(Content Warnings: violence and reference to death)
Immaculée is the last one awake. Her tent trembles as if a fight is happening inside of it. The zip yanks down halfway and she trips, faceplanting on the ground. She gives a great big yawn in the middle of my GreenLive, scratching her unbrushed hair in the background of my phone camera’s self-view. The comments pour through the side of the screen with laugh emojis.
lol is that destro?
The contrast between our green angel and that beast
DESTROYDESTROYDESTROY
Destro fans need to leave this g live
My throat tightens. I loosen it with a laugh. “Come on guys. Let’s say good morning to Ima. Good morning!”
She ignores me. That climate monster. “I think she’s half-asleep. Help me pick out my outfit guys!”
Just because we’re camping rough in this shadowy-horrible-lighting clearing doesn’t mean we can forget the fact that we’re idols first, on a mission, second. The sky alternates between greyness and snippets of light, meaning I have to use my solar light to make my facial features fully visible.
While I display the green shorts I fashioned out of a tattered dress, Ima stretches in the background. Gahinda starts to sing a sad ballad for her GreenLive, causing the air to dampen around us. I tilt my phone to show the bit of rain she conjures over a dry bush on one end of the clearing.
“Check me out!” Ima jumps into the frame, holding a rock that crumbles in her hands.
DESTROYDESTROYDESTROY
I miss Zuba. Why is Destro here?
Show us your powers too, Vestine!
Yeah, grow some grass lol.
I swallow my annoyance. “This morning, I saw this little guy outside my tent.” One tap flips the camera from self-view. The sprout sits in a stray bit of sunlight where I left it. I turn off my solar light and waggle my fingers over the sprout for dramatic effect. My camera captures the moment my hand glows gold and the plant does too. The plant’s stem grows. Two leaves erupt from it, then a bud that blossoms into a blue flower. Heart reactions fill my screen. I smile, relieved to see a decrease in Destro fan comments. “That’s all I have time for today. Tune in for our livestreamed journey at 10 am.”
Gahinda is showering herself with rain and calling it her tears of sorrow over the way we’ve failed Mother Earth. The dishes from the night before are a pile in a bucket behind her. Ima does cartwheels and scratches her butt.
I retreat inside my tent to change. My outfit of the day is green shorts and a lilac halter top. Combat boots lace up my shins, ready to trek through the forest. I twisted my hair into bantu knots and did most of my makeup during my GreenLive.
When I come out of my tent, Gahinda has finished her GreenLive, dishes are still undone, and Ima is doing a handstand in the same slept-in pyjamas.
“It’s already 9:45,” I tell her.
“So?” she says in her Destro voice. “My fans say hi.”
Too late I notice the phone propped against a water bottle on a grey tree stump. “Where’s your solar light?”
The lighting is non-existent right now. It’s overcast in a way that reminds me of the wasteland outside of this forest. Her face is a dark blob blending in with her black outfit. Maybe the all-black look is what Destro fans are into. That and senseless destruction.
“Solar lights are for shallow people,” Ima says.
Ima off-camera is bubbly and helpful. Yesterday we had a long conversation about where to charge your solar light so it gathered the most solar energy. Her on-camera persona picks fights with me. It’s tailored to perfection: Ima the Destro Idol, every hater’s goddess. Whether she believes in her Destro brand or not, she’s clearly filling a niche in the idol market. Standing in her GreenLive reminds me that her persona is at odds with mine.
I inhale softly and wave at the camera. “See you at 10 for the livestream!”
Ima’s handstand falters and collapses into a muddy patch. Destro laughs at herself, a little like the Ima of yesterday. “The longest I can hold this is ten minutes.”
There’s a dot of mud on the middle of my top now. I need to change. And finish the dishes. And pack up camp. I, at least, can’t look like I’m slacking. Our task is too important.
•••
At 10 am, the red light on the city’s drone cameras turn on. I wave at the one directly in front of us. “Hi all! It’s Day 2 of Operation Boost the Mother Tree. We’re travelling with the new gold seed.” I take the seed out of my pack to show the cameras. It glows the same colour as my powers, round and yellow as a gaperi. “The gold seed will give our Mother Tree a refresh, so she can bless our city with more wonders for the year.”
Simulated applause from the remotely operated drones. The louder the applause, the more viewers are reacting positively.
“This year it’s me, Gahinda, and Ima travelling together. We’re making good time, too.” Thanks to me. “Today we want to reach the halfway point: Circle Bluffs.”
We can’t see comments on the official livestream. The city-appointed moderators go through the ones that get repeated a lot and select a few to feature. The chosen comments come out in a monotone voice from the drones.
The drone next to me pings. Incoming comment. “Where’s Zuba?”
I pout. “Sadly, Zuba’s sick, but this year we’re fortunate to have an equally qualified idol. You know her as Destro. It’s Immaculée!” Ima puts her hand on my shoulder and throws up a peace sign. Her fingernails are freshly painted black in uneven, clumpy strokes. Gahinda also invades my personal space by tracing tears on my cheeks. I miss Zuba so much.
The drone pings again. “Is this whole thing even real?”
Again with the conspiracy haters, most of whom were born in the city or were too young to remember the wasteland outside. I resist the urge to sigh. I wish it wasn’t.
I launch into the usual spiel. What people don’t often notice through the livestreams is the faint glow around the Mother Tree’s roots. Our city is aglow with the vegetation that the Mother Tree feeds. Because of the ecosystem centred around our Mother Tree, our city enjoys life.
But the Mother Tree’s past her prime. That’s why every year we give her a medical boost in the form of a seed, so that she continues to bless us. “So this mission is very real, and very important.”
A high-pitched screech interrupts us. We crouch in formation. The air smells sharp and sweet like mould. I hear gurgles. Three gunk monsters stumble out of a bush, oozing, sharp-toothed creatures shaped vaguely like wolves. I slam my hands on the ground. Vines wrap around their stumpy legs, pinning two but missing one. The wolf-like creature leaps for Gahinda.
Ima breaks formation and touches the gunk monster on the head. It dissolves into a pile of gunk. She whizzes past the other two, tapping each on the head. They disintegrate into dust along with the vines holding them in place.
The drones whirr around us, simulating the roar of applause. I keep my face neutral and clap the dirt off my hands. Ima whoops and hollers at the drones, basking in the hero worship. One by one, the red lights go off. I stomp over to her. “We fight together. We celebrate victories together. We don’t do one-idol shows here.”
“I saved us,” Ima says, beaming like a proud child.
“Gahinda had it covered.”
The smile fades. “What’s rain going to do?”
“Keep it distracted so I can pin it in place.”
“And then what?” Ima’s smile drops into a sneer, the one she reserves for her Destro persona. “What did you used to do? Have Zuba sunshine them to death?”
A drone’s red light flashes in my peripheral vision. I swallow my retort. The last thing I want to show the world is discord between the three idols chosen for the single most important task of the year. I stretch my mouth wide. “Good work, Ima. Let’s take a break.”
I retreat to the nearest tree and open my pack. The seed is still safe in its casing. Its warmth is comforting. Without the seed, the Mother Tree dies, along with any chance our city survives. It’s my job to protect it. And my fault if I fuck it up.
•••
The first time I met Destro was during the city’s twentieth anniversary broadcast. I’d been invited as one of the main acts in a collaboration song with other prominent city idols, including Zuba and Gahinda. Destro caused a stir on set when she showed up in a gas mask and an all-black hazmat suit. Zuba turned to me and murmured, “I wonder how long her spectacle tactics will last.”
Destro had half a line in the collaboration song, but she stole the show by messing it up. The lyric was “Stay strong like our Mother Tree.” She sang, “Destroy, sang our Mother Tree.”
Her name trended at number one after the event. Zuba came second for several weeks. I dropped to third. Then Destro dropped to second and we’ve been competing for second place ever since.
Destro’s stunt was enough to ignite her fan base to new levels of disruption. Several were detained, several quarantined for contracting pollution disease. Only people who have been outside our city’s protection catch it. A reason to suspect anti-city activities outside the walls.
The city council called me in for a clandestine meeting. It was in the usual basement meeting room at the city council building, the one with mushroom lighting and a musty smell. Everyone except me showed up on drone projections and spoke through animal head avatars, as if to say, Can’t be too careful around waste children. As if I’d ever try to attack them, like some other waste children might. I’m an idol.
The council leader spoke through a wolf-head avatar. “Our polls strongly indicate that Destro may have a spot on the team of three.”
I resisted the urge to laugh. “How? She stands for everything you monitor us against.”
“The people will choose,” came the clipped response. “We expect strong results from you again this year.”
So I have to work hard to beat her popularity wave, but they won’t lift a finger to stop a clear enemy of the city? At the gym, I punched a hole in my punching bag. Sand drizzled to the ground along with my blood. Zuba whistled, adjusting her weights back onto the rack. Her hips sashayed gracefully along with her blond knotless braids. Zuba gained popularity with ease. She’s kind but also frank, beautiful but real, the kind of person that everyone wants to be friends with. She lives up to her name: the Sun Idol. I don’t mind being her distant second because we’re friends in this idol-eat-idol world. Together I felt like we could keep all the haters away.
“How does a waste child like her get celebrated, while a single mistake sends me knee-deep in downtrends?” I could rant like this because Zuba’s private gym is one of the only places with a mic and camera blind spot.
Zuba patted my back and wiped my forehead with a towel. Then my knuckles. The towel came away with a heart-shaped bloodstain.
“I know it’s frustrating, but you’re on the up too. The wilder her fan base becomes, the more new fans you gain on your side.” Zuba folded up the towel so the bloodstain didn’t show. “You stand for growth. She stands for destruction. It’s the perfect showdown, don’t you think?”
Every idol competes through a gruelling selection battle to get a spot on the Mother Tree mission. The incentive is simple: get in the team of three and your popularity skyrockets. The higher you rise as an idol, the less chance you have of being labelled as a waste child. They monitor us either way of course, but as an idol the monitoring comes with the job. As a waste child, it’s a waiting game until they detain you.
I released two singles leading up to the selection battle for the Mother Tree mission. Both coincided with Destro’s releases. Fans debated for hours wondering whose single was responding to whose. The lines that sent fans into frenzies were Destro’s “I’ll choke your vines and let them crumble” from Destroy Mother Go, versus my “Ashes always let me grow” in Cry We Grow (featuring Gahinda). Our popularity soared, neck and neck for second place.
Then the selection battle was announced and Zuba coughed. And coughed. They’re keeping her in quarantine in an underground facility. I visited her after the selection battle.
“Congratulations on making number one, Vestine!” she rasped. I pressed my lips together to keep them from trembling. Zuba was ashy and way too thin. Pollution disease. In her case she could have caught the virus at a young age, and it had incubated until now, but the city council suspected otherwise.
“Your face looks worse than me right now.” Her breath fogged up her oxygen mask. “Don’t be sorry. Don’t be hard on yourself. Right now you need to nurture your team.”
Zuba asked for too much.
After visiting her, I attended another council meeting.
“Congratulations on making the team of three again this year,” the wolf-head council leader said. “As always you will be tasked with carrying the new gold seed.”
Three years and counting.
“You were chosen for this role because of your strong loyalty to this city. I hope you will protect the Mother Tree’s seed with as much dedication as you have shown in previous years.”
“As you wish.”
“Be especially careful of foreign elements. The movements of Immaculée’s fan base are concerning. Be vigilant against all threats.”
My jaw tightened. The pressure was on me to do what they should have done to shut down the Destro craze. What’s the point of all their watching if it’s the idols who have to keep each other in check?
I exhaled softly and beamed at the assembled members. “You can count on me.”
•••
Circle Bluffs is a ring of cliffs that plunge into a valley. Today the valley is foggy. At the bottom is where the Mother Tree stands. Roots dip down into the valley, snaking down the cliff walls towards their mother. It’s hard to tell which have climbed up from the valley’s bottom, and which are reaching down. Some glow faintly, a sign of the Mother Tree’s influence on the thriving vegetation here. The glow extends to the greenery in the city.
We set up camp in a clearing near the edge of the cliffs. Wind is strong over there, so we need the extra tree cover. Gahinda takes selfies of us at Circle Bluffs. Ima excuses herself to go pee. I gather kindling and rocks to form a fire and take a selfie of myself to show the finished creation to my fans.
“Why did you do that?” Gahinda grabs me by the shoulder and snaps a selfie of us bent by the firepit. “Your post makes you look like a loner.”
“You light the fire then.”
It takes her ten tries to light it with flint and stick. “Sorry,” she pouts at her self-view camera screen. “Fire isn’t my thing.” I laugh in the background, my face leaping gold in the flames’ light.
Ima comes back before the official livestream starts. Our dinner is roasted potatoes and a bean stew I made with canned beans, peanut butter, and the mushrooms and inyobwa I gathered throughout the day.
The evening livestream is a Q-and-A-style variety show where the three of us huddle around the campfire. I checked our positions before the camera went live. Ima’s on the left-hand side in a black hoodie and ripped black jeans. Her bleached grey wig settles nicely on her shoulders, a casual look I’m not mad at. I’m confused by the black face mask though. It’s not like she has a cold. Gahinda’s fulani braids twist down the side of her face in a blue and green braid that she just did for the occasion. She’s snug in an embroidered sweater dress she crocheted herself over several livestreams. I’m in the centre in a simple green hoodie, wrapped in a patchwork Mother Tree quilt I made myself last month. Both Gahinda and I have our creations to talk about if the audience questions are not enough.
The drones’ red light turns on when we’re digging into our bowls of stew. The first audience question comes quickly. “Who does the most work around camp?”
Ima and Gahinda both point at me. I laugh humbly. At least they recognize it.
“Who oversleeps?”
Gahinda and I point at Ima. She laughs through her mask. “I need my beauty sleep.”
“Sure you do.” I decide an eye roll will look more playful than antagonistic. The next question makes me regret it. “Do Destro and Green Angel get along?”
“Of course we don’t!” Destro cackles.
The comeback needs to be playful. “Yeah, not only does she wake up late, but she also snores.”
“I do not! You should listen to yourself snoring.”
Good. Ima’s bubbly character broke through just a second to give us a moment of lightness. Gahinda laughs and says, “You both snore,” sealing the interaction as playful roasting. Zuba would be proud.
“What would you say is an idol’s biggest responsibility?”
Gahinda goes first. “To be role models and glorify Mother Earth.”
“Besides our current mission?” I tap my chin to ponder. “To protect our city from threats.” Both from outside and inside. I glance at Ima.
She laughs, clutching her stomach as if we’ve said something hilarious. I brace myself for a Destro rant, the kind I’ve watched anonymously on her personal livestreams.
“An idol’s biggest responsibility is to make sure she stays on the right side of the city council,” she says. “Make sure she doesn’t get monitored for the wrong reasons.”
I keep my face neutral. She’s not wrong.
“Protecting the city comes second. With that said…” Ima takes off her mask.
I see the letters painted on her cheeks and throw my quilt around her shoulders, pressing her left cheek into my neck. “Aww, and here I thought you only lived to destroy.”
She struggles in my arms. Our differences in raw strength were apparent in the selection battle, the one physical criterion where I overwhelmingly won.
Gahinda reads the room. “It’s getting late. Tomorrow’s another packed day.”
I hold Ima until all the red lights dim. When I release her, she punches my shoulder. “I didn’t consent to that!”
“What were you thinking?” The letters DM and T are in stark white letters on her cheeks. They’re a known shorthand for Destroy the Mother Tree, the most radical element of her fan base.
Ima shrugs. “My fans would have appreciated it.”
“Your fans are criminals.” I take Gahinda’s bowl, but it drops from my shaking fingers.
Ima picks it up and puts it in our dish bucket along with hers. “I want to protect the city in my own way. I thought you of all people would understand.”
“Your image straddles a thin line,” I warn her. “Don’t ruin it for yourself.”
“Why do you care?”
The question makes me laugh, the kind that’s born out of dealing with everyone’s shit for days. “With your power, I would’ve been detained before I could speak. You became a top idol. That’s amazing.” I envy you. “I don’t want to see you fuck it up.”
“I’m not you,” she says. “I’m not desperate to please everyone.”
“We’re idols. Our job is to please.”
“You’re scared. I’m not.” She wipes the white paint off with some dishwater and leaves for her tent.
I cocoon myself in my blanket, eyes fixating on the fire. The thoughts are back. They circle through my head every year, asking me how many times we can give medicine to a dying tree.
•••
Fog rises all the way to our campsite in the morning, chilling my toes. This time both Ima and Gahinda help with the cleanup. There isn’t any good lighting for GreenLives anyway. I settle for a few text posts and pictures of us packing up in the fog.
The way down to the Mother Tree is especially treacherous. The official livestream gets interrupted by flying gunk monster attacks: sharp-beaked hawk-shaped things. Gahinda strikes them down with hail condensed from the fog. It’s the first time she’s used ice in a battle. By the way her breath hitches I can tell it’s something she never meant to show the drones. I reach back and squeeze her hand.
My foot slips on a root. Ima catches me before I fall down the steep slope. Her balance and agility are second to none. Pebbles click past us, clacking into the foggy void below. Roars respond. A group of wolf-like gunk monsters bound up the slope. I tap into the roots around us to form a thorny cage from which Ima and Gahinda can strike with a combination of icicles and lethal touch.
We take a break inside of the thorn cage. It’s the point in the journey where no one’s concerned about how we look like to the world. That’s how tired we are. Though the drones still circle on backup power, visibility is low and the red light is blurry in the grey. The city broadcasters are probably making up their own commentary of what we’re up to.
“There’s no end to them this year,” Gahinda whines. “Where do these gunk monsters keep coming from?”
“The sickness of the Mother Tree,” Ima says. “It doesn’t want her to be healed.” It’s one of the many “conspiracies” she feeds her fans. Gahinda and I know it’s true, but we’re bound by contract not to admit it publicly.
Zuba said something similar earlier. She video-called me around dawn. Bags stood out under her eyes and her cheeks sank where they used to be plump with life. “It’s not pollution disease,” she wheezed.
“Okay.” That’s not what the council said.
“It’s her sickness… seeping… kill… the Mother Tree wants… before…” Her voice cut out and the screen blurred while the call tried to reconnect. “I had a dream,” Zuba said.
In the dream the Mother Tree’s roots glowed yellow like the source of Zuba’s power. “I felt so connected to her, Vestine.” She coughed for a long time and I shushed her, trying not to break into sobs. The council said Zuba’s dying.
After our goodbyes, I sat in my tent for a while and redid my eye makeup. Thinking too hard about Zuba’s words would make me waver. The gold seed will fix things. It needs to.
•••
The sun is a bright blob in the sky when the ground levels into a shrubby hill laden with roots. During our last break we finish off the bean stew from the night before.
I check my pack for the gold seed. It glows faintly. “I won’t give a rousing speech or anything. Just a heads up: the fight at the tree will be especially ugly this year. Let’s stay sharp and look out for each other.”
Gahinda nods. Ima stares into her stew. Keep an eye on her, Zuba said.
We leave our packs inside an enclosure of vines, save for a small pouch I use to carry the new gold seed. The fog clears enough for the sun to blind us. When our eyes adjust behind sunglasses, the Mother Tree is within view, grey beneath the white sunlight. Around her wolf-like gunk monsters sprout from the roots, detaching themselves like oozing snot. I count at least thirty. We’re outmatched, but the idea isn’t to defeat them, it’s to administer the medicine. Our destination is a knothole on the Mother Tree’s trunk, a nook where the gold seed sits. Ima surges ahead. I turn to Gahinda. “Cover me.”
Ima makes three gunk monsters disintegrate on a straight path towards the tree. I follow her, trusting Gahinda with covering my blind spots while I manipulate vines to hold gunk monsters down by their torsos.
Watching Ima disintegrate gunk monsters with a touch reminds me of a conversation we had on Day 1 of our journey. She washed plates while I dried them. “I can only destroy what I touch,” she said, handing me a bowl to dry.
“Why isn’t that bowl disintegrating then?”
“Practice. I only destroy what I want to destroy.”
Now Ima’s hand slides over a section of root where a gunk monster is about to sprout. She touches the root itself. Gunk monster and root disintegrate, forming a line of ash that extends to the Mother Tree’s trunk. Light pulses and the ground shakes.
“Be careful!” I shout.
Ima doesn’t turn back. She speeds ahead, right for the Mother Tree. Her hands shatter roots in moves that look accidental, but it’s happened thrice now, and I know how calculating this girl really is. She might actually be trying to destroy the Mother Tree.
I aim a root at Ima’s ankle. She trips and reduces it to dust, still not looking back, still intent on reaching the tree first. That confirms it. I sprint for the tree, throwing root after root to slow her progress. The pouch with the seed bumps against my back. I use its presence to fuel me forward.
If Ima destroys the Mother Tree, it’s the end of the city as we know it.
I’m still a few strides behind Ima, surrounded by a line of wolf-like gunk monsters that circle around me. One latches its gooey teeth onto my pack. An icicle strikes it down. I exhale and focus all my strength into piercing each of the monsters circling me with thorny vines. The effort brings me to my knees. Ima jumps on a root that leads straight to the knothole on the Mother Tree’s trunk. I focus my energy on uprooting the root. Ima stumbles back. Another vine whips around her torso and flings her behind me.
My arms shake from the technical control needed for the motion. I touch the back of my pack. It’s still wet and a bit sticky from gunk fluid, but the seed is still there. I get to the knothole first.
Inside the nook gold light pulses. The old gold seed sits embedded in the ground, flickering weakly. I reach inside my pouch. There’s a hole on the bottom, no gold seed. I whirl back to the entrance. As if on cue, Ima appears, breathing hard, gold seed in hand. “Looking for this?”
And she crushes it in her hands.
My throat goes raw from screaming. She dodges my punch easily, twisting my weakened arms behind my back before kicking me away.
I can only watch. “Why would you condemn us all to death?”
“This tree should have died years ago.” Ima kneels before the old gold seed. “Right now it’s giving us more danger than safety. Its sickness is already poisoning our water. Look at Zuba. Look at all the other detainees who caught so-called pollution disease. Half of them were born in the city and have never been outside.”
If Ima’s right, Zuba’s cryptic words would make sense. Still, “You’re going to kill us all.”
“Without destruction we can’t renew.” Ima taps the old seed. It dims to black, plunging the knothole in darkness. A sound like falling sand builds, then crashes into me like a wave.
•••
I wake to dust and grey. It’s quiet. No screeching of gunk monsters. Just the faint buzzing of drones and a high tone that repeats over and over. The city’s alarm. Anti-waste child forces will be here any minute. I prop myself up on my elbows. The adrenaline has worn off. Only Ima stands, staring down at me in her all-black outfit. Destro in all her destructive glory.
“Are you happy now?” I spit.
“‘Ashes always let me grow.’” The quote from my own song feels like a taunt. Ima points behind me.
There’s a black circle where the gold seed used to be. There’s nothing there now. I crawl on shaking arms and cup the spot around my fingers. After all the work I put in. Three years of work. I don’t want the end of our city to start like this. Splaying my hands on the ground, I exhale and reach through the earth for a seed. My arms warm with the renewed effort. I close my eyes and think of exercising with Zuba, singing with Gahinda, even laughing with Ima and thinking she isn’t so bad after all. My entire body pulses with the remains of my depleted power.
When I open my eyes, a small sapling stands where the gold seed used to be. A single leaf hangs out. Water drizzles on it. Gahinda crouches next to me, patting my back. We sit there watching as the leaf brightens. The sun pokes through the fog and dust, reminding me of Zuba’s light.
“Will this do anything?” I ask no one. Purify the city’s water? Save Zuba?
Ima circles around the sapling and grins, back to her bubbly off-camera self. “It’s more than enough.”
