The Book of Flora Read online

  “Caimans aincher problem,” Bodie says through clenched teeth. He’s got a lump of chaw tucked under his lip. (How Alice deals with the stench of that in his mouth I’ll never know.) “I’ve seen the thing the caimans fear. Deadlier by far, and there are so many now. We’ll see them soon. It’s not their territory yet.”

  Bodie spits into the sea. His muscles ripple and shake as he poles us through what used to be a place for children to play. A huge metal wheel stands rusty in the water, the bent struts reaching up toward the sky. His slender boat, the Ursula, is responsive to him. Their relationship is intimate and clearly long-lived.

  “What are they?” I ask. “What does a caiman fear?” I’ve seen their teeth. I’ve had nightmares of them since I was a child. It doesn’t seem to me that anything could frighten them, though we’ve seen huge snakes wrap around them as they thrash.

  “Hippos,” he says darkly over his shoulder to me. Eddy, poling on the other side, looks up.

  “Hippos?”

  “Si,” Bodie says.

  “I’ve seen those in books,” Eddy says, clearly not believing. “They’re round all over, with tiny little ears. They don’t look scary.”

  “They’re round all over and full of tusks,” Bodie says. “You’ll see.” He taps the end of the pole against the metal plating around the base of his ship. “They’re why I have these. Them and the makos. The sea is nothing but teeth out this way. Warmer the water, the worser it gets.”

  Eddy doesn’t answer him about the sea’s teeth. More and more, he’s quiet these days.

  It takes the rest of the day to reach Tona, and to find a safe place to moor the boat. Bodie doesn’t leave the boat, not ever. Alice and I talked about this when we first sailed with him.

  “Someone has to stay with Bodie,” I told her.

  “So he doesn’t take off without us?” Alice was sunburned after only a few days on the sea. She puts on a jelly at night that’s supposed to help her skin, but she’s turning brown where she used to be freckled cream, and red where she was white.

  “That’s it,” I told her. “We can take turns with who has to do it, but we can’t risk not getting back on board. How would we get home?”

  Alice cocked her eyebrow at me, a little smile on her lips. “And where is home, again?”

  Eddy snorted a short, sharp breath, like a horse getting ready to charge.

  We can’t go back to Ommun. Nowhere is gone. Where Eddy wants to go is so far away, Bodie says we may never see it at all.

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “But I want to choose where I get stuck. Don’t you?”

  Alice nodded. Eddy stalked off to be alone somewhere. Back then, Alice was still sleeping with me, curled up in a hammock below the deck. She tried spending some nights with Eddy, but he was sullen and sent her away. Nobody wants to talk about that at all.

  I want us all in one bed. I want the comfort of it and the security. I want things the way they had been before Eddy knew what I was. I want a place where we all accept and love each other. Hell, even Bodie could come.

  But now Alice sleeps only with Bodie. I’ve crept up on deck and seen them, sweating even in sleep, the moon shining on their wet skin. His arm is always over her, like she’s something he’s afraid will be stolen. I’ve seen him boil water for her to wash her moon cup, proud as a parrot to have a woman on board who bleeds. Eddy washes his alone.

  We’re all tired when we get to Tona, and Alice volunteers to stay with Bodie. Bodie squeezes her hip, obviously pleased she’s going to stay. Eddy and I wade through the shallows toward Tona. The village is busy in the twilight and stinks of fish. Every house seems to have fish hanging to dry, fish guts poured out in buckets at the back doors of kitchens. A tall, crumbling building has snakeskins tacked out to dry, fires at their base, triangular heads fifteen windows up.

  “What do you think you’ll find here?” Eddy asks me tersely. “Nobody here will know you. Nobody will remember Archie. Why come back here? What do you have to hope for?”

  “Why go anywhere?” I shoot back. “Why do anything? Isn’t it all meaningless? What does it matter where we start or where we end up? Why did we leave Ommun?”

  That shuts him up.

  He won’t let me touch him. I know we could heal this thing between us if he’d let me be sweet to him. It wouldn’t even have to be sex. I could hold him, I could help him shave. Anything. He’s like a stone. To Alice, too. Now.

  Tona is clearly a trading city. Boats moored all over, some of them long-legged, as Bodie calls them. Big, tall sails and huge rudders. There are enormous houses and halls, all lit up, trading fish stew and bread and drinks.

  Eddy looks over at a man in the street who’s calling off the menu to passersby.

  “Let’s get something to eat, huh?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer.

  I catch up with him at the doorway of one of the loudest places. He is already halfway in.

  “You have to ask,” I remind him.

  He rolls his eyes at me.

  “You have to ask,” I repeat. “We need to know, to be safe. Come on.”

  He stomps back to the barker. “Are there women for sale here?” he grumbles.

  The barker looks me over. “Yes, sir, but it seems you’re already provisioned.”

  “I mean,” Eddy says, perking up a little, “can I buy slaves here? Women or girls? Catamites?”

  The barker shakes his head, his lips pursed. “No, sir. There’s a parlor on the fourth floor where you can pay by the hour. No slave markets in Tona. King of Florda won’t have it.”

  My stomach flips over when he mentions the king of Florda. “What king is that?”

  “King Valencia, these last seventeen seasons,” the barker says. “Long may she reign.”

  I nod to him. Eddy is already headed inside.

  I can see at once that Tona isn’t a slaving city. There’s security to check anyone going up the four flights of stairs, to make sure they have something to trade and that they aren’t too drunk to stand. There are at least five women in the room, all lounging in the company of men who can look nowhere else. There’s a desperation about slaving cities—a dullness in women’s eyes and a mean-dog look about the men. Tona feels free.

  Eddy trades Alice’s toothache paste for bowls of fish stew for the both of us. The broth is red, and peppers and onions swim up from the bottom. It’s delicious, but I haven’t had spice like this in years and my eyes water up. I see Eddy wipe his nose a few times.

  The man who slides between us takes this as his opening. He offers Eddy a fresh cotton cloth, putting his elbow on the table. “I heard you’re in the market for a catamite.”

  Eddy looks over his shoulder and back down at his stew, avoiding the man’s gaze. “You heard wrong.”

  “I thought Tona wasn’t a slaving city,” I tell the man, putting my spoon down.

  Eddy doesn’t take the cloth, wipes his nose with his fingers again. “Fuck off.”

  The man turns to me. His face is handsome. He’s smiling. “Not a slave. Just a boy for sale.”

  “As a catamite?”

  He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter what you want him for. We just want his kind out of Tona.”

  “What kind is that?”

  “The kind that pretend to be girls.” He puts down the cloth on the table and pushes himself off. “Daybreak tomorrow. There’s only two of them. They’ll go quick.”

  Eddy doesn’t want to stay, but I convince him. We fight about it, hammock to hammock, back on the boat.

  “This obviously isn’t the place where we want to stay.”

  “I know that. I know. But let’s go and see in the morning.”

  “If that kid is for sale, then we’re both in danger here. This is not better than Ommun. Or any of the places we’ve seen and couldn’t stay.”

  “No place is going to be Nowhere, Eddy.”

  Eddy sighs. He hates when I even bring it up. But it’s not an angry sigh; there’s no edge on it.
/>   “I wish I had spent more time at home. When my mother was alive. When I could have been with Alice. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good. I was so anxious to be away. So sure there was something better.”

  “There is.” I think about the horsewomen in Jeff City, the Hives we had seen out on their own. The women in Shy. “There’s better. But maybe better is always paid for by someone else. Maybe there’s no comfort without somebody in pain.”

  Eddy is silent for a long time. “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “I only know what I’ve seen,” I tell him.

  “That’s the problem.”

  The harbor ripples through the night and I can hear the screaming of the birds that don’t sleep but hunt all night. I hunt with them.

  In the morning, Eddy won’t go with me. Time was, I would have begged. I begged in Ommun and Nowhere. I have begged on this ship more times than I can count. Today it’s too much and I just turn my back on him. If it surprises him, I can’t tell. He’s always closed off to me, but today is the first time I close in response.

  I walk to the public house where we heard about the boys for sale. It’s just before dawn, and not many are awake. I see people up feeding their chickens, checking their nets. There’s no smoke in the morning, and everything smells like fish and the sea. We haven’t been here long enough for the smell to fade. I remember this from when I was a child, the wet air redolent of rotten fruit and bog and fish. The villages Archie dragged me through were smaller than Tona, for the most part. Archie shied away from bigger trading cities, unless he had to go there. He was convinced he’d be shot and hung up as an example in one of them.

  “They’d do the same to you,” he’d tell me darkly. “Once they knew what you were.”

  His warning is with me this morning. It’s always with me. There are places that punish men like Eddy for being what he is. There are places that are dangerous to women like Kelda, surely. Alice is welcome wherever we go; that is her magic. I’m always the one they worry about.

  It’s no great crime to live as a man. Men are plentiful and everyone understands why you do it. Women lying with women is a waste, but you’ll hardly get killed for it. Living as a woman without being one is the thing that always stirs hate and violence. As if there is some great deception in it. As if it is the worst kind of fraud. Yet a woman who cannot breed or will not try is never the same sort of problem. And women past the end of their blood are no threat. I am no different from them.

  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.

  I find them by the crowd. I trade a pair of leather sandals I made on the ship for a big basket of fresh cornbread and salt fish I can take back to the ship. It’s a better deal for the woman who sells it to me, and she knows it. She makes some sort of sign and says I’ll be “blessed by the mouse.” I don’t ask.

  The two slaves are hauled up on the stage at first light. The handsome man I met last night holds the taller one by the back of the neck. The other is younger, smaller, and more easily cowed.

  Rage roils in me and I can barely keep still. They’re girls. They’re both obviously girls, with the truth in every line of how they stand and the way they look out over the crowd without hope.

  The man begins to speak and I panic. They have another tongue here. I’ve heard it before, must have been while I was a child here in Florda. It’s fast and rhythmic and every sentence seems to rhyme with the next.

  I cast my eyes about the crowd and find the woman who sold me my breakfast. She’s showing the shoes to some man. I put a hand on her forearm.

  “You speak this tongue,” I ask her, nodding to the platform.

  She nods. “Of course. Everyone in the marketplace speaks Spaniel.”

  “I need your help.”

  By the time she understands me fully, the younger girl has been sold. She’s shuffled off and into the arms of a short woman.

  “That’s his mother,” my translator says softly in my ear. “She bought him back.”

  “Who was selling the child, then?”

  “Must be his father. She’ll have to leave Tona. She can’t stay here with that. They’re trying to make sure no more are born.”

  The auctioneer pushes the older girl forward and begins to call out again.

  “Is that child’s parents in the crowd? Are they bidding?”

  My translator shakes her head. “This one has no family. They died of a fever. He’s alone.”

  I tell her to start bidding on my behalf. I have silk, but she tells me there’s no interest in that. “What’s that word he keeps using? Is that the word for pretending to be a girl?”

  I remembered the disorientation I felt after Jeff City, trying to explain what it meant to be a horsewoman. We are everywhere, but the word is always different. Sometimes it’s a word we choose and sometimes it’s not.

  “Guevedoces,” says my translator. “They are born girls, but then they turn into boys after they are twelve or thirteen summers old.”

  “Turn into boys?” I stare at her. She watches the auction, waiting for an opening. I tell her to bid metal tools. Nobody flinches. Knives and tools are common here. Damn.

  “Si, everything comes at once. The bird, the eggs. One day a girl, the next day a boy. Big disappointment.”

  “How?”

  “Nobody knows how, but it keeps happening. The king wants all guevedoces cut and moved far away. Sent out, or sold to travelers.”

  “Have they been cut already?”

  She shrugs. “Maybe it is for the buyer to do. I don’t know.”

  I tell her to switch to som and the crowd goes silent around us.

  I am watching the slave. We lock eyes and I see pure shock there. Total disbelief that I am willing to pay what I am.

  The auctioneer accepts far less som than I would have paid. We have paid more for ink. I go to the platform and pass off the two pots, taking care never to touch his hand. He pushes my purchase at me, and I try to catch the child without grabbing at a body that is not mine to touch.

  I thank my translator as we pass her. The child follows me without a word. The crowd begins to break up, moving to greet the dawn.

  When we reach an open space beneath tall palms, I turn to the child.

  “My name is Flora. You’re not a slave. I paid for you, but you belong to yourself. Do you understand?”

  “Si,” the child says sullenly. The eyes don’t look away from me, but there is no trust in them yet. Why should there be?

  “What’s your name?”

  Brown eyes are so soft, so sad. Mouth in a line and trying to look tough. “Concepcion. Connie. But I guess I have to change that.”

  “Why? It’s yours. You can have any name you want.”

  The kid crosses arms across a skinny chest. “I’m Connie. That’s my name.”

  “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.

  “Neither, then. That’s alright. Connie, I want to take you away from here. I know it’s your home, but I think it’s best if we go. This was once my home, too. Will you come with me?”

  “What other choice do I have?” They bite their lip and I can see their struggle not to cry. Not that grown-up. Not yet.

  I set the basket of food on the ground. I pull a knife out of my belt and throw it in. From my back, I take my other light cloak and lay it over the top.

  “You can go on your own, to wherever you wish. This isn’t much to start with, but it’s something. It’s more than many people have when they take to the road. There are good places and good people out there, but also a great deal of danger. I’m not telling you that to frighten you.
I’m telling you because it’s true.”

  They look down at it, blinking. “It’s not enough.”

  I shrug. “It never is. If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll never go.”

  “Where will I go with you?”

  I look out toward the harbor. “On a boat, with some friends of mine. On the sea, for a long time. We’re looking for something.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  I don’t even know how to say it. None of us does. It’s too big to be spoken. It would never fit through my mouth.

  “Somewhere where it is safe to be who we are. We are tired of being in danger because of how we were born.”

  Their eyes widen. Of course that makes sense to them. What else has their life been but a long setup for a bad joke?

  “Where is the place?”

  “We don’t know yet. That’s why it’s going to take so long.”

  “But it’s real?” They push their hair behind their ear. There’s something so indefinable about them. Not boy, not girl. Something else.

  “I believe it is real. And I want to take you with me. Will you come?”

  They look at the basket again, and for a moment I’m sure I’ve lost them. I’ll see their back as they sprint away toward whatever they can wrest from life on their own.

  “I’m coming. I don’t know what else to do. I can’t stay here. And I’m afraid to go alone.”

  I nod to them. “Come with me, then, Connie.” I pick up my things and we go together.

  I bring Connie to the boat. I wish they didn’t have to watch me explain. Eddy isn’t happy. Eddy is never happy. Bodie doesn’t care at all, merely shrugs and tells me there are four more hammocks in the hold and I need to rig one up.

  Alice, as usual, tries too hard and does too much. She doesn’t touch the child without asking (at least folks in Nowhere had good rules about that—nobody in Ommun could ever figure it out). But she comes close and talks too much.

  “What a beautiful living child you are! I’m so glad you’ve come to join us. What’s your name?”

  “Connie,” they tell her, barely meeting her eye.