Hopped up on adrenaline, both natural and injected, she barely registers the first cut. Brittany has always been quick, and dodging danger has usually been her first defense, so the cuts aren't deep anyway. Her opponent is small and strong, and pretty quick too, but she's reckless and impulsive. Clearly she hasn't been fighting long. Brittany blocks the knife strike with her left, kicks her in the head with her right, turns and kicks again.
Brittany's been fighting forty-one days. There are rumblings that she may soon break the infamous Azimio's record of fifty-two. It's pretty simple. If you lose, you die. If you refuse, you go to the workhouse, where you get used until you die. Losing isn't an option. And refusing– well, she'd rather die fighting.
This morning a new girl was captured, a wild girl. She won't talk– maybe she can't talk. Brittany's heard rumors of a raft adrift, a boatload of girls picked up by the coastal patrol, sunburned, starving. Someone speculated they'd been floating for thousands of miles, from the southern ocean, ever since the water closed over their island. Others expressed doubt.
The girl looked battered when she was dumped in Brittany's cell. Thin, dehydrated. Swollen eyes, that when she opened them burned steely and protective, blood in the white of one. She smelled of blood, but she also smelled of cedar.
She smelled of home, where Brittany's grandmother had grown up, growing things–food, medicine–back when plants grew. Where Grammie and Aunt Jo lived with the other aunties. Home, or what Grammie used to burn to remind her of the old days, before the bees died out, before her medicine crop withered, before they'd had to flee to higher ground, well east of the old Capitol. Grammie only used a whiff or two at a time, and only once in a while, since there was no replacement coming any time soon. Brittany roused herself from her reverie. Those days wouldn't be coming back any time soon, either. Grammie was gone, Mama was gone. There was only here, only now.
They sat across from each other in the cell. Brittany met her gaze and held it. The girl wouldn't speak– or maybe couldn't– so Brittany spoke to her in low, soothing tones about how the fights would go and how exactly, if they met in the arena, Brittany would kill her.
The new girl only tipped her head to the side in response.
Now Brittany has her in the sand, at the point of her own knife.
"You have lost!" bellows Brittany. "You must die!"
The girl takes the hint. She even convulses– too dramatically?– as Brittany drives the point home. Cheers shake the stadium as Brittany takes her victory lap and swell as she drags the girl out and throws her on the pile of bodies.
Another day. Another laurel. She can only hope for a life after death.
But the next day there's another girl. And another. And another. Forty-nine victories. Fifty. Nearly two months in the ring. Background buzz about her escalates into a drone. Guards are making book on her within her hearing, implying threats, implying promises.
Her food gets better, but her competition gets worse.
It's the fifty-first day. Her fifty-first fight. Her opponent is a blonde boy with nice muscles but little sense of how to use them to his advantage. His hair is in his eyes. He's slow and scared. It's some kind of setup. She should be fighting harder opponents, not easy ones.
The boys never get thrown into her cell, so she hasn't told him how she'll kill him. Which means, of course, that she will have to kill him. He started the fight with a knife. She is bare-handed, nearly naked, without so much as a wooden shield.
He charges at her. He's a fool.
She easily evades him, spinning a kick to the knife. He is disarmed, doomed.
She catches the knife in one hand, his arm in the other. She pulls him in close, drawing out the moment.
"You must die, my friend," she growls into his ear, "and you must die well."
If he doesn't, he certainly will.
She throws him, pins him, hoists the knife. The crowd hushes for a moment, then roars.
"And now," she roars, "you die!"
The knife plunges. The boy lunges. Fucking idiot.
She catches him. She'll make it quick, but she can't guarantee painless. She slices his heart. She drags his body to the refuse pile, keeps up the act for the victory lap, then holes up in her cell.
Inside her, there's a place she goes, a refuge, an oasis, but today it's dry. Dry like the lakes, dry like the fields, dry like the mountains, before the ocean rolled in and drowned her home. Home, where Mama had grown up, growing things, and where Brittany grew things, too. Summer smells, bud and flower, earth, sunshine, patchouli and sandalwood. Winter smells, woodsmoke, pine, snow. Cedar. Then dust. Just dust. And later, oily, salty intertidal muck.
The rent in her heart has sent refuge packing. As has the smell of barbequed bodies. Here, the circus provides the bread.
Daylight wanes. Darkness laps at her feet. Murmurs of the other fighters ebb and flow, then slowly, sounds of sleep.
Brittany needs sleep, so she will sleep, but when she does sleep, she knows the ghosts of those she has killed will visit. So she delays. She sits up, in the shadows, in a corner, facing the door.
A tiny knife strikes the wall by her head. Adrenaline quickens her. Without thinking, she wrests it out and hides it, then hides herself. Within minutes she has the lock picked and the door opened. She notices her guard is missing, and instead a smallish fellow wearing a hood stands outside her cell. She freezes.
The hood dips to the side, beckoning. Instinct prods Brittany to follow.
Silently they make their way, from shadow to shadow, through corridors to air ducts and finally to the outside. Still silent, strangely unseen, camouflaged with the walks of peasants, they manage to arrive at the city wall. Hidden in a crevice, a rope hangs ready.
A whiff of cedar teases Brittany's nostrils as the kid with the hood leads the way up and over. A sharp yank brings down the rope, and they run for scrub. They don't stop until they are under cover.
Brittany catches the other's arm and takes down the hood. Black hair spills out, and with it, a dash more of cedar.
"You came back for me." Breathless.
Alarms sound. The girl brings a finger to her lips. Carefully she checks for hunters. Getting caught again would mean the workhouse for sure.
The sliver of moon won't illuminate them much. In fits and starts, they make their way from scrub to scrub, west, Brittany notices, always west. Where there's nothing but waste and ocean.
"Where are you taking me?" she whispers. "Where are we going?"
"Shhh…" spits the girl.
Into her ear, Brittany breathes, "At least tell me your name?"
Warily, the girl eyes her.
At last she decides. "Santana. I'm taking you home."
Now Brittany considers, tips her head to the side. "West?"
Santana nods. And they go.
Nights of walking, days of sheltering, hiding, avoiding. Maybe the hunters gave up. Maybe they got distracted. Maybe they're around the next bend. The girls wend their way west, against Brittany's best instincts, but maybe against those of the hunters, too.
Salt pools provide water. They must wait for the heat and cool to distill enough. Food is a tougher issue. In between kills, they chew rough grasses for the sensation of having eaten, without having been nourished. Brittany can feel her body eating itself.
Six days in, they shelter in a buried capsule. Someone has been stocking it with water and hard pale pucks of something resembling food. They fill their bellies, and their full bellies loosen their tongues.
"You came here, didn't you? Before you went back for me."
Santana nods once.
"But why me?"
Santana considers. "It's what we do, bringing lost girls home. But I also needed– I needed to return the favor."
"But your home is under the ocean? Isn't it?"
An involuntary chuff escapes Santana.
"Mine is," says Brittany.
"Yeah."
It's not easy for Brittany to hold her gaze now. Santana's eyes keep drifting to the side. But when Brittany takes her hand, Santana zeros in on her.
"Did you save a lot of girls? Did they want to be saved?"
Brittany nods. "If they didn't want to be saved, they died. You didn't die."
"Some of the girls we saved died, too."
"Probably you didn't kill them, though." Brittany breaks eye contact.
"No."
Santana continues to hold her hand. The silence deepens between them.
"Do you want to? Come home with me?"
Brittany looks again. "You want a killer in your home?"
Santana brings Brittany's hand to her lips. "No. Just you."
Brittany senses her heart starting like when they shot her with adrenaline, when she was going into the arena. Her breath catches. And she finds her lips touching Santana's.
"Don't run," Santana breathes into her mouth.
On the sixteenth day, they crest a hill and the ocean opens up below them. But not just the ocean. The remnants of a forest rise from the sea, and a breath of cedar brushes their nostrils. A little way farther, Santana pulls a tiny canoe out of its hiding place. She shows Brittany how to provide power from the bow. Santana provides direction from the stern.
Their weakness makes the canoeing slow, but finally they reach the towering trees.
Hidden in the branches are structures. A city, over the ocean, in the trees. They climb up, hoisting the canoe after them. They are greeted by women. A city of women.
"Welcome home," smiles Santana.