by Meg Elison
Connie’s eyes grew bright but did not tear up. The four of them sat, locked in the world’s oldest tension, life and death playing themselves out pretending to be love and sex. The sunlight slanted across the table.
A knock at the door.
Too soon. Too soon. They won’t believe it.
But the message was almost too late.
“It’ll just be a minute, my love.” Alice rose and brushed Connie’s cheek with her hand.
Hortensia and Zill stood there when Alice opened it. “It’s done,” Hortensia said in her brisk, no-nonsense voice.
“The attack force in Settle took the army from behind, after we landed the boats. The people of the city gave us plenty of backup, and they’re well armed over there. We’ve gained control of the tanks, but they pushed the plane into the sea. Some casualties, but most of them surrendered. They were all ready to stop this awful thing.”
Flora stood. “You told them Connie was already dead?”
Zill nodded. “You were right. It was like a snake without a head.”
Connie was on their feet, crashing toward the door, knocking over the tea tray as they went.
“That’s not possible,” Connie told them. “They’ve got two mortars aimed toward the old lighthouse, and I told them to fire if there was any kind of attack. I’d have heard it.”
The moment hung in perfect silence, as golden as a cup of tea. Flora watched her only living child’s face, saw cocksure security draining away and becoming the empty, openmouthed mask of betrayal. Despite what it meant for her island and herself, Flora felt her heart break in that ache-filled crystalline moment. She knew it had to happen. She didn’t know it had to hurt like this.
Zill turned and ran at once, already yelling orders. Connie looked after her, rage and regret dawning on their face. They turned back to Alice, tears finally falling from their eyes.
“My love,” Alice crooned. “My love. No need to get upset.”
They turned toward her, their whole heart on their face. They didn’t look at Flora at all.
In the relief and release of it all, Flora was finally able to pull her gun. The real fight was elsewhere. All she had to do was this small thing and surely she could do it. This was the plan, and now she had to pull the trigger. Before Connie sent up another flare, before any more time was lost. Before she lost her nerve. Her hand trembled as it held the weight of the revolver.
Eddy sighed. “The Unnamed. You still have her gun. Kind of fitting. Like a circle.”
Alice smiled and raised a hand to Flora. “Don’t bother. The real Midwife’s weapon did the job.”
Connie’s body folded inward, diminishing. They fell toward Alice, their face still full of unshed longing, despite their agony. Alice cradled Connie like a child, easing them both to the floor, watching their muscles spasm and their face pull itself out of shape with twitches and grimaces. Connie’s hands opened and closed and Alice slipped her fingers into one of them, riding out the contractions and waiting for the moment of emergence. Her long curls hung down and brushed Connie’s forehead, so Alice pushed them back over her shoulder. Wordlessly, she crooned to Connie, trying to soothe them to peace.
Flora watched Alice midwife Connie out of their body. Flora could not move or speak. They all waited for the end in silence. The gun weighed more in her hand than her living child ever had.
Connie’s eyes rolled up in their head as the poison finally reached their heart. Alice pushed the body gently off her lap, stood up, and looked down over them, utterly without remorse.
The wind blew in through the still-open door and pulled it shut. The latch clicked home as the only sound in the silent room.
EPILOGUE
Eddy waited at the appointed place for the Alexandria to arrive on midsummer that year. There was a small cottage big enough for the three of them to spend a few days watching the light grow longer.
Alice and Flora did not want to stay on board the library ship; they both had lives to get back to on Bambritch. But they thought a short trip couldn’t hurt.
The librarians were glad to see them. Dell was long gone, replaced with a flinty-eyed commander named Di. Di greeted Eddy like an old friend, and Eddy introduced her to Flora and Alice.
They brought gifts from Bambritch in the only variety the librarians liked: books. They had collected from households that had diaries to spare, and paid scribes to copy some of the more precious ones to give to the Alexandria. Copies of the Book of Flora and the Bambritch Book were among them. Alice kept no narrative, but had made a copy of her personal herbal to add to their collection. The librarians received them warmly.
Eddy told Di what they wanted to see, and the leader was amenable. They sailed north, chugging with the ship’s mighty engines into a frozen sea.
The island was exactly where Eddy said it would be. Di told them that there was a librarian on the island who had been left behind to study these women over a year ago. With some difficulty, they found her.
She was a woman in middle age, wrapped in furs and windburned across her high cheekbones. She offered her hand and said her name was Quinn.
“So is it true?” Flora asked without preamble. She knew that Quinn would understand.
“I don’t know why it’s happening,” Quinn said. “But yes. They’re fragmenting. It’s been happening here for generations, or so they tell me. The offspring can only frag; they can’t get pregnant in the usual way. Some of the frags can do both, but not the ones who are born of it. They’re just different.”
“Male and female?” Alice was looking at the faces of the people who came aboard the ship, looking at the strangers who had once again arrived on their shore.
Quinn shook her head. “Neither. Something else. Something new.”
They held the strangeness in silence. The world was cold and just-born, and snow drifted down soundlessly.
Before they pulled out and made their way back toward home, Eddy, Alice, and Flora had one last night on that faraway shore. Di came to their shared cabin and woke them, insisting they come up top. Shivering, wrapping themselves tightly, they came.
High above, sparks and spears of color were streaking through the sky in a shimmering ribbon. The effect was startling, making Flora feel like she was flying, or blowing away on the wind. The lights were purple-red-green, not like a rainbow but like a rainbow’s darker, stranger cousin. They could not look away.
They stood on the deck for as long as the lights continued. They did not argue over whether or not the lights were real, or what they meant. They simply were.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2016 by Devin Cooper
Meg Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. She is the author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, winner of the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award, and The Book of Etta. The Book of Flora is the third 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. For more information, visit www.megelison.com.