The Book of Etta (The Road to Nowhere 2)

by Meg Elison

  At the sound of the lost child’s name, Eddy clenched his jaw.

  “They just let them take her. I let them. Cowards, all of us.”

  Flora snorted, low and short like her horse. “It’s not a simple question, Eddy. The Lion’s men burned down a whole town to get one fifteen-year-old girl. That was a few summers ago, the refugees came into Jeff City. They had tried to fight. Instead of that one girl, they lost every girl they had. Hundreds died, and the town burned all the way out to the woods. It’s a terrible cost, but we pay it.”

  “Would you pay it?” Eddy looked at her sidelong. He wanted her to give the right answer.

  “I can’t have children. I’m cut. So it doesn’t matter. Can’t be mine.”

  Eddy had never heard of someone being cut so badly that the Midwife told them children would be impossible. However, he knew plenty of women who decided for one reason or another never to try. He didn’t ask.

  “They’re all yours. They’re all mine. They’re you and they’re me. Imagine if nobody fought to keep you.”

  “For all I know, nobody did.” Flora clicked her tongue and her horse sped up, out of earshot.

  They crossed small towns that were completely burned out. Some of them had burned a long time ago. Others were fresher and still had the acrid stink of burned plastic, livestock, people.

  They camped in a rusty steel shed less than a day’s ride from Estiel. Eddy got more and more nervous as the city became inevitable. His hands shook and he spooked Star. They tied the horses up outside, and Flora brushed them down and cleaned their hooves. Eddy sat with his journal.

  The Book of Etta

  Year 104 in the Nowhere Codex

  Spring

  Almost to Estiel. Traveling with Flora from Jeff City. She has horses.

  He sat with his pen hovering over the page. His ink was made thick, so it never dripped or ran. He watched it hang over the edge of the nib, full and round as a pregnant belly. He tried to make himself write.

  I could write the Arch. I could write the moon-blood-cups closet. I could write the chair.

  The hand holding the pen went rigid and the nib twitched. Ink as thick as cold blood spattered on the page and his right hand. He cleaned it and put it away, his mind a perfect and studied blank.

  Where are you right now? You’re cleaning a pen. Hold the pen.

  Flora yanked the balky steel door sideways in its dirt-clotted track. She had put on her head-to-toe garment again. “There were muskies out there big enough to suck me dry.” She pulled the blue cloth over her head and laid down the two sets of saddlebags.

  “So, tell me about Estiel.” Flora settled in like she was expecting a long story.

  “No.” Eddy said it like a reflex, not meaning to speak at all.

  “What?” Flora’s face was concerned. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No. No, sorry. I don’t know the city well. I know there are smiths and metalworkers. You can smell it when you get close. The city is partially walled off, but not everywhere. I usually come in from the south, so we should get a look at the west side this time.” Eddy’s voice trembled.

  “Are you alright?” Flora put that same soft hand on the inside of his arm. His skin erupted all over in the puckers and bumps of gooseflesh, and he shivered.

  “I’m fine.” He closed his eyes as soon as he knew she was going to kiss him.

  Her kiss was patient, like she anticipated a century in which she’d get to know him. Like a first raid, just a look-and-see. She pulled back, smiling.

  “I really wanted to do that.”

  He smiled back, he couldn’t help it. “It’s nice to kiss somebody I didn’t grow up with,” he admitted.

  “Right?” She leaned forward and kissed him again, harder this time.

  Eddy let himself be kindled. The blood rose in his face and neck and his whole body thrummed like a plucked string. He raised one hand and put it to the side of her face.

  Outside, the horses whinnied and stomped. Flora looked in their direction a moment, but Eddy reached for her and she sighed, both of them forgetting the sound.

  Just in the moment that they began to burn as one flame, they heard the terrible, baying howl.

  Flora jumped to her feet with a short scream. “What the hell? What is that?”

  Eddy had his gun in his hands. “Wolves.”

  He pried the door open a little way and saw that it was too late.

  Eddy, unused to horses, hadn’t thought about whether they’d be safe outside. When Flora heard the sound of the struggle, she tried to push past him. He held her back.

  They were not truly wolves, not all of them. Many were wild dogs, but the species were well on their way to remerging into a single one.

  Apples, being the bigger horse, reared up and kicked at the predators. Her hooves crushed one wolf-dog’s skull, splattering its brains in the dirt.

  Star twitched back and forth, snorting, working to free herself. A wolf leapt at her throat and buried its teeth in her flesh, hanging on to drag her down. Another wolf joined the first and Star went down, her creamy spots reddening.

  Apples had sustained a few scratches when she slipped her rope. She ran wildly, disappearing into the night. Star went down and the wolves swarmed over her, snapping and yanking on every side of her body.

  The sound of killing teeth on the horse’s bones pierced the night and seemed to go on and on before the animals slept. Flora cried gently after her yelps of grief subsided. She crawled, as entitled as a child, into Eddy’s arms. He held her as it got dark, but they could not sleep.

  “I hope Apples ran home.”

  “Where else would she go?” Eddy did not know whether wild herds of horses would accept an outsider. Would they look at her shoes and know she had been property?

  “Do you know any songs?” Flora was sniffling, shaking.

  “Sure, we sing in Nowhere.”

  “Can you sing me something?” They were wrapped together in cloak and blanket, shivering more from horror than the cold.

  Eddy sang low, trying to keep the dogs’ keen ears well out of it.

  Pack up all my care and woe

  Here I go, singing low

  Bye bye blackbird

  Flora snuggled down into his arms, but it was no good. Outside the shed, the wolf-dogs began again to howl.

  CHAPTER 5

  In the morning, they avoided the slick red mess that was all that remained of the dead horse. They walked east, following the same road toward Estiel.

  Flora’s face was swollen from crying. As the sun broke free of the morning gray, she pulled on her all-over cover.

  “What do you call that thing?” Eddy was annoyed by it. He felt like he was talking to a bedsheet.

  “A veil. Women who left Jeff City said to wear one everywhere to be safe.”

  Eddy laughed a little.

  It’s not a secret there’s a woman under there. It’s like a wrapped-up present.

  “You’d go safer as a man. It wouldn’t be diff—”

  “No.” Flora cut him off, her voice hard and low.

  “What?” He wanted to see her face. He couldn’t fathom why this would upset her, as little as it meant.

  “I will never, ever wear the clothes or the guise of a man.” Eddy imagined her jaw flexing, the soft white of her neck blotching red.

  “Why not? It’s not worth it, looking like a woman. It’s like showing raw, bleeding meat to a dog.” Eddy remembered the horses and wished he had thought about it a moment longer. “I mean . . . you know. Men are just . . . You know how they are. They see a woman or a girl and they just lose all their other feelings. Like when they took Myles.”

  “So you’d rather be like them? The hunter, rather than the hunted?” Flora’s voice simmered with anger.

  “That’s not the point.” Eddy felt himself getting angry in response. “I’d dress like a tree if I thought I could get away with it. I don’t want to be a hunter. A slaver. I could never do that.”

 
; “You don’t know what you could do.”

  A few moments passed; the only sound was their shoes grinding in the broken remains of the old road.

  “Being a woman is sacred.” Flora’s voice was prim, like a child reciting catechism.

  Eddy snorted.

  “In the before, people didn’t know that, because we were everywhere. The plague came so that we’d understand.”

  Eddy laughed out loud. “Before the plague, women were rulers and peacekeepers and cooks and dancers and whatever they wanted to be. And they had medicine that made it impossible to get pregnant. They were free. And now they’re property almost everywhere, raped to death and sold to monsters by monsters. But I’m so glad they’re sacred now. Thank you, Plague God.” He stood with his hands on his hips.

  Flora turned to him, stopping in her tracks. She hauled the veil up and he saw that her face was red and her teeth were bared. “Is that what they think where you’re from?”

  He had stopped to face her out of instinct, but he tried to pass it off as a momentary hitch. He kept walking, his back to her.

  “Nope. Where I come from, people think women should be having babies or catching babies, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Being a Mother is how a woman saves this world. It’s how we restore the balance,” Flora called from behind, not catching up.

  “Or fatten a slaver,” Eddy called back, not slowing down. “You save the world. I’ll just clean it up.”

  The sun was high overhead and the days were getting warmer. Flora thought for a long moment, then stuffed her veil into her pack and walked slowly, tiredly, after Eddy.

  It took her a little while to catch up.

  “Do you ever wish you were a woman?” She was quieter now, chastened.

  Eddy held his breath a second, wondering if Flora knew.

  Is that why she’s asking me all this?

  He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She didn’t seem to be judging him.

  “I wish I was neither. I wish nobody cared.” Eddy pointed to a clutch of trees. “Let’s eat, okay? I’m starved.”

  Eddy knocked a nest out of a tree and roasted four small eggs on the fire they hastily made. No bird returned to the tree to mourn.

  They reached the outskirts of the city in the evening. They smelled it first, the stink of sewage suddenly strong as the wind shifted.

  “We must be coming in close to their dump site. Or their pits.” Eddy rummaged in his case of wonders and came up with another small ceramic pot. “Here.” He held it out to Flora.

  “What’s this?”

  “Mint and pine sap and a couple of other things,” he said. “Smear it on your veil where you’re breathing and it’ll cover the smell.” He was pulling out a long strip of cloth and doing the same for himself, binding it over the lower half of his face.

  “Will it stain?” Flora looked uncertainly at her finger.

  “Probably, yeah.” His voice was muffled.

  She pulled her hand in under her veil and moved to put the salve on her skin instead.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Eddy warned.

  “This is all silk,” Flora said shortly. “I’m not going to—ohhh.” She moaned in sudden sharp pain. “It’s burning,” she whined, wiping at her face. “Cold and burning.”

  Eddy grinned. “No use now. You’ll have to just wait it out. You’ll have a red spot for a day or two. Don’t,” he added as she pulled in her canteen.

  Too late.

  She cried out sharply as the water only intensified the pain.

  Eddy laughed low, but Flora could see him.

  “It isn’t funny! It hurts so bad!”

  He laughed harder and saw that Flora was starting to laugh, too. Her eyes were red and streaming with pain, and it was all so ridiculous.

  Estiel was surrounded on all sides by suburbs, which grew steadily into the leaning and crumbling taller buildings that were the foothills before the mountains of the city itself. Eddy heard his own laughter bouncing off the brick walls just a moment too late.

  A signal. A whistle into cupped hands that wavered high and then came low again before cutting off. Meant to sound like a bird, but Eddy was used to this kind of subterfuge.

  “Cover your face.” His voice had dropped to a growl.

  “What?”

  He yanked his hood up and pulled the mask up off his neck to cover everything but his eyes. He wanted badly to touch his gun, but he reached up and pulled out his machete. The edge was murderously sharp; he honed it himself every chance he got. He held it in a two-handed grip as he squinted, looking for the spotter.

  “Eddy, what?”

  He shushed her with a warning gesture, hand held low. He listened, every sense as keen as the knife.

  The same call came again. And a third time.

  Eddy’s head whipped to the right and he felt a tiny crick in his spine under the rigid pressure of his neck muscles. The sound had come from two or three blocks away. He wasn’t sure they’d been seen.

  Walking backward, he crowded Flora into the shelter of a half-fallen brick chimney. She had covered her face as he had ordered.

  “Why don’t we just go to the trading gate?” Flora was whispering, barely making a sound.

  “Because they’ll take you. Do you want to get taken?” He spoke rumblingly, in his lowest register, eyes still scanning above them.

  Rooftops aren’t stable. Maybe they’re in a tree?

  She laid her light hand on his shoulder. “They won’t take me.” She stepped closer. “I’ve done business with traders from Estiel. They know what I am.”

  The men came at ground level, so stealthily that Eddy didn’t see them soon enough. Three of them, so similar in looks that they could only be brothers. Each of them wearing a claw around his neck.

  Eddy tensed up with the machete. Flora strode around him in her gray-blue silk veil, formless and without tension. She held up both hands.

  “Paws of the Lion? Lion of Estiel?”

  The men showed no weapons and looked at her with aloofness.

  The tallest man spoke first. “I am Eric, Sheriff of Estiel. These are my deputies, Anric and Alric. Yes, we are Paws of the Lion.” He put both thumbs under his wide leather belt, waiting.

  Flora pulled the veil off, lifting it with both hands. Eddy quivered like a bowstring.

  “I am Flora, a silk thrower from Jeff City. Horsewoman. Do you know my kind?”

  Eric squinted, but Anric came forward. “I know your kind. I know your work.” He had the same close-cut black stubble as the others, but blue eyes instead of brown. All three were deeply tanned. “Who’s your man?”

  Flora reached back and Eddy transferred the machete into his left hand, keeping it loose and easy. “This is Eddy, also from Jeff City. He’s a hunter.”

  Alric crossed his arms. “What’s your business in Estiel? Come to trade?”

  “Yes,” Flora said evenly.

  Eric nodded to their meager packs. “Trade what, horsewoman?”

  Flora spread her hands wide and smiled nervously. “Dogs got our horses and we lost some gear. I have silk for trade in my bag. And Eddy here has drugs.”

  Eddy swallowed hard.

  Shit. In for it now.

  Bright interest showed on all three faces as the brothers looked at one another. “What kind of drugs?”

  Eddy cleared his throat, shook his head. He took a deep breath and cleared it again.

  Deep. Stay deep.

  “A selection. Infection stops. Sleeps. Toadstool tea.”

  The three men began to smile.

  “Eddy, did you say?” Eric smiled pleasantly at him.

  “Eddy, yes.”

  “Are you the maker?”

  “No, but I know the maker. West of here.” His face was still covered, somewhat muffled by the balaclava.

  It’s the distance, he thought wildly. The distance between the nose and mouth. That’s what Alice said. Shorter for women. That’s the giveaway. Breathe
. Eight in, eight out. Where are you right now?

  Eric was walking toward him. This was the moment. Eddy pulled down his mask and looked up at the man, his mouth set in a straight line, lips pulled in.

  “Do you want to see what I’ve got?”

  “No,” Eric said. He didn’t seem to have noticed anything unusual in Eddy’s face. “We have strict instructions to bring drug traders to the Lion. He’ll give you a very good price for them.”

  “The Lion?” Flora’s face was blank with confusion. “Really? The Lion himself?”

  “It’s your lucky day.” Alric said it, offering Flora his arm.

  Eddy was grateful to walk alone.

  Young men, all wearing claw necklaces, scurried to and fro in front of the old hotel. They carried baskets and boxes; they swept the paved areas and hoisted pulleys to raise suspended parcels to the upper floors. They all had a sense of purpose and an air of organization that Eddy had never seen before. He watched, fascinated.

  Eric, Anric, and Alric fell into single file as they passed through the main doors. Alric gently took his arm from Flora and directed her to follow him. Eddy brought up the rear.

  Despite the cleanliness of the place, inside and out, Eddy could smell waste. The smell they had picked up on the wind turned out to be a dump site. Eddy pulled his mask back up, seeing that deer had been gutted here, and waste like fish tails intermingled with unidentifiable junk to create the terrible stench.

  “Let them try the oil,” Flora suggested.

  “What oil?” asked Eric.

  Eddy tried to kill Flora with his eyes. He still had it in his front pocket. He drew it out and told them slowly and carefully how to put a drop on their handkerchiefs or any bit of cloth they had.

  “But not your skin,” he added. “See how Flora’s face is all red?”

  Alric looked over and laughed and Eddy saw that he was missing a good number of his teeth on one side. “Oil can’t burn you! What did you do, set it on fire?”

  Flora laughed a little back, settling into the easy game of getting along with men. “No, truly! It’s very strong, like itchweed or a wasp sting. Be careful!”

  The men laughed a bit more, but they were cautious.