fear can hold us in :: [ denali + lethe ]

~Lethe Turner

The lizard’s body was already hard when Lethe found it.

For years she wondered when the day would come that the speedy lizard she managed to pluck out of the Arena would die. Somehow, Camalia lived on, touching her soft tongue to Lethe’s skin when she held her and skittering over to her food. Perhaps she was some kind of Capitol-engineered lizard. Or maybe she had something to live for her. And that’s why, year after year, Lethe clutched her as they boarded the train yet again to the Capitol and for days, woman and lizard would sit in Lethe’s compartment, listening for Patricia’s biting commentary to whichever unfortunate tributes were accompanying them.

But something was different that year. It was the 80th Games and Camalia was slower and slept longer. Lethe felt it, too. Her fingernails had grown more brittle over time and when she rubbed moisturizer over her skin at night, they slipped into wrinkles and crevices under her eyes and around her mouth. Jasper would never comment on them, except to call her “still beautiful,” but she rarely let him touch her nowadays. Like the feeling of her own hands, his touch felt hollow and cold and reminded her of how much time had passed.

Lethe felt older when she arrived at the Capitol this year. Her stylists offered to do a face-lift, which she graciously declined, and they spent a long time weaving newer, fresher blonde strands into her thin, graying hair.

But, like every year, Lethe sat perfectly still in the Victor dining room, listening to Patricia talk, watching twenty-three children die. Camalia nibbled on her croissants. The Games wore on and Patricia dug her fingernails deeper into Lethe’s wrist each day, watching her muses fight for their lives. It irritated Lethe to a point, especially when her fingernails drew blood as the boy from District 5 died, blood spilling the earth, the lover of the girl from District 5 swooping in to deliver the final blow. Lethe unhinged Patricia’s fingernails as the girl from District 5 went up in flames, right at the very end. It was brilliant and horrifying, ribbons of flesh and strands of hair twisting up into black smoke. And like that, like a sigh of relief that came with the sizzle of the fire and the boom of a cannon, it was over.
But, it wasn’t. Lethe immediately stood to return to her room to pack.

Two surprising things happened: Lethe came back to her Capitol-issued apartment and found Camalia stiff, lying on her back with his eyes glassy. And the tributes woke up. They were alive.

Lethe sat with the body for hours, as Avoxes scurried around her, cleaning and preparing the room for visitors. A Capitol official would be along shortly, she was told, to explain the situation. When he came, he took one sweeping look at the dead lizard in Lethe’s hands, the scales flaking off between her fingers and drifting to the floor, and spoke haltingly to the wine glass in his hand. The District Five tributes would be returned to the care of Patricia and Lethe. They’d return home. They may look different, but, and he smiled, thinly, like they were able to patch her back up, they’d be able to patch up the tributes.

Later, wordlessly, Patricia and Lethe dug a small grave in the garden on the roof of the Training Center and lowered Camalia in. Patricia looked at her like she was about to make a joke and Lethe could hear it already in her head – “Maybe the Capitol can resurrect your lizard, too,” but neither woman spoke.

Patricia left, mumbling about going to bed, as Lethe dropped dirt over the grave, relishing in the feeling of the cool soil on her burning, trembling hands. They were alive, but beneath the dirt lay Lethe’s pet, lay Lethe’s daughter, lay Lethe’s brother. She tried to slow her breathing, just as Jasper suggested when she pulled a shirt out of the laundry and realized it was Eden’s. The heavy breathing began when she pressed her nose to the armpit and realize, with a breath, she could no longer smell her.

She laid a hand gently against the makeshift grave and thought of the babbling river Camalia had crawled out of and into Lethe’s life. She thought of the rain and the white outlines of massive bones and the way huge, cold droplets filled Lethe’s bloody eye socket and mouth agape in pain. The way her muscle stretched and tore as she raised her hand once more to deliver another knife blow. How, at the end, as Lethe lay besides Razor, unable to stand in her agony, her limbs packed into the mud, licking the salty blood off of her lips, she remembered his last friendly words to her – “Get yourself killed by someone else.” She wasn’t alone though, even as her fingers strained to scrape the back of his cold hand, to really make sure he was dead, there was Camalia.

But, now she was gone. Like Razor. Like Saskia. Like Anya.

It was all of them. It gnawed away at her as she lay in bed at night, with silent tears rolling down her face. Jasper’s snores filled the empty spaces in the room as she counted them off on her fingers. They were all gone.

She dug her hand into the dirt again, letting it fill the crevices of her fingers. A cricket chirped nearby. Many floors below her, the streets of the Capitol were ablaze. A cheering crowd, bathed in the electric blue street lights, was drunk, celebrating the end of the Games. Their shouts and cries bounced off of Lethe’s ears, against hardened skin. She felt bloated, like she could burst if just one scream of, “HAPPY HUNGER GAMES,” managed to penetrate her. And so, she hummed.

It was an old song she sang for Eden and then for Phelix. Her last babies. She’d made sure of it.

Was it really just five years ago that her last baby left her? She remembered lying in a hospital bed, wires pouring out of her like veins, with drips of blood and medicine moving in and out. She imagined they were taking the blood of her and replacing it with something else; Something that would make her feel less. But, when she came to, and less medicine moved in, and when Patricia snapped her fingers above her head, impatiently, she jumped, she knew that wasn’t the case.

Now came the pain, but it was no longer physical or tangible. It was like her womb was collapsing. The little part of her that held Eden close for so long would shrinking, deepening into her body. Late at night, Lethe clutched her lower belly, trying to feel something, anything, that would tell her Eden was still there. But, there was only the tiny, little heartbeat of her own fingers.
That’s when Lethe decided they wouldn’t leave her again.

In the darkness, lit only by the glowing machine hooked to Lethe’s heart by the side of her bed, Lethe tapped her fingers against her womb and promised to never let another heartbeat fill it again.

In the garden, Lethe eased back onto her butt from her knees. She stretched her pale legs out in front of her, sitting with the grave neatly between her legs. A slight breeze fluttered the front of her dress.
Jasper didn’t know why she was rejecting him.

He was gentle in that first year. Lethe arrived home, beaten and empty. Jasper had already tidied up Eden’s room and, at the behest of a Capitol doctor, he kept the key to it. That was the start of one of their ugliest fights. When she saw that white door, she wanted to run to it, but she walked, forcefully. Tried the handle, but it was locked. “I hate you, mom,” was echoing in her ears. The last thing Eden had said before she slammed that white door shut and now, Lethe began to bang her fists against it, trying to get to Eden, just to say, “But I love you, Eden.” Jasper grabbed her shoulders, he was shouting about the key, how she couldn’t have it yet, but now she was in their own bedroom.

Her hands grabbed pillows, rooted around in pillowcases. When the key wasn’t there, her fingernails split them in two. Showers of feathers everywhere, inhaled down her throat as she screamed, throwing drawers of clothing across the room, “SHE IS MY DAUGHTER. SHE IS MINE. SHE ISN’T YOUR DAUGHTER. GIVE ME THE KEY, JASPER.”

Glass lamps shattered. Her voice began hoarse. Jasper slept on the couch that night and gave her the key. It was in his front chest pocket and, with a hint of wickedness, Lethe heard herself scream that she would split that open too, anything to find the key.

Patting the dirt in front of her, packing Camalia down further and further, Lethe did the same with Eden in her head. In front of her eyes, scenes of Eden’s messy room came and went. Clothing on the floor and a dusty picture of mother and daughter next to the bed, but none of it yielded her daughter. Lethe took a few of her shirts, the ones she wore to go on runs and were still cold with sweat, and locked it back up. She locked Eden back up, too.

After that night, Jasper was careful. For a year, he kept his distance. He kissed her cold forehead and made dinner at night. He helped Phelix with his math homework. He put on the birthday parties. Lethe began to spend more days with Patricia. Nearly silent days, full of Patricia’s sharp glances and biting comments, but at least those made her feel something.

It was after she came back from the 76th Games, tribute-less yet again, that he finally turned to her in bed, fingers dawdling at the drawstrings of her pajama pants. “No,” she said quietly, turning away from him.

“Lethe,” he began, but she slowed her breathing, patronizingly slow. And then, she pretended to sleep. There were more nights like this. “Lethe…,” like a sigh. Then, there were tears.

“Please, honey, I love you. I won’t hurt you. I have needs. Please, I can help.”

And night after night, Lethe turned away and kept silent. She felt Jasper slipping away, too, further from her. Finally, he stopped asking. And eventually, she let him hold her in their bed, but that was all. It was the only time she felt the familiar panging of their love, the same warmth rising in her chest that she felt on their wedding night, but there was a hard rock in the middle of it now. Some nights, she’d let it overcome her, basking in the warmth of his chest, but in the morning, she’d awaken and it would just be him and Phelix and the hole inside her was empty again.

In the garden, she finally stood and patted the dirt off of her knees. Her bare toes now dug into the soil.

It was five years now. Lethe now walked to the edge of the garden and peered over the railing of the balcony. If she pushed her forehead out too far, she might feel the gentle pulsing of the force field keeping her there. It was the same pulsing she used to push thoughts of her daughter, the love for her husband, and the anxiety about her 11-year-old son back down deep inside of her.

It was five years now and Lethe was no different, but her entire world was. Eden’s door remained locked. She pinned Phelix’s As in math up onto her fridge and her mother snuck extra sweets to him when she wasn’t looking. She kissed his head and truly felt something when he snuggled under her arm on the couch. But, then he left to throw a ball with his dad. It was five years now, but about to be six, and the pain was only pulsing louder in her ears. It was about to be six and Phelix would then be 12.
It was about to be six and Lethe hadn’t touched her husband since.

It was about to be six and Lethe knew there was someone else. One night, when Jasper stretched his arms around her, she smelled the perfume. Jasper, ever the charmer, even at his age, she thought bitterly, inhaling it.

Lethe imagined that she was younger, just past reaping age. She worked behind the counter of the bakery that Jasper liked so much. He was the only one who could afford her cinnamon rolls that her mother told her to stop making, but she made them anyway, just for him. Lethe was starting to wonder why he no longer brought home one for her. She imagined that the girl’s thin frame had not begun to sag and when Jasper reached for her blouse, she giggled.

“Does your wife know? Are you guilty, just a little?” -- (and this, Lethe imagined, was with a sly smile) – “Do you think she’d be mad?” Yes, and yes, she was sure of it. And maddeningly, even when she found her earring under their bed while sweeping, Lethe wasn’t sure about the last question. The perfume stung her nostrils and she hastily bit back the tears and yet, a sense of relief passed through her. Bitterly, she understood. But she swept up the earring, which had probably cost Jasper a lot for this girl, anyway.

It was about to be six and Lethe’s fingers curled tighter around the balcony’s railing, and if they all were going to leave her, why don’t they leave her already?

It was about to be six years and Lethe’s lizard, brother and daughter were dead. She’d pushed her husband into the arms of someone else. Her son would write his name onto a little slip of paper in preparation for the 81st reaping. It was about to be six years, but somehow in these five, Lethe had managed to shake everyone, but two tributes she couldn’t care less about.

Returning to her room, finally, to sleep, she wracked her brains for their names. Minx and Denali. Their names swirled around in her vision line as she stared at the ceiling and then scrolled across her inner eyelids when she slept.

Minx and Denali. Minx and Denali. Minx and Denali.

Somehow they were alive, but Eden wasn’t.

---

In the morning, Lethe actually brushed her hair. She let an Avox dress her and press a warm cup of coffee into her hands. “Thanks,” she muttered and began to ask for some cream, but the Capitol official was suddenly in the doorway. Denali was back, at least. She was in her own apartments.

Lethe allowed herself to be led down the intricate hallways, her mind drifting to the train that was surely waiting at the station to whisk her back home, back to her Phelix, who she was aching to see, and back into the arms of Jasper – who would act like he’s been nowhere, but home since she left.

The door opened and there she was, swarmed by another Avox who was patting white bandages over – were that her arms? For a moment, Lethe’s stomach dropped and she was transported back to a sterile white room, hours after her own Games. Flashes of doctors in masks, a glass eye being passed between hands, skin grafts draped over her face.

There she was, Denali, not the burning husk Lethe last saw. The ribbons of flesh that disappeared into the air had been replaced with marble arms and Denali, having not seen Lethe yet, seemed fascinated with them as well. A patchwork girl.

The door shut behind Lethe and it was then that the girl looked up, expectedly.

Lethe paused, a few steps into the room, still clutching her morning coffee. She knew what Patricia would say (where was she, anyway?) – “You look like shit.”

But, Lethe didn’t say that, her voice had caught in her throat, hot acid behind it. Denali was alive, but where was Eden. The mother inside of her wanted to rush back to that Vault she saw all of the tributes wandering in. Like a womb, like a belly, Lethe wanted to tear it open, search every bit for her little girl. If they were in there, they all had to be there. Razor. Saskia. Anya. Eden. She would hold her baby girl’s cracked skull back together, glue it with the same hot glue gun she used to make Eden’s winter recital dress. She would take her home. Not Denali.

Lethe took an uncertain step forward. Her voice came back, rising into her mouth before she could stop it – “Was she in there? Was Eden there?”

And then – “How are you back?”