Lethe. The river of mindlessness. It flows around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, and all who drink from it, must forget. On a good day, unleashing the power of Lethe can be fun. Sometimes I play with it. Sometimes, I imagine casting the fog on everyone at headquarters. How long would they wander the halls in a stupefied haze? On bad days, it makes me forgetful and dreamy. Today is such a day so when Eniad swings by my desk at noon and tosses me her car keys, I wince.
“Ki Gardens. You drive.”
I had forgotten about the raid.
Still, I am glad for the adrenalin until we near the bleak outskirts of the city. Here, there are fewer buildings and the land is barren. The streets are narrow, oiled and treeless, the houses made of red mud, an inferior variety. Tall weeds and grasses grow between them. Desultory boys stand in the landscape like clumps of young trees.
“The hollow promise of Raia,” Eniad says. “Some uncle arrived here, told them it was amazing, the promised land. They got here and found nothing.”
Maybe where they come from is worse, I think but don’t say. Even after all these years, she scares me. In the years since the first incident, I’ve been trained to control the Fog. I no longer let go accidentally. Eniad takes personal credit for that. I was one of her more difficult students, stubborn and silent.
We pull up outside a house. A swarm of chickens riots outside, coarse and bustling. Across the street, children play in yards and doorways. Women are digging holes, sowing seeds, washing clothes. The ordinary rhythms of living. I kill the engine as another van draws up behind us. The women call to their children, pause.
An officer gets out of the van, short and poker-faced with floppy bangs and hard eyes. We move like robots, bodies slicing through air, stunners out. The visc-hounds trot in and around the house. The chickens disappear, squawking.
We are almost at the door when a boy comes out, arms up. I block the wave of fear-despair coming off him, kick the door open, and am faced with the reek of raw meat. About a dozen slabs of dead animal hang from iron hooks on the ceiling. It is a gigantic freezer.
Animal rearing is strictly regulated in Raia, and managed through a central slaughterhouse. This is illegal. Contraband meat. Winding my way through the cold flab, I can barely breathe.The next room has more meat, piled in a ice box this time.
Outside, the boy climbs into the van. Floppy Bangs pokes him with her stunner, then puts the visc-hounds in with him. The door closes on his haunted face as a team loads the meat in a truck.
“Dead goats,” Eniad says. “From the shape and size.”
Across the horizon, factories belch smoke into a sky scrawled with orange. Eniad is staring at it now. “Raids are so beautiful, aren’t they?” she murmurs. “Really makes one feel alive.”
Outside, the boy climbs into the van. Floppy Bangs pokes him with her stunner, then puts the visc-hounds in with him. The door closes on his haunted face as a team loads the meat in a truck.
“Dead goats,” Eniad says. “From the shape and size.”
Across the horizon, factories belch smoke into a sky scrawled with orange. Eniad is staring at it now. “Raids are so beautiful, aren’t they?” she murmurs. “Really makes one feel alive.”
Later that day, Ryz opens the door of his hut and leans against the frame, making no effort to adjust his disdainful expression. “Are you visiting for pleasure or have you come to pay up?” he asks.
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“Can I come in?” I ask.
He sighs as if I’m wet toilet paper stuck to his shoe but moves aside. Leela is on the floor, cross-legged, eating peanuts from a paper cone. The mattress looks tempting. I could use a nap. I dump the heavy bag on the floor. “Check it.”
“No need,” Leela says.
Ryz gives her a look of such incredulity, it could turn a grasshopper into a fried snack but she remains focused on her peanuts. He opens the bag roughly, counts the bills. Taking out half, he stuffs them under his mattress and zips up the bag. “Take this,” he tells Leela.
Leela shrugs. “I’ll take it in a plastic bag.”
“It’s not safe.”
The concern in Ryz’s voice makes a tiny pit of loneliness unfurl in my stomach. I move to leave but Leela flaps a hand. “Sit. Stop being so nervous. We’re not going to eat you for dinner.”
“I am not nervous. I have a nerve-related thing. It does not make me nervous.”
Handing me a tumbler of tea, Ryz sprawls on the floor.
“Where you from?” I ask instead of staring at his thighs. “You don’t sound like you’re from here.”
Leela tosses a peanut at him. “This one came to Raia to study architecture—gave it up. Now he's a petty thief. He should go back to his education. Drill some sense into him, no? Maybe he will listen to one of his own kind. He’s from village #8—you know it?”
I do. Village #8 is a sophisticated seaside town of salons and parlors, soirees in the evenings and the clink of wine glasses. In upper class homes, people with fine tastes and finer degrees acquire culture like it is currency. Why is he living in this mean hut? Ryz returns my quizzical look with one of his own.
“None of your business, what her powers are,” Leela says, teasing.
The afternoon bustle of Kala Bazaar filters in—taxis blaring music, vendors hawking vegetables but I am beginning to feel curiously relaxed. The cha is delicious and their camaraderie infectious. I idly wonder what brought them together, two people from such disparate worlds.
Leela grew up in Sector 5, an abandoned waif, and belongs to nobody but these streets. Her accent is Effaiti, suggesting ancestors from far lands. People from Ryz’s village on the other hand, are local and come from money. Ryz carries that air about him even while trying to disown it. He frowns as if he’s guessed my thoughts.
“Why are you living here?” I ask again to detract.
“What’s wrong with here?”
“You’re from village #8—,”
“Slumming it.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Doesn’t have to make sense to you.”
“Ryz,” Leela scolds. She pushes a tome towards me, a volume of the Old Texts. Indicating an entry with one slender finger, she says. “Look what it says—a shape-shifter needs meat when they’re transforming.”
“Goat meat….”
“Exactly. If more people are using the potion, more meat is required. The city’s usual supplies are not keeping up.”
After a while, I leave the somnolent calm of the hut. Past chicken bone hangings and dreamcatchers, past ivy jasmine growing up the walls of houses. A bus rattles by with tourists waving flags.
The river is full of glittering boats, decked with fairy lights and blaring music. The city has the air of a festival but my mind is not on festivities. Eniad confirmed the Tests are coming up and if I can prove I’m in control, I may be able to leave. Kild teens are drafted when their powers misfire. In my case, the misfiring was literal but maybe, just maybe, I can win my freedom.
Someone’s energy, like a caterpillar crawling down my leg. The day is not ready to calm down. Tourists and stragglers have crowded before one of the windows. When I get closer, it is cold, almost freezing. The woman inside looks more like a girl than a woman, with a round face and pale-moon skin, bright red hair hanging to her waist. A foreigner. She is sitting cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed as if meditating. Her white dress has frayed edges and she looks hungry, a bit feral. A narrow bed to one side holds a pile of clothes but there is nothing else in the room. There is a roar in the air, a harsh clack-clack-clack and the girl opens her eyes, wide and startling. Two red beads.
She looks at me.
Later, I will wonder if I could have blocked it if I’d known, if I’d been warned, if I’d been less lulled into some sense of warmth from Leela and Ryz’s company. I am not prepared for the force of the girl’s energy. It slams into my body, a physical entity, a live thing, and I am on my knees before I know it. Like a shadow, it looms above me, a great building, a monolith, solid as a concrete structure. It changes form, becomes black and livid, a hive of wasps. Anger/pain in great, gasping, gulping lungfuls. Not the kill-someone kind of anger but close—I have an overpowering urge to smash my boot into someone, or through the glass. To hear it shatter. Make it dust—
“What is happening to you?” Leela yells. She is beside me. Strange. She grasps me by the arms.
“Is she making that noise?” I mouth as nausea engulfs me. Oceanic waves. Inside the display window, a red silk scarf floats upwards from the pile of clothes, twirls in air. People cheer. There is blood on the floor, a drip-drip originating from the girl’s feet, as if she has walked on glass.