The Lethe Alumni

In their stories, girls would start losing their hair. First the hair, then their minds. By the age of twelve, a witch would lie without even realizing it; by fifteen, she would stop feeling remorse; and if left untreated, by eighteen she could become dangerous to men, children, animals, and herself.

They showed them photographs of women with shaved heads, women being dragged from burning houses, and women standing beside the bodies of their dead husbands with that distant, chilling look soldiers bring home from war. The instructors called them “documented hereditary outcomes.” The girls simply called them the forbidden W-word when no one was listening.

The Lethe Institute was not officially a school for witches. There are no schools for witches. Everyone knows that. Plus, calling places like that schools would be too generous. Conversion centers would be more accurate.

Lethe, named after the river that made the dead forget who they had been, was one of twenty-seven Residential Centers for Family Rehabilitation run by the Commission for Hereditary Health. Officially, the last outbreaks of female superstition, hysteria, and domestic magical practice had been brought under control. As far as the public knew, Lethe was a place for troubled girls with inherited behavioral disorders.

Mara was seven the first time she overheard her mother and grandmother talking.

“They know about us,” her mother whispered.

“Then teach her.”

“So they can take her sooner?”

“They’ll take her anyway.”

Little girls taken from their homes. That was Lethe.

Three months later, two women from the Commission came to Mara’s school. They were very kind. One of them asked whether she ever dreamed about things before they happened.

“No,” Mara said.

Whether objects sometimes moved when she was angry.

“No.”

Whether her mother had ever taught her special words.

“No.”

Whether she had ever placed her hands on someone who was hurt and wished, very hard, for the pain to go away.

Mara hesitated. The woman smiled.

At the Institute, the girls had their hair checked for unusual loss. They cut it short anyway, even when nothing happened. Their blood was tested regularly. They were taught breathing exercises to control intrusive thoughts and made to repeat sentences in front of mirrors: “Nothing passes through me. Nothing answers me. I belong among living things.”

The girls who had nightmares were medicated. Those who moved objects were given higher doses. Those who still managed to move inanimate things despite the drugs were transferred. No one knew where.

By sixteen, Mara had learned to endure the instructors’ provocations without showing fear or anger and, more importantly, without anything around her moving, rattling, or breaking. At seventeen, she graduated with distinction and was certified as dormant by the Commission. Her hair never fell out.

***

Twenty years later, Mara worked nights in the pediatric emergency department at a major trauma center. It had never been the plan. For a long time, she wanted nothing more than to keep a job, pay her rent, and live a life small enough to stay off the Commission’s radar.

She chose nursing because it seemed safe. There were rules, procedures, charts, dosages, hierarchies; the human body could fail in a thousand different ways, but for almost all of them someone had written instructions. After Lethe, there was something comforting about a world where things had precise names, could be measured, and had identifiable causes. No one ever asked if a light bulb had burned out because she was angry.

A few months after nursing school, Mara took a position in a neonatal unit. She didn’t really choose it; there was an opening, she needed work, and she took it. She cared for premature babies, babies who needed only a few days of observation, and others who needed way too many machines just to stay alive.

When a baby died, there were still things to be done. That tiny body had to be washed, dried, and dressed if the parents could not bring themselves to do it. Most parents had brought clothes from home, but no one packs a hospital bag imagining they will have to choose what their child will be buried in. Sometimes none of what they had brought felt right anymore, and someone would look through the unit cabinets for something that did. Handprints or footprints were made if the family wanted them. Small things were put aside that, only hours earlier, no one had imagined would become keepsakes.

The first time Mara was asked to help wash a baby girl who had died that morning, she spent too long on her hair. Not because it needed more washing, but because she could not stop.

“That’s enough, Mara,” her colleague said eventually.

Mara nodded, but kept one hand resting on the baby’s head. She tried something, though she was not quite sure what. Perhaps it was not even a spell, only that old movement inside her whenever someone was suffering, the reflex the Institute had spent ten years trying to strip from her body. She searched for pain she could push away, fear she could soften, anything she could move a few inches farther from where it was. She found nothing.

Soon afterward, she asked to leave the neonatal unit. When a position opened in pediatric emergency care, she applied.

***

At first, the emergency department felt almost like a relief. The children came in alive. They cried, screamed, vomited, kicked, bit, insulted doctors, and demanded to know when they could go home. Broken arms, high fevers, asthma attacks, heads split open on playgrounds. There were serious accidents too: car crashes, falls from height and sometimes death.

Then Mara began to recognize the others. They did not arrive with the word abuse written across their medical records. They arrived as something else.

A boy who had walked into a door. A four-year-old who, according to his mother, had somehow burned himself on his father’s cigarette. Bruises in places where children who played like children did not usually bruise. Older injuries beneath recent ones. Adults who answered too quickly. Mothers who would not raise their eyes.

One night, Mara asked an older nurse how she had managed to do that work for twenty-six years. The woman kept typing.

“I haven’t.”

Mara waited for her to say something else, but she did not.

“Then why are you still here?”

The nurse stopped typing and looked at her. “Because someone has to be here when they arrive.”

That was all. Mara thought about that sentence for weeks. Someone has to be here when they arrive. Not when the police believed them. Not when a court made a decision. Not months later, when someone found proof and everyone started asking how no one had seen it sooner. When they arrived. That was when Mara stopped thinking about another transfer.

It was around then, too, though she would never be able to pinpoint the first time, that she began using magic. Not to heal. That would have been too visible and, often, too dangerous. A fracture had to remain visible on an X-ray. A burn had to heal at the speed of a burn. The body needed to keep telling the truth, especially when the adults around it were determined to lie.

So Mara did smaller things. When a child needed to describe what had been done to them, she moved the fear slightly farther from the memory, just far enough for them to reach the end of a sentence. When a boy’s body was so tense that even medication could not make him sleep, Mara placed two fingers against his wrist and pushed the nightmare into the following night, then the one after that; sometimes she could keep it away for a whole week. When a girl began to shake at the sound of a man’s footsteps in the corridor, Mara softened the sound. She never erased anything. These children already had enough adults telling them certain things had never happened; Mara would not take their memories from them too. She only created distance, a little space between what had been done to them and who they still were: children.

Her rules were simple: never heal what medicine could heal, never change a diagnosis, never force anyone to forgive or forget, and never do anything in anger. The last rule mattered most. Anger traveled farther and left a trace. So she kept the magic small, small enough to pass for resilience and small enough to remain untraceable.

For a long time, Mara told herself that this was why she stayed: because she could make something hurt less. Only later did she admit the other reason. In pediatric emergency care, she also met some of the people who had done those things to them. There had been exceptions to her rules.

A man from Ward C who had broken his daughter’s jaw later developed migraines so violent that any aggressive thought sent him to his knees, vomiting. “Intractable migraine,” according to his medical record. Another, who had put his wife and son in intensive care during a World Cup game, later suffered a sudden spinal condition that left him unable to move his arms or legs. “Idiopathic transverse myelitis,” the records stated.

***

A girl arrived at 2:11 on a Sunday morning. Her name was Elsa Vale. She was eight years old, with a split lip and bruises at different stages of healing across her back and upper arms. Her father said she had fallen down the stairs.

“I already told the paramedics everything,” he said.

Mara kept typing. “How many steps?”

“What?”

“How many steps did she fall down?”

He stared at her. “I don’t know. All of them.”

“Twelve?”

“Something like that.”

“Carpeted?”

“Yes.”

Elsa sat silently on the exam bed while her father leaned closer to Mara. “She’s clumsy. Her mother was the same.”

Mara stopped typing. Was. She looked at the patient information on the screen: mother deceased, three years earlier. Then she returned to the keyboard. “Someone from the child protection team will need to speak with you.”

“For falling down the stairs?”

“It’s part of the procedure.”

When Mara reached for Elsa’s hand to clip a pulse oximeter onto her finger, the girl pulled away.

“No.”

“It won’t hurt.”

Elsa shook her head. Her eyes were fixed on Mara’s hair. She had grown it long after leaving Lethe, maybe out of vanity, but most definitely out of spite.

“You still have yours,” Elsa whispered.

“What?”

“Your hair.”

Elsa glanced toward the curtain, where her father was waiting, then looked back at Mara. “They told Mommy hers would fall out.”

Mara did not move. “Who told her?”

Elsa closed her mouth and for a moment neither of them said anything. Then Mara reached for the girl’s hand.

“Elsa.”

The moment their skin touched, the light above the bed went out. They looked at each other, and then the light came on again as suddenly as it had gone out. A nurse at the desk muttered, “These damn lights,” without looking up.

No one else seemed to notice. The numbers on the monitor began to climb: 98, 99, 100. They should have been Elsa’s, but Mara was the one whose heart was racing.

“I’m sorry,” the little girl whispered.

***

Mara entered Elsa’s surname into the hospital system. VALE. A yellow symbol appeared beside the child protection tab. It was not the usual marker but a small circle crossed by a line, one Mara had not seen in twenty years.

Her hands went cold. A referral had already been made automatically: ‘COMMISSION FOR HEREDITARY HEALTH. Notification sent: 02:17.’ Six minutes after Elsa arrived.

Mara deleted nothing and changed nothing; either would be visible. Instead, she stood completely still as the old words returned to her: “Nothing passes through me. Nothing answers me. I belong among living things.”

Elsa’s father appeared beside her.

“How much longer is this going to take?”

“Elsa still needs to be assessed.”

“You’ve already examined her.”

“Not fully.”

“I’m her father.”

“Yes.”

Something in Mara’s voice made him stop. She regretted it. Never do anything in anger.

***

At three ten, a Commission officer arrived. She wore navy trousers, flat shoes, and a hospital visitor badge but no uniform. They no longer needed uniforms.

“Mara Keene?”

Mara looked up. The woman smiled.

“Dr. Helen Salles. Commission physician.”

Of course she was a doctor.

“We received an automatic notification concerning a pediatric patient.”

Mara kept her expression blank. “She’s in Bed Four.”

“Have you observed anything unusual?”

“No.”

“Electrical interference?”

“No.”

“Changes in temperature?”

“No.”

“Has the patient said anything that might suggest hereditary activity?”

Mara looked directly at her. “No.”

Helen Salles studied her for a few seconds before smiling again. “Thank you.” She turned toward Bed Four, and Mara watched her go.

For now, Elsa was staying. A social worker was already involved, but her father had no criminal record and concern alone was not enough to decide what happened next.

By the time Mara returned to Bed Four, Helen had finished examining her.

“When am I going home?” Elsa asked.

“I don’t know.”

“My dad says soon.”

Mara sat beside her and looked at the bruises disappearing beneath the hospital gown. “Does your dad hurt you?”

Elsa looked toward the door. “No.”

Mara waited.

“No,” she said again, and the monitor beside her flickered.

“He says they’ll take me where they took Mommy,” Elsa whispered.

Mara leaned closer. “Where did they take your mother?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did she ever talk about a school?”

Elsa nodded.

Mara closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them again, Elsa was watching her.

“You went there too.”

It was not a question.

“Yes.”

“Did they make you better?”

Mara almost laughed. “No.”

Elsa considered this for a moment.

“Good.”

***

Mara locked herself in the staff bathroom and turned on an old phone someone had given her years ago. It held numbers for women she knew only by their first names, and she chose Ruth.

‘Do you still have the pear cake recipe?’

The reply came less than a minute later.

‘How many pears?’

‘One. Eight years old. The Commission is already in the kitchen.’

Three dots appeared, disappeared, then appeared again.

‘Don’t cook alone.’

Over the next few hours, small things began to shift. The hospital social worker found time to assess Elsa properly. The officer assigned to the case found three previous domestic violence reports involving her father. No charges.

At five in the morning, Elsa’s father decided he was leaving. He made it as far as the elevator before collapsing. Mara reached him first. He was conscious, his pulse racing, with no obvious signs of a seizure.

“What’s happening? I can’t—” he gasped.

He lifted his right hand. It was shaking violently.

“My arm.”

“Can you move it?”

“Yes.”

He stared at his hand, then at Mara. “But when I think about—”

His expression changed and he doubled over in pain.

“What were you thinking about?” Mara asked.

He did not answer. Mara had never touched him. That was when she realized she was not alone.

***

By seven, Commission technicians had arrived. They checked the electrical systems, the infusion pumps, and the monitors and questioned members of staff. According to one of them, there had been “a cluster of low-level anomalies.”

“Low-level,” Mara repeated under her breath, hiding a smile.

Helen Salles found her outside the examination room.

“You attended the Lethe Institute.”

It was not a question.

“Yes.”

“Classified dormant?”

“Yes.”

“Any recurrence?”

“No.”

Helen looked at Mara’s hair, and Mara was eight years old again: the white light, the steel ruler, a woman measuring her hair.

“Remarkable,” Helen said.

“What is?”

“That after all these years, women from certain families still seem to choose caring professions.”

Mara said nothing.

“Nurses. Teachers. Midwives. Social workers.” Helen smiled. “One might almost call it hereditary.”

Helen’s tablet chimed. She glanced at the screen and her expression changed.

“What is it?” Mara asked.

“Nothing.”

But Mara had already seen the message: ‘TRANSFER AUTHORIZATION SUSPENDED.’

Elsa would not be handed over to the Commission, at least not yet. Helen looked down the corridor toward Bed Four, then back at Mara.

“The penalties for unauthorized hereditary practice are extremely severe.”

“I know.”

“Especially when physical harm is involved.”

“I know.”

“And yet incidents like these are extraordinarily difficult to prove.”

Mara stayed silent.

Helen stepped a little closer. “Statistically speaking.”

Then she walked away.

***

Later that morning, Elsa was admitted to the pediatric ward while child protective services decided what would happen next. Her father remained under observation.

“I did something bad,” Elsa said.

“What?”

“Last night. Before the ambulance.”

Mara waited.

“I wished he could be afraid of himself.”

“That isn’t what happened to him.”

“How do you know?”

“Because wishes aren’t that precise.”

Elsa frowned. “Then who did it?”

Mara looked through the glass partition. The social worker was signing paperwork. The housekeeper was mopping the floor. A young doctor was filling a water bottle. At reception, a policewoman was speaking quietly with someone from the Commission. Mara smiled. “I don’t know.”

Elsa watched her closely. This time, the monitor did not flicker.

“Will my hair fall out?”

Mara touched the end of her own hair. “No.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they lied about that.”

“What else did they lie about?”

“That there was something in you that needed fixing.”

***

When she got home, her phone buzzed.

‘Heard the pear cake turned out well.’

‘I wasn’t sure you’d still have the recipe,’ Mara replied.

‘Someone has to be here when they arrive. Open the link.’

She did. At the top of the page were three words: ‘THE LETHE ALUMNI’. Below them, messages were already appearing on the screen.

‘Three pears at my school.’

‘Legal aid. One pear. Sixteen.’

‘Maternity. Two. Both mothers.’

‘Pediatric emergency. One pear.’

Mara replied:

‘I’ll be there when she arrives.’