Chapter Text
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Prologue
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My ma used to tell me, when I was small and my hair was still good and long for combing, ‘bout how she flew and fought on the fury road. I was no more than a chit in her belly, those days; no brain to remember, not even an excuse to say I did. I liked to think I had a part in it though. That through her fighting blood running down her veins and into me I was made strong, I was made historic on that day of all historic days.
Remember me.
She told me more than that, as I grew old and useful. Guided my hands into damp dirt, ‘round the roots of little plants so they wouldn’t break when I moved them. They were fine as hairs on my fingers. Some kinds killed; others soothed my lungs, made my lowest days a little sweeter.
She’d show me, too, the patterns the stars made, and the kind of deep hush across the wasteland, the kind that settled after a long, hot day, the kind that tastes blue on the tongue and sad in the soul. On top of the red-rock-height of the Citadel weren’t nothing to break the view of the stars but my own nose in front of me, and my ma’s hands when she lifted them to point out little glims and glits of light.
“Those are far away,” she said. “More distance than you can fathom, little weed. And you’d best be glad they’re not closer, too.”
“Why, ma?”
“They’re big balls of fire. And they’d eat up the world if they came too close. Eat it up with heat ‘til there wasn’t anything left.”
“They wouldn’t. There’s nothing to eat out there, anyway. Nothing but dirt.”
She’d laugh in her moon-headed way and stick her fingers in my hair and ruffle it til it was all flying like feathers. She was tall and pale and beautiful, my ma, with her hair long and white around her, even when she was young. I always thought she might be what some in the wasteland called a snakeye. Able to see more than what was in front of her. She could see how things would grow sure enough, and could see how people ailed even before cracking them open.
Remember me.
She called me Milkweed. I was her girl, her only girl; she didn’t cotton to any men, not even the ones who were nice to her. She didn’t cotton to many save her sisters-in-heart, save to Furiosa, she of the iron-grey hair and iron-grey arm. They ran the Citadel, the walled city where I grew, a paradise in the middle of the red desert: three rock spires surrounded by the lush garden my ma and aunts and all had worked so hard to steal and keep and grow.
“To think of change? Simple,” Ma told me. “To change? Nothing harder.”
They taught me as I grew, them and the rest of the Citadel folk, raised me as daughter of dozens; maybe so they’d forget who gave me my genes in the first place. Furiosa never forgot, I think. Oh, she was kind, in her way, but who could forget a beast like the one who hacked the deathshead into the Citadel?
I could still hear him breathing sometimes. In my head, in nightmares. Deep in the wending halls. They called him immortal, and what’s called immortal can never die, not really. Maybe he was still there, kept alive by me, kept alive by the wasting rattle in my lungs.
No one told me out. But I knew what I was. I knew what had wrought me.
I had to become strong. Strong, like my mother’s blood. I knew it was destiny manifest. All I had to do was follow.
Toast the Knowing, with her gunpowder-scarred fingers and her eyes glinting hawkish in the sunlight, showed me the ways of the rifle. The way to find a man’s skull with my bullet, the way to brace for the recoil, the way to taste at the wind so I’d know how my shot might curve. “More than seeing,” she said to me. “It’s all calculations. It’s power, too, same as fist-to-the-face can be.” She chewed her pick and grinned. “Better, I think. Go on. You try.”
“I can’t. I’m…I can’t hold the gun.”
“Yeah, you can.” She swapped out hers for a smaller one, a lighter one. Less power, but greater range. Compromise. “Try that.”
I am a warlord’s daughter and a snakeye’s, too.
“Remember me,” Ma whispered, as a night fever took her off.
Remember me. The words carved into the balcony, the stone-hacked overlook where the water levers live. Furiosa put them there so we’d learn the Citadel wasn’t to be a place of pain, no longer. A place of hope, she told us.
I haven’t seen that green and growing place for a long, long time. Not since Furiosa walked into the wastes with naught but a single engine and a tank of guzzoline to keep her running. Not since I knew I had to follow.
You make your own way in this world.
I’ve seen wars and growing things and dead things and skies so big I could drown in them. I’ve seen the ghosts of men in bodies still breathing. I’ve seen Old Walker himself and lived to rasp the tale.
I’ve killed and near been killed in stride. Fair, I think. That’s the way the world turns. In the end, you get what you gave, and you’d best remember your debts.
Remember me.
Remember me.
Remember.