The Book of Etta (The Road to Nowhere 2)

by Meg Elison

  As he climbed up the overpass, he scoped out the old structures. He pulled from his pack a tiny pair of binoculars. They were bright-yellow plastic, made for a child. But they worked better than his own eyes, so he treated them carefully and used them with respect.

  He scanned over the chimneys that still stood. Most of them lay in piles of crumbled brick, but a few leaned mostly upright. No smoke hung in the windless evening air. He swept judiciously from side to side, looking for any signs of life or trouble. Nothing stirred.

  A sound caught his attention, and he peered anxiously down at the houses.

  No, not there. Behind you.

  He lowered the binocs and squinted back down the road.

  The sound was horses. Eddy did not know horses well; very few people in Nowhere kept them. He had seen them wild on the plains more than once—huge, hoof-pounding herds that thundered terrifyingly, even at a distance.

  A rider on the road was approaching fast, pulling a second horse behind them. Eddy lowered the glasses and looked around.

  I’m above them, he assessed quickly. I’ve already been seen. I won’t outrun them. They’ll probably pass right by me.

  He backed off the road and stood in the dirt at the edge. Yellow dandelions formed a line behind him. He watched as the rider slowed and came closer. He reached back and put his hand on his gun.

  The rider was tall in the saddle, but completely covered. A long garment draped over their entire body, with a window at the eyes. Strips were tied at the rider’s forehead and shoulders to keep the drapery straight. The cloth was periwinkle blue, streaming back in the wind on all sides as though it were light as air. The sight took Eddy’s breath away for a moment. He shook off the awe and looked at the saddlebags, at the rider’s hips.

  Not armed. Why they stopping?

  The horse pulled up and the second one stepped forward, reining in slower. The rider tied the reins of the second to the horn of the saddle and reached down to haul their long clothes up.

  Eddy tensed.

  The figure looped the yards of fabric off her face and around her shoulders. Flora smiled and pushed her red-purple hair out of her eyes.

  “So glad I found you!” She worked for a minute to catch her breath. “Why did you come this way? Don’t you know they’re looking for you?”

  “Who is?”

  You know who is.

  “Those raiders from Estiel. The Lion’s men. What happened? I’ve heard you tried to kill one of them.”

  Eddy shook his head, looking back down the road. “What are you doing here?”

  “I couldn’t stand the idea of them finding you out here all alone. I came to bring you back.”

  Eddy pulled up his hood and pointed over the road. “I’m going to make camp in one of those houses. And then in the morning, I’m going to head into Estiel. I am not going back to Jeff City, now or ever.”

  Flora slid off her horse and landed pretty lightly. She hauled her cover all the way off and threw it over the animal. The horse was dark brown and seemed tired. Eddy looked nervously at its huge black eye.

  “Then I’m going with you.” Flora pulled at the reins and started to walk. “We can talk about it in the morning.”

  I hate horses.

  As if she’d heard him, Flora popped her chin at the brown horse first. “This is Apples. And that one,” she said, nodding to the cream-spotted smaller horse, “is Star. See the star on her head?”

  “Sure.” Eddy didn’t follow. He was happy to see Flora, but he was put off by her assumption that he would just accept her coming along.

  “I’ve got squirrels in my saddlebag. And some arrowhead potatoes.” She looked back over her shoulder. “You hungry?”

  Grudging, grumbling, Eddy walked forward.

  They found a faded blue house that looked safe enough. Eddy climbed through one of the long-gone windows and kicked out the rusty door from the inside. There was a garage attached where they could keep the horses out of the rain that was now imminent in the heavy, scented air and the electric crackle in everything they touched. The space had no door, only a huge, empty hole where one might have been.

  Thunder rumbled and bashed right on top of flashes of green lightning. Eddy walked around inside the house, trying to find the most intact part of the roof. One of the back bedrooms seemed best. The room smelled of rats, but there was a small fireplace they could use.

  They were nearly an hour in making it habitable, and by then the rain had begun in earnest. They pushed an old wardrobe in front of the window, then argued about using the bed to block the door.

  “If anyone wants to bust in on us, they’ll come through the window,” Flora said, exasperated.

  “You don’t know that.” Eddy stared around the room, trying to come up with a compromise. He stalked into the house’s kitchen. It looked like every other kitchen he had ever seen: picked clean and looted for anything that might hold value. He pried open a warped cabinet door under the old sink and found two plastic trash bins.

  “Here,” he said. He shook one of them out on the floor. It was full of rusty cans, made of cheap metal that smiths in Nowhere never seemed to want. “Gather these up.”

  As they walked back to the bedroom, they laid the cans everywhere so that an intruder would be sure to knock more than a few down as they made their way in.

  “The storm should cover our smoke,” Eddy said. His teeth were chattering. The front rooms of the house leaked in odd spots. The back bedroom had one good-size leak in the farthest corner from the hearth. That was luck. He turned himself to their kindling and rummaged in his pack for his flint and steel.

  “So did you? Try to kill the Lion’s men?” Flora fidgeted, wrapped in her cloak and still freezing.

  He concentrated on the fire. “Better question would be why all of us didn’t stop them from taking that baby. Myles. Everybody just stood there and let them take her.”

  “Violence isn’t the only—” Flora began.

  “Oh, bullshit. You said that before, and I get it. But there wasn’t any resistance. So you all didn’t want to kill them. Alright. But you could have just blocked them, just taken her away from them. She’s as good as dead, you know. Maybe not tonight, but someday soon. They won’t wait. She’ll be serving before she gets her blood and pregnant right after.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do.”

  Smoke poured out of the blocked chimney into the room.

  “Shit.” Eddy felt for the lever of the flue, wrenching at the corroded metal. It wouldn’t budge. He pulled out one of his knives and used the haft of it to pound at the handle until it screeched and gave. Hot air rushed upward and he yanked his hand back.

  He fed the fire without speaking until it leapt and crackled. He pulled off his leather boots and put his socked feet in front of the heat. Flora scooted up and joined him.

  “It’s not our way,” she said quietly. “It just makes things worse. And the Lion’s men . . . They could make things much harder on us. We made a deal with them.”

  “What is that deal?”

  Flora shook her head and Eddy saw tiny droplets of water caught in the fine baby hairs around her face. “I don’t know all of it. But I know they take girls. And I know we let them.”

  “Always babies? They can’t even wait until they get their blood?”

  Flora shrugged. “They’re looking for a particular kind of girl.”

  Eddy remembered something they had said. “They don’t take horsewomen, is that right? Like you?”

  He watched her. She was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin. She turned her head away from him and set it on her shoulder. “Yes, like me. They’re not interested in us.”

  That doesn’t make any sense.

  “Nothing I saw in Jeff City makes any sense.”

  She didn’t answer him.

  They fell asleep three feet apart, shivering in front of the fire. Eddy woke up twice, when the wind knocked over a can and when it howled
. He did what he could to keep the hearth hot.

  Dawn was cold and wet. He woke up to Flora banking the coals and tucking eggs into the ashes.

  “These’ll only take a minute.”

  They ate breakfast in silence. When Eddy was done, he brushed off his hands and stood up.

  “Well. I’m going to keep moving toward the city. You should probably head home.”

  Flora stood and adjusted her cloak. “I told you, I’m coming with you. We really shouldn’t go to Estiel. Is there something you need there?”

  “I don’t want you to come with me. I don’t want company, and I don’t want a horse. I especially don’t want a coward. Alright? Now go on home.”

  Flora looked down at her boots. “I thought . . . I thought that you liked me. I thought you might stay.” She looked up at him with her stormy gray eyes. The ink she used around them was smudged and she was puffy with sleep. It was easy to say no.

  “I don’t know what you thought,” Eddy said shortly, “but that isn’t possible.”

  She huffed a little air and smoothed her hair out. “Why? Because we think about things differently? Because I don’t believe—”

  He shouldered his pack and went to turn away from her. “I don’t care where you go. Just don’t follow me.”

  “I don’t care,” Flora said simply. “What we believe doesn’t matter to me. Only what we do. I want you, Eddy!”

  She called out to him as he tried to walk away. “I want you. I want to follow you. I left my home to follow you. I want . . . I want something different.” She sighed as she struggled to put words to her desire. “I want to be different than I am at home.”

  Eddy stopped in the doorway. He heard himself echoed back, that need to escape not just home but the ghost of himself who lived there.

  He did not turn. He did not take her hand. But she was watching him carefully, and he let his shoulders settle down just the smallest bit.

  “Fine. Let’s see to the horses.”

  Apples and Star trotted out of the garage the minute they were untied from the old pipes. They looked to be in much better spirits than their human companions this morning. Apples began eating the tall grass and wild wheat immediately, while Star lowered her head to drink from a deep puddle.

  Eddy watched them dispassionately.

  Never even tried to ride one of these things.

  “How much faster do you go as a horsewoman than if you’re walking?” he asked.

  Flora gave him a funny look. “On horseback it’s four, maybe five days to Estiel. Much faster. But you have to be careful not to push them too hard.” She reached over and stroked Apples’s side.

  Eddy’s stomach contracted. I don’t want to be there that soon. Memory flashed Estiel’s black rainbow at him again. He took a deep breath.

  “I’ve never ridden before. I’ve seen it done, but I really don’t know how.”

  Flora nodded, patting Apples. “That’s why I brought Star. She’s a training horse for little ones who are just learning. She’s very gentle. Patient.”

  She gives these things too much credit.

  “I see.”

  Eddy was unsteadily mounted and cantering onto the road not long after that. Flora set an easy pace, but he could immediately feel that he would be saddle-sore later.

  “How do you keep from . . .” He indicated his crotch and thighs with his free hand. “It hurts like I’m going to be sore later.”

  Flora laughed a little. “You get used to it. Nothing to be done.”

  “I see.” Eddy spent the next few minutes trying to adjust his seat. “So you were a slaver’s apprentice? I never did get the story.”

  Flora sighed, looking off into the distance. She rearranged the folds of her cloak. Eddy was grateful that she did not wear the huge covering tent she had worn the day before.

  She thought a long time before speaking. “I don’t remember most of that time. I was very young. But yes, I worked for a slaver. His name was Archie. He was old, and he used to tell people he remembered the before.”

  “He couldn’t have been that old.” Eddy adjusted again, feeling punched in his vulva.

  “No, it was just something he said. He made up all kinds of stories. He said he had flown in an airplane. That he saw one of the great glass cities while it was still standing. He said he had known a king in Florda. That’s who I’m named for. Flora, the king of Florda. That’s where he found me.”

  “Where’s Florda?” Eddy was sure he had seen that name on a map somewhere.

  “Far from here. It’s warm there all the time, and wet. There were huge monsters there that slid up out of the water and ate men. I remember. You don’t forget a thing like that.”

  “Monsters?” Eddy lifted an eyebrow, but she wasn’t looking.

  “Yes. Green and bumpy, with huge mouths and rows of teeth. They change their shape and color to look like logs floating in the water, and then they spring.”

  Flora spread her arms wide in front of her, miming the snapping of enormous jaws with one arm above and one below. “They could swallow you whole. I still have nightmares about it.”

  Eddy tried to picture it.

  Like the dinosaurs in my old schoolbooks. But they said those were extinct a long time ago.

  Then again, those books don’t know anything.

  Flora cleared her throat. “Anyway, Archie said he wasn’t the one who cut me, he said I came that way. I don’t remember that at all, I must have been a baby.”

  Eddy pulled the reins hopelessly, trying to bring Star over closer but failing to communicate with the animal. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. I know some people who are cut. That’s hard, and I’m sorry.”

  Flora shrugged. “I don’t know any different. So I don’t feel like I lost much. But I watched Archie do it to the kids he sold, and a lot of them were old enough to know what they were losing.”

  They rode in silence awhile.

  “And somebody bought you in Jeff City? Who was it? Your mother?”

  “My father,” Flora said, wistfully. “He’s gone now. Died in a twister seven summers ago. It didn’t come close enough to hurt the city much, but a flying piece of wood hit him in the head. He was a good man. He made dyes so rich and so bright. He was the best man in town for it. But I was a woman by then, and already learning my trade. I missed him, but I could get along on my own.”

  “So, no man in your life? No Hive, right?”

  Flora shook her head and smiled thinly at Eddy. “I’ve heard about Hives. Sounds like a good time, but we don’t have them in Jeff City. I’ve been with some men and some women. But nobody like you.”

  “Men and women? Really?”

  Flora’s smile got shy. “Sure, why not?”

  “No reason,” Eddy said, trying to sound uninterested. Like the Unnamed.

  The smile widened and warmed. “What about you? Men? Women? A Hive back home?”

  “Not part of a Hive. A couple of women that I like to be with. But we can’t . . . It isn’t a permanent arrangement.” Eddy stared off, pretending to watch the road.

  They trotted forward.

  Eddy said, “I guess that might be easier where you’re from. Since there are so many women.”

  “Easier? How do you mean?”

  “Like no one . . . No one stops you. If you want to be with a woman.” Eddy was looking at the horse’s mane.

  “Stops you how? Like someone would stop you from stealing?”

  “No,” Eddy said, struggling for the words. “Not like that. Just, you know. Pressure. Disapproving. Making you feel like you don’t belong.”

  Flora shrugged, then clicked to Apples, who had begun to slow down. “Why would they? What business is it of theirs?”

  “I don’t know. Just wanting all women to be Mothers, I guess.”

  “But all women can’t,” Flora said quickly. “Some won’t even try. Does someone make them, in your city? Is breeding forced there?”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s j
ust . . . complicated.” Eddy thought about Nowhere, and the respect that women were showed. More than respect; often something like worship. But only if they were being the right kind of woman.

  He remembered a couple of women who had lived together when he was small, the way people had subtly left them out of things, forgetting to invite them or just not talking with them. He remembered the elder Sylvia and Carla, in particular, being cold toward them. Alice had been even younger; had she seen the way her mother acted? Did she learn her stealth that long ago?

  In the end, the two women had started a Hive they could share. As soon as they made the change, everything had turned around. It was as if some pressure had been eased, and all of Nowhere could breathe easier. They had both died in childbirth, a few years apart.

  Eddy realized Flora was staring at him, waiting for him to speak. He thought about the town square in Jeff City, all the women in their shady bonnets.

  “Why aren’t there more children in Jeff City?”

  “What?” Flora was unscrewing the lid of her plastic canteen to get a drink. She held it out to Eddy.

  “With that many women, there should be a lot more children. Did the Lion’s men take them away?”

  “No.” Flora drank and put her canteen back. She took a moment to collect her thoughts. “None of the horsewomen can have children, of course.”

  Of course?

  “So, I don’t know what it’s like where you come from. Where do you come from, anyway?”

  Eddy let the matter of horsewomen drop for the time being.

  “I’m from Nowhere. It’s a few days’ walk south of Jeff City. Soldiers lived there, in the before.”

  “So, in Nowhere. Do you have a lot of children?”

  Eddy sighed, trying again to ease the horse closer to Flora’s. They seemed to be drifting apart. “Not as many as we’d like. The Midwives do all they can, but . . . most pregnant women get the fever. A lot of them die, and most of the girl children do, too. They’re all born with it. We get one or two a year.”

  “We got one last year,” Flora said with a sigh. “Maynard. And the last one before that was Myles.”