The Book of Flora (The Road to Nowhere, #3)

by Meg Elison

Destruction is easy. Creation is so much harder.

Her work goes on; Motherhood lives forever on the doorstep of death. She understood that.

But books are so fragile. Paper and leather and wood cannot stand up to fire or water or time.

And there is one thing I know is true in this world: only what is remembered survives. Only what is written has a chance in the future. People forget. Rivers rise. Stories and songs are snuffed out every time some town takes a fever or loses to a man with a little power. Destruction is common. Creation is rare.

will spend these next uncertain days turning memory into record. One will last. The other will not.

We only know the story we are given, unless someone writes the truth of it down. And even then, it isn’t the whole truth. Only theirs. As this is mine.

I can only tell you what was told to me, and most of that was probably lies.

Now I see that if I do not carry my past with me, it will wrap itself around my ankles and drag me down. There is no living without it. There is no pretending I am not the sum of all these things.

He rejected the lies anyone else told him and replaced them with his own creations, always.

I hate feeling this way. I hate dreading people figuring me out, dreading what they’ll say or do. I am exactly what I am and there is nothing wrong with me. So why am I worried that Alma knows what I’ve got between my legs? Why do I care what she makes of that?

Fathers are everywhere; Mothers are special.

Her truck was a crumbling, rusty wreck, borrowed from the mish in Ommun. They had lent her their oldest, least serviceable vehicle, and that fact had not escaped her.

They had kept the library. Flora wondered if that had always been the job of women.

It was too hot to sleep in anything but herself, so that was what she did.

I cannot stay here. I wasn’t sure before, but now I am. But will anyone go with me?

He was himself again, alone in his body, sovereign.

“They were never meant to be. They were pain made flesh.”

Her desperation scares me. I have seen this kind of rage before, when someone disagrees with reality and cannot accept it. Nothing good comes of that.

That was the moment when I realized that every new death in my life was like a new link in an old chain. They connect, and you run your hands over all the ones that come before it. It is never new. It is never just one death.

“My name is Eddy. I am the living child of my mother, Ina, who lies dead here today. I was trained as a raider by Errol and Ricardo, my good friends. I killed the Lion of Estiel. I have saved girls and women all my life. I have fought slavers wherever I have met them. I have loved only women in my life, and I will keep right on doing that. I am leaving Ommun today, because I will not be told how to live, love, or die. I will take as many with me as will go.”

And isn’t escape always like that? Isn’t it always something you carry on your body, something that makes it impossible to pretend it wasn’t real? It wasn’t like Estiel, but it was an escape.

People will believe anything if you don’t teach them how to reason for themselves.

These boys have committed the crime that is a crime almost everywhere we go. The crime that Ommun could not accept. The crime that Shy was built on. The crime that I am.

“Then that’s what I’ll call you. And is it he or she?” Connie shrugs. “I don’t care.” “I care,” I say softly. “It matters to me. Which feels right to you?” “Nothing,” Connie says immediately. “Neither.” Shining black braids flash in the sun as the kid turns away from me.

It’s not just women who have to worry. It’s anyone who isn’t a man.”

We are the library of the new world.”

This is the work that women do. We keep the fire of civilization burning, by collecting and protecting stories. It’s what we’ve always done.”

I can barely stand it. I keep thinking he’s just belowdecks or out on the shore. He’s like a hole where a tooth used to be, and I keep putting my tongue in it. I can’t get used to it. I can’t accept that I ever will.

“I know what you’re feeling,” I said, trying to draw them near. “I know it’s hard to settle into your body and feel welcome in it, take control of it.”

“Maybe that’s why your book is blank,” I said. He looked at me with such nakedness that I could barely stand it. “What do you mean?” “Because you’re not meant to leave a story behind. Or a child. Maybe you’re meant to watch the stories of others.” He walked down the length of the deck and took both my hands in his. “Thank you. I won’t forget.”

I used to think that the losses in my life would slow down or maybe cease, that I wouldn’t always be mourning and saying goodbye. But the older I get, the more constant that state becomes.

Maybe they need to believe in something impossible because of what they are.”

The truth of it belonged to them.

Not understanding these basic processes was what let people fall into abject superstition, believing that they needed to make sacrifices or offer some kind of ritualized devotion in order to be fed or be safe.

“What are you going to name her?” “Poppy,” Alice said dreamily, already falling asleep. “I’ve been growing her my whole life.”

They wore a red scarf over the lower half of their face, and Flora could tell at once that it was made of silk.

“No,” Alice said clearly. “That’s why you couldn’t love yourself. Is that what all this is about? Are you just taking your own pain and spreading it around, rather than finding a way to love and be loved? You really have become a man.”