The walls of Wicker City were every bit as vile as the lifestyle within. Funny, then, that Elena so longed to be back in the city—a testament to how much worse it was outside.
Elena’s eyes took in those walls, hating their twisted, rusty metal and all they stood for. Some areas were the backs of stone buildings, the rest of which had been long ago otherwise been blown to bits. Other sections of the walls were made of scrap metal, barricades and parts of old tanks turned on their sides. The closest gate, never opened these days, was a massive door that had long ago been sealed. Leaving the city simply wasn’t done anymore. Entering, even less so.
Elena’s journey back to this spot hadn’t been an easy one, but there she was, the lost daughter of Wicker City returned. Exile can drive one to desperate measures, but near starvation and numerous kill-or-be-killed fights for survival can lead to even worse.
Hope for a better life and a hunger for answers brought her back.
Many years had passed since she had arrived at the city with her parents. Not a day had gone by since without her remembering those early years. Shivering not only from the cold of the world outside those walls, but from thoughts of wondering who she was and where she had come from.
In the Elsewhere, she had done things she wasn’t proud of in the name of survival. If she was her father’s daughter, was cruelty something she could escape? She had asked herself that same question every moment along her path until returning on this day. Over time, however, she had wondered about such thoughts. She had been a young teen when she left. Maybe her view of him was harsh? Maybe he had simply been looking out for his family in the only way he knew how.
Looking up at those walls, she could see how someone would go to extremes to both get in and, once inside, find a foothold. Everyone knew the walls of Wicker City were impenetrable. That entering was impossible. Still, she had made her way back and been with a local encampment outside the city for almost a year now, hoping to find a way.
On yet another murky day of surviving in this encampment, she was selling what scavenged goods she could to Big Jodie. Haggling with the woman never went well, because she knew the type she dealt with—those desperate to stay near the city in hopes of one day finding a way in. That meant they wouldn’t travel far to find other buyers.
Elena turned to pocket her coins and head off to find a bite to eat, but she turned back to look at Big Jodie for a moment and froze, eyes focused on a face she knew from her past. A little girl, standing with Big Jodie now. The large woman nodded, then pointed Elena’s way.
Elena had known this girl when she was with the group known as the Sisters of the Wind. Many of Elena’s better memories from her time in the city were from when she was with the Sisters, though that only lasted briefly. The Sisters were a group of mostly young girls who lived on the streets of Wicker City. Over the years, they had started to work together, forming a bond to enable their survival. The girl had been young when Elena had been with them, only six maybe, but already quite clever when it came to snatching bread and other essentials.
She couldn’t remember the girl’s name off the top of her head, but she knew their meeting could be the key to returning within the city walls.
“A flower of some sort,” Elena said, approaching the girl. “What are you doing outside the city walls, little flower?”
“It’s Lilly,” the girl said, standing tall and eyeing Elena. This girl had to be eleven, maybe twelve. Already showing the signs of becoming a woman, along with a hardness in her eyes that came with living in a place like the city. Not that anywhere else was any better. She wore her platinum blonde hair in two pigtails, a light line of freckles crossing her nose from one cheek to the other. Her skirt and layers of shirts were tattered old black and plaid. Recognition slowly showed on her face. “You...? You’re her, aren’t you?”
At her side, Big Jodie grunted and walked off.
Elena gave her a mock bow. “Elena.”
“Come.” Lilly gave her a simple nod and turned to lead the way. “You’re needed.”
Apparently, the girl was there looking for her. After a glance Big Jodie’s way in the hopes of her knowing what this was about, Elena followed. She knew enough about the Sisters of the Wind to understand that when one of them shows up outside the city walls, you do as she asks. Following Lilly down to the edge of an embankment, she found an answer, but it was the last thing she would have expected.
It was her mother.
That same mother who she was told had died years ago. She sat there, propped up against an old, gray couch cushion on the ground. Her face was beaten, her hands gripping desperately at what must have been bullet wounds, judging by the red drenching her shirt and overcoat.
“Mother?” Elena knelt at her side, hands reaching but then pulling back, unsure what to do here.
“They told me… you were dead,” her mother replied. “You…” She took a gasping breath, then coughed up blood, eyes going distant as she reclined, head on the cushion.
“What is this?” Elena looked to Lilly desperately, but the girl had turned, looking out at the horizon. Turning back to her mother, Elena finally removed her coat, pressing it against the wounds with pressure. “Mother, tell me who did this.”
“It was…” Her mother struggled to speak, spasmed softly, and then got out one more word, “…him.”
That was it. Those simple words, and then she stopped moving, stopped spasming. She was dead.
Elena held her mother’s body, staring at it in confusion. What had she meant? For years Elena had dreamed of returning to finally get her answers, to have her revenge, but she had been a nobody.
Now, old enough to think clearly and come up with a plan, she had learned everything she knew about life had been a lie. Everything that mattered, at least.
And the unfortunate truth about the situation was that there was only one ‘him’ she could even start to think her mother had meant. The man her father and his boss Sabin had been going up against all those years ago in her father’s power play. The one they called Peter.
She would find a way into the city, get an audience with that man, and ask him to his face. But everything had likely changed within those walls since she had last been there, so first she would have to learn the lay of the land.
Eyeing Lilly, she licked her lips, knowing this girl was her ticket in.
The girl noticed Elena’s gaze on her, and said, “Talk… there’s talk of a city out there. One with working electricity at all times. Where…” She stopped, then laughed. “Well, you’ve been outside of the walls for years now, right? You know of such a city?”
For a moment she wondered how Lilly could see her mother lying there like this and think of anything else. But no, Lilly was a child of the city. Death was nothing new to her. Another part of a normal day.
“I don’t.” Elena turned from her back to the form of her dead mother. Someone had lied to her. She had only been a teenager, and they had told her that her parents were killed. But here was her mother, actually dead. All those years… it had been a lie. Just like the city Lilly asked about was a lie. “Lilly. I want you to take me into the city.”
“Of course you do. When one of the Sisters came out for supplies, you were spotted. We told her, knowing how much she missed you, how she had searched.”
“She… did?”
“Of course. And she insisted we come for you, to take you back. I only assume you will still be coming, in spite of… this.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
Lilly considered, then shrugged. “Someone shot at us. Her, specifically. But we made it.”
Elena frowned. “Made it?” That was debatable. They had found her, yes, but her mother was dead. A shudder went through Elena, and she bowed her head. No tears came—she had already shed too many tears for her parents’ death. Now, it was a cold, hollow sorrow in her chest.
“I need to find answers,” Elena said, rising. “If you came from the city, I trust you know a way back in?”
Lilly nodded. “The Sisters of the Wind know many things.” It wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Leaving the city wasn’t difficult, but returning without a warlord’s permission was supposedly impossible. This girl, however, knew how to get things done. She motioned for Elena to stay close and follow her.
“But my mother…” She considered what to do with the body, but realized she had no answers. She turned to see Big Jodie and asked for a moment. Running back over, she confirmed that the woman would handle burial. While Elena would have preferred to have been there for it, she had said her farewell.
It was time for action.
She returned to Lilly, who nodded and led her away from the encampment. Elena eyed the city walls again, a dread coming over her at the ghastly sight. For the longest time, she had convinced herself she was glad to put Wicker City behind her. Focused on the negatives, such as the backstabbing and politics. No matter how hard she tried to twist it, though, outside was always worse.
As vividly as if it had been yesterday, she remembered that one cruel night not long after she and her parents had entered the city. They’d been hiding in a room on the outskirts, near the walls.
Then the attackers had come. “Go,” her father had hissed, and Elena had run, one step ahead of them as they retreated to the back room, her hiding under the bed. Two men had stormed in, shouting as they waved machetes above their heads. Elena had found a spot under the bed, gripping her hands together as if in prayer, but eyes peeled in horror. She knew this scene from stories, watching and dreading the moment when her father’s face would appear before her eyes, head decapitated from his body.
“You’re Sabin’s lackey, now?” one of the attackers had shouted at her father, lowering his blade to point it at his throat. “More men for his army. No, I say one more corpse for the sewers.”
They had attacked. They had fallen. Her father was a large man, but deceivingly quick. As the one who had spoken tried to attack, Elena had watched her father close the distance between the two. He had caught the man with an elbow to the throat, and then disarmed him to take the machete for himself. Next, her father spun and drew a pistol, blowing a chunk from the second attacker’s face before burying the machete into the first man’s skull.
He dropped the blade, sent another shot into this man, then turned back to deliver a second to the other. Both corpses fell into pools of their own blood. Dead eyes stared at Elena hiding under that bed all those years ago, but neither set belonged to her father.
Finally, he had knelt, reached out a hand, and helped her to stand. Her stomach was churning, bile sour in her mouth, and the sight of blood had made her almost faint, blotches of light appearing at the edges of her vision.
But her father had put a hand on her shoulder, pointing her to the bodies. “This is how we make it. Look and see the price. Do you understand?”
She hadn’t. Not really. Later she had looked back on that moment and considered that it was likely to have been a setup. Her family had been bait, set up by one of the city’s warlords—the man called Sabin. The fact that her father had let that happen while she was in the house? One of many reasons she had screamed at him, telling him that she never wanted to see his face again.
Then had come the news that both he and her mother were dead. Her dad’s friend Thomas had come for her in the night, told her the horrible news, and got her out of the city. It wasn’t an official exile, but once she left the walls of the city, it might as well have been.
What followed was a stark reminder of what it was like for children on the outside. For every tear shed within the city walls, outside saw a thousand. More bloodshed, more shit that life threw at you from every direction. For years she had simply tried to survive, but a new discovery had led her back to this encampment, where she had been now for over a year, hoping to find a way in. Having a bit of the treasure referred to as New Gold meant she could better work the system, increase her chance of survival, and find the answers she craved.
She never would have dreamed that her mother was still alive, or that her real death would be what brought her the chance to reenter the city. And if her mother had been alive all this time, what did that say of her dad? Elena found herself imagining him trapped in some warlord’s prison, tortured and on the edge of death. Was it odd that she found herself not caring so much? He had proven himself to be a real son of a bitch more than once. Maybe he really was dead, she didn’t know. That would be one of several answers she determined to find in the city.
It was time to see if the Sisters of the Wind still had the pull they once had. It was time to find a way back into the city, to earn her place and make a difference. To find answers, and this time, have her justice.
Lilly paused in the shadow of a tree, turning to eye Elena. “The price—”
“Price?”
“You were one of the Sisters of the Wind, once.” Lilly offered her a smile. Almost warm and friendly, but slightly twisted. “All we ask is that you consider this. We help you out, you help us out when the opportunity arises.”
Elena nodded, slowly, then glanced around the land to say her farewells. In the years since leaving the walls she had been a nomad, chasing myths of a paradise beyond. Every turn had led to more danger, more terror, and more grief. Eventually, she had ended up back here more out of a lack of anywhere else to go. At least the worst of the crazies tended to stay farther away from the walls. And here she had known that if someone ever found a way back in, she could take it.
This was her way. And now her drive was intensified by the need to know why she had been lied to about her mother’s death.
She agreed to Lilly’s terms, then followed the girl, anxious to see what had changed in that God-forsaken land. Ready to find her answers.