by Meg Elison
“Gunner,” yelled Dell. “Don’t fire until we’re between the smaller vessel and the slave ship.”
“Aye,” a redheaded woman yelled back. The ship lurched forward, churning against the shallow water and thrumming all over as the ancient engines stirred to life. When it began to move, it was surprisingly fast.
Across the bay, Bodie immediately took the hint. He brought the Ursula into the shadow of the mighty Alexandria, slipping behind her as a chick seeks the warmth beneath a mother hen’s wing. Flora leaned over the railing, hoping for a glimpse of Connie, but the child must have gone below.
The slave ship was fully visible now, and it was a monster. Three masts of aged black wood, with men swarming over her decks like ants.
“Gunner,” Dell yelled again from a perch halfway up to the crow’s nest. “Fire at will!”
“Wait,” Eddy yelled, his brow furrowing. “What about the—”
The guns fired immediately, a booming, earsplitting thud that rocked the whole ship. And then a second and a third. Across the water, the slave ship splintered pitifully, struck twice by whatever ammunition something so large could offer. Fire engulfed the fragments as they began to sink.
Eddy watched in horror, his mouth hung agape. Flora looked around the deck of the ship, staring in disbelief at the women on board celebrating such a malicious, forgone victory.
“What the hell?” She could barely hear herself speak. She reached out to the woman nearest her and dragged her close. “What the hell? What about the slaves on board?”
The woman pushed her off. “We’ll rescue anyone who’s in the water who isn’t male. Come on. Don’t be ridiculous. We did them a favor.”
Flora staggered off and reached for Eddy. She looked at his face and saw something there that terrified her. He had moved past his earlier consternation. He was wearing an expression of wild satisfaction. He was glad.
And this was what you always wanted. An unambiguous, untainted victory. A commitment to an absolute, no matter what it costs. They kill slavers the way you always wanted to: immediately, without negotiation or hesitation. Those guns on your body will never match what the guns on this ship can do.
Below, Flora saw that they had indeed dispatched rescue boats to search for survivors. She didn’t think they’d come back with many.
She looked for Dell but didn’t find her. She grabbed Eddy by the arm. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got to get back to Bodie and Alice and Connie. Come on.”
She found Eddy was hard to move, but in the end he went with her.
Aboard the Ursula, Connie was all eyes. “What happened? Who’s on that big ship? How did they get those big guns?”
Flora reached out and cupped Connie’s cheek. “It’s a library ship,” she said. “They keep books and stories, and they kill slavers. That’s all it is.”
“A library ship?”
Flora nodded. “It’s new to me, too.”
Alice stared over the bow at the wreckage of the slave ship, one hand on her belly. “They could have just as easily fired on us. They don’t know we’re not a slave ship.”
“We were there to tell them,” Eddy said. “You were never in any danger.”
Alice gave a short little laugh. “As if that’s ever been true.”
“So, are we ready to push up the coast?” Bodie asked. “We’re not far from Midwife Bay now.”
Eddy shook his head. “They say there’s nothing up there. Nothing at all, no reason to push on.”
Bodie shrugged. “Then what now?”
Eddy was staring at the huge gray ship, ignoring the small boats that picked up survivors. “I don’t know yet.” His voice was low, but his eyes were up.
You do know, Flora thought. Because she knew, too.
CHAPTER 39
The Book of Flora
Midwife’s Bay
Coldest part of the year, but it’s not as cold here
104N
Bodie’s map says it’s San Francisco Bay, but we’re calling it Midwife’s Bay, because that’s what it is. Because the story is what matters. Eddy’s map could have been updated, and I think he would have liked the change. But Eddy is gone.
I can barely stand it. I keep thinking he’s just belowdecks or out on the shore. He’s like a hole where a tooth used to be, and I keep putting my tongue in it. I can’t get used to it. I can’t accept that I ever will.
Alice believes that we’ll meet again. She says that if we found Errol, then Eddy can find us again. That it’s possible. Eddy knows which way we’re headed, but nothing more. He doesn’t know where we’ll end up. I don’t know where that ship will go. We have nothing tying us to one another. I guess we never did.
We lingered in the bay a few days. We watched the fishermen come and go. Connie sat and watched the men take milk. I could tell that they wanted to try it but were afraid to ask.
“It’s alright if you want that,” I told them. “The women are offering.”
“Why do they do that?” Their eyes were shiny, and I tried to remember what it was like to be that young, to still want to be comforted like a child but also ready to fuck like an adult.
“It’s a gift,” I said. “A way to connect. It’s how Mothers feed their babies, you know.”
“I know,” they said quickly. “I know about babies. I’m not stupid.”
I didn’t answer. I waited.
“But there are no babies,” they said, their voice eager. “They just give milk, even though there’s no one who needs it.”
I shrugged. “Women often nurse someone else’s child, if the Mother is sick. Or keeping nursing for years, if the child still needs it. I don’t know how they start or stop. It just happens.”
“Maybe they can just make it happen,” Connie said. “Maybe it happens because they want it to, and they know that they can.”
“Maybe,” I said, because I didn’t know how to argue it. I keep returning to the place where I am certain that they don’t really know or believe the truth of how people have children. It kept coming up in the days before Eddy left. The other night was the last straw. I’m still reeling.
We were all on the deck. Alice was weaving a patch for one of Bodie’s bad nets. He’s taught us all how to do it. I’ve been weaving since I was Connie’s age, so it was nothing to me. The open, even weaving of nets is no task at all compared to the tight, hot-fingered weaving of wool. Connie struggles with it. They have never really developed a trade, in all the chaos of their life. Eddy refused to do it at all. Alice is neat-handed, smart, and patient. She’s as good as I am, now that she’s been at it awhile.
Connie was watching her do it. They’d been staring at her off and on since she told us she was pregnant. I didn’t think much of it, since pregnant women are always a source of wonder and fascination for the people around them. Connie is no different from that. But still, something about the intensity of their gaze worried me. Does everyone on this ship want to fuck Alice? I figured I was about to find out.
“How did it happen?” Connie just blurted it out, giving Alice a little jump of fright.
“What?” she said, turning her neck away from her work to look at them. “The net?”
They shook their head. “No, the baby. You said you’re having Bodie’s baby. So how did it happen?”
Alice smiled a little awkwardly. “I told you when you asked, child. We did the thing that makes them. I got pregnant, as women often do.”
They looked around the deck, spotting Eddy in the prow, staring at the lights of the library ship, and me with the Midwife’s book. “Yes, but you’ve done that with Eddy and Flora, too. So how do you know it’s Bodie’s?”
Bodie smiled and put a hand on the back of his neck. He was as embarrassed as a child, that leathery old seaman! “Yes, child. But I have man seeds in my body. I can give them to her. These others can’t, you see?”
Connie’s brow dropped at once. “What? Don’t we all have the seeds of children inside us?”
I wal
ked over to them and put a hand on their shoulder. “It has to be a man and a woman,” I told them gently. “That’s the only combination that makes a pregnancy.”
“Then why don’t you have Eddy’s baby?”
Eddy and I looked at one another, and then away.
“Eddy and I weren’t born with the right bodies to do that,” I told them. “Well, actually, we were. But things have happened since then. I was cut as a small child, and Eddy—”
“Cut how?” Connie asked at once.
I cringed. “Connie, this is awfully personal. Why do you need to know?”
“I don’t understand,” Connie said. “I don’t understand why sometimes people have babies and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes babies die and sometimes they’re born wrong. Sometimes they’re like me. Can I have a baby? Can I get someone pregnant?”
“Nobody knows what their future will look like,” Eddy said. He did not turn around and look at us. “Nobody knows the answer to that.”
“That’s right,” said Bodie. “It’s luck. Or it’s magic. You cast your lot and what comes up is what you deal with.”
Connie shook their head. “How can I accept that? When it’s so important. When it’s everything.”
“I know what you’re feeling,” I said, trying to draw them near. “I know it’s hard to settle into your body and feel welcome in it, take control of it.”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” Connie said, breathing harder. “I was a girl. I had everything. I could have had a Hive, could have had endless children. Then one day I became something else and nobody could love me.”
“That’s not true,” I told them. “You can still have a Hive. You can get children other ways; look at how I got you. Eddy rescued a dozen girls from slavers, and any of them could have become his child.”
Eddy did not add anything.
“Not like Alice has it.” Their voice was shaking. “And you could, too. If you wanted to. Being cut doesn’t change that.”
“Connie,” I said, my voice low. “I don’t have a womb any more than you do. I don’t think you understand how this works.”
“I can talk you through the process,” Alice offered, standing up. “It’s a little mysterious, but not that complicated, in the end. Lend me a piece of your charcoal and I’ll sketch it out.”
Connie shook their head. They looked at Eddy, Alice, and me in succession, over and over. They laid their hands against their chest and belly, mimicking Eddy when he breathes, Alice when she feels for her child. They were silent a moment.
“What is a woman?”
“I’m going to become a librarian,” Eddy said, out of nowhere.
“What?” I was asking them both.
“I’m so sick of this,” Eddy said. “Of all of it. We’re never going to find what we’re looking for, because it doesn’t exist. I don’t want to fight. Not even the little fights that happen when you try to build with other people. I don’t ever want to live around men again. I don’t ever want to have to define myself to anyone, ever again. I’m going.”
Alice stood up. Her voice trembled. “Eddy, you can’t leave us. We’ve known each other our whole lives. I wanted to raised my child with you.”
Eddy looked over at Bodie. “No you didn’t.”
Alice gave that little smile and one-shoulder shrug that seemed to work on everyone. She had washed her hair with rainwater, and her ringlets were perfect again. In the light of the rising moon, she was blue-white and as beautiful as any woman I’ve ever seen. “I had to get it somewhere,” she said in a low voice. “And I wasn’t going to get it from you. It could still be ours. Since when does any man have a claim on a child?”
I saw Connie watching avidly, trying to figure it all out.
“Eddy is free to go where he wants,” I said, my heart breaking inside me the way a wave breaks on the rocks. “Isn’t that the point?”
Eddy smiled at me for the first time in I don’t know how long. Since the cave, maybe? It seemed like forever.
“Maybe that’s why your book is blank,” I said.
He looked at me with such nakedness that I could barely stand it. “What do you mean?”
“Because you’re not meant to leave a story behind. Or a child. Maybe you’re meant to watch the stories of others.”
He walked down the length of the deck and took both my hands in his. “Thank you. I won’t forget.”
Alice cried on him endlessly as he tried to say his goodbyes. She clung to him as though she were drowning. He extricated himself and gathered his pack. He was resolute, never wavering. I believe I saw relief on his face and not much else.
He bid Connie and Bodie goodbye somewhat less warmly. Connie seemed stunned and distant. That child has had enough goodbyes to last them forever (haven’t we all?).
Eddy came back to me again. “I have all the guns I’ll ever need, from Ommun. My bag is still almost too heavy with bullets.” He hooked his thumb at the gray ship over his shoulder and grinned. “And you’ve seen what they’ve got. I don’t think I’ll need most of this.”
He pulled two of the pistols from Ommun out of his pack, added a long box of bullets, and handed them to Alice. “Take care of yourself,” he said.
Alice sobbed and wouldn’t take the parcel. Bodie did it for her.
“Mighty fine gift. She’ll thank you one day.”
Eddy nodded. He pulled one of his knives out of a deep place in his binder and gave it to Connie. “This is a good one. Take care of it, and it’ll take care of you.”
Connie looked at the piece of shining steel in openmouthed wonder. “Thank you,” they breathed. Eddy put a hand on their shoulder, and they regarded each other a minute. That was all of it.
He came to me and held out the revolver that his mother had given him. The one that had been passed down through Nowhere all those years, that had come to him from the Midwife.
“You’re following her now. You have her books. You carry this. You go on. I’m done. This should be yours.”
I couldn’t take it. I knew what it meant to him, and I opened my mouth to argue.
“You have to keep it wiped down,” he said, pressing it into my hand. “You have to take care of it. If you touch your hand to it at night, it’ll keep you safe. This is the gun that killed the Lion. This is my heart. It always has been. But it’s time I grew a new one.”
I took his warm metal heart from his hands and held it to my chest the way one holds a child. I wish I had known what to say.
He called to one of the small boats as it passed, taking the librarians away when all their milk was gone. They brought him on without any questions. I took my last look at him against the purpling sky, outlined in black next to a woman whose still-exposed breasts seemed to glow in the dark. Then he was gone.
I used to think that the losses in my life would slow down or maybe cease, that I wouldn’t always be mourning and saying goodbye. But the older I get, the more constant that state becomes.
There is nothing in San Francisco. The stories were true. Much of the old city is under water, and storms have wrecked boats all over the bay, washing them in from the sea and getting them caught there. No fires at night, no signs of life. Alice and I sat on the railing of the ship, watching whales glide through the water among the wrecks. We saw one calving, thrashing her offspring free with a bright plume of blood in the water.
“How do they do that?” Connie asked, their hands moving over their sketchpad.
I didn’t have an answer. Nobody does.
The boat seems emptier than it should be with only one person missing. Alice is wrapped tight around Bodie; they look like a couple of snakes entwined. Connie’s sketchbook is full of nothing but drawings of Alice. Alice from the back, from the side, from above. Connie must have climbed into the crow’s nest to get that angle: Alice’s nose jutting like a blade out over the roundness of her belly. A few other drawings, from memory or from the sea. A litter of kittens. Bodie’s hand sunk into a gravid fish, her n
ight-bright shining eggs spilling out over his hands.
I remember the way he put his fingers in his mouth, sucking their raw saltiness and rolling his eyes up in his head. “Unborn,” he had said. “Magnificent.”
The Midwife is no comfort now. She makes me think of Eddy and almost nothing else. I think of my silence when he burned Ina’s body, and when he was strapped to the Lion’s bed. What should I have done? What could I have said? Is there some other life where we held it all together? Should we have just stayed in Nowhere and tried to rebuild?
Is there even a right answer? Is there any way in this life to feel less pain?
I feel old. I suppose that makes sense. I’m older now than I’ve ever been. But I feel old in the way that means there is nothing ahead. And that is what hurts the most. There is nothing on the horizon now, as we sail ever northward. Connie gets taller and Alice gets rounder, and I get nothing but older, day after day.
CHAPTER 40
The Bambritch Book
High summer, long hot days
144N
I thought I was old then. I didn’t know what old looked like yet, how it would settle on me like invisible weights, bowing my back and making my hips ache. I didn’t know that age would bring the cold into my bones like splinters made of glass, or that it would make my bowels untrustworthy and unpredictable.
The young have no idea the kind of pain and degradation that await. It’s just as well. It would be hard to go on at all if you knew what the end of the line looked like. My prize for fighting, for not dying all those times, is a broken heart and very dry skin.
There is no entry in my book for when Connie left. I knew there would be none, but it still shocked me to come to the place where that book just stops. I closed it and didn’t open it again for many years. When I was ready, I simply began in a new book. I wanted something that had never held a mention of Eddy, or of Connie. I wanted to start over, and so I did.
When we reached Bambritch, Eddy had been gone half a year. The sea was a cold and bitter gray, and it was sleeting into our faces half the time. Connie was sleeping with me out of sheer desperation for warmth. Alice was as big as a house.