons, Alma always called them—arrived and helped us carry her off the bed and out. When we came to the split in the main hall, we moved to head for the lift, but the boys took the body the other way.

  “Hey,” I said, pointing down the dim line toward the way out. “We need to head up.”

  One of them, a blond, shook his head at me. “We have to take her to the mourning room. Alma is waiting.”

  “Alma? What does she have to do with this?”

  “She performs funerals, as Prophet.”

  They were off again without a word, as if nothing we could say would change their plans. As if she were theirs.

  I had never seen the mourning room before. It was clearly shut up and used for nothing else. The Leaf boys were still dusting when we got there. Alma was puffy-faced, not ready to be awake and yet serving. She greeted the body with a sad smile.

  “Dear Sister Ina. She lived a long and fruitful life. As a Mother, first of all. She fulfilled her purpose.” She gestured to a pine box on a low table. The wood was raw, but old. She saw us staring.

  “Our wise founders, those who built Ommun, provided for us in every way they could. There are enough coffins in one of the lower storage levels to last us many generations. I had this one brought up for her.”

  Alma had a way of stating the facts as if everything that occurred was a gift especially from her.

  “We need to pass the word,” Alice told her urgently. “Everyone from Nowhere will want to say goodbye.”

  “The news has already gone out to all the people of Ommun,” Alma said smoothly. “We will all be part of her funeral.”

  This was clearly a well-rehearsed set of steps. Fresh wildflowers appeared at once and went into built-in vases all around the white room, along with fresh water. A long table was set with milk and juice and bread. People began to join us in the room, sleepy and stunned. Some were still in their pajamas. The children did not appear.

  Tommy was hot-eyed and upset, going straight to Alice. “Where’s Etta?”

  Alice shook her head, looking around. “I don’t know. She discovered the body, and then I lost track of her.”

  The room began to fill with the low, murmuring sound of everyone passing the news and catching up. Chairs scraped against the floor. Alma, ever the veteran reader of the room, began to gather herself.

  “Brothers and Sisters,” she began. “We come together today to celebrate the life of one of our own. Mother Ina was a recent addition to our stake, one of the many refugees from Nowhere and the destruction of Estiel. She was nonetheless one of our own Sisters, and we loved her as we love any Mother of a living child.”

  Alice caught Bronwen’s eye across the room. Tommy glanced between them both. They had all caught it: Alma was adopting language from Nowhere to describe Ina’s life.

  “Ina became a Mother late in her life, despite wanting and trying for many years to have a child. She knew that it was her destiny and her highest good to bring another life into this world. She valued that life above all others, even risking her own to bring Sister Etta into this world.”

  “You didn’t know her.” The voice came from the back of the room. People turned.

  There stood Eddy, his pack on his shoulder like he was already on his way out the door. He was. We all were.

  He carried in his hands Ina’s wooden baby belly. He had found it in one of Ommun’s laundries, discarded with the unsalvageable clothes some of them had worn in from Estiel. No one in Ommun had known what it meant, and so it had not made its way back to its rightful owner.

  Until now.

  He came up the aisle, laying his bag beside Alice as he went. He was dressed in all dark clothes, a dark man in that white room. It was as if all our eyes lent him weight, making him more than what he was. He took on gravity as he came up and stood before Alma.

  “This isn’t your story,” he said to her beatific face. “It never was, but that didn’t stop you from telling it.”

  Alma didn’t flinch. “This is my place,” she said. “I lead Ommun. I speak to Heavenly Mother, and she speaks to me. You need to sit down.”

  Instead, Eddy turned around to face us.

  “I won’t be told how to live. And I won’t be told how to die, either. Most of all, I’m not going to stand and hear my mother’s fucking life story from someone who barely knew her.”

  Alma was nearly blocked by Eddy’s body, so she took a step to the side to continue addressing us. “Sister Etta, you are prostrate with grief. You can feel your sorrow without sharpening it to hurt those around you.”

  Eddy did not turn to look at her. “I am here to feel my sorrow, and yours. I am here to say goodbye to my mother. I am here to mourn the others who should be with us right now, who knew her even longer than I did, those who were lost in Nowhere and Estiel.”

  Alma opened her mouth as if to speak, but Eddy cut her off.

  “Ina, daughter of Maude, had not always wanted to be a Mother. She was glad that it happened, but she was other things, too. She was trained as a Midwife and would have been one her whole life if not for the Law of Emily.”

  Heads nodded around the room.

  “She was a teacher. She taught scribes to copy books, and then taught them how to write their own. She was a fierce fighter for the history of Nowhere, and wanted to make sure that it included everyone.”

  Eddy was catching his rhythm now. He moved his feet farther apart. He looked up from the corpse.

  “She was funny. Smart. Wicked. She would always call people on their shit. Me, most of all. She had one of the biggest Hives in Nowhere. She lived in the House of Mothers for as long as she could stand it, but they drove her crazy. When she had her own house, there were maybe thirty men in and out of there? Forty? All ages, all kinds. She was always with somebody. She was never lonely, but she belonged only to herself.

  “She was a good Mother to me. Good woman, good Mother. She took care of me, made sure I was able to stand on my own and find myself. When I got my first blood, she led me through the strangeness of it. When I told her I wanted to be a raider, she accepted it. She gave me my first gun, the same gun I carry now, the same gun that had belonged to the Unnamed.

  “There were parts of herself she never shared with me. I don’t know much about her life before I came. Her old friends, Carla, Ash, and Shannon, are gone now. Only the youngest of her Hive are still with us. Parts of her will always be a mystery to me, but maybe that’s how it’s meant to be. She’s not mine. She never belonged to anyone but herself.”

 
Alma finally got the bit back between her teeth and stepped down off the dais to stand beside Eddy.

  “She was all of ours,” she broke in smoothly. “She belonged to everyone around her, as part of a community. As each of us does. That’s why I have decided to decree that the next child born in Ommun will bear her name. The next Ina—”

  “Will you fucking stop?” Eddy turned and spoke straight into Alma’s face. For once, Alma actually flinched.

  “Stop. Stop trying to give and take names. Stop trying to connect things so that life makes sense. Stop trying to tie everything together where it doesn’t fit. If the child doesn’t come out of you, you’re not naming it.”

  Lucy stood up, quivering with rage. “The Prophet names and blesses every child. That’s her right, and you need to respect it. Our names come straight from Heavenly Mother. This is an honor she’s doing for Ina, just as she did for you. You should be grateful. You people are never grateful.”

  “Sister Lucy, your faith shines right through you.” Alma smiled.

  “No,” Bronwen said, rising out of her seat. “Unless someone is holding on to a real big secret, the next child born here will be mine. I’ve already picked a name. I don’t want to be told who my child will be.”

  “But Sister Bronwen,” Alma said, coming forward. “Remember when I blessed your child? I laid my hands on you and gave my matriarchal blessing. Told you all that would come to pass.”

  Bronwen shrank a little, putting her hands over her belly. “What are you saying?”

  “Blessings come to those who obey,” Alma said. It wasn’t quite a threat. Not really.

  “And blessings can be taken away, right?” Eddy was blazing all over. “At your pleasure. By your decision. Based on what you think.”

  Alma looked him up and down. “You do this to yourself. You have no faith. Your body is corrupt. Haunted.”

  Eddy gave a small, mirthless laugh. He stepped forward one more time. He laid the wooden belly against his dead mother’s body.

  “I know exactly who I am. I won myself, in fight after fight. On the road. In Nowhere. In Estiel. With every lost girl I brought home. Every time I refused to be someone I’m not. I’m sorry I never told my mother my name. I waited too long. But I am not waiting another minute.”

  He looked up over his mother’s body and addressed everyone in the room. His eyes were dry.

  “My name is Eddy. I am the living child of my mother, Ina, who lies dead here today. I was trained as a raider by Errol and Ricardo, my good friends. I killed the Lion of Estiel. I have saved girls and women all my life. I have fought slavers wherever I have met them. I have loved only women in my life, and I will keep right on doing that. I am leaving Ommun today, because I will not be told how to live, love, or die. I will take as many with me as will go.”

  His words rang out in the room like music. For a moment, no one spoke.

  “I named a daughter after you,” Alma spat, red in the face.

  “You named your daughter after someone who doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Eddy turned his back to her and slipped his arms beneath his mother’s shroud. He lifted her body without a struggle.

  Alice picked up Eddy’s pack and shouldered it. We went back to gather our things. Bronwen met us there.

  “I can’t go,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I understand why you’re leaving, but I just can’t. Not while I’m facing childbirth. It’s so dangerous already. I—”

  “It’s alright,” Alice told her. “You’ll be safer here. I know why you’re staying. I get it.” She patted the other woman’s cheek. “I hope it goes well for you.”

  Bronwen wiped her eyes. “I know what I’m giving up. Come back someday, if you can. You know she’ll let you come back. If you just . . . you know.”

  “I know,” I told her.

  The rush was on. Little by little, the people who were going to follow us gathered in the hallway, milling and talking. They had all packed. Not everyone had boots, which I immediately began to worry about.

  And then I asked the question nobody had put into words yet.

  “Where are we going to go?”

  “Back to Nowhere.” Tommy spoke up like there had never been a question at all. “That’s our home. We can rebuild. We can replant the fields. Where else would we go?”

  I didn’t know. It made sense that they all planned for that, but they had so much work ahead of them. There was almost nothing left of Nowhere.

  “We won’t be far,” Sylvia said. “I can come back in a year or two and see if Bronwen wants to come home. Or . . . anyone.” She glanced around, not sure who was with us and who wasn’t.

  That was when I spotted Rei and Gabe.

  Gabe ducked his head, tucking a loose lock of his long hair back into the braid at his neck. “I don’t know who to ask,” he said. “But we want to come along. Ett—uh, Eddy said anyone who wanted to follow. That’s us.” He shot a look over at Tommy, and I got it.

  “You two are coming together,” I said, nodding to Rei.

  Gabe nodded, and Rei reached over and took his hand. “We’re companions. Always have been.”

  I nodded back. Nowhere was not mine to give or withhold, but I knew that Eddy would welcome them.

  Alice stepped up, and in that moment I believed she would lead Nowhere. “Of course you are coming together.” She raised her voice a little, but kept her gaze on the two men. “For a long time, it was hard in Nowhere for people like you . . . and me. People who weren’t breeders. But we’ve seen where that kind of thinking leads. And it’s time to let people be who they are.”

  Kelda appeared with her leather bag and leather clothes just in time for that. I saw her fix her bow on her shoulder and smile a little.

  I knew, even then, Alice would have to say it over and over, everywhere she went. This stuff is complicated. And people forget. And people make sacrifices so that children will be born. But we all believed her in that moment. It was real, and Nowhere became somewhere new before any ground was broken.

  We waited for Eddy, but he didn’t come to us. So we headed to the lift.

  Alma was there, arms crossed over her leaking breasts, face like a storm cloud in red. She is still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, but it was hard to remember that when she was so angry.

  “I forbid you to leave,” she said, her voice ringing mightily through the halls. “You were promised to us. All of you.”

  Bronwen had followed to see us off. She approached the Prophet, her face soft, her hand laid against her belly.

  “Don’t make it any harder for them,” she said. “Let’s have peace between our people.”

  “We are one people,” Alma insisted. “We can’t afford to be stiff-necked about this.” I could see that beneath her exhortations, she was terrified. Maybe she had never lost people like that before. Maybe we really were the first break in her peace. She just didn’t know how to take this break, and I felt sorry for her. She stood there streaming milk, thinking she could mother us all forever.

  But she could not, and it was time.

  Alice shook her head. “No, Alma. We’re going. You can’t stop us.”

  Alma held up one hand, pointing her out. “You may go. You’re a witch. You kill children. You led these people astray. But no one else.”

  Tommy came forward, with Rei and Gabe behind him. Alma’s eyes widened. “If we didn’t believe that when the Lion said it, what makes you think we’d believe you?” Tommy’s voice was clear and carried across the crowd.

  Alma’s face twisted from rage to sorrow and back again. Betrayal was as clear on her face as if we had sold her to a passing slaver. “Brother Rei. Brother Gabe. How can you leave us? What of your calling? Your mish?”

  They couldn’t look at her. They looked anywhere else.

  Alma grew redder still. “I won’t have this. I won’t order the Leaf to raise the lift. You will not leave.”

  “Then we’ll make the climb,” Kelda said, tiredly. “We�
�d better get started.”

  The only other way out of Ommun was a long climb, hand over hand, up a ladder in a steep tunnel to the surface. I looked around, making sure everyone who was with us could make it. We were in good shape. I decided we could.

  It took much longer than any of us thought. A few minutes in the lift translated to hours on the metal rungs. My arms got tired first, the muscles in my biceps and shoulders shuddering and seizing. I had to loop my arms through the rungs and hang there, trying to stretch them out and bring them back around. There was nowhere to really rest. It was agonizing within the first hour.

  Soon thereafter, my thighs began to quiver, the breadth of muscle there taxed beyond anything I had ever asked of my body. My calves cramped twice and I had to push my toes up against the ladder, hanging my body weight against it to stretch them out. This put strain on my ankles, which ached fiercely. By the time I could see the hatch up top, my feet felt like something had taken bites out of their soles. My hands were raw and red, the creases looking like cuts.

  And isn’t escape always like that? Isn’t it always something you carry on your body, something that makes it impossible to pretend it wasn’t real? It wasn’t like Estiel, but it was an escape.

  When we finally made it to the surface, we could still hear Alma shouting at us up the tube. We couldn’t make out her words through the echo. She was just a booming bunch of nonsense coming up from below.

  That was the last time I saw Ommun.

  Eddy was already on the ground. He had carried his mother’s body the whole way up, somehow. Maybe he strapped her to his back. While we had made our sorry goodbyes, he had built her a funeral pyre and laid her tenderly upon it. Her wooden baby belly made a mound over her shroud, and Eddy laid his hand on it for one last moment. He drummed his fingers the way she used to do, making the little hollow tap-tap sound like a drum from the emptiness within.

  I wondered if I would ever see another woman wear that symbol; if anywhere would ever be like Nowhere again. Almost free. All those women living somewhere that they were so close to free.