Page 3 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

Manaj peered under a bread cloth in the living room.

“You did two braids again. It’s faster to do one.” Manaj dropped the cloth and hobbled into the kitchen.

“I know,” Lethe clipped.

“You can’t keep those hands still.”

“Or to myself. You’ve said so before.”

“Right,” Manaj replied.

“I’m happy we have an understanding.”

“There is the stress of having active hands and the stress of having mischievous hands. I pity the man that has both.”

“What can I say? I’m a burning flame, Manaj,” Lethe shot back.

“You are not a flame. You are on fire. There is a difference.”

Lethe smirked as he listened to Manaj pour from the water pitcher. He smoked, watching the world outside wake up. A cart rattled down the street. A child started crying. The banging and pattering of life crept into the morning. Thunder churned. Things would pick up soon.

An endless, loud cycle of monotony.

Manaj hobbled back outside, a glass of water in each hand. He eased down on one of the rocking chairs, sitting on the very edge before sliding slowly back into it.

“Put that out,” he said.

Lethe rolled his eyes.

Manaj hated smoking, which hadn’t been a problem until Lethe’s invention of the “super cigarette.” He’d tied three together and Manaj, knowing him well enough to know it would only escalate further, set very strict ground rules.

Lethe tossed the cigarette off the porch, balancing a hand on the back of the rocking chair as he walked around it. He collapsed into it, tilting his head to the tin roof. The morning smelled like fresh bread and rain.

He propped a long leg up against the nearest support beam, shifting against the arms of the rocking chair. Broad-shouldered, he filled the chair, and though lean enough to be nimble, next to Manaj, as he often was, he felt like a giant.

Manaj rocked with the ends of his toes covered in thick socks and patched-up sandals.

He huddled in a striped, green robe he’d worn to sentimental rags.

He handed a glass of water to Lethe with a single basil leaf floating inside.

Reaching into his robe, he pulled out a pink and yellow striped hat with a hole in the side. He shimmied it onto his head.

They watched with some measure of restful silence as the orphans in the village ran to the schoolhouse.

One boy tripped and two oranges rolled out of his hands.

He scrambled to his feet, dusting them off before scurrying to catch up with the lines filing up to the building.

They all had oranges, En Sanctus’s largest export.

En Sanctus’s climate suited them, and so each year, farmers dug up bunches and bunches of them, storing the leftovers in the dark to plant the following season.

Lethe sipped the water as he watched people patrol the streets, moving from one wooden shop to the other. Their elderly neighbor across the street was taking her laundry off the clothesline.

An endless, loud cycle of monotony ,he thought, feeling suddenly tense and wrestling in the feeling with thoughts of horseback riding.

“I heard a war hero in Fort Laurie was just honored by the State for giving up war secrets,” Manaj said, rocking in his chair.

“Propaganda,” Lethe replied. “They’d execute a war hero if they ever proved they found one.”

War heroes, like any reminder of the war, weren’t well liked. En Sanctans pretended they didn’t exist. The State would interrogate them for information and then execute them when they lost their usefulness. The Mystics loved them, but no one wanted to escape to the barbaric wilds of the Mystics.

Finished with the water, Lethe set the glass down in his lap as his fingertips traced the light reflecting through the lip. He watched the residual water on the lip tug toward his skin, and he left just enough space so that the drop would hang there in limbo.

“I’m hearing more and more of these stories,” Manaj started again. “The State is pushing for answers. The remote forts up past the mountains see any mention of the war as an offense, and the State is now sending its emissaries poking around asking sensitive questions. Conflict will follow.”

“Hmph,” Lethe said skeptically.

It already had, just not in En Sanctus.

The State was caught in perpetual squabbles with the Mystics.

The State philosophy of discovery and exploration had posed a heated contradiction to the En Sanctan conviction to secrecy and the Mystic’s reverence of the unknown.

As neighbors, the three countries didn’t seem to agree on any idea but one: they were marooned on this continent, alone and together, unable to explore beyond.

Time moved much too fast beyond the drawn borders. People always died on their way back.

Lethe stood abruptly from his chair and walked inside. “I’m done,” he announced.

“Already? You barely sat at all!” Manaj called after him as Lethe placed his glass in the kitchen. “You aren’t teaching any soldiering classes today! You can’t use that excuse!”

Manaj had caught on to all his excuses, most notably, the soldiering classes.

In exchange for the town’s secrecy, Lethe had agreed to teach the youth some of the skills he’d learned in the war.

Not that anyone would report him to the State for being a war hero.

They were either too afraid of him or too afraid of betraying the En Sanctan vow of secrecy.

Being willing to do the classes did, however, earn him the smallest bit of the people’s trust and it was a nice escape from Manaj’s oversight.

“If you sit in that chair too long, rigor mortis will set in!” Lethe called back.

He heard Manaj chuckle as he wound back into his room and shut the door. He rubbed his face, sinking down on his hands and knees before peering under the bed.

He shuffled through piles of stolen name cards from a wedding, a few utensils from a house down the street, an empty sweet loaf package, a burned figurine of a deer, and a multitude of stolen caramels, boxes of them, that he’d collected over the past few years.

He pulled out an old book, holding it to his chest as he moved to the nearest wall and sat up against it. He pried a caramel loose from the back cover, the front cover all but removed.

He opened it to a page saved by two metal shish kabob skewers, inspecting the images and descriptions of primitive psychiatric treatments before flipping through to the section on lobotomies.

He looked at the door, listened for Manaj, and then glanced back down to the book. He reread the passages, his face nearing the pictures as he played with one metal skewer.

He’d read them all before, gone through this all before, but it was different this time. Since early this morning, he’d built up the conviction that it was worth trying, at least.

Lethe tilted his head back against the wall, lifting the skewer up to the corner of his eye, closest to his nose. He felt the indent there, positioning the skewer as he took in a measured breath.

He could hear his own pulse, louder than anything else. One quick, hard tap, and maybe he’d have some relief. It would only be painful for a few seconds. He’d been through worse.

He took a deep breath and held it.

His pulse drummed in his ears.

It was likely why he didn’t hear Manaj until he’d opened the door.

The two men looked at each other, Manaj with a ladle in his hand.

Manaj’s eyes moved from the skewer to the book to Lethe.

Lethe lowered the skewer and eased the book off his lap.

The old man’s lips pinched together. He readjusted his ladle.

Lethe put a hand up as he stood. “I’m leaving,” he said, easing toward Manaj so he could squeeze through the door. “Leaving right now.”

Twop!

Manaj hit him with the ladle. Lethe tried to move through the door as Manaj repeated the effort over and over, aiming for his head despite their vast difference in height.

“You’re a madman!” Manaj said. “Mad! Mad! Mad!” He then spoke passionately in Hindi as Lethe raced outside the house. Lethe’s foot caught the step, and he tripped and rolled.

He’d never seen the little man move so quickly, ladle flailing as he marched down the stairs.

Lethe whirled around in the street, arms up.

“I’m sorry! Hey!” He dodged another swing. “English!” he shouted back at Manaj as the man continued incessantly in Hindi. Lethe recognized a few colorful words.

“I knew it!” Manaj finally withdrew the ladle but shook it at him. “I knew it! I knew it! I told you that book was not good for you—it was not!”

“It won’t kill me, Manaj! Come on!”

“I knew it was only a matter of time before you did something else, but this—this?” He started off in Hindi again and did a turn.

Lethe noticed one of their neighbors peeking through a window. Luckily, it was still too early for most people to be out in the street.

“What did you expect to happen?” said the old man, pointing the ladle at him again but still marching around so that Lethe had to adjust the distance accordingly.

“I just thought it would calm things down in my head, all right?” Lethe said. “Worst case scenario, it heals right up and does nothing!”

“You push your mutation too far, and you know it!” Manaj said, shaking the ladle as he finally planted his steps in a wide stance. “You don’t know if your brain heals like your body does. You abuse your gift! The miracle of your body! What if you had done permanent damage to yourself?”

Lethe shrugged. “You have to admit, maybe I’d be more manageable.”

“No jokes!” Manaj said, marching back toward the house. “This is an offense against me!” He whirled back around, shaking the ladle. “I was making us breakfast!” He slammed the door, leaving Lethe waiting outside in the street.

Lethe scratched his head and then checked his belt.

He cursed.

“Manaj,” he called, walking up to the base of the steps.

“Don’t come back until nightfall!” Manaj shouted from inside the house.

“Manaj, I need my flask.” He stood with his hands on his hips, staring down at the steps as he waited for an answer.

“No!”

Lethe sighed, looking up at the sky now.

“Manaj,” he called again.

Silence.

“Lethe.”

He looked to his right to see Jamie, an orphan in a stained, yellow sweatshirt, walking up to him on her way to school.

She adjusted her large bag over her shoulder, the edges of her sleeve gathering down near her elbow. She stopped next to Lethe, looking between the door and him before pushing her hair behind her ears.

“You and Manaj fighting again?” she asked.

“Something like that,” Lethe said, glancing down the opposite street to the schoolhouse as he squinted into the sun.

“What did you do?” she asked.

He fished out a stopwatch from under his shirt and clicked it open.

“You’re late for school,” he said.

“I know that’s a stopwatch. I’m not an idiot. I was going to see if you could braid my hair.” She stepped in front of him, facing the door. “Can you?”

Lethe glanced back up at the door to the house.

“Fine,” he said, offering his hand to her.

Jamie dropped hairpins into his hand after pulling them from her bag. “Are you teaching any soldiering classes this week?” She tilted her head to look at him, and he thumped her in the temple. “Ouch!”

“Watch the braid.” He started tugging gently at strands of her dark brown hair, holding the pins in the corner of his mouth as he wove the strands with practiced expertise. “Was thinking about it, but they’re taking the horses to Fort North to trade,” he said.

“I hate when there’s no riding.” She looked up as the door creaked open, Manaj poking his head through.

“Good morning, Mr. Manaj,” Jamie called.

“Good morning, Jamie,” Manaj said, still mostly hidden behind the door.

“What did you do to him?” Jamie asked Lethe.

“Nothing. He just walked in at the wrong time.” Knowing Jamie would likely repeat this story verbatim to all of her friends, he clarified, “I was reading a book he didn’t like.” He clarified further, “A science book. I was trying a science experiment.”

“What kind of experiment?”

“A dangerous one, and it scared him.”

“Hmph.” She accepted the information with no qualms.

He had to give Jamie credit. She’d sought him out when others avoided him for surviving the war. Though he wasn’t sure what that meant of her good sense.

He knew she’d heard the stories.

He’d burned more than a few people, killed plenty more than that. There was even a rumor that Lethe once choked a man with his own dismembered foot.

Only part of that was true. It had been someone else’s foot.

He’d been in a bind under very specific circumstances, and desperate times called for desperate measures. In the war-torn version of the world, he’d been a creative master of a most desperate persuasion.

The only problem was, the times weren’t that desperate anymore.

He put in the last pin. “There. It’s done. Go.”

Jamie felt her hair, patting the design gently.

“Looks great. Go,” Lethe said, checking his stopwatch. “You’re late for school.”

“I told you. I’m not an idiot,” Jamie protested.

“Yeah, yeah.” Lethe waved her off.

“You’re late,” Manaj noted.

“Ah!” She scrambled off and whirled around, running backward. “I’ll see you tonight! I’m coming to”—she tripped, gathering her footing abruptly before turning around—“visit!”

Lethe watched her join the others in the schoolyard. He started up the porch, Manaj still watching through a crack in the door.

“Manaj,” Lethe began.

Manaj slammed the door, opened it a second later to throw Lethe his flask, and then slammed it again.

Lethe picked up the flask and fixed it into his belt. He turned around and sighed as he walked off to muddle through the day.

An endless, loud cycle of monotony.