Mad Max: The Green Place (Patreon)

It started in the hold of the war rig.

Max was driving, Furiosa trusting him not to kill them but still not enough to be around the girls. He had given her one of his commandeered guns and she’d checked it five times. It would fire.

Max didn’t mind her protectiveness. He saw how it was. Mentally, the Wives were still back at the Citadel—no freedom, no celebration, not when pursuit was so close. They needed someone whose strength they knew. Trusted. They needed bedrock.

Furiosa? She was what was beneath bedrock.

Cheedo was the most scared. She’d been close to Angharad, and losing her had shaken all her courage loose. It would take her time to find it again, but it was somewhere out there. She’d left with them, after all.

For now, Furiosa took hold of her, rocking her gently, trying to provide a counterpoint to the noise and fury of the war rig. They weren’t used to it, and the only thing about it that didn’t scare them was that it wasn’t home.

Finally, the little wheedling sounds of Cheedo’s fear faded. Asleep. Furiosa hoped she was dreaming of Angharad, and not her death.

Toast offered herself up next, as Furiosa shifted Cheedo down onto her lap. Toast sat sweetly beside Furiosa, smiled nervously, then laid her head on Furiosa’s shoulder. Her good one. The Imperator put her arm around Toast, not knowing quite how she knew what to do—more used to getting a read on predators like Max than knowing prey like the Wives.

But something inside… a long-dead memory of the Vuvalini, like a half-remembered childhood lullaby… compelled her to rub her hand on the dark skin of Toast’s arm. Unlike most, she had been born looking sun-bronzed—one of Joe’s exotics. Furiosa half-expected her to be warm to the touch, at least warmer than the others, but she was chill and cool, nervous sweat just waiting to pour from her. As she relaxed, Furiosa rubbed the proper warmth into her.

Toast gestured to Capable, who was half-watching and half-looking away, but more than half-saw the beckoning. She went over, laying down beside the sleeping Cheedo with her head on Furiosa’s thigh, looking at her friend. Furiosa didn’t know if she wanted reassurance or to protect her. Probably both.

The Dag came last. Moved between Furiosa’s spread legs, put her back to Furiosa’s front, settled down to sleep with her arms around her fetal legs. Toast reached over, patted her. Capable reached over, patted her. The slender muscles of her arms flexed as she tightened them around her shins. Her head bowed and Furiosa saw the brand of the Immortan, blaring from the back of her neck.

Toast reached over and played Dag’s hair back behind her head, covering it. “I should grow my hair long too,” she said gently.

“Go to sleep, Knowing,” Dag replied.

Furiosa was careful to position herself so she didn’t touch the Dag in her sleep. She got it. The Dag wasn’t like the others. Didn’t want to be comforted. Just wanted to be close. Furiosa guessed she would’ve been the same way, her age, if she’d had anyone to be close to.

Before she’d left, she’d planned what she would need, what she could take—how she could hurt Joe. She hadn’t taken any of the bloodbags or war pups, but that wasn’t the reason. The Wives were about the only thing left delicate for a thousand miles—might as well be the whole world. Even Joe knew their value; though he would crush them trying to have their delicacy on his terms.

Furiosa, she knew better. They had to be saved because they were proof the whole world had been gentle, once, or at least it could’ve been. And as annoying as they could be, she was glad they weren’t like her.

And she was glad she was enough like them to be a comfort.

***

She checked for Max after they took the Citadel. Half expected him to gone somewhere, curling up to die like an old dog. Half expected he’d never die. Her scouts looked for him, but didn’t find smeg. It wasn’t until he’d come back through the gates that she saw him again. A couple camels he’d tied together, pulling what was left of his Interceptor. Mounted on another car’s sheared suspension until he could put real wheels on it.

Inside the complex, he undid all the bridles, seemed to set the animals to wandering without a care. Some of the scavengers pressed in on them, looking to Max for not exactly permission, but a sign he would defend if they tried to take them. A sign that they could beat him if he defended. A sign that the camels were even edible…

Furiosa had arrived by then. Max was trying to gesture a certain pantomime—‘take them, they’re yours’—but charity didn’t translate very well. Furiosa took over. The camels would be added to the livestock; too valuable to slaughter just yet. But double rations for everyone, in celebration of Max’s return. They could afford it, with eight new pack animals on the roster. Furiosa doubted anyone would come asking for them back.

“We can fix up your rig in the engine bay,” she told Max. Helping him push it the rest of the way to the lift.

“I’ll fix it. Can be fixed…” He made it a question with a sort of shrug.

“Good to have you around.”

He went “Hmmm” and examined the wreckage again, like he hadn’t done that every half-minute he’d been out there. Furiosa didn’t like the looks of it. There was a lot that could be salvaged, but sometimes, you just had to drop the casualty. Start from scratch.

***

They’d burned a lot of Immortan Joe’s things, taking over his space in the Citadel, trying to drive out the spirit of him. Furiosa had played schoolmarm, trying to make sure the Wives weren’t amputating good meat with bad—they could always place things in the Vault, give it away. There was precious little of the Old left; she didn’t want Joe to take it with him, like it’d belonged to him, like he owned it.

But as soft as his bed was, there was no argument. They burned it. Threw the twisted frame off the side of the cliff. Let it end up as mangled and broken as he had been.

Cushions, blankets, that was all the new bed amounted to. A part of the hard rock that was softer than the rest. Furiosa was used to it, used to worse. The Wives weren’t. But they made themselves used to it. Brought their own blankets, their own pillows, and laid close to Furiosa. Cheedo in the Dag’s arms, Capable facing the door, Toast with her head on Furiosa’s arm. Not a bed, just a bunch of sleeping bags and none of them with the sense to want any space.

But it was warm. Even when the night got its coldest. At least, it was after Furiosa saw the knives they slept with. Capable even had a gun under her pillow. Empty. Still threatening.

She hated it, but the Wives would die before they went back to the way things had been. And certainly before they let anyone hurt her.

***

“Lost cause,” Max said. He tried to slam the V8’s hood down, but it had taken so much budging to get it open in the first place that it stayed wrenched in place. Then he looked over at the tools he’d assembled, the spare parts, and shook his head. “Good money after bad.”

“What’s ‘money’?” Furiosa asked.

He looked at her for a moment before giving her a never-mind shake of the head. He looked better for being in the Citadel—maybe just being free. He’d eaten, hydrated, hadn’t slept—she’d gone to bed with the sound of his would-be repairs echoing through the caves. But his eyes lingered instead of darting. His voice was oiled when it came out of him, instead of creaking.

“You’re welcome to any of the fleet.” She had brought a wheel. Known the diagnosis while the exam was still being given. She handed it over and Max snatched it from her on habit before giving her an apologetic look.

He clutched the wheel to his chest. “Yes.” He tried to remember the word. “Thanks.” Then he looked at her. Furiosa inclined her head. She could see him reaching for words and usually they sprung up for when he said what needed to be said. “Your Vuvalini… they’re staying?”

“Yes. Everyone’s welcome.” That was as overt as she could be. Talking with Max often felt like holding out food to a wolf. Maybe if you were too insistent, he’d think you were offering the hand as well.

Max nodded, a grumbling sound in his throat. “They weren’t out there too long.”

***

He left shortly after. The Wives were curious about his V8, picking over it—the War Boys had emptied it out little before the chase, and he’d taken even less from it before leaving. Most of the utilities were smashed up. But there were little bits of him… things to be mended when he got the time, memories untainted enough to travel with him. Puzzle pieces they put in a room and left for him. It wasn’t like there was a lack of vacancies, after the canyon.

The car Capable fell in love with. She thought it looked pretty—banged up, but not something of the Citadel’s. That’d all been scraped away by the desert. The wheels Max had put on it were good, the suspension stable… everything else was the problem. But between the four of them, they could push it. Furiosa joined in: she wouldn’t let the Dag do it, with her potbelly standing out even from her well-fed frame.

They got it into Joe’s room, Furiosa’s room, one more bit of them instead of him. The hardtop had gone off in one of its crashes and the hood hadn’t made the trip, but they emptied the interior of everything but the dials and the trunk too—Capable said it would make a good crib, she had a vision—and they filled their empty shell with blankets, with cushions, until it was a nest, big enough for all of them.

Furiosa supposed it was her own fault for letting them sleep alongside her this long. Anyway, it wasn’t a bad bed. Unlike a lot of things around the Citadel, it smelled of sanity instead of craziness and hatred. Furiosa laid her head beside the gas pedal and tried to forgive the Wives for all squeezing in beside her instead of wanting to use the passenger footspace. Capable said that if they pulled out the scrap metal from the engine compartment, they’d have even more space. Someone could sleep in front of Furiosa as well as behind her.

She didn’t know what they wanted from her. How much more safe could she make this place? When would they not want to protect her from it?

***

Furiosa tried hard not to tear the paper again. She was holding it down with her new arm, the palimpsest of a magazine article, writing out messages to Bartertown to the south. Oiltown was hers, the Bullet Farm was hers—she told herself she wouldn’t, but she wished Max were here. Even Nux. She needed someone she could trust on those installations, and the Many Mothers were stretched thin.

So she tried to create trade. They had gas, they had water, they had plants—even bullets, though Furiosa didn’t want to put more of those into the world. She wasn’t naïve enough to close the mine down, but she’d freed the miners, ramped down production to a minimum, a safe level. They had more than enough anti-seed already.

But who wanted to trade with the Citadel? Especially now that it’d become a game: king of the hill. Why risk pissing off whoever pushed her off the top? But someone had to take the deal. Build on it. The world couldn’t just be a bunch of vultures, eating each other’s corpses as one after the other dropped away.

They had to make something new.

The paper ripped. Furiosa sighed, adjusted her bad-arm—lucky the mechers had studied the original enough times to come up with a substitute. It still didn’t feel broken in enough; mechanisms weren’t worn smooth like the old one had been. It was too responsive. Twitched with her body when she didn’t want it too. She kept writing.

She sniffed. Something smelled good. Better than the caves’ usual scent of crazy, possessiveness, death. She had a thought of Joe finally fading, then looked around to see Toast approaching her, tray in hand. Water and a bowl of stew. A spoon.

“Didn’t see you at dinner. Cheedo missed you.”

“That why she made me the soup?” Furiosa joked, knowing that Toast would pout and say—

“No, I made you the soup because I love you more.” Quick and teasing, but too quick just to be claiming credit. Furiosa took the bowl, tried it. Warm but not hot. Tasty. Noodles and meat cubes. “You should come to dinner.”

“The other settlements should trade with us. The Buzzards should stop testing our defenses. The…” She gestured with her open hand, then turned it into a curt slap of the back of her hand against the desk. “The world should’ve saved some of its goodness for now, when we need every bit of it. You know they used to have these… water things that would keep your feet soft? Mama Plant told me…”

“The soup’s good, isn’t it?” Quick and teasing again, but Toast could never convince Furiosa that she didn’t care. Maybe because Furiosa wanted her to.

“The soup’s fine.”

“You should come to dinner. Next time, the girls’ll send someone else to fetch you—“

“Toast, I can’t. This place is like a rig. It’s either running or it’s rusting. I have to keep people fed, keep them watered, and the seeds haven’t grown yet—”

“Joe kept it running.” Quiet now. “Can’t you just do what he did? But nice-like?”

“Keep the scavs in line? Kick them off the lift? Shoot ‘em for not going hungry?” Her bad-arm was flexing. Too damn responsive. “The moment we’re that bad, we don’t get any better.”

“You’re nothing like him.”

“What I’m trying to prove,” Furiosa replied simply.

Toast leaned in. The kiss she put on Furiosa’s cheek was like a comet: lips there and then gone. She lingered close to Furiosa’s face, as close as she got when they slept. “You’ll come to dinner when you’re done?”

“I won’t be done for a while.”

“But you’ll come?”

Furiosa nodded. And when she’d figured out a message to send that maybe wouldn’t start a war, either by presenting themselves as insultingly strong or temptingly weak, she let the hawkers deliver it, went to the kitchen. Everyone had eaten, but the Wives were still there. Doing the dishes while they waited. Furiosa helped them, scrubbing the hubcaps and broken knives that they ate with.

***

A family of refugees streamed in one morning. Furiosa’s jaw tightened, thinking of more mouths to feed, more throats to wet, but they said a man named Max had sent them. Told them this was a safe place.

The grandfather had been a farmer.

***

That night, Furiosa went to bed early. Nothing to do but wait now. Either Bartertown would take the deal or they wouldn’t. She found an empty bed. Fine. Probably past time the Wives found somewhere else to sleep. Got one of the nicer War Boys, Imperators, someone. She unlimbered her bad-arm from herself, stripped, quickly scrubbed with a sponge and bowl of day-old water. If the Wives came back, they wouldn’t want their bed smelling of sweat and dirt. Then she took a flick-knife in hand and relaxed against the Interceptor’s central console. Alone.

Distantly, the doors opened. She had good men on guard duty; friends from her Imperator days. But then, she hadn’t really had any friends. She flicked the knife out. The blade shiny and chrome, and she hoped thoughts like that weren’t where the grammar had come from, Joe sleeping in a bed like this, thinking thoughts like this…

It was Toast the Knowing. In the dark, it took Furiosa a moment to recognize her, she’d changed so much. Her hair grown out into delicate dreadlocks that trickled down her dress. A burgundy dress that covered her from the waist down, with swaths of red and blue fabric that covered her breasts as well. She stood straighter. She walked with a swagger, no longer fearing anyone’s eyes but inviting them. At least, she was when Furiosa looked.

“Where are the others?” Furiosa asked.

“I wanted us to be alone. They did too.” She undressed. Her breasts were perfect, proud and supple, and Furiosa hated the treacherous heat in her body. She hadn’t felt it before, on the rig, just a desire to keep all of them safe. Now she wanted more and it wasn’t hers.

“You always wear too much,” Toast continued. “It’s not your clothes’ job to keep you warm, not at night. It’s ours.”

She moved in. Pulling aside Furiosa’s sheets. Taking away what Furiosa wore as pajamas: a man’s jacket, too-large pants, one big layer for her to wrap herself in.

“Stop,” Furiosa said softly, backing away as Toast slipped beside her. Perfect and beautiful and pure and innocent—she belonged with the other Wives, people like her. Furiosa belonged not among them, but between them and the people who were even worse. “You’re not my property. You’re not one of my things.”

“Do I have to be?” Toast asked, and her voice was perfect too. Love and warmth and softness. “To be with you?”

Furiosa was firm. “You owe me nothing. Your body is your own.”

Toast smiled at her, eyes warm and tender, lips teasing the pucker of a kiss. “I choose who I share it with?”

Furiosa nodded seriously.

“I’ve chosen,” Toast said, and she was getting closer, and closer. Furiosa hadn’t known someone could be that close to her. Like maybe there’d been some wall around her she couldn’t see. But Toast’s skin touched hers: some, then more, then all. Her legs around Furiosa’s, her arms around her back, her gaze on Furiosa’s hesitance. Her lips on Furiosa’s lips.

“You’re going to want to be gentle with me,” Toast said. Furiosa thought it was good she was so much better at talking. “Soft. I like that. Do you want me to be soft too?”

“Yes,” Furiosa said, not sure she’d made the decision until she’d made it. “I want… I want to know how to please you.”

Toast petted her head. Furiosa’s hair was coming in too. She still cut it short. She didn’t know how long she wanted it. When she wouldn’t have to worry about someone grabbing it, throwing her around by it.

“Just kiss me,” Toast said. “You know how to kiss, don’t you?”

She remembered her mother kissing the top of her head, lips blunted by a full head of hair she’d never had since. This wasn’t like that. Only it was. She kissed Toast’s cheek, as Toast herself had shown her, and Toast giggled and touched her more.

There were places Furiosa liked being touched—she vaguely knew of them, how they responded to her hands when she was able to wash herself, how ugly they felt when they drew a War Boy’s eye. Toast’s touch didn’t linger. It was just quick enough to make them feel beautiful.

“Like this,” Toast said, and showed her how their lips could merge, how their tongues could dance together, how it could stop and start again and never stop. Living and dying and living again; the only death and rebirth Furiosa needed.

“And this,” Toast said, and her breast tasted as good as it looked, fit to Furiosa’s mouth perfectly once Toast showed her how they connected. And Furiosa realized she was doing more than protecting—she was giving Toast something worth being defended. This must’ve been how people mated in the Old.

“And here,” Toast said, robbing Furiosa of her lips and her breast, but giving her the place between her legs; shocking pink in all her sweet darkness. Furiosa spend long minutes there, in the furnace of Toast’s need, just kissing her. Her soft hand found Furiosa’s callused one, squeezing it with stroking thumb so Furiosa knew she wasn’t hurting her, no matter how loudly she cried out.

Finally, Toast was too tender and raw to do anything but climax. Her soft hands pushed at Furiosa’s head, skating across her shorn scalp, and Furiosa thought with wet lips of what it would be like to have hair long like Cheedo’s or the Dag’s. Long enough for Toast to catch between her lips, as Furiosa did with one of Toast’s dreads, coming back up to join Toast in an embrace.

Toast saw Furiosa’s hesitance, still, her eyes darting over Toast’s body as if checking for damage. Like she could’ve scarred it with her kisses. “That was wonderful,” she assured Furiosa.

Furiosa nodded—not anywhere near as sure as she’d been before.

“Would you like me to do that for you?” Toast asked.

Furiosa started to nod, stopped. “If you’d like to.”

“It’s all I want.”