Station Eleven

“We left St. Deborah in kind of a hurry,” someone muttered.

“I had to leave,” the girl said. “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll do anything, just—”

“Why did you have to leave?”

“I’m promised to the prophet,” the girl said.

“You’re what?”

The girl was crying now. “I didn’t have any choice,” she said. “I was going to be his next wife.”

“Jesus,” Dieter said. “This goddamn world.” Olivia was standing by her father, rubbing her eyes. The tuba lifted her into his arms.

“He has more than one?” asked Alexandra, still blissfully ignorant.

“He has four,” the girl said, sniffling. “They live in the gas station.”

The conductor gave the girl a clean handkerchief from her pocket. “What’s your name?”

“Eleanor.”

“How old are you, Eleanor?”

“Twelve.”

“Why would he marry a twelve-year-old?”

“He had a dream where God told him he was to repopulate the earth.”

“Of course he did,” the clarinet said. “Don’t they all have dreams like that?”

“Right, I always thought that was a prerequisite for being a prophet,” Sayid said. “Hell, if I were a prophet—”

“Your parents allowed this?” the conductor asked, simultaneously making a Shut up motion in the direction of the clarinet and Sayid.

“They’re dead.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Were you spying on me in St. Deborah?” Kirsten asked.

The girl shook her head.

“No one told you to watch us?”

“No,” she said.

“Did you know Charlie and the sixth guitar?”

Eleanor frowned. “Charlie and Jeremy?”

“Yes. Do you know where they went?”

“They went to the—to the Museum of Civilization.” Eleanor said museum very carefully, the way people sound out foreign words of whose pronunciation they’re uncertain.

“The what?”

August whistled softly. “They told you that’s where they were going?”

“Charlie said if I could ever get away, that’s where I could find them.”

“I thought the Museum of Civilization was a rumor,” August said.

“What is it?” Kirsten had never heard of it.

“I heard it was a museum someone set up in an airport.” Gil was unrolling his map, blinking shortsightedly. “I remember a trader telling me about it, years back.”

“We’re headed there anyway, aren’t we? It’s supposed to be outside Severn City.” The conductor was peering over his shoulder. She touched a point on the map, far to the south along the lakeshore.

“What do we know about it?” the tuba asked. “Do people still live there?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“It could be a trap,” the tuba murmured. “The girl could be leading us there.”

“I know,” the conductor said.

What to do with Eleanor? They knew they risked accusations of kidnapping and they had long adhered to a strict policy of non-intervention in the politics of the towns through which they passed, but no one could imagine delivering a child bride back to the prophet. Had a grave marker with her name on it already been driven into the earth? Would a grave be dug if she returned? Nothing for it but to take the girl and press on into the unknown south, farther down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan than they’d ever been.

They tried to engage Eleanor in conversation over dinner. She’d settled into a wary stillness, the watchfulness of orphans. She rode in the back of the first caravan, so that she’d be at least momentarily out of sight if anyone approached the Symphony from the rear. She was polite and unsmiling.

“What do you know about the Museum of Civilization?” they asked.

“Not very much,” she said. “I just heard people talk about it sometimes.”

“So Charlie and Jeremy had heard about it from traders?”

“Also the prophet’s from there,” she said.

“Does he have family there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell us about the prophet,” the conductor said.