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I.
They call me the Dag, but that's not my name. Immortan Joe said I was a dag, a queer one, and that it was a good thing I was pretty and had a pretty pure-life womb, else I'd be out in the red sands with all the other bones, the barren and the useless and the ungrateful. But Immortan Joe's a fine one to talk about dags. I get a name, everyone does, and it's my name, so I get to choose it.
I'm Gwenhwyvar. I'm the white spirit, a queen on her throne, even if there ain't no knights on shiny chrome horses come to do me honor. I knew it was my name since the day Angharad read out of the red-and-blue book, about Gwenhwyvar and the King Arthur and the knight Lancelot, who brought peace to the Camlot Citadel until Mordeath and his warboys betrayed them.
No one else knows. To know the name is to know the thing, that's what one of the other books says, and they may be my fellow wives, but they don't know me. They rag me and Dag me, being so young, so fair and fey. Like I don't do what they do, bite my tongue so's not to cry under the stinking weight of Immortan Joe or Rictus Erectus or some silver-lipped warboy who's earned five minutes in heaven before driving off to Valhalla. Like I don't look at the Milking Mothers when they stagger down with buckets for us, and know that's my fate in a few thousand days, and that's if I don't split apart bearing a (please V8) full-life babe or catch poison from the air or the water or the sun.
There was green once, tall green, proper green, not scrabbly and struggling high on the rocks. There was more to the world than red sand and blue sky and black smoke, and the smell of gas and metal and dying rot that not even that big thick door he seals us behind can keep out. There were ladies and men, not wives and warboys and a pale sick hulk of flesh that plaits my salt-white hair with his yellowing pelt and pets me like I'm tame, then gives me to his monster son to glut himself on. There has to have been more.
I am the white spirit, and I will not die bred out in a bunker in a withering world. I will be free.
II.
When I was tiny, and stomping around in a creche under the eyes of some exhausted Milking Mother I can't even remember, there were warboys talking nearby in their motor-gunning, rat-tat-tat voices, and I stopped to listen.
“An' then y'put it in the thing—the thing, the thing that burns it—an'it comes out all burnt an' nice, an'you eat it for breakfast an' lick up the crumbs all salt and burnt--”
I thought they didn't actually know what it was called, warboys not knowing much outside of motors and war and anything else chrome, and so I snapped out in my haughtiest little voice “It's called toast.”
I remember how they went silent, and then two skull-pale faces peered at me out of corridor shadows, eyes surprised and bright in darkened sockets. I remember how they laughed, and one had lingering silvershine on his teeth that made me think of the Big Bad Wolf in the stories Angharad painstakingly read us, and so I darted back a few steps, back towards the Mother's safety.
“You're toast, little cog,” said the one with the silvery teeth, almost affectionately. “Toast the Knowing, that's you, all wise an'wonderful. Remember me, Shade the warboy! Remember me when you're pretty tawny brown toast in a couple thousand days, and if I haven't gone up in flame on the Fury Road, I'll show you fine new things t'know.”
His friend hissed something in his ear, and while I didn't hear it, I bet the words “Immortan Joe” were involved, because his eyes skittered away like I was suddenly the most mediocre bit of scrap left to rust halfway to Gastown, and he and his mate vanished. Not that I ever saw him again; he probably sailed up to Valhalla on gas fumes and heat waves not long after.
He gave me my name, though. I'm Toast the Knowing. I've read every book in the bunker, some of them twice and three times. I know how to take apart a toaster (first thing I ever investigated, and put it back together, too), a gun, a motor, and I think I could do something clever with the piano only Capable's allowed to play on. I know how to read and write and count. I know how to tell when old Joe's not up to his husbandly duties, and how to cozen him so he doesn't beat on us out of frustration. I know how to count when I, when we, bleed, and how to pretend to be bleeding when you're not. And I know just exactly how much space is in a war rig's spare fuel tank, and how to fit five girls into it.
III.
I'm not strong, I never have been. The Milking Mother that bore me, she told me a hundred times how she was instructed to leave me out for the gore-crows, but I was so delicate and lovely, she couldn't bring herself to obey. She fed me from her own dugs, long past the time she was meant to be breeding again or giving her milk to the Citadel, and begged and bargained milk from others, too. Until I was old enough (and still pretty, and full-life, pure-life enough) to catch the eye of Immortan Joe.
It's he who saved us all, you know. He established the Citadel when the bitter fire rained down, scorching the earth and poisoning it so green only grows in fits and patches. He stashed the aqua-cola (it's water, Splendid Angharad says, and we should call things by their proper names) and kept it clean so the people won't dry out or starve or die of the poison that spawns in bad still water. When the mad hordes came, it was him and his First Warboys who held them back, else the citadel would be just another empty place, with all of us slain or eaten or both. It's he who made the treaty with Gastown, and with the People-Eater and the Bullet Farmer. It's an honor to be one of his brides, to bear his full-life children and carry on the Citadel's legacy.
But I...
I don't want to. V8 forgive me. I know the steps, I know the way of things. Breeders breed until they lose three in succession, then they sit with the pumps and become the Milking Mothers, feeding the Citadel until their bodies wear out entire, and then the empty flesh feeds the gardens above. But I've barely seen five thousand days, and I'm still not strong. The monthly bleeding still sends me to bed with the pain of it, and everyone says that childbed is a thousand times worse. There's no shiny Valhalla for women who die bearing, not even for Immortan Joe's brides.
That's why my name is Cheedo the Fragile. Immortan Joe, may his name be written bright in chrome, has been kind and patient with me, letting me live in the bunker with Splendid Angharad and the other wives, eating well and drinking clear water and growing strong. He only comes for his rights when the doctor says it's good, when the moon's just so and my womb is ready, and...and I should be grateful.
I'm not. I'm not grateful, I'm scared. What if I die in childbed, in blood and pain, and no one remembers the name Cheedo? What if Immortan Joe tires of me, of my fragility, and hands me over to Rictus Erectus or one of his other drivers? Or what if I never catch, never have the babe Immortan Joe wants, and he breaks my bones and sits me in a chair, to bleed out milk like one of his founts until I'm nothing?
I am not nothing. I will live. I'll risk his anger, and ride out with Splendid Angharad and the others. I'm scared, but I think it's better to be scared than buried, one way or another, in the Citadel.
IV
The red hair, that's not common. Hair's not common. It gets thin early, it straggles or falls out. And the warboys shave as soon as they're old enough to hold a razor, if their bodies ever get strong enough to grow it before the white paint and the chrome spray and the gas fumes and the poison air dry it right off them. Maybe Valhalla frowns upon hair. Any hair except Old Joe's, of course. His is coarse and oily, you could plait it into rope. There's a story in one of the books about a strongman who lost all his strength when his hair was cut while he slept. I told Angharad about it, but she said she didn't think that would work, that it was one of the bits that was only story. Still, it's a thought. It's why they call me Capable; I can always think of something. A third option, a new way of looking at things, something helpful to do in the thick of panic.
Any rate, that's why I'm here, red hair and a clever mind—and a fertile womb, there's that. Bore one babe already, a boy taken right away to the creche. He's coming up on the age to be a warpup soon. I'd creep into the barracks to find him, if I thought I'd know him. Maybe he's got my hair. But I haven't laid eyes on him since he was newborn. He sucked his first milk from my breasts, and then he was swept away to the care of the Milking Mothers, while the doctor sewed me up and told me to drink my aqua-cola and rest up until my womb was ready for Joe again. And he wouldn't know me. Warpups, warboys, they only see women as Milking Mothers, milk factories with swollen bodies and swollen dugs. Or that Imperator Furiosa, scoured cold and clean as desert-dried bone.
They say she was a bride once, blue-eyed and golden-haired, wrapped in white gauze. They say she was brought out of the sands like an angel, and wept beneath a cascade of clean water for the generosity of the Citadel's Lord. Or that she bit off Joe's nose the first time he tried to mount her, and he decided she'd serve better on the Fury Road than in his bed. Or that she's no woman at all, but some construct of sand and metal and chrome will, born to drive a war-rig for guzzaline and the glory of the Citadel.
I know she listens. She knows our names, all our names. She knows what our favorite books are (mine is the one with Helpful Hints, even if I don't know what a lipstick is or why it shouldn't smear on clothes. Maybe it helps against the sun), and has helped us read them. She taught Toast how to hide things between her mattress and her bedframe, and me how to tuck small treasures into the gaps between piano keys, where no one ever thinks to look. She knows that Cheedo is terrified of breeding, that Dag has sworn to kick Rictus in the balls if he comes at her again, and that I haven't caught in near two thousand days, not since the last one strangled herself with her cord (well done, daughter, that's a freedom denied me), and that old Joe will have me strapped into pumps if I don't take someone's seed in the next month or so. And she's been talking long into the night with Angharad and Miss Giddy, murmurs and sidelong looks.
It's time to go. It's time to live up to my name.
V
Who broke the world?
That's the question, that's what I don't understand, and the books don't tell me. They tell me all kinds of other things, how to grow a garden and raise rabbits (what are rabbits?), how to Catch and Keep a Man (yes, but how do you make him go away?), and all the stories, so many stories. I have been in this bunker for almost seven thousand days (which is nineteen years, say the books, just a little less than nineteen years, and if I knew what a 'season' was, maybe I would understand how to turn days into years), ever since I was a babe born from a full-life bride, who was herself born from a full-life bride, all the way back to before the clouds made mushrooms in the sky and Immortan Joe had a proper face and could walk without pain. And it has taken me all those days to separate story from fact, to learn the way of things.
No, Cheedo, not the way of things here in the Citadel. The way of the world, which is different from the Citadel.
Here is the truth, as I understand it, going by some few things in the books, and what I have heard Joe and his drivers say, and what Imperator Furiosa has told me. The world is big, so very big, bigger than a thousand days' walk and wider than a thousand salt flats. And there used to be people everywhere, people drinking all the water (it isn't aqua-cola, Dag, that's Joe's word) they liked, and pouring guzzaline into their cars and trucks and motors right from special pumps that were set up by the side of the road just for that. And women didn't have to be brides or Milking Mothers, they could do what they pleased, and take to their beds whom they pleased, and they lived in houses with windows and doors that didn't have to lock. And the sun didn't burn, and the air was sweet, and water fell from the sky sometimes so you could just lift your face and drink.
It's right there in the book, Capable. Look for yourself if you don't believe me, but I swear shiny and chrome that that's what it says.
Anyway, something happened. There was a war between men, over guzzaline, or the thing that makes guzzaline. There wasn't enough, or it was hard to get to, or maybe both. And the war was fought with warboys, and then with fire, and then with the bitter fire that burnt up everything and weakened the blood and bones of the people left behind. All of the world that remained was the red sands and the Fury Road and the Citadel. At least, that's what Immortan Joe tells us.
But why should we listen to him? He's as old as the stones of the Citadel, he needs a suit to go riding in and a mask to breathe with. He claims he saw the bitter fire and the fields of guzzaline burning in black pyres. Maybe he broke the world just so he could rule the scrapmetal hill it became.
He says our pure-life children will remake the world. But I don't want a world in his image, ruled by him and his mad children and his Valhalla-bound warboys. I don't want this broken world, where I live in a vault and never see the high blue sky, when the books say there's so much more.
Imperator Furiosa says there is a green place. She says that there, there are no Milking Mothers, no windowless bunkers. She says mothers there raise their own children, and bear them in their own time, and give their milk to whom they choose. She says she will take us there, and we can cut off these belts and stand in the sunlight as ourselves, not as the Brides of Immortan Joe.
Joe calls me Splendid, but I hate that damned name. My name is Angharad, the most-beloved one, and I will not be his splendid anything.
Who broke the world? He did.
Who is going to remake it? We are. Toast, Cheedo, Capable, Dag, we could do, be, so much. Let's ride out and start.
Not shiny and chrome, though. Green.