Stella headed home to get her ready bag. It was a bag her mother insisted remain packed with two changes of clothes and a bunch of essentials, ready to be grabbed in a moment if an emergency occurred. She’d used it fifteen times since they’d come to London a year ago, but twelve of those had been drills so they didn’t count. One of the other times was when her bibi-daj left the honey out, the kitchen was infested by ants, and they all went to stay in a hotel for a week.
Which made this the third real emergency in a year. The first one where she actually knew what the crisis was, too. Twice they’d simply moved in the night, buying a new home in a different part of the city. She liked the Highgate house, the area was very nice. She could hunt rabbits in the cemetery, or in Hampstead Heath, and people didn’t shout or scream if she walked down the street with her bow over her shoulder.
In Highgate, being different was normal. Everyone was different here.
It was a strange thing to think about, and she wondered why she was having the thought now. Was it because they were about to leave London? Was her mind telling her she didn’t want to go?
Either the thought of leaving London made her stomach lurch, or the baron’s illness hadn’t been completely cured from her system. She hoped it wasn’t the latter.
She took three trams home without paying attention to her surroundings, which was annoying. She liked to pay attention to her surroundings, she liked to catalogue the smells, to feel the different textures she encountered, to note the people and try to understand something about each of them.
She couldn’t. Her thoughts were demanding too much of her attention. The conversations with Maria had left Stella deeply unsettled, as had the events of the past few nights. She’d been reacting, quickly, focusing on action, now she had to slow. Slow meant thinking about all the things she’d managed to avoid thinking about so far.
There was a lot. Too much, it was overwhelming. She had almost died last night; she hadn’t thought that could happen. Not yet. She still had her destiny to do; the world hadn’t even ended, yet.
She had no idea when it would happen, but she couldn’t die before it did.
Her bibi-daj was gone now, too, heading out to arrive at the compound tonight, and start getting things ready. The compound was a pressure Stella hadn’t expected to encounter; it was where her mother had been born, and her grandmother had died. Her mother hadn’t been back since the day she’d lost everyone she’d ever known.
The world had been supposed to end on New Year’s Eve 1899, 2000 years after Christ was born. Well, not the whole world, but civilisation was supposed to end. The Millennium Grace Congregation had spent decades preparing for it. They knew that when the world ended, small pockets of humanity would survive. Farmers might stay fed, but the majority of people in cities would have no idea how to get food once shops no longer existed. Farmers could grow their own food, but they couldn’t fight off the city survivors that turned to banditry.
The Millennium Grace Congregation could do both.
They were prepared for everything except the world not ending.
The day after the world didn’t end, they’d all committed suicide. All except seventeen-year-old Selene.
Her mother didn’t talk about it, ever, but her bibi-daj had told Stella when she was fourteen. Somehow, she had gotten the story out of her mother, and she’d thought Stella deserved to know. The world hadn’t ended, but her mother still thought it would, so Stella had been trained as her mother had. She’d been learning to fight since she was five years old. She’d read books on strategy and war by ancient masters. She could farm, fish, hunt, and butcher animals. She knew every plant in England by sight and could make medicine from herbs. It was her destiny to lead humanity after civilisation fell, or so her mother claimed.
Civilisation wasn’t going to fall, her bibi-daj said, and Stella’s destiny, if she needed one, was to live a good life, be happy, and have fat babies.
It didn’t seem like a very good destiny, if Stella was honest. Leading war bands through the wastelands after the world was partially destroyed sounded much better than fat babies.
She was still thinking about how much she didn’t want to have fat babies or, honestly, any babies, when she reached her house. Home. It was home, now, and she didn’t think she wanted to leave.
She tried to imagine living in this house forever, with her fat babies. There was plenty of space; her bibi-daj, Stella, and her mother took up less than half of the bedrooms. She couldn’t imagine it.
Stella sat on her bed, staring at the ready bag, her thoughts stumbling from fat babies she didn’t want to kidnapped teenagers she didn’t want to have to deal with. The fight in the warehouse. Her first fight with Brick. Her second fight with Brick. She’d almost died last night. Twenty-two years ago, her mother had stumbled out of that compound with nothing, no one left alive to care, no home, no money. She didn’t even have a surname. Now she had to go back.
Someone was kidnapping sixteen-year-olds who had abilities, which meant… what? Someone knew, obviously, but what did they know? How did they know? Who were they? What did they want? How did prosthetics fit into it?
Stella wanted to scream. She did. It was loud and went on for a long time, until she fell back on the bed exhausted. She wanted to hit someone. Lots of someones, hard, until they told her what was going on.
She had nearly died last night! A Spaniard had saved her. Healed her. Spaniards had killed both their dads. One of them deserved it. The five-year-old boy didn’t. Who killed little kids? That was evil.
It was… she didn’t have words for what it was. It was wrong, that was the only word necessary.
If she was going to have a destiny that had anything to do with babies, it would involve stopping people from killing them. By hitting those people a lot. That would be a good destiny.
There was too much happening, too much in her head. A mysterious Voice that might be God; did others hear the Voice? Was she alone and going mad? She needed to tell her mum, but how could she, now? As tough as her mother was, she was strangely delicate. She could cope with anything with Stella’s bibi-daj at her side, but without her bibi-daj she was that lost seventeen-year-old with no second name, who’d survived the end of her world at the cost of everything she’d ever had.
How could she possibly tell her mother about the Voice if her bibi-daj wasn’t there?
She moved down to the kitchen, looking over the room. Searching in cupboards as if they held the answer. They didn’t. Neither did the frune. There were no answers, and everything… There was just so much… She couldn’t even find the start of it, the place to begin thinking. It was just everything all at once, vying for attention. Too much!
She banged the cupboard doors shut. It improved her mood slightly. She screamed again. It didn’t help. She felt like she couldn’t breathe, like the walls were pressing in around her, like she was drowning or suffocating or both, like Death was standing beside her, one hand on her shoulder, ready to take her away.
She had to get out of here.
The pub in Soho had a certain kind of clientele, the sort that were illegal. Men in the finest of suits rubbed shoulders with men in rough, coarse woollens and cheap cotton. This was not the sort of place that belonged to any gang: the gangs pretended it didn’t exist, because there were some laws even gangsters wouldn’t break.
It was mainly for the men who found places like this by word-of-mouth, but there were others here. The unaffiliated, the lost, the lonely. It was a pub for the misfits of the world, the transients, immigrants who had yet to find community. Those who didn’t have anyone else.
And one annoyed journalist.
The Red Lion Inn wasn’t actually an inn, because it didn’t have rooms to rent out. It didn’t have a kitchen. It didn’t have a snug, where ladies could be hidden away in a smaller, quieter space so as to not offend men. There weren’t any lions, either, and the only thing that was red was the barman’s beard.
Hildy hadn’t thought this would matter. She was a flapper, she had a boyish figure and a boyish haircut, and she wore trousers and a flat cap and a cardigan with sheep her nan had knitted, not exactly female dress. She hadn’t imagined anyone would notice her.
The barman had spotted her and dropped a quiet word in her ear. She could drink, but she couldn’t approach the bar or buy a drink. The premises’ licence didn’t allow for selling alcohol to women. Someone would need to go to the bar for her.
Also, she was not allowed to get drunk, or the barman would call the police.
She had glanced around at that comment, at the men sitting closer than platonic friendship allowed, at the held hands and stolen glances, and the two men in dresses who left perfume trails in the air so thick they were almost visible. There was no way the barman would call the police, not here, but he also wasn’t going to serve her.
“Two more whiskeys,” Tom said, sitting down opposite her. She’d only met him for the first time today, but he seemed like a good sort. He was too rugged to be spiffy, and at least ten years older than her, but most men her age were monologists. Tom, at least, seemed interested in what she had to say, and when she’d told him the bank was closed when he first approached, he’d stayed anyway, and hadn’t tried to hawk himself and have the bank re-open out of hours. A good guy, one who listened and took no for an answer. “That’s your third, maybe think about making it your last,” he added, and she changed her mind about him being a good sort. Clearly, he was an interfering busybody of the absolute worst kind. Older men always thought they were her father.
“You were saying about the war,” she said as she accepted the whiskey. It smelled terrible but it was exactly what she needed. Whiskey, inane conversation, maybe opening the bank and having a little frantic sex with someone who was still half-a-stranger. She was a modern woman after all, she had needs. Whiskey, cigarettes, sex, and a pocketful of sherbet lemons, she was a working modern woman, her needs were simple.
“Just glad it’s over,” he said. “Glad I got home in one piece. Not like a lot of people I know. I’d rather hear about being a reporter.”
“People think it’s all blow, like we’re finding clues to great mysteries, but it’s mostly rather blaah. Often there’s some big timer we have to convince we’re the bee’s knees, so they’ll pass on a bit of goss, or reading through a whole lot of old files to find that one thing hidden in dust that connects everything. Or sitting up a tree in the rain for hours watching a building.” Or ramming milk floats into demons and dragging dying women into churches. Had she done the right thing? Should she have ignored what was said and drove to the hospital? Was the woman already dead?
Tom burst out laughing, then at her slight frown raised his hands in surrender. “I’m not laughing at you. You just don’t have to sell me on how bad investigations are, that’s all. I became a private investigator after I left the army. I know all about sitting up trees in the rain; I know investigations are the berries, but most of those berries are sour.”
She laughed along with him, then declined when he offered her a cigarette. Instead, she pulled her own tin out of her bag. It was mostly pink, and in the lower left corner a woman in Arabian dress cuddled the mane of a lion. The lion held a cigarette tin in its suspiciously hand-looking paw.
“Kyriazi Frères,” he read.
“Egyptian,” she replied.
“Fancy.”
“I was in Morocco, doing some war correspondence in 1919. Got a taste for them, hanging out with the Rif rebels in town.”
“I didn’t know they let women be war correspondents.”
“I never thought to ask permission.” She’d never claimed to be a man, she just hadn’t corrected anyone who assumed the Hildy that was sending telegrams from Russia, and then later Spain, was not a Hildebrand. Even then, returning to London had been difficult. So many newspapers had closed their doors to her when they discovered her gender.
The London Eye had been the only one that hadn’t, on the recommendation of their photographer, Charles Foxx, whom she’d met in Spain. That had been a complicated relationship. The incredible sex had lost its shine with the way he kept trying to send her home, “out of danger,” and now she was driving milk floats in to demons.
She didn’t want to think about that.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever encountered on an investigation?” she asked, breaking the comfortable silence.
“No,” he said instantly, a scowl coming on his face. “Was baby farmers, I’d rather not discuss it.”
“That still happens? There’s laws against that now.”
“There’s laws against murder, too. I’ll tell you the weirdest thing I ever investigated, though. Elephant theft.”
She laughed, the mood instantly turning brighter at his words. “Elephant theft?”
Tom nodded. “It was covered up. No one wanted the story to leak, too embarrassing for the zoo, police, and politicians, but about six months after that baby elephant was born, would be… two years back now, some of those Forty Elephant girls got it in their heads what their gang needed was an actual elephant, so they nicked one from London Zoo.”
“No!”
“Yup. Don’t know how they thought they’d hide it, even baby elephants are huge, and need 12 litres of milk from their mamas every day. They’re loud, too, when they’re distressed. Very loud. So they kept having to move its location, and I kept chasing rumours of elephant noises across the city for three days, before catching up to them.”
“What did you do?” she asked through laughter.
“I called the zoo and the police. I’m paid to find things, not tangle with gangs.”
They sat in silence and smoke for a moment, and she considered him. His face held a sort of rugged, grizzly charm. He hadn’t shaved for maybe a week, and stubble covered his lower jaw and cheeks, but his hair was short and trim. His hands were clean, his nails were short, and his eyes were clear. Not spiffy, but definitely sparkly. Smart. Respectful. Not bad looking. Willing to listen. Not pushy. “Alright,” Hildy said, “bank’s open, let’s blouse.”
Previous Chapter: Chapter Seventeen
Next Chapter: Chapter Nineteen
Editor’s Note
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
From: The London Eye Editorial Board
Subject: Language
Date: June 14, 1922
Confused? You might need The Hildy Johnson Flapper Slang Dictionary. It explains all the flapper slang in this, and other, chapters.
Author’s Note
There’s a context post on the inspiration for Selene and Stella on the queerguide today that goes a little into why I wrote this.
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