Susan Kim - Wasteland

By now, Esther was too far up the wall for Skar to call her back. Feeling resigned, the variant made a quick decision and followed.

Moving at twice the speed of her friend and with enviable grace, Skar clambered up the brick wall and caught up with Esther within moments. At the last second, she was polite enough not to overtake her. Instead, they reached the roof together and Skar even allowed Esther the illusion of pulling her up once she had reached the top.

“Don’t worry,” Esther whispered, clearly proud of herself; “I got you. And I got here first!”

But her jubilation made her forget herself and she stood upright, something a variant would never do, especially not in a moment of triumph, the one moment your guard was down.

Skar hissed a warning at her, but it was too late.

Esther wavered and then lost her balance, falling forward onto the roof and landing hard. The top of the building was steeply tilted on both sides like an old-fashioned cottage from a picture book, covered with overlapping reddish-brown tiles. Esther started to slide, her fingers scrabbling in vain to get a grasp of the tattered clay rows.

Skar reached out a hand, but it was no good. Esther kept sliding, rapidly approaching the edge.

At the last possible second, she was able to wedge one foot into the shaky rain gutter while grabbing onto a few secure tiles. One broke off under her hand; it skittered down the roof and disappeared in the darkness beneath them with a faint crash.

With surprising speed, Esther crawled her way back up to her friend, who was huddled miserably, waiting for her.

“I knew this was a bad idea,” Skar said.

The variant was astounded that inside, no one had heard the incredible noise Esther had just made. Any one of her people would have been outside investigating the suspicious sounds within seconds. She wished (and not for the first time) that Esther wasn’t so stubborn.

“But we just got here,” Esther whispered. She flattened down onto her stomach and crawled toward one of the many gaps in the tiles. “And I want to hear what they’re talking about.”

Skar had no choice but to follow her. She sat next to her friend, knees huddled close and bulging eyes shut tight.

One gap afforded a limited view of the room below. Esther glanced down, then placed her ear over the hole and concentrated. There were many people speaking at once, but she was able to detect a female voice. She had to strain to hear what she was saying.

“We got nothing else to give him. Without gas, why would Levi even talk to us?”

She peered through the hole. Esther could see the tops of heads, a few familiar faces. She recognized Rafe, the current leader of the town elders, a boy she hated because beneath his superior airs, he was both a coward and blowhard. As usual, he was doing his trick of talking softly. Esther had to put her ear close to the hole and focus hard in order to discern his words.

“Maybe not to you or me, unless we got something to trade,” he was saying. “That’s all he cares about. But there’s one of us I bet he’d talk to.”

Who were they talking about?

There was a brief silence, followed by a faint murmuring as people stood and craned their necks, looking to see who he was discussing. Esther followed their gaze and was startled.

It was a girl, seventeen, with dark, straight hair held back in a ponytail. Unlike everyone else in town, her robes were relatively clean and gathered neatly at her waist with a dark cord. She seemed embarrassed by all the attention, yet flattered as well.

“I… I don’t know,” she was saying. “For one thing, I don’t know what good it would do. I’ve never been to the Source. I can’t even remember the last time I spoke to Levi…”

Esther pulled back, as if struck. “Hey.”

“What is it?” Skar asked, opening her eyes.

“It’s my sister. Sarah.”

Frowning, Esther sat back on her heels. In that position, she could see the place they were talking about, where Levi lived. The Source lay to the northeast of town and was something she saw every day, as much a part of her landscape as the sun. Although it was nearly a mile away, it was hard to miss from anywhere in town.

The gigantic white building was like a beacon, huge and blindingly lit with electrical lights. They threw deep shadows across the trenches that lay next to it, black gashes in an overgrown field. The holes were just three of the dozens of pits scattered across town that the people dug day after day when they were unlucky enough to be assigned to the Excavation. The front and side of the Source faced a monstrous asphalt field marked with fading white lines and still crowded with the dusty remains of cars.

Now, it seemed Rafe and his followers wanted something from Levi, something new. And they apparently needed Sarah, the childhood friend who once knew him best of all, to be the intermediary.

Esther didn’t like it.

She glanced at Skar, who was amusing herself by tossing a small knife up in the air and catching it. She wasn’t even paying attention, and for that, Esther felt a stab of exasperation. Skar was, after all, only who she was—a great friend, but one who was easily bored, like a little child.

And little children needed to be protected.

Esther knew it would be up to her. She was not sure how she would do it, but at least she knew where to start.

It was evening. Shadows cowered low to the ground and scurried through the streets and alleys of Prin.

They were feral dogs, rooting through piles of garbage for something to eat. They snapped and fought over whatever they could sniff out, anything that was remotely edible: the stale and salty ends of flatbread, rabbit bones that had been sucked of their marrow, the burned crust of rice porridge. The dogs of Prin were dingy and skeletal, cringing yet vicious beasts accustomed to skulking in the shadows and traveling by night in packs.

There was, however, one stretch of sidewalk that had been swept clean. The storefront window behind it had not only been patched over with flattened cardboard and gaffer’s tape; it looked like someone had actually taken the trouble to measure it so it fit properly. A cracked and battered sign above what was once the window read STARBUCKS COFFEE in block white letters on a green background. And above the sign, a light was visible in the second-floor window.

Agitated shadows moved across the curtain. Behind the thin fabric, Esther was getting in her sister’s face.

“But you can’t go,” she was saying.

Esther was trying hard not to raise her voice, because she knew losing her temper would only cost her the argument the way it always did. Instead, she tried to sound reasonable, clasping her hands tightly behind her back.

“You can’t ask Levi for weapons,” she said. “This whole thing is starting to get crazy.”

Sarah stood at the kitchen counter, cleaning out the firebowl with a rag. The older girl acted as if getting rid of every last trace of soot and ash was the most important thing in the world. She was doing what annoyed Esther the most: ignoring her because she was focused on something more meaningful, something adult .

“Pass me those,” was all Sarah said, nodding at the forks and spoons.

Frustrated, Esther picked up the handful of dirty silverware. She couldn’t help herself; as she handed them over, she slammed them down on the counter harder than she intended to. At the noise, her sister jumped, to Esther’s private satisfaction. Then Sarah turned all her attention back to cleaning up.

“How could you listen to those people?” continued Esther, still trying to sound calm. “Rafe? He’s a big mouth, that’s all. And the others—they’re just thugs who want an excuse to hurt people.”