by Meg Elison
“This is quite an operation.”
Athena smiled. “There are three out sick. Today’s quota is light.”
“Where does your wool come from?”
“Outside the city, we operate farms. Sheep, goats, cattle, and horses.”
Eddy nodded. He had seen all the same on the bigger farms in Nowhere, and wild examples besides. However, Nowhere had only a few who could use a drop spindle, and no spinning wheels at all. Scavenging cloth was hard and heavy work, so only those raiders who had trucks could really do it. Most clothes were like Eddy’s: leather and meant for everyday wear. Weavers were scarce, as well. A wool blanket was a costly thing. He stared around in amazement at what he was seeing.
In the dusty yellow light, spun wool lay in white and black and gray-blue stacks on shelves that covered one wall. On the far side of the room, weavers sat at looms in the same condition as the spinning wheels, though not so many. Eddy watched the shuttles move at a distance, entranced.
Softer and better than anything I’ve seen. This city is rich for trade.
One woman caught his eye, sitting on the edge between the spinners and the weavers. She was singing along but absolutely focused on her work.
Eddy popped his chin in her direction. “What’s that woman doing? Why does her yarn look different?”
Athena smiled. “Oh, that’s Flora. She’s throwing silk. Come with me and I’ll show you where it comes from.”
They walked again, out to a wooded part of town. Athena showed him the mulberry tree with its huge leaves, all covered in the soft, flightless moths that had once been silkworms. Empty cocoons littered the ground below.
“See, they’re harmless. Sticky little feet and they can’t even fly.” She held one on the back of her hand, passing it over her cheek. “Silk is hard to make and we only have the one tree. We only use it for things that are very special.” She pointed out the immature worms, who lifted their heads as if to greet him.
“Like what?” Eddy thought of the woman named Flora, her long eyelashes downcast as she pulled out the worm-wool.
“Weddings. New babies. Precious things. There are only four silk weavers. They tend the tree, as well.” She put the moth back on its leaf with the utmost tenderness.
“Are there any new babies now? Do you have a nursery?”
Athena looked down, tucking a lost lock of her hair behind her ear. “Not now, no. Did you say your council is made up of Midwives?”
“Sure, yes. The women who don’t have children, but help bring them. You know.” In Eddy’s mind was his image of the Unnamed, and of Nowhere. The offerings of honey and fresh meat people brought to Sylvia and the other Midwives. He had traveled enough to know that every place had its own heroes and stories, and that his were known nowhere else.
“Huh. We have doctors and a couple of nurses who do that. Do you have new babies back home?”
Eddy smiled. “There’s always a couple. One born last winter—Alexa, daughter of Cassie—and two others last year while I was out in the summer. Our Midwives are great, and we have good survival rates. What about here?”
Athena smiled thinly. “We do okay. About one child a year.”
That doesn’t add up at all.
“One child? With this many women? Do you have a lot of infant mortality?” He saw the look on Athena’s face and was chastened. “Forgive me. That’s a lot to ask. I hope things get better.”
“So do I.”
A small unease was beginning to creep up Eddy’s back. He wasn’t sure he wanted to stay the night, but he had said he would.
There should be more children. This many women, they ought to be knee deep in babies. Unless they figured out birth control, but why would they?
Athena brought them back to Thea, who walked Eddy to a small house that was appointed for a man living alone.
“The pinkish house over there on the left,” she said, pointing, “has invited you to breakfast. She says any time after daybreak.”
“Thank you. I’ll do that.”
“Pleasant dreams, Eddy.”
That was not a phrase Eddy had ever heard before. He slept fully clothed, hands on his gun. He did not dream.
He watched the day break. He washed his face and hands with the cold water left in a tub in the kitchen for him. When it was full light, he walked to the pink house, pinker in the dawn. He circled the house once, hearing nothing. He circled again and heard sounds in the back.
He knocked at the back door.
Flora opened the door to the kitchen. She was tall, and much more striking up close than she had been at a distance, throwing silk. Her eyes were bright, glorious gray and she used some kind of ink to line them and make them stand out. Eddy had never seen that before. He had also never seen hair that was so dark red, almost purple. Everything about her looked careful. Her white apron worn over her green dress, her neat hands, her shy mouth.
So pretty.
“Good morning, good woman.”
“I’ve got fresh eggs. Bread and some canned apples from last year. Sweet water from my own cistern and mint tea if you like it.” Her voice was musical, tripping up and down the words like notes.
Eddy smiled, genuinely disarmed. “That sounds delicious, good woman. I am honored.”
She laughed a little. “They told me you were very formal.”
“Formal?”
She turned out of the doorway. “Please come in.”
The eggs were boiled and still hot, sitting up in ceramic cups. Eddy sliced the heads off his and dove into the yolk with shreds of toast. He was hungry, and as Flora was finishing her own eggs, she pushed a bowl of canned apples toward him. They were preserved in honey with a strange spiced taste.
“What’s in that?”
“It’s called sassafras. I bought it from a trader last year.” She dimpled prettily. “He told me it grows all over. Do you like it?”
Eddy had a large mouthful when she asked. He grinned around it and nodded.
“I’m so glad you’re enjoying it.”
When he could speak, he asked, “Have you always made silk?”
“The worms make the silk. I just throw it and weave it.” She dipped her head and drank a little milk.
She kidding me, or just being difficult?
“So have you always done that?”
“No, I started off in wool like everyone does. I made the neatest, most even yarn, and the silk guild chose me.”
“Can you show me what you make? I can’t imagine what worm-wool must feel like.”
Tell me you’re wearing it and let me touch. He stared at her throat.
“Here.” She rose from the table and left the room. She came back with a square of pale-white cloth that fit in her palm. She held it out. “May I?”
He nodded, looking up at her.
She pressed it to his cheek and rubbed it downward, slowly. It felt cool and impossibly soft against his face. He put his hand to it and touched hers.
“That’s so soft,” he said.
What an obvious thing to say. I am so good at this.
She smiled again, this time teeth and all.
“It took me a long time to get it this smooth and fine.”
He smiled back. “So what would it take to get you to trade some?”
“Have you ever seen a running car?”
More than I’d like to.
Eddy shrugged. “We have a couple of trucks that still run. Making gas is hard and it stinks, but some of our guys use them to haul big stuff in and out of the village.”
“That’s what I want. I will trade whole bolts of silk for one of those.”
Eddy sighed. “You want a lot.”
“You have no idea.”
Flora walked Eddy back to the town square. He didn’t know what he was going to do. He figured it was about time to move on, but he wasn’t sure he had established enough of a contact to ensure future trade. When they reached the center of town, he turned to her.
“What are you goi
ng to do today?”
“Work, like I do most days. Trying to get as much silk thrown as possible before the first berries come in. I’d like to do some dyeing this year.”
“How old were you when you picked that up?”
She looked down. “I started spinning right after I came here. It was my first job.”
“Oh, you weren’t born here in Jeff City? Sorry, I just kind of assumed. Were you on the road?”
In Nowhere, travelers told their stories to the librarian, who edited them and gave them to the scribes. Knowing she had been a traveler sparked him to respect. Most of the people he met in safe places like this had never left home.
“I was, yes. As a child. I don’t remember much.” She wouldn’t look at him.
“Did you come with your parents? Or with a group of people? Did raiders find you?”
“I came by myself.”
Eddy let that hang for a moment. A little girl on the road alone was unheard of. He assumed Flora must have been sold to Jeff City, or escaped slavers on her own.
Fuck, I am never gonna find out unless I ask. Just ask.
“Does . . . Does Jeff City pay for girls? Buy them from slavers?”
“Um. I don’t know.” Eddy tried hard to meet her eyes, dropping his head to intersect her gaze. She looked away, at the floor, anywhere else.
“You don’t know? Do you ever get new people in? Travelers?”
“It’s been a long time.” She pushed her dark-red hair behind her ears on both sides and smiled suddenly, bright and fake. “Mandel would know! Let’s go talk to her.”
Eddy felt that same uneasiness wash over him. Across the square, women walked carrying baskets and balls of yarn. Little girls wore bright bonnets to keep the sun off their faces. Two women stood consulting about ingredients for lotion, and the sound of their voices made Eddy feel a sweet and sad sort of envy.
Discussions between women only were rare and precious back home. Relished in talk between Mothers and Midwives, at first-blood parties and moments of privacy. Here, with so many women around, it was commonplace.
He wasn’t paying attention to where they were going. When he turned his head back to match the direction of his feet, he saw that they must be headed into their infirmary. The sign above the door used the same symbol as the one in Nowhere: a red cross on a white background. Eddy had seen it a few times in his travels and knew it must be a symbol from the before.
Inside, the tallest woman Eddy had ever seen was wrapping a bandage around a man’s forearm.
“Next time, just let it fall. Don’t dive after it. You’re not a young man anymore, Eamon. Your back won’t carry you forever.”
“Yes, Mandel. Thank you. I’ll bring your house some good dry wood for this.”
“That’ll be fine.”
Mandel turned around and Eddy watched with his mouth open. She was two heads taller than him, with rippling blue-black braids that hung shining to her waist. She dipped her hands into a basin and dried them on a cloth before speaking to them.
“Flora, so lovely to see you! Not sick, I hope?” Her mouth was kind and quick, and she looked Eddy up and down as she spoke.
“No, Mandel. Thank you, I’m well. This is Eddy, he’s a traveler from the south.”
“Good to see a new face, Eddy!” She reached out and gave him the same one-armed grip he had received before.
That must be the way a woman greets a man. Two women do it with both arms, woman and man with one. Or is it just one for outsiders?
“New faces is actually what I came to talk to you about,” Eddy said. “Do you have some free time?”
“Never,” she said with a small laugh. “But we can talk anyhow.”
He nodded, remembering Sylvia and the other Midwives, the way they always seemed to be working. Sylvia had told her that they had to force each other to take breaks, just to keep morale up.
Mandel picked up a tray of instruments and began dropping them into a pot to boil. “So, what can I tell you?”
“How do you handle newcomers to Jeff City?”
“We don’t have many.” Her back was turned, but it didn’t sound like a lie.
“Yes, I’ve heard that.” Eddy forced his voice to stay even, not too eager. “But when you do get them?”
“It depends. On their attitude and why they came. What they want, you know.”
“Do you accept new people, if they want to join you?”
“Sure, if they want to work and not make trouble.”
“Men, too?”
Mandel was silent for a moment, putting the pot on a hook that held it over a fire in the far corner of the room.
She turned around and looked at him cautiously. “Yes, men, too. Do you need to leave your own town and join us here?”
“No,” he said impatiently. “What do you do with slavers? With men who show up in the town square with a pregnant little girl and ask you what they can get for her?”
“Oh.” Mandel tossed her head a little, and a black braid slipped over her shoulder. “As I said, that doesn’t happen often. But when it does, we buy the girl.”
Eddy worked his jaw for a few moments, unable to speak.
“Why?”
The tall woman looked at Flora and sighed. “To end her misery. To get them to leave without trouble. To keep the peace and keep the child.”
“So you have repeat sellers? Men who steal girls from their people and drag them for miles to bring them here for . . . for what? How do you pay for them?”
“Doctoring, mostly. Men who live on the road live with running infections and bad teeth and unset broken bones. Sometimes just drugs, though we don’t have much.”
Eddy was hot all over, but somehow his heart was like ice. “You help them. You encourage the slave trade, and you keep slavers healthy?”
Mandel looked exasperated. “We didn’t make the world, Eddy. We just have to live in it. They’re going to do it anyway, at least they know they can bring them here.”
He couldn’t speak.
“Eddy,” Flora almost whispered. “What do your people do?”
Eddy laughed shortly. “We kill them. For fuck’s sake. Of course we kill them. We hang them up outside our gates with a sign that explains what we did. We take any women or children they have, and it ends there. It ends.”
Maybe they just don’t have the weaponry. Maybe they didn’t have someone like the Unnamed to tell them how it had been on the road, how it would be.
“How barbaric,” Flora said, looking at Mandel.
The tall woman clucked her tongue. “Dead men don’t learn anything. Changed men change the world.”
“Men don’t change,” Eddy said automatically. “They never have.”
“If you say so,” Mandel said with a hint of amusement. She turned her back on them without saying good-bye.
Outside, Eddy turned on Flora. “Is that what happened to you? Were you bought?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, what, then?”
“I was . . .” Her gray eyes darted for a moment. “I wasn’t a slaver. But I was an apprentice to one. I was so young. They gave me the chance to stay and make a change. So I took it.”
What does a slaver’s apprentice do? Run down the little ones? Hold them while he sharpens the knife?
It must have showed on his face, because Flora looked like she knew herself judged.
“There’s a lot here you don’t understand,” she said. “That you’re never going to understand. Because you only see one solution.”
She walked away and left him there.
Eddy wanted to leave town immediately, stomping out still burning with rage. He made himself wait.
Instead, he walked to the marketplace. He could see what Thea had meant; this edge of Jeff City was clearly the face they showed to outsiders. Huge reinforced gates blocked the main road in, patrolled by sentries carrying bows. The ratio of men to women on this side of the city looked right to Eddy. He saw only two or three women in t
he streets and stalls, mingled among thirty or forty men.
Everyone in the market was clearly armed. Mostly knives and machetes. A man walked just in front of Eddy, and he had a moment to admire the workmanship of the man’s bow, smooth and curved like a tender upper lip. It was nearly as long as the man himself, Eddy saw as the other man strode away.
Pulling his hood back, Eddy approached the nearest stalls to examine the goods for sale. It was still fairly early in the day; bushels were full and the cool air was kind to the butchers. He passed by fruits and vegetables, noticing that their drying and canning looked expert. He fingered cloth of all types, though silk was kept away from customers’ hands. At a dairy stall he bought a lump of soft cheese wrapped in a scrap of cloth and took a small bite. It was well worth the clay pot of toothache remedy he had traded for it. The cheese was smooth and salty, better than any he had had in Nowhere. He knew people back home would be eager to trade here.
The bowyer’s stall was deserted when Eddy arrived. He carefully wiped his fingers and pocketed the cloth before laying his hands on the merchandise.
The bows on display were carved from ash and hickory, he saw. They were strung with sinew, and a bag of spares sat just out of Eddy’s reach on the far side of the table. Behind it, ten bows were piled unstrung on top of a cowhide. He picked up one of the displays, an ash bow. He held it before him, testing the weight of it.
Through the purple curtains at the rear of the stall came a short man with a heavy belly that hung over his pleated skirt. His head shone bald in the center, ringed around the back with thick black hair. His eyes were as small and intelligent as a wild boar’s.
“A beauty, isn’t it?” He held his hand out for the ash bow and Eddy handed it over. The short man pulled the bowstring in profile, muscles suddenly clear in his inelegant limbs.
“A beauty, yes. Are you the maker?”
“Oh, I’m the bowyer, if that’s what you mean. One of three here in Jeff City. Name’s Fletcher, if you can believe that.” He grinned, tiny teeth in a heavy gum line.
Eddy had never met a bowyer or a fletcher and didn’t get the joke, but he knew from the man’s tone that he had meant to be funny. He smiled and laid his hands on the bow’s hickory twin.