by Tali Inlow
Autumn takes that earth-shattering moment to assess the woman’s state. No lines of age, no scars from the sun or the Winds or evidence of a Sickness-ravaged body. Her youth, apparent—and if Autumn has kept proper track since her days at Whitmore, then this girl is indeed a woman now, nearly nineteen years of age, Autumn is sure of it.
Hell, if Autumn had to bet her life on it, she thinks she would. Because this girl, lying prone in the dirt at the End of the world, she looks so goddamned familiar to Autumn that Autumn, frankly, wants to puke up her guts.
An unwise decision, of course, so she refrains.
Instead, Autumn tears her eyes from the woman and back to the men in the clearing.
“Is there a problem here, boys?” Autumn asks, stepping closer.
As she approaches, Gray takes a step back, which causes Windbreaker to hiss at him, their dual cowardice on display. Power in numbers, that’s what they believe. But Autumn has all the power she needs in this situation, and she knows it—and them? They’ll know it soon enough.
“You... you killed him!” Gray yells, pointing an accusing finger in Autumn’s direction.
Autumn looks over her shoulder with a faux-confused look on her face before turning back to the men. She presses a finger to her chest as if to say, Who, me?
“Who the actual fuck do you think you are, woman.”
Windbreaker hasn’t asked a question. He knows it, Autumn knows it, everyone knows it. So she doesn’t bother to answer him.
“You’ve made a mistake here. You know that, right?”
“The fuck do you know about it?!” Gray shouts, flecks of spittle flying from his lips.
“I know that he’s dead,” Autumn says, pointing to Tree. Even as she says it, he lets out a rattling, gurgling groan of agony and abandon. “Or on his way to it, then. And this woman, I’d wager, did nothing to provoke your aggressions besides being... Well, alive. Am I right?”
“You’re no law over us,” Windbreaker growls. He clenches his fists, hands finally moving away from his face as the stream of blood from his nose dwindles to barely a drip. “You’re no law over me.”
Another step forward by Autumn. Gray is trembling but somehow standing firm at his leader’s back. Windbreaker, Autumn is not disappointed to see, looks as if he is ready for a fight.
“And who exactly do you think,” Autumn practically growls out the words, her voice low but her intentions clear—she’s produced another dagger from who-knows-where, is twirling it between her fingers, “laws over me?”
Without breaking her gaze with Windbreaker, Autumn hurls the knife—an almost invisible flick of the wrist, so fast does the blade leave her hand—straight into Gray’s eye socket.
Brain impaled, electrical circuits instantly fried, Gray falls backwards into the dirt with a thump. Oddly enough, even the surrounding ground seems to lose what little color it may have had before he came into contact with it. Nothing will grow there, ever again.
“Fucking bitch!” Windbreaker roars, now alone. He pulls his own blade from beneath his jacket—it appears rusted and worn, ill-kept. But still a weapon, still dangerous.
He makes to lunge at Autumn—
But he doesn’t get six inches before he’s tripping, the woman he’d smacked down to the ground only minutes before now with her leg outstretched from where she’s remained otherwise still.
His weapon goes flying, and his nose gushes red anew. He’s mumbling, his curses muffled by pain and blood and dirt. The woman pushes herself to her feet, and Autumn approaches the pair.
“No peace for you in this life,” Autumn says, grunting as she pulls the man’s head back by his neck, “no peace for you in the next.”
He hardly even puts up a struggle as Autumn uses yet another meticulously kept knife to slit his throat. His blood spills out onto the ground.
“Shit,” the stranger—who is no stranger at all—breaths out, sidestepping Autumn and the dead men alike. She makes for her satchel as Autumn retrieves her daggers. “Not exactly the day I planned on having.”
Autumn chuckles, re-sheathing her blades in their rightful slots across her chest strap. “Me either.”
“Thank you, by the way.”
That voice, the first thing about the woman that had given Autumn pause, so haunting as to cause her to still her movements for a moment. Eyes closed, memories knocking, threatening, then beaten back...
The woman glances Autumn’s way as she kneels to collect her things. They’re strewn about in the dirt where Gray had been rifling through them, no doubt looking for contraband, drugs, precious metals, or food. She’s stuffing what looks to be an old rolled up atlas back inside when Autumn catches sight of something that makes her breath hitch.
Because if everything about the woman’s physical appearance and penchant for cussing hadn’t given her away, then the flash of colors—of green, yellow, and white—would have certainly done the trick.
But the embroidered cloth bearing those colors is there and gone in a flash, hidden as the woman closes the top of her satchel and stands. She shrugs her arms into the straps before snapping a latch across her chest to cinch it firmly in place. Autumn is pleased to see that the woman has a folded up shawl in one hand, likely her go-to piece of protective equipment against any sun flares, acid rainstorms, or sudden bouts of Wind.
Her other hand, she extends in Autumn’s direction. For a handshake. Autumn eyes the extended hand curiously, one eyebrow arching upward in amusement.
“The name’s September,” the woman says, and Autumn gets the best look at her eyes she’s had so far.
September’s eyes, they change, depending on where the light’s coming from—from blue to brown, grey to green.
So like her mother’s.
Autumn swallows hard but takes September’s hand, hardly breaking their eye contact as she pushes past the lump in her throat. She is just about to return introductions when the woman beats her to it.
“And you’re a Shepherd, right?”
Autumn takes a deep breath, expelling it upward to blow a piece of loose hair out of her face. Had she dared, for even a fraction of a moment, to hope that September would know her on sight?
Foolish.
“I tend to go by my name,” she corrects September, “which is Autumn.”
September chuckles, and Autumn isn’t sure what’s funny to the other woman. If anyone should laugh, Autumn thinks, the right belongs to her and her alone—hearing September’s name, so casually and in the middle of nowhere at the End of the goddamn world, certainly implies that Autumn is the butt of a cosmic joke the likes of which she cannot comprehend. A galactic mockery of Autumn’s entire existence, jabbing particularly cruelly at her adolescence.
September, Autumn ruminates on the name, the world, the time...
September.
“So,” September says, hitching her bag higher up her back. “Where are we headed?”
A beat, then, “We?”
“You saved my ass, Shepherd—” at this name, September throws her hands up apologetically, the glare Autumn tosses her way enough to scald. “Sorry, sorry—Autumn.” A cheeky grin. “But really, you saved me, I have to return the favor.”
Autumn scoffs lightly and begins walking. Without missing a beat, September falls into stride beside her. Side-eying her apparent new traveling companion, Autumn says, “I stopped being the kind of person who collects favors a long time ago.” Her voice is low, gruff. She’s not trying to be standoffish, but neither is she trying notably hard to be warm, inviting. She won’t rid herself of September, she knows that much—she’s too selfish. After all this time not knowing each other, what harm could come of the knowing?
“Well, my pops always stressed manners, you know? I can’t imagine what he’d say if I didn’t at least try to, like, save your life in return or something.”
“Your ‘pops’, huh?”
September’s smile is sad as her knuckles tighten around her bag straps. She looks down at the groun
d, her eyes not here, at the moment, but a thousand miles and days away. “Yeah. My dad... Miss that dude something fierce.”
Autumn is curious to learn more, to hear more of September’s story—at least the parts of it she doesn’t know already. But to prod would feel too disingenuous. To try to figure out the young woman’s life without disclosing their unwitting connection would be cruel.
Instead of prying, Autumn merely says, “I don’t travel with others.”
She picks up her pace to prove her point. Her stride is quick, efficient—brutal for anyone not at or near her fitness level. But September keeps up, and Autumn isn’t surprised; the other woman’s body looks as if the gods themselves had sculpted her for a life like this. Tall and lean, her only true vulnerability the lightness of her skin. Easily enough remedied, and she seems well-prepared, even if the rogues from before had caught her off-guard.
“Do you mosey in the same general direction with others?” September asks, a quirk to her lips that Autumn does not appreciate.
“We’ve barely gone two hundred yards, how could you possibly know what general direction I’m going in? And I don’t mosey. Besides, the odds are low that our trajectories match.”
“Please, is it really that hard to figure out? When the world Ended, there was only ever talk of one thing: going West. Isn’t everyone headed that direction in time?”
“Hmm,” Autumn grumbles to herself, brow drawing down as she frowns deeply. “It’s more a Northwest direction for me at the moment, but I can appreciate your rationale.”
“So we’re buds now?” September asks, the goofiest pep to her step.
Autumn can’t help but allow her frown to morph into a wry smile. “Who said anything about being friends?”
“Not ‘friends’,” September emphasizes, “buds. It’s very, very different.”
Autumn chuckles drily and shakes her head. A few chunks of her dark hair fall into her face, and she pushes them away. From the side of her pack, accessible with a little finagling that does not slow her pace, Autumn pulls out a particularly well-worn piece of cloth. Still not breaking her stride, she pulls her hair up into a ponytail atop her head, which she ties up skillfully with the strip of cloth.
“I don’t know what a bud is, kid, but I’m not it.”
“Kid?” September feigns shock, one hand pressed to her chest. “How young do you think I am, Autumn?!”
Without even looking at the woman, Autumn lies.
“Sixteen,” she says, “at the very oldest.”
“Fucking gasp,” the woman exclaims. “You’ve cut me off at the ankles. I’m about to turn nineteen, I’ll have you know.”
Time: a hard thing to measure nowadays. But there are ways of doing it, of course. The night sky, for one—humans hadn’t fucked up the entire galaxy, just this one planet. And though the seasons had become up-ended, topsy-turvy nonsense, there was still a longest day of the year, and a shortest. By Autumn’s estimations, they’d experienced the longest day a mere few weeks beforehand, suggesting that they were somewhere in the months of July to August.
“Let me guess,” Autumn says, raising an eyebrow and making deliberate eye contact with the other woman. “You were born in... October?”
“Ha ha.” September rolls her eyes, but her cheeks take on a pink tinge. “Actually, I’m sure this sounds totally ridiculous... But my birthday’s in May. I have absolutely no freaking clue why they named me September.”
“You must have looked like a September.”
The younger woman looks up, eyes alight. “Was that a joke?”
Both women, pleasantly surprised by the ease of the banter, grin at one another before turning back to the path before them.
“In all seriousness, you can’t travel with me forever.”
“Who said anything about forever?” September jabs.
At this, Autumn’s feet stutter-step in the dirt. She nearly trips. In a flash, September’s hand is reaching out to grab ahold of her elbow.
“Whoa, you all right?” she asks.
But Autumn steps out of her grip before they connect. “Trouble seems to follow me, and I won’t have you getting in the middle of it. Or bringing it with you—you’ve yet to prove your worth as it is.”
She says this last bit with a bite, and she can feel September’s eyes on the side of her face. But she doesn’t budge—and neither, it seems, will the other woman.
“Fine,” September says, “exactly. I’ve got to prove myself to you. And I’ll do that by saving your ass at some point, all right? Just... let me walk with this debt for a bit. I’ll live up to it.”
This time it’s Autumn looking at September, and September avoiding her gaze with absolute determination. Autumn sees something in the woman, in that moment—something more than what she’d seen before. She sees a fierceness, a kindness, a desire to be bigger and more important than the world has let her thus far be.
And even though she hadn’t strictly seen this side of the woman before, Autumn isn’t surprised. Not one bit.
“All right, kid—”
“Hey!” September interjects.
A quick defense on her tongue, Autumn says, “Listen, you won’t be guessing my age anytime soon, but you are most definitely a kid to me. So that’s what I’ll be calling you.”
September grumbles under her breath to herself, but Autumn can make out the young woman saying the word “kid” in various intonations. She can’t help but crack another grin.
“We’ll do this for a while,” Autumn continues her previous train of thought. September’s gaze on her is expectant, excited. “But I’ve got somewhere to be, and only a limited time to get there. So if you show any signs of slowing me down, no longer buds will we be. Got it?”
When September smiles, it’s the kind of thing that lights up a goddamned room like a Christmas tree used to do. It’s a smile that Autumn recognizes, that she could never forget...
“Somewhere to be, huh? Sounds like there’s a story there!”
“There really isn’t,” Autumn deadpans.
A sly, cocky expression comes across September’s face at this. “We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we then?”
And Autumn dares to laugh, a small, quiet thing that’s swept away by the barest remnants of the Winds from the desert, far away and behind them, now.
They continue on, walking north and west, side by side. And Autumn realizes the blunt and absolute truth of these circumstances she’s now found herself in: this? This, she never could have planned for, not in her wildest imaginings.
But that’s the thing about the Sisterhood, Autumn supposes. Just because girls stopped matriculating at Whitmore when the world came to an End, that didn’t mean that the tradition—the history, the magic—was going to die.
The world Ending didn’t mean that the Sisterhood was ever going to stop growing.
In fact, Autumn’s mind thinks back to that flash of colors inside September’s bag—green, white, yellow.
Perhaps the Sisterhood has truly been growing. All this time.
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Also by Tali Inlow
The Sisterhood
The Sisterhood: Episode One (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood: Episode Two (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood: Episode Three (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood: Episode Four (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood: Episode Five (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood: Episode Six (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood (Seasons)
The Sisterhood: Season One (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood: Season Two (Coming Soon)
Watch for more at Tali Inlow’s site.
About the Author
Tali Inlow is an up-and-coming author of queer speculative fiction.
Read more at Tali Inlow’s site.