The Book of Etta (The Road to Nowhere 2)

by Meg Elison

  Flora drew herself up straight, anger cutting through heartbreak. “I’m Flora,” she said, the roughness of a scream surfacing in her smooth, low voice. “I’m a weaver and a silk thrower. I’m as much something as you are, Eddy. Etta. Are you broken? Are you nothing?”

  Eddy’s chin pulled back as if she’d slapped him.

  “No, I do this for survival. I do this like the Unnamed did. To stay alive on the road.”

  “I’m staying alive, too,” Flora said, her voice hoarse but her eyes on his. “And I make it possible for the Lion’s men to be unsure, to not round up every woman they see. I serve other women, and I love other women. And no, it’s not acceptable in Jeff City. I haven’t had a lover in years.”

  Her voice broke at the end of this sentence and the sound of her loneliness was bigger than that cave, than any cave on earth. She shouted down into it, hearing her own echo.

  “I don’t care if you don’t want to fuck me,” she said. “I don’t care at all. But if you loved me even a little, you’d want to know me. I am overjoyed to see you unwrapped and know you.”

  Eddy’s face burned as he watched Flora give herself over into sobbing, her face pressed into a double handful of her own silk.

  It’s not the same. It isn’t.

  I still want to kiss her.

  Him. I cannot touch him.

  Her.

  It isn’t the same. She’s the same, but it isn’t the same. We aren’t the same.

  They sat that way a long time. Flora cried herself dry and turned over on her side, curled up like a tiny child who wakes up and finds herself cold and alone.

  Eight in, eight out.

  Where are you right now?

  Is that shame? Am I ashamed of this? I’m angry enough to kill her. Him. He lied to me.

  I lied to her.

  It isn’t the same.

  He looked at the curve of her back and felt uncertain rivulets of time and old hurts wash over him, dripping in him, shaping him.

  The things we see give us our shape.

  He looked at the stalagmites, remembering when Ricardo had taught him the word. The way they reached up with all their might, while the stalactites that hung down hung on tight. He had known, even then, that inside every man and woman there was a place like this, made of stone that changed slowly, shaped by the trickling of what they saw, heard, did.

  Rage steamed out and pity dripped in. Pity drained out and longing washed in. Still he sat.

  One of the torches went out, then another. Eddy looked around, deciding that one of them would keep burning if he slept awhile. He didn’t want to wake up in total darkness.

  He lay down behind her and slowly, slowly, crept to curl up behind her.

  “I don’t know what this means,” he said, low in her ear.

  “I don’t know what anything means,” she rasped back. “But I’d love you to hold me.”

  He held her, deep in that forgotten hole in the earth. They slept.

  Outside it was high spring, and the world was waking up.

  CHAPTER 7

  Bees?

  The thought woke Eddy with a start. He sat upright and shook Flora, whose face was swollen in the light of the last torch.

  The sound bounced off the cavern walls, like the singing of a choir that was very small or very far away. It wasn’t quite the buzzing of bees, but for Eddy it was close enough to frighten him.

  Eddy had been stung more than once after shimmying up a tree or climbing into an old attic in search of honey. Nowhere had no good sugar-bearing crop; the surest way to make friends with a baker was to be good at bringing them honey. After the honey was traded for bread or a minuscule, precious cake, Alice would buy all the wax and propolis Eddy could harvest. Any drug maker would buy wax, just as any scribe and any brewer would.

  But Eddy always chose Alice.

  If that’s bees, there’s a swarm out there.

  They got to their feet slowly, staying crouched. Eddy gestured to Flora to retrieve the torch and she did so quickly, avoiding the puddles and pools all around them. When she fell in behind him, he had drawn his gun.

  They went back up the path and then the staircase that led to the squat brick building. The grayish light inside the building led them, and they put their torch out. When they drew near the windows, Eddy gestured silently with his free hand for her to stay behind.

  Nowhere to go if it is bees. Get down deep and throw ourselves in the water.

  He remembered Ricardo warning him against drinking the water here, describing it as salty and strange. Eddy’s teachers hadn’t known if it was dangerous, only that it was no good for drinking or bathing.

  Can’t shoot bees.

  When he got to the windows, he saw that he wouldn’t have to. He turned back to Flora, counting on his fingers.

  “It’s the damned cicadas,” he said glumly. “I can’t believe it’s been seven springs.”

  Flora laughed. “That’s nothing,” she said.

  Eddy looked back over his shoulder. “They’re gonna make driving hard,” he said. “We need goggles. Or face shields made out of something clear.”

  Flora was already tearing open more of the bags that held cotton shirts. “I’ve got it,” she said. “We make basket masks in Jeff City, with holes big enough to see out of but not big enough for a bug to get in. It’s no trick at all to do that with this cotton.”

  She was using her own small knife, cutting slits into the material, tearing it into long pieces. When she tied one on Eddy, he held up his hands in front of his face.

  “I can only see what’s in front of me,” he complained.

  “Like a blinkered horse,” Flora said. She was tying on her own mask, then redistributing the yards of silk she wore to cover her more completely.

  Eddy didn’t know what it meant to be blinkered, but the mention of horses brought the echo of his earlier feeling of betrayal. He shrugged.

  “I guess this will do.”

  Flora didn’t move to leave. “Where are we going?”

  He looked at her through the mesh of the mask she had made him. He couldn’t see all of her at once. He had to sweep his head from side to side to get a sense of the room.

  “Do you want to go back to Jeff City?”

  She crossed her silk-draped arms. “Not just now. Do you want to take me back there?”

  Eddy looked down for a second, deciding.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Flora nodded. “Look, I want us to promise that we won’t hide anything else from each other. If we’re going to be on the road together”—she looked up at Eddy, frustration clear on her face—“then we need to be able to trust each other. Do you agree with me?”

  Eddy nodded.

  “Do you still want me to call you Eddy?”

  “On the road, I am Eddy. That’s it.”

  Flora nodded, resolute. “Alright then.”

  She stepped forward, groping without peripheral vision, and took both of Eddy’s hands. For a moment, she held him in the two-handed grip Eddy had seen pass between women. She dropped her right hand and held only his left.

  They stepped out into the singing cloud of insects, still holding hands.

  Eddy pointed on the map for the route Flora should follow. They were driving on a huge, wide road that Eddy had avoided when he was on foot. It was clotted in some places by the hulks of ancient cars, but they found their way through. The paving was cracked and crumbling at the edges, with wide swaths worn away by rain and floods. The truck’s wooden wheels stood up to the rocks and debris they rolled over, Eddy noted when he checked them before refueling.

  If it stops running, we’ll just have to walk. Used to walking, anyhow. Quieter. And no matter what, we’ve gained all this distance so much faster than we would have otherwise.

  They were heading west along that old-world interstate. As the sun started to appear before them rather than behind, Eddy knew they would have to make camp somewhere and try to find something to eat. Their stores
of food had been meager to begin with and had just about run out.

  He checked his bag. He had just enough cracked wheat to make them porridge one more time. He knew Flora still had a little salt and some dried fruit.

  Through the slits in his mask, he scouted along the sides of the road, watching for patches of anything edible. He had always gone raiding in spring; he knew that fruits and vegetables would be small but ripe enough. Water would be plentiful. Game would be foolish, out in numbers at all hours, trying to reproduce.

  He tapped her shoulder and indicated that they should stop soon. She nodded vigorously, pointing to her ass as she tilted it to the side.

  Yeah, I’m sore, too.

  Pulled over. They got out stiffly, shambling more than walking. They had been rolling almost uninterrupted all day.

  “I’m going to try and find something we can eat,” Eddy said.

  Flora was pulling a knee to her chest as she stood, trying to stretch out her thigh muscles.

  “I’m never sitting down again,” she moaned. “I’ll build a fire.”

  They had stopped on a desolate stretch of highway, without a building or a sign of human habitation in sight. Flora was not pleased about that—she hated sleeping in the open. But she was too glad to come to a stop to argue about it.

  Slowly, bending like a much older woman, she stooped and gathered an armload of dry wood for a fire. On a flat spot beneath a flowering tree, she built a phalanx of sticks and put a little of the old cotton between them. With her flint and steel, she caught a small fire and shielded it from the wind with her body until it was big enough to live on its own.

  She stretched and paced and fed the fire, singing a song in a low voice. She kept her eyes on the road, waiting.

  On the other side of the old-world highway, Eddy was walking in the basin of an ancient flood. He found spoor and the leavings of acorns and was pretty sure there were wild pigs here somewhere.

  He had seen great, hairy boars in the wild. He had also seen the tamer, smaller pigs that people kept in Nowhere. He kept still, waiting to see which lived here.

  It was a small pig, barely more than a shoat, that decided to test him. That was just as well, Eddy knew, since they needed more salt than they had to cure the meat or keep any of it.

  He nocked an arrow and managed to shoot it, but only in the deep muscle of its leg. He had to run it down and cut its throat. He bled it out before bringing it back.

  Flora lent her inexpert help to butchering the small animal, and together they roasted it, eating the crackling fat and waiting for the larger, meatier pieces to get done.

  “So,” Eddy said. “I want to ask you about everything, but I’m sure you don’t want to tell me everything tonight.”

  Flora wiped the grease away from her mouth, and her eyes flashed in the firelight. “I want to ask you quite a few things, too.”

  “Alright, you go first, then.”

  Flora had another small bite of meat halfway to her mouth and stopped. She looked at him again before looking into the fire.

  “You’ve been to Estiel before.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t know the Lion?”

  Eddy shrugged. “I mostly kept out of the main part of town. I tried not to run into anybody.”

  Flora fidgeted. “It’s just . . . the Lion’s men are everywhere. There are more little towns like Jeff City. We all pay tribute. He’s . . . He’s everywhere.”

  Eddy stared her down. “Tribute? Is that what the kids are?”

  “What? No! No, we pay mostly in yardage. The children . . . The girls are different. The Lion takes girls from everywhere. People who don’t give up their girls end up dead.”

  “End up dead anyway. No girls, no women. No women, no children. Jeff City’s fires go out.”

  Flora’s head was turned away and Eddy’s eyes traced the long muscle that ran from just below her ear to her collarbone.

  Still pretty.

  No point, but pretty.

  “Unless there’s some secret you horsewomen have,” he said nonchalantly.

  She faced him then, her eyes searching his.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing.” She looked away again.

  The wind picked up and blew smoke in Eddy’s face. He got up and started gathering the bones of their meal to take them away from camp. He almost didn’t hear Flora when she spoke again.

  He turned back to her. “What?”

  “Why didn’t you ever come to Jeff City before? You said you’ve been doing this a few years. Rescuing women and girls. Why didn’t you come to our town sooner?”

  He walked back toward the fire, looking down. He didn’t answer right away.

  “I learned the route when I was apprenticed. Ricardo. He kept old maps. He showed me the road to follow. Errol taught me what to look for, how to tell if stuff was useful or not. I just . . . I never took a different route. I always go that way.”

  “Why?”

  “I found good things along the way. Things I could trade or bring home. Lots of little towns on that road, with just enough people in them.”

  “But you could go anywhere. You could explore, see anything.”

  Eddy’s breath came too fast and he worked to get a hold of himself.

  “Yeah, I can go anywhere.”

  Where are you right now?

  Eight in, eight out.

  “So where have you gone?” Flora was excited just to ask.

  Eddy stretched his legs out in front of him. “All over. South to the Odarks. East to Estiel. North to the Faces. But west . . . There’s nothing out west. Errol said so.”

  “Where would you go, if you could?” Flora’s eyes were bright.

  “Where would you go? You sound like you’ve been planning this.”

  She blinked in surprise. “Oh, anywhere. Just being out here—” She gestured around them in the gathering twilight. “Somewhere that isn’t Jeff City. It’s incredible.”

  “You were in Florda, as a child. Where was that?”

  She looked down, subdued. “South, I think. It was so hot. And the trees were so different. Leaves like huge fans, instead of like little waving hands. And there were fruits there, sweet and bright orange and full of juice. But I was so little, and so scared then. I hardly remember.”

  “You said you were sold as a girl,” Eddy began. “How?”

  “I was cut, and my hair grew long.”

  “You were—” Eddy stopped, feeling his throat close. He remembered her saying she couldn’t have children because she’d been cut. He’d thought she had meant . . .

  “Gelded,” Flora said in a small voice. “All catamites are. It keeps us from becoming men, when the time comes.”

  “But you still—” The shock of the cave was back in his body, making his pulse quicken.

  Eight in, eight out.

  “Yes, I still rise. Wouldn’t be much use in a catamite who didn’t function. But I can’t produce children. You know how this works, don’t you? You’ve read books. Don’t you have catamites in Nowhere?”

  Eddy leaned back on his palms, trying very hard to seem relaxed. They always seemed to return to the same fight.

  “No, we don’t geld boys. We have Hives. We geld livestock, of course.”

  It was quiet between them for a moment. The wind picked up and Flora’s dark-red hair blew in front of her avid face.

  She’s not angry at that. Good.

  “In the codex, the book I was telling you about? Back in the time of the Unnamed, there was a man. Named Breezy. He . . . He and another man were together, and he dressed as a woman. It’s in the book, in their own words.”

  Flora leaned forward, fascinated. “What happened to her? To them?”

  Eddy laid his head on his shoulder, staring into the coals of the fire. “I don’t know. The book never mentions them again. But he wasn’t the only one. There are a few . . . of that type in Nowhere. They keep to themselves, mostly, like any of the closed couples do.
Some of them look womanly, but nobody pretends they’re women. They’re not gelded, they grow beards and look like men.”

  “Like you?”

  He lifted his head. “You see a beard?”

  Flora ducked her chin a little. “No, I mean looking like a man. Like you do. You must have worked a long time to get so good.”

  “I can’t be Eddy at home,” he said shortly. “It would be a disgrace. My mother . . .”

  “Wouldn’t she understand?”

  He puffed out both cheeks and leaned forward, hunching slightly. He thought of Ina’s tired face, her constant talk of babies.

  “No, she wouldn’t. I’m Eddy on the road, and I’m Etta at home. I’m both.”

  “Is . . . Is this who you are? Are you always Eddy on the inside?”

  He looked up at her, startled. He wanted to snap that it was none of her business who he was on the inside.

  He thought for a long moment.

  I’m more angry that I don’t know the answer than that she asked.

  “I want to read the story.”

  “What?” He had trouble remembering how they had gotten there. “What story?”

  “Breezy. The Unnamed. The old world. The whole story.”

  “It’s really long. You could read the short version, though. The one everybody reads. If we went back to Nowhere.”

  Flora’s silks seemed to balloon around her as she sprang forward. “Yes! Take me to Nowhere, I’d love to see it!”

  When Eddy didn’t respond to her exuberance, Flora shrank a little. “Where are we going?”

  Eddy looked steadily at the ground. “We’re on the road toward Nowhere. But I wasn’t planning to go there until I . . .”

  “Until you’ve rescued a girl, right? You did. You rescued Myles.”

  “I’m supposed to bring them back to Nowhere. To where it’s safe. Jeff City isn’t safe.”

  “So you’re taking me back.”

  “You’re not—”

  “In every way that matters, I am. What, you’ve never brought a woman back who couldn’t or wouldn’t have children?”

  “That’s not the point.” Eddy knew he was losing. He felt his face growing hot.

  “You mean you have to bring back prizes. Just like a Paw of the Lion.”