Publishing had never been a choice Miranda was going to make. Station Eleven was hers and hers alone. She viewed her life's work as a non-linear exploration. Start and end were not important.
She had printed the first ten copies for herself. She had not entirely thought it through before sending a few copies to Arthur. It wasn't as though he was special. A few went to her family. One to Pablo. It was her way of explaining her life's work to those who had never understood. Here, she was saying, here is why I did this. Here is why I needed to.
Sometimes she wondered whether she should have expected the email. A friend of Arthur's (a fact she resented) who wanted to meet for lunch to discuss the future of her career as a writer. She pretended not to know why she went along with it, but in truth, the recognition felt good. Perhaps someone would finally understand Station Eleven, would finally understand Miranda. The lonely part of her soul sang as it realised it would finally be understood.
/
It was an immediate fascination with Tyler. The novels had come all the way from Canada, sent especially for him from Arthur. Tyler had not seen his father for six months. He was supposed to visit for Tyler's birthday, but something had come up and he had cancelled. Tyler had learnt by then to not let his father disappoint him – he was no longer surprised by the lack of contact. He had known since the divorce that Arthur did not have time for him. Still, he'd been upset. He had wanted his father, not comics. But despite Arthur's absence, his birthday had been a good one. His mother had taken him to a museum, and then they had fast food for dinner – a rare treat. He had started reading the comics the same night, feeling sick from the greasy fast food and the two slices of cake.
The red skies and bright blue seas of Station Eleven had been utterly unlike anything he had seen in Israel. They felt strangely familiar, as if Tyler had been there before. He traced the outline of the sun with his index finger, and wondered why his father had married Miranda Carroll. Or, rather, why Miranda had married his father. He had never met her – there wasn't any reason for him to – but during and after his parents' divorce, Tyler wished he could speak to someone besides his mother who understood what his father could be like. The distance he always felt between them, even when they were sitting next to each other.
He wondered if Miranda had felt it too.
/
By the time the Georgia flu was something to worry about, over one and a half million copies of Station Eleven had been printed. Miranda was unused to her newfound fame. Part of her resented that she had let her work become so mainstream, so public – it was hers and hers alone. It felt as though her entire life had been put out on display. The comics had, over time, become something like a journal, an abstract musing of her own life. But she was finally just Miranda Carroll. Not, 'Miranda Carroll, Arthur Leander's first wife.' To Miranda, this felt profoundly important.
Still, the fame was not something she enjoyed. People wanted to interview her. Take her picture. Get her autograph. What she had once loved about the city – the anonymity, the pleasure of knowing she was a stranger to all who saw her – had been taken away, and Miranda felt nude. Station Eleven had once been a place for her to escape, and now her secret refuge had been translated into twenty languages.
/
Kirsten read the first few pages while waiting for her mother to pick her up. Rehearsal had run long, and she had asked to be pick her up at ten instead of nine thirty. There had been no response. She would have been lucky if her mother had picked her up at ten anyway – it was often ten thirty or eleven before she arrived on a normal night. Kirsten had gotten used to the late nights – they no longer affected her as much. When she did attend school, she no longer fell asleep in class, ate her food at lunch instead of sleeping through it.
Still, Kirsten liked being at the theatre at night, after most people had left. Tanya didn't mind being kept late – she was usually off talking to Arthur anyway. It was peaceful there at night. The only noise was dull conversation from the dressing rooms, the hum of the overhead light, the distant sounds of the city.
By the time her mother arrived to collect her, it was eleven. "Sorry," she said. "Got caught up in errands." Kirsten no longer wondered or cared what errands her mother could be running this late. She had read one-fifth of the first comic and was anxiously waiting to get home so she could read the rest.
/
Kirsten might have never known what the 'MC' pencilled on the front cover of her comics meant had it not been for Arthur Leander. By then, she was fifteen years old. She had read the comics over thirty times. Her Arthur Leander tabloid collection was still in its infancy – a few pictures, one lone interview she had found in a newspaper. She had already formed the habit of looking through magazines in empty houses.
It was the dullness of the magazine that drew her in. So unlike the tabloids she had found her collection in, it was a plain brown colour. There were no edited photos, no garish subtitles that said things like 'Angelina and Brad SHOCK FIGHT' or '10 celebrity weight loss tips doctors don't want you to know'. When she skimmed the contents page of the dull brown magazine, the words jumped out at her immediately. Doctor Eleven. An interview with the author.
It was the first time she'd ever seen Dr Eleven's name anywhere but her own comics. The plain brown magazine went into her backpack.
/
Once upon a time, Tyler's life had stretched ahead of him in a straight line. High school, college, a high paying job in the field of his choice. Station Eleven slotted in somewhere along that line, like a piece of a puzzle. It was simply a part of him, just like how acting was a part of his mother.
And then the world had ended. Predictability became a dream. The line became a zig zag, and then a flatline. He would not go to high school. He would never attend college. Survival became the highest priority, and he was faced with the likeliness that he would never make something of himself. His only certainties were the comics in his backpack. He had read them so many times the words had become predictable, a rare comfort. Reading aloud to one or two people at the airport as a child became a frenzied preaching, a desperation to share his comfort with the world.
Elizabeth might have been concerned about her son's obsession had she any sanity left herself. While it once may have been a concern, she had found herself her very own comfort in the luggage of a deceased passenger. The bible was heavily annotated and dog-eared, which she liked. The knowledge that someone else before her had held this book in their hands, found meaning in the words, was akin to a warm hug. It seemed to both Tyler and Elizabeth a miracle that in the very same suitcase she found the bible, a copy of the first volume of Station Eleven was found. This was the miracle that kickstarted Tyler's collection.
/
The interview in the brown magazine became almost as important to Kirsten as the comics themselves. She learnt, firstly, what the mysterious 'MC' stood for – Miranda Carroll. She learnt that Miranda was the first wife of Arthur Leander, a connection that Kirsten found so unbelievably exciting she cried a little bit. It made sense now. Arthur had, of course, been the one to give her the comics. She realised later than Miranda herself had probably been the one to write inside their covers. Memories that had once been foggy became crystal clear.
She didn't plan the play. She had begun writing down the things she learnt about Miranda as a way for her to sort out her own unknowns. The list had eventually become all the things she knew about the woman – that she had grown up on the same small island as Arthur, that she loved the predictability of her first job as a secretary at a shipping company, that the comics had no true source of inspiration – they came from everything, everywhere, everyone. Eventually these written facts became a timeline, and the timeline became dialogue, and the dialogue became the first draft of a play about the life of Miranda Carroll.
Sometimes Kirsten wondered what had happened to Miranda. Had she survived the pandemic? Was she still drawing Dr Eleven and the Undersea?
/
Many miles away, at the top of a beach across the world, Miranda's skeleton lay alone on the sand. By now, grass had grown along the beach. A sea hibiscus tree had started to grow through her skull, flowers sprouting from her empty eye sockets. A seabird had made a nest in her ribcage.
/
By the time the Symphony reached St. Deborah by the Water, where they would perform Kirsten's play for the first time, Tyler's collection of memorabilia had filled up an entire caravan. His followers considered the comics a bible, preached by Tyler nearly every waking moment.
It was perhaps unlucky for Kirsten that the prophet was in the town at the same time as the symphony. She had felt something was wrong with him from the moment she had met his eyes in the audience – she had stuttered over her line, a line that she herself had written and by all accounts should have memorised.
To Tyler, it felt like a miracle. Kirsten put up a good fight when four of his followers jumped her after the play – she had been filling the Symphony's water barrel at the lake when they attacked her. She had stabbed one of them in the throat and popped out the eye of another, but it was not enough. One well-placed hit on the temple and Kirsten dropped. She found herself stranded in the Undersea as they dragged her into the caravan, wishing desperately to return home.
Tyler wasn't quite sure why he had to have Kirsten. Perhaps it had been the passion with which she performed – or the well-worn comic in her hand that she quoted throughout the play. Her performance reminded Tyler of his own preaching – he knew that Kirsten would become the most valuable part of his collection. He had encountered no-one who was quite as passionate, as connected to the novels as he was – he wasn't going to let that get away.
/
By the time Kirsten woke up, they were a full day out of St. Deborah by the water. The Symphony had searched for her relentlessly – Tyler and his followers had heard cries of "Kirsten" echo across the lake for hours until they got too far away for the sound to carry. In the first few moments of waking, Kirsten heard the rumble of wheels, felt the vibrations through the floor, and for a moment believed herself to be at home with the Symphony.
Tyler had watched her sleep, wondering if she dreamt of Station Eleven. Her words still echoed through his head from the play, and when she opened her eyes, he did not move.
Slowly, she stood up, leaning on the wall for support. An intricately embroidered Station Eleven quilt fell off her. "You kidnapped me," she said bluntly.
"I did not kidnap you, Kirsten," the prophet replied calmly.
Kirsten was scared, but tried to sound as if she wasn't. "How do you know my name?"
"Your friends searched for you. By now they probably believe you to be dead."
"Why am I here?"
"As you can see, I am quite the… fan of Station Eleven." He gestured around the caravan. Her whole face changed when she noticed what, exactly, the clutter was. Station Eleven posters, news articles, character sketches covered the walls. Hundreds of copies of the comics were stacked on the floor – Tyler's superior copies were locked safely in a glass cabinet. "Something we have in common, I believe?"
"I don't have anything in common with you," Kirsten spat. She raised a hand to her aching head, crusty with dried blood. The Symphony's motto slammed into her head suddenly – survival is insufficient – that for a moment Kirsten thought someone had yelled it into her ear.
The prophet did not move. "But you do," he said earnestly. "You share the same devotion. The same passion. I saw it in your eyes as you performed. Imagine, Kirsten, what we could accomplish together. How far the words of Dr Eleven could spread if we joined forces."
"The words of Miranda Carroll, you mean."
"She is only the messenger," the prophet said dismissively. "It does not come from her heart. The story comes from God – it is the new Book of Revelations, and His work must be spread."
Kirsten scoffed. "You're delusional." The snub to Miranda had felt personal, and Kirsten was angry on her behalf – how many years, blood, tears had gone into her work, for the prophet to claim that it had not truly come from her? Kirsten's fingers closed into a tight fist.
The prophet shook his head at her, a slight smile playing on his lips. "You have not yet woken up."
He thought he knew better than her. A stab of rage pierced Kirsten's heart.
/
There were two knives tattooed on Kirsten's wrist. She loved them as much as she hated them – they reminded her of her strength, and of what she had done to gain that strength. They symbolised, to her, not only the lives she had taken, but also the lives that had touched her own. Arthur Leander. Miranda Carroll. The nameless man who had helped her the night Arthur had died. Tanya. They were her parents, her brother, the people she had known in the lifetime before this. Sometimes she wondered how many knives there would be by the time she died. She hoped that the number would remain two – but perhaps that was wishful thinking.
/
The prophet looked human in sleep; his face untwisted with desperate grief.
The adrenaline had begun to wear off, and Kirsten was now feeling every single wound. Part of her wanted to lie down in the blood next to the prophet and go back to sleep. She forced herself, instead, to her feet, and stumbled outside, landing on all fours in the dirt.
The caravan was still moving, albeit slowly, led by two elderly horses who looked as though they might drop at any moment. For the first time in daylight, she saw the men who had attacked her by the lake – two of them walked alongside of the caravan. They stared at her blankly, and she wondered if they were going to kill her. They had no doubt expected the prophet to stumble from the caravan instead.
She wondered what was taking them so long. She realised that she didn't care. Turning her back to them, Kirsten began the long walk back to the Symphony.