Authors: Lee Kelly
4 SKY
I watch, helpless, as Phee is pulled towards the trees that border the Park Lake. As she disappears into darkness, I unleash a hatred within my skin that threatens to eat me alive.
Phee’s words echo through my brain.
The littlest.
The black sheep.
The one on the sidelines.
I’m the oldest. It shouldn’t be Phee.
It should be me.
I try to shake away the demons and focus my efforts on Mom, on being that shining pillar of support for her, and grab her hand.
“Welcome,” Rolladin’s voice booms through the Park, “to the few winter fieldworkers who’ve just joined us. To my year-rounds, my Council. My lesser lords. Fellow survivors—all glorious three hundred eighty-two of you, according to this year’s census—we live another year. And for that, we have much cause to celebrate.”
The crowd hurrahs, and a wave of torches rises and falls.
“The war wages on beyond the skyscrapers, and yet because of our determination, our honor, our
refusal
to give in, we live,” she continues. “Our city has fallen, our shores have been surrounded. The Red Allies have cut us off from the rest of the world. And yet we live. They give us nothing but our bare hands to survive. And yet—WE LIVE!” Rolladin throws her hands up to the stars, and another rally from the crowd echoes like thunder through the Park.
“I’ve been with my Council of Lords to the Brooklyn borders and back this summer,” Rolladin continues. “I’ve begged the Red Allies to spare us once again, to leave us here in captivity as the war goes on. And because of all of you, we can continue to survive here. We can afford to be ignored. We have made an oasis in the middle of a war zone. And we will
continue
to thrive.”
She steps down onto the matted grass and the crowd rallies again, parts like wheat in a windstorm.
“Tonight I am not your warden, but your fellow prisoner. Your fellow sister who emerged from the tunnels when the skies were black and the streets were singed, and we clawed our way back to life all those autumns ago,” she says. “Tonight I give you a gift, a celebration worthy of your courage. And we will rejoice and dance and fight for all that we have to be thankful for.”
I can barely see over the rows of people in front of me, but it looks like Rolladin is signaling to a cluster of lesser lords behind her. The warlords break away and move towards the forest. The 65th Street fighting is about to begin. This is it. This is real.
“So without further delay, let us commence the census festivities. To the Sixty-Fifth Street underpass for the first of our competitions!”
The crowd cheers and a chorus of drums kicks up, percussion thumping against the night sky. We move as a herd across Sheep Meadow, in and out of the trees, spill onto the cement roads that cut through the Park like frozen rivers. Mom skip-hops next to me on her crutches, wincing a bit with every step.
“Rolladin said the first round’s for the Council position, then the second round will be Phee and Cass.” I swear my heart is pounding louder than the drums. “We’ve got to be right under the bridge, so Phee can see us.”
Mom nods. “We need to pick up the pace.”
Mom’s friend Lauren catches up to me and my mother, and the three of us navigate our way together through the crowd, move quickly to get to the front of the pack before it floods both sides of the 65th Street underpass.
“Do you see her?” Lauren asks us.
“No, we lost her,” Mom says. “They must be prepping her in the forest.”
The music’s grown so ferociously loud I can’t hear myself think. There are guitars in the crowd now, and singing, no words but moans and chants. Haunting, oddly beautiful sounds, like the odes of nightmares.
We spill under the 65th Street Transverse. We nearly collide with one of Rolladin’s lesser lords, holding her arm forward to signal
stop
, her other arm waving a torch high above. Some of the Park kids giggle as they race around the guard and scale the rocks up to the abandoned street above, then lie down and hang their heads into the underpass, attempting to watch the matches upside down. My sister and I used to do this. My sister, who’s about to spar tonight.
I exhale and try to focus only on my mission—protecting our spot in the front, in the first rows right at the edge of the archway’s shadows. Lauren and I start throwing elbows, and I put my hand out like a protective gate in front of my mother as prisoners file around us. Others come under the 65th Street Transverse from the other side, so now the underpass is caged by bodies. Guards with torches puncture the crowd like fence posts, the firelight casting odd, frightening shadows on the archway above.
“Keep the underpass clear! Keep it clear!” Clara, the guard who took Phee, hollers as she walks in a long, wide oval, her stride marking the ring. “Save the aisle for Rolladin!”
The drums and chanting quiet as Rolladin pushes her way through the crowd and into the underpass.
Mom grabs my hand and looks at me. “Tell me Phee’s going to be okay.”
“She’s going to be okay,” I say, for both of us.
“The Sixty-Fifth Street fights are not only a Park tradition.” Rolladin’s voice booms through the tunnel as the drums fall into a steady beat:
BUM bum BUM bum BUM bum BUM
. “They are a testament to the prisoners taken from us. A celebration of the lives that were sacrificed for the amusement of the Red Allies, those who were beaten senseless in this very street for sport. We honor them with these matches. Let us never forget our desperate beginnings. And let us always remember that strength and sacrifice keep us alive.”
The crowd gives a huge collective “
HURRAH!
”
“For the first match, I give you my two lesser lords Philip and Lory. They’re both fighting for the chance to join my Council, since we lost my dear friend and confidante Samantha this past summer.” A few of the lords murmur in sadness. “But as we’ve learned from this treacherous city, from death comes life and opportunity.” Rolladin raises her arms to the archway. “Three matches! To be followed by the archery contests, and of course, the races. Then last but not least . . . the feast of your year!”
Another “
HURRAH!
”
“Without further delay, we begin!”
A soft cloak of mink brushes my arm as Lory pushes her way past us into the open underpass. Philip plows through the crowd on the other side, and the two begin circling the torch-lit underpass, a dangerous dance of light and shadows.
“Philip’s as good as dead,” I tell Mom and Lauren as I study Lory’s chiseled arms, her legs as wide as tree trunks. Lory wears a scratched helmet long past retirement age and carries no weapons but her bare hands.
Not that I feel sorry for Philip. After he turned us away from check-in today, I’m rooting against him with my whole being. The very fabric of my soul prays for his destruction.
“He’s getting old,” Lauren says. “It was a stupid play for power. Rolladin will take his cloak if he loses.”
The chatter has reached a fever pitch, as bets and side bets are being swapped and argued over—who will win, how many rounds, how many licks. I try to calm myself in the chaos, try not to think about the fact that my sister is next. That she might have the worst odds of any street-fighter who’s ever sparred in the Park.
I put my arm around my mother, holding her close, letting her lean on me. I crane my neck behind me, trying to look past the thicket of bodies, to see if I can spot Phee approaching.
I can’t find her, but for a second, I spot something else moving across the lawn beyond the crowd. It cuts in and out of the shadows, darts over the pathways of cement and into the trees, bounding away from the madness of 65th Street. I’m about to shrug it off as a startled deer, but it’s slower and bigger. It almost . . . it almost looks like a person.
But before I can think through it, before I can say anything to Mom, the mania of the underpass overpowers me. The drums, the catcalls, the cheering—they build like a raging storm. Then Lory’s animal war cry thunders through the underpass:
“You’re mine!”
Philip steps onto the curved brick wall of the pedestrian walkway and leaps forward towards Lory, like he’s flying.
But his fist meets air as Lory ducks and sends an elbow right into his stomach. Philip doubles over, and Lory kicks him square in the chin, sending him staggering back into the brick wall. He hits it with a
slap
.
But he gets up quickly and dances away from Lory.
She throws a jab, he ducks, she throws a hook, he jumps . . .
“TIME!” Clara, the referee, comes bursting out of the folds of the crowd on the other side. She separates Philip and Lory, pushing them to opposite ends of the underpass.
The crowd is wild at this point, and I feel hands and hot breath on my neck, tugs on my clothes, as the prisoners behind Mom and me lean in to get a better look.
“Round two!” Clara yells a minute later.
Philip repositions his helmet, then steps back into the ring. He starts to stutter-step, like some pathetic warm-up lap, but Lory’s already barreling towards him.
“Philip’s a goner!” Mrs. Warbler declares behind me, in between hacks. “She has him. She has him!”
Lory punches Philip in the face, once, twice, sends him flailing backward.
“Use a rock!” someone yells from the crowd, tempting Lory to raise the stakes.
I wince with expectation as Lory searches the shadows of the bridge and picks up a flat, smooth rock the size of a fist. Philip tries to slither away, but Lory grabs the collar of his raccoon shawl and pulls him under her.
“Stop!” Philip cries. “Stop!”
But no one pays attention. This is 65th Street fighting, after all. There are no rules. And there’s no “stop” until someone’s down and out cold.
Lory whips off Philip’s helmet, then smashes the rock over his head. A river of blood springs from his temple, flowing over his eyes, his hair, his . . . I can’t look anymore.
“Finish him, Lory!” the crowd rallies.
I keep my eyes closed, take my mother’s hand once more, and squeeze as hard as I can.
Then I hear the referee: “One, two, three, four, five . . .” The crowd joins in. “Six . . . seven . . . eight!”
Then, silence.
“Bravo,” Rolladin’s voice echoes through the tunnel. “Bravo.”
My eyes snap open. Rolladin’s hovering over Philip’s heap of a body in the corner of the 65th Street underpass. She bends down to survey him, some mess of emotions crawling across her face. Then she’s nothing but a blank slate again.
“Lory will join my Council of Lords for her bravery. Philip’s service was commendable.” Rolladin waves a team of lesser lords forward to take Philip’s body away. “But over. If he survives the night,” she tells her team, “he’ll start as a fieldworker tomorrow.”
The crowd booms with cheers and laughter as three young warlords carry Philip out of the underpass. Rolladin takes the victor predator pelt from the referee, throws it over her shoulder, and crosses the open ring to congratulate Lory. She grabs Lory’s face and crushes her own into it, a fierce, possessive kiss.
“Do you understand what you’re watching, why I give you these matches, year after year?” Rolladin addresses the crowd. “To show you
evolution
. Survival of the fittest. Only those of us who are strong, like our champion here”—she thrusts Lory’s arm into the air—“will survive. There is no room for weakness in this city.”
And it’s only when Rolladin drapes her newest Council member with the prized pelt of a zoo tiger that I realize Mom is crying.
5 PHEE
“I’m going to rip your hair out. Gouge out your eyes. Make your teeth into a necklace,” Cass calls ahead to me as a pair of whorelords pulls me across Sheep Meadow and towards 65th Street.
One of my whorelord goons tightens her grip around my forearm. Then she turns around and tells Cass, “Save the fighting for the ring.”
We stumble through the dark field, then over the walkways of cracked cement and towards the underpass, the 65th Street Transverse crested over it like a half-moon. Fieldworkers and whorelords with torches spill out of both sides, and kids are hanging over the bridge for cheap-seat views of the fights. The whole scene’s chaos, basically: shouts and cheers and flashes of fire against the night sky, side gambling and bickering. Every year I’ve been in the thick of it, just part of the bloodthirsty audience, calling for some whorelord to get what’s coming to her. I never thought about how it looked from the outside. I never realized it feels like some sort of crazy sacrifice.
Someone comes sprinting towards us out of the madness. “They’re ready for her,” says Clara, the old referee.
“Who won?” Cass asks behind me.
“Lory.”
“Figures. Philip was a relic.” Cass laughs. “I was sick of that old queen anyway.”
But Clara doesn’t laugh along with her. “Show some respect. He got his face rearranged.” The referee takes me from my escorts and nods at Cass. “Maybe you should focus on your own match.”
Cass adjusts the little squirrel shawl around her shoulders, the only stupid thing separating her from me. “You think I’m worried about this lemming? Please.” Cass smiles at me. “She’s as good as dead.”
The drums have kicked up again, and now I know we’re minutes from starting. My heart starts sputtering, climbing, clawing its way to my throat.
God, I think I’m going to be sick
. Referee Clara leads me away from Cass and my two bodyguards, then pulls me down a small hill and into the crowd of people.
The underpass is humming, a fat, soupy stew of grabby hands and catcalls—
Wait, is that Phee? Sarah Miller’s youngest?—
as Clara pulls me through the crowd. My head starts spinning, my heart keeps pounding, and I swear I’m going to drown in all of this. Like it’s all going to wash over me and pull me under.
I say, “I don’t think I can do this,” before I even realizing I’m saying it.
Clara pulls me into her side as we plow forward. “You can, and you will,” she says into my ear. “Do whatever it takes to make it through the first round.” And even though she’s giving me advice, her eyes are hard. “The only place there aren’t rules is the ring.”
But before I can pump Clara for more, she thrusts me into the center of the underpass.
The crowd falls to silence as I stand there, alone, in the middle of hundreds of prisoners.
I look around, the faces of friends and fieldworkers blurring together in the light and shadows of the underpass. I try to take a deep breath, just try to find Sky and Mom, but the crowd’s gasps and shocked whispers rattle me like thunder.
I start backing up, into the hands of the crowd behind me, then look over to the other side, where they’re packed in like matches.
Even if I wanted to escape, there’s nowhere to run.
“And now, I have something quite
unusual
for your viewing pleasure.” Rolladin steps into the center of the ring and calls over the crowd. “One of your own has pledged a street-fight to me, as a pleading for mercy.”
The crowd grows louder, a hive buzzing with questions.
“Her family has disrespected the rules of the Park,” Rolladin adds, “and extends this offering in desperation. As you can see, I have accepted. But let this be a lesson to all of you.
Nothing
is given for free in the middle of a war.”
Rolladin looks at me. Her face is weird, though, all mashed up, almost like she’s worried, or upset. Then she gives me a little nod, so small and serious that I almost don’t catch it. But I can’t stand to look at her.
Screw you, Rolladin
.
I reach for the grass necklace Sky gave me for my birthday this morning, pretend it’s her hand. I
need
to see my family, and the need is quickening my breath, shaking my hands. I search the crowd frantically, run through each face as quickly as I can.
Where are they?
Clara comes back with some loaner helmet with a hole on the right side and a fat pockmark in the middle.
“Keep this on, whatever you do,” she says as she fastens it under my chin.
But I don’t answer, I
can’t
answer—it’s all going so fast, none of it feels real. I’m watching from a cage in someone else’s nightmare.
Rolladin’s still blabbering on about Cass, and the match, and about me being an example, but I can’t process her words. They’re just flies, buzzing past me.
“Eye for an eye—”
All I can think is,
Where are they?
“The way of the Park—”
And the shadows dancing across the arched ceiling of the underpass, Rolladin’s voice, the gasps and the whispers—it all comes to a quick boil, and before I realize what I’m doing, my vocal cords are straining under the pressure of, “WAIT!”
And then it’s only me talking. Fear is flattening me, crushing me on all sides, but somehow I’m talking.
“I’m not doing this for Warden Rolladin,” I say. I’m surprised I sound powerful, my tone as flat and steady as a drum. “I’m doing this for my family. For my mom and Sky.” I look around at the worn, tired faces of the Park on both sides of the underpass. “For the fieldworkers.”
“How dare you speak—,” Rolladin begins, but she’s interrupted.
“Phee!”
Sky angles past one of the whorelords who’s guarding the crowd on the other side and moves a few steps into the ring. Mom’s trying to pull her back, but Sky shrugs her off. I close my eyes and open them, and when I do, there’s no longer any crowd. It’s just the two of us. Back by the water on Wall Street, laughing and sparring, ready to begin our own fake fight. And in that crazy way Sky can read my mind, she reminds me of what I’ve forgot.
“Remember your weapons,” Sky yells.
The crowd murmurs, confused.
But I’m not confused.
I take a deep breath, close my eyes again, and do what she says. I think of the weapons we made as kids, the ones hammered out of my sister’s stories and dreams. Swords from wizards and magic dust from fairies that Sky swore lived in Battery Park. We’d pull the weapons out and be ready to battle anything. Even the ghosts that made Mom scream in the middle of the night. Even the skeletons we’d find in bed when we’d scavenge downtown apartments.
Cass can’t touch me.
“Silence!” Rolladin roars. “Enough delay. It’s time to begin!”
My sister runs back to the sidelines. Then it’s just me and Cass, on opposite sides of the underpass. She starts pacing sideways, surveying me like some zoo animal, so I start mimicking her and stalk the other way. The crowd’s alive again, and a swell of cheers and catcalls erupt out of the Park and shake the underpass.
“PHOE-NIX. PHOE-NIX.”
Even through my fog of fear, I hear the cheers. I grit my teeth, crack my knuckles, and swallow the tight ball in my throat down, down, down.
Cass crosses the ring. She comes at me in a burst, sprinting, jumping, fist framed against the torch-lit underpass. . . .
I duck and roll away.
Cass gets to her feet, dusts herself off, turns around and smiles. “You can’t duck forever.”
She growls and runs at me again, both fists up and ready to strike. She grabs my shoulders before I can wriggle away from her. My hands go up on instinct, reaching for her face, her eyes, her dumb squirrel cloak. . . .
BOOM.
My rib cage rattles. Then Cass whips her hand up and brings it crashing down against my cheek. The blow burns, feels like candle wax against my skin, and I yelp and turn to run away from her. But Cass has got me, pushes me, and now I’m flailing backward. I fall against the pavement, the wind knocked out of me in one tight whoosh, as gasps echo through the underpass.
Get up, God damn it, Phee, get up—survive the first round
.
I take a breath out of my battered lungs and crawl my way to stand.
“You’re a masochistic little bitch, aren’t you?” Cass leaps for me, grabs my hair, and pulls me towards the brick wall.
“Stop,” I’m yelling. “STOP!”
Somehow I manage to elbow Cass in the ribs and fold into her side, and I send us both careening onto the pavement.
Cheers roar through the underpass:
“Phoenix, hang in there!”
“She’s nothing but a Rolladin lackey!”
“Stay in it for me. For my daughter! May she rest in peace!”
Then Referee Clara is untangling us, shouting, “TIME!”
Cass comes at me again, but Clara pulls her into the opposite corner.
“Don’t make me
try
, bitch!” Cass is shouting, fighting, as she’s dragged away for the one-minute break between rounds.
The crowd is just a loud wave of voices, like an ocean under 65th Street, but somehow I pick out the one voice I need to hear. Mom. “Phee, next hit, stay down!”
I scramble to my feet, desperate to see her and Sky again. But they’re no longer on the front lines. The crowd must’ve swallowed them whole.
“Round two!”
Cass bursts out of the fieldworkers and comes running at me. She wastes no time. Blow to my right side. Then she undercuts my chin, and I swear, I feel the jab in each tooth. The next hit comes fast as lightning, across my cheek, and the pain sears me like a flame.
I double over.
Cass kicks me in the stomach, and now I’m hurling, just bile and spit and blood as I crawl to the side of the underpass, to the rows and rows of legs and feet marking the borders of the ring.
“Enough!” I can’t see my sister, but I can hear her. Sky’s voice rings out, panicked and desperate above all the others. “Phoenix, stay DOWN!”
Referee Clara begins the count. “One . . . two . . .”
Then time does a funny thing as I’m on the ground, bleeding.
It stops, hands me a slice of forever, and I
feel
all the fieldworkers around me. All the prisoners, especially the young ones, like Sky and me, even Trevor, the ones who have only known rules.
And even though I know I’m supposed to just . . .
stop
, and stay down, I said I came to fight for them.
“. . . five . . . six . . .”
Before I can even think,
Yes, okay, this is what I’m doing
, I spot a thin red-handled blade poking out of a whorelord’s boot. I lunge towards the leg and dislodge the weapon, then with every shred of fight I have left in me, I whirl around and thrust it forward, the referee’s words whispering in my ear:
The only place there aren’t rules is the ring
.
The small knife lodges into Cass’s forearm, but I pull it out fast as a reflex. Her eyes fly open, and she shrieks and falls to the ground, folds around her arm. I scramble to my feet, blood and heat and pain attacking me from all sides, just as Clara jumps between Cass and me.
“TIME!” Clara says, pushing us to opposite corners.
I look at Cass’s arm, a cut the size of a finger lacing blood around her forearm.
I did that
. I exhale. Wipe my lip, wipe my brow, readjust my helmet.
I
did
that.
“Time?” Cass is sputtering. “
Time?
That bitch is a cheat! You can’t bring weapons into the ring! Rolladin,” she appeals to our warden, who’s standing in her cushy spot on the sidelines.
Rolladin’s face is hard, cool . . . she doesn’t answer
.
So was that fair? Does it matter?
I can’t think, I can’t process any of this, ’cause time’s now skipping forward like some kid hopped up on honey, but somehow I manage, “I didn’t bring it in.”
Cass gives this tight, twisted little laugh. “You’re giving me technicalities?” she shouts. “You are so fucking dead.”
Again the crowd is all whispers, grunts, and groans. Out of the thick madness, I swear I can hear Sky and Mom call to me. “Phee, enough!”
But time keeps skipping forward, and Clara shouts, “Round three!”
And then Cass is coming for me like a lion from an open cage. I try to keep the small, bloodstained knife between us, thrusting it in all directions like some moving wall she can’t scale.
But she catches my arm and brings it crashing over her knee, and sends her other hand into my stomach. And I can’t hold on anymore. It’s like someone’s taken my heart and thrown it against the cement. I fall to my knees, and the knife goes flying.
I lunge for it, but Cass pulls me back into her, and then we’re locked together, rolling around in the underpass, nothing but the cheers throughout the Park to buoy us. She’s feet, inches, away from the knife. I know it’s over when she gets her hands on it. But I can’t hold her, I—I can’t stop her. . . . Her fingers wrap around it. . . .
“ENOUGH!”
Cass looks at me hungrily. Then at Rolladin, confused.
I want to roll away from Cass and run, run as fast as my legs will carry me, through the crowd now as quiet as Wall Street in winter. But I can’t move.
“I said enough.” Rolladin’s voice is louder, closer now, like she’s right up next to me, in my ear, and then I feel Cass release my hand. And now Rolladin somehow
is
beside me. One rough tug by her, and I’m on my feet. Rolladin’s gripping my forearm, holding me steady, with Cass pulled close on her other side.
“The match is a push,” Rolladin booms through the underpass. But her voice sounds funny, shaky, like it’s balancing on the edge of a skyscraper. “Cass has secured her place as newest lord on my lesser council. And for her courage, Phee and her family will remain with us in the Park. Extra rations to the three of them tonight.”
The crowd’s not quiet any longer, as hundreds of voices let out a roar, and a bloody smile creeps across my lips.
A push
.
And even though the world’s spinning, I stand a little taller.
“Final match!” Rolladin calls over the crowd. But before she gets back to the best spot in the underpass, she pulls me in tight to her, so close that I can see where the blue of her irises fade into green.