Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Robert Brady

  Indomitus Oriens

  Book Three of The Fovean Chronicles

  By Robert W. Brady, Jr.

  The horse that you love the best, will be the one that hurts you worst.

  The Fovean Chronicles

  Book Three: Indomitus Oriens

  © 2014 by Robert W. Brady, Jr.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical photocopying or through a retrieval system without the express permission in writing of the author, except by a reviewer who may publish excerpts as part of a review.

  ISBN: 978-0-9793679-3-9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art: Boris Vallejo

  Third Printing

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Dedicated to Ann Brady

  Whose steadfast acceptance of this life as it came inspired this book, even before I realized it myself

  Dabar si seteti bet i desine nuo jo deive!

  The Map of Fovea

  Prologue

  A Story About a Nice Girl

  A girl woke up in a dirty bed, its gray sheets sticking to her skin. Red dots on her legs and arms showed where fleas had bitten her in her sleep. She'd matted down her black hair with her own sweat; the t-shirt she slept in stank of her own perspiration.

  Hazy light filtered through a dirty window onto a carpet that stank of mold. She could see fleas hopping in it in the weak sunshine. The room had a dirty little bathroom attached, with a toilet bearing the stain of a lifetime of ‘near misses.’

  What could anyone expect from a $25/night room?

  She rose, the inside of her left leg sticky, her cheeks feeling chapped from the tears that had dried on them. Her stomach ached from hunger but she didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to do anything but take a shower. She'd been denied that last night because the water wasn’t working. She prayed that it did now.

  Last night, she had done it. Last night she had crossed the line. Last night, for a measly fifty dollars, she had bent over for a man in an alley and let him pull her panties down, and pretended to moan with pleasure when he entered her.

  Afterwards he tried to tell her how good she made him feel, how pretty she was, how much he enjoyed it. Couldn’t he just shut up? Couldn’t he just pay the money and leave? Did he have to be nice to her? Did he have to try and make her feel a connection to him, and have to remind herself she was just a whore?

  A whore. She was a whore now.

  She entered the bathroom and she turned the knob in the shower. A noise like steel cockroaches running up and down the pipes greeted her. The shower head jumped, and jumped again, and did a little shimmy, then a trickle of water leaked out of it, then the trickle strengthened to a flow.

  “Yes!” she said. Her own voice surprised her, loud in the dismal room, too bright for the morning, too young for the million and one years she felt she’d aged.

  She shucked the t-shirt and stepped into the shower. The water felt tepid and smelled of sulfur. A bar of Ivory sat on a scummy shelf. She had to pick the wrapper off of it but at least she could rub it on her body.

  She scrubbed her breasts, where his hands had been. She scrubbed her backside, where he had gripped her, and up and down the inside of her leg, where he made a mess taking the condom off.

  The water wasn’t hot, but it burned her skin like fire, and she scrubbed herself red. She used the last of the soap on her underarms and then scrubbed her hair as hard as she could with her fingernails to get it clean.

  She stepped into the stream and let the water envelope her. The rotten-egg smell made her gag, but it was better than the alternative – what had been left on her from the night before.

  Sex had been love to her. Sex had been the special gift she gave to Mike--her commitment to him. Mike who held her, kissed her and took her for her very first time. She had kept his house, his company, and his bed. She had been everything but a wife to him, and that only because he hadn’t asked her.

  The man last night had left her with a wink and an awkward smile, in an alley where the garbage smelt of rot and pee, holding fifty dollars in her hand and knowing this reflected her worth in the world.

  Mike had left her less. Mike had just walked out with the rent money, lacking the courage even to say good-bye to her, to give her another chance, even to cry in front of him.

  Mike had been the first steps on the path that brought her here.

  When she couldn’t stand the sulfur smell anymore she stepped out and realized there were no towels. She didn’t want to, but she used the bed sheet, imagining the creepy-crawlies that hid in there and that had returned to her skin. She did her best not to think about it as she dressed back in the clothes she’d worn last night. She had a simple mini and a tube top; she tied her hair up in a ponytail with her one and only scrunchy. She looked in the mirror and felt thankful she had the kind of face that didn’t need makeup.

  She’d never had much, but this was the first time she’d had nothing. She’d had a daddy, a sister, a mom. She’d lost them all. She’d had a college career, and A’s in biology and chemistry. She’d lost that, too. She had done worse than lose Mike—he had deserted her. Now she had given up her dignity, and couldn’t help wondering what more she had, and if she was destined to lose that, too.

  She left the cheap hotel room and she went to a diner where she could eat. She wanted a real breakfast with waffles and bacon and a cup of coffee. She had taken up smoking for Mike, and she looked forward to a Marlboro, if she could get a pack.

  She sat down at the counter, because she liked the stools. Her dad had taken her to breakfast at a place similar to this on Sundays, when they still went to church. She would sit on the stool at the counter, and she would hold her back straight and pretend she was an important woman who was just taking time out of her busy schedule for a quick bite. Her father, once he knew the game, would call her, “Ma’am”, and ask for her advice on stocks, or what she thought of the news, and she would give him her sage advice, woman of the world that she was.

  Now she placed her order and paid up front, because she didn’t look like the kind of person who had $4.50.

  She stared into the dark depths of her coffee, and wondered what had become of her life.

  Lysette, her younger sister, had called the game stupid. Lysette would kick her feet to scuff her paten leathers, and complain the food was cold, the milk was warm and the air was smoky. When their mother had died, Lysette had found a new thing to hate about her world every day and acted on it.

  “If that isn’t the saddest face on a pretty girl.”

  She turned to her left and saw an old woman with silver hair, wrinkled skin, dressed in a yellow sundress and white shoes. She smelled of Sunflowers perfume.

  “I guess it's a pretty bad morning,” she said.

  “Lose your best fella?” the woman asked.

  “Oh, he is long gone,” she said. “He is the reason I am up here, I guess.”

  “Up from where?”

  “Portland,” she said, pronouncing it Powat-land, as any Mainer would.

  “Been here long?”

  “Just a day.”

  “And what are you going to do here in Augusta?”

  The girl thought about that. She really didn’t know.

  “Eat breakfast, I guess, ma’am,” she said. “Look for work, and a place to live.”

  “Ya got no place to live, girl?” the woman seemed halfway between sy
mpathy and making fun of her.

  “No, ma’am,” she said. She looked back into her coffee. This was becoming very depressing.

  “And you got no money, I gather,” she said.

  She shook her head.

  “Well, ya got a name?” the old lady asked. “You must have a name. You can’t be that bad off and not have a name for it.”

  “Oh, leave her be, Eve,” the waitress said. She poured a little more coffee in the girl’s cup. “Your breakfast be out in justa minute, hun,” she said, and patted her hand.

  Eve looked back to her own business, which seemed to be nursing her own cup of coffee.

  “Melissa,” the girl said. She looked back to her right, to the old woman, and met her sea-green eyes, and said, “My name is Melissa, ma’am.”

  And for the life of her, and despite her best efforts, she burst into tears and fell into Eve’s arms, because she'd done a bad thing, and she was a nice girl, and she shouldn’t be a whore.

  “Oh, there, there,” Eve said, and rocked her, staring down onlookers over her shoulder. “You jes git it all out now. You’re in a room full of strangers, and don’t you nevermind what they think.

  “It’s a big a world and sometimes a body jes needs to cry.”

  The waitress dropped a plate with waffles and eggs in front of Melissa’s stool, and refreshed her coffee as Eve pushed her away.

  “Now, you eat, girl, and you tell me about what ails you,” Eve prompted. “Sometimes when you air out dirty laundry, you put it away smelling fresh.

  Melissa hesitated. There was something about Eve, so motherly to a girl who barely remembered her own. With some difficulty, she decided to start there.

  “My mom died when I was ten,” she said. She looked down and took a sip of coffee. The waffles smelled of home as she preferred to remember it, earthy and good.

  “She was really, like, hard on me,” she continued. “I used to hate it when she told me, ‘Put your knees together,’ ‘Sit up straight,’ and all that crap.”

  “It’s a mother’s job to raise her daughter up proper,” Eve said.

  Melissa cut a piece from her waffle. “Yeah, I s’pose,” she said. “Didn’t make me hate her less. I couldn’t do anything right for her. Then with no notice, she was gone. She went to the hospital and she never came back.”

  “Accident?” Eve asked.

  Melissa shook her head. “Cancer. Wasn’t caught in time. I didn’t know that then. All I knew is that my dad was drinking a pint of Jack a night and if you talked to him too long, he started crying.”

  “Oh, dear,” Eve said.

  “I took over,” she said. “I don’t think I knew it then. I knew that if I did chores, then it was like, you know, doing it for mom?”

  Eve gave a sympathetic laugh. “When my mother died, I went and cleaned her headstone every Sunday for two years,” she admitted.

  Melissa took a bite and chewed. She had never been to her mother’s headstone. Her dad never brought her.

  “Lysette was the problem,” she said. “My younger sister. She says she doesn’t remember mom at all, but I think she does.”

  “She in Portland?”

  Melissa shook her head. “She’s in Warren,” she admitted.

  Eve touched her hand and looked into her eyes. “Prison?”

  Melissa nodded as she chewed. “Robbed a liquor store with her loser boyfriend. He turned her in when the cops caught him.”

  “Goodness!”

  She nodded. “She liked ‘em like that. Tattoos, a record, whatever pissed off daddy most. He’d yell at her and she’d just get worse. Then, when she got busted, he spent all of his money on her lawyer. Not that it mattered or helped. She did it.”

  “That’s hard on a family,” Eve said.

  “It was on me,” Melissa said. “He spent my college-fund, so I had to drop out. That’s when I met Mike and ended up in Portland.”

  Melissa took another bite and shook her head. This was a bad idea. Why was she spilling her guts to this woman? She couldn’t help. She was an old biddy using her to kill time.

  “He that fella’ you mentioned?”

  She nodded. She got that hot feeling you get in the back of your throat when you wanted to cry but couldn’t let yourself.

  “Took everything? Left you flat?”

  Through sheer will she swallowed her mouthful. She put the knife and fork down, and laid her hands in her lap, on her napkin.

  She felt the tears in her eyes, her vision becoming blurry. She looked back at Eve, who had drawn all this out of her.

  “He—he—he,” she said, and sniffed. She took a moment, started again, looking down at her sneakers.

  “He said he loved me,” she said. “I gave him everything—everything—and after a year together, I come home and there isn’t even a note. Like, thanks for the sex, slut! Next thing I know, the freaking landlord is telling me get out by tomorrow because the rent hasn’t been paid and we’re evicted. And there is Melly on her own, no money, no job, hitchhiking to Augusta to start again.”

  “Your dad couldn’t help you?”

  She shook her head.

  Eve reached out and took Melissa by the chin, turned her face to look at her, and looked into her eyes.

  “Where did you sleep last night, girl?” she asked.

  “The Cityside,” she said.

  “And how did you do that, if you didn’t have money?”

  The waitress nearly dropped her pot of coffee, eavesdropping on that answer.

  “Oh, now you know better than that,” Eve said.

  “I know, ma’am,” she said. “I hate it. I should have just stayed up all night, or—”

  “Oh, and you know better than that, too,” Eve scolded her. “If you could go undo the past, do you really think you would pick last night to change? I don’t think so, young lady.”

  No, Melissa agreed. Last night was a symptom of the problem, with the sickness being the way she ran her life.

  “You’re a very nice girl hoeing a very hard row, and you are here blaming all the rocks. Well I tell you, and I am a Mainer, so as I know, that it ain’t the soil’s fault for being stony, it is the girl with the hoe,” and she jabbed Melissa in the arm, “who don’t know no better than to pick another spot for her garden.”

  “What?”

  “You’re in the wrong place, girl,” Eve said. “You are a good girl in a location where she can’t succeed, and all you’re doin’ is hoeing up rocks. You need to move your garden to a place where you can plant you some vegetables.”

  The woman clearly didn’t know what ho’ meant to a young girl, especially to Melissa this morning, but she got the message. She finished her meal with a last gulp of her coffee, and she left a dollar on the bar. She stood and kissed Eve on the cheek.

  “You’re a nice lady, Eve,” she said, looking into her eyes.

  “So you ain’t gonna move your garden?” Eve said.

  “I would if I had the money,” Melissa said. “I would move the heck away from here. If I can get a job today then maybe I can start saving so I can jump on another bus and get to another city.”

  Eve poked Melissa right in the collarbone with a long, wrinkled finger. “Well, I hope you do,” she said. “When you git you going, you go someplace rural. I don’t mean start farming, but get the idea of big city life out of your head. Busses go to nice places, too.”

  Melissa nodded. Someplace where people had a stake in her maybe. Not a big city, but a nice town. Some place in the south.

  “I will, ma’am,” she said. “I promise.”

  “So where you off to?” Eve asked her, as the waitress cleared her plate.

  Melissa chuckled. “You won’t like this, but to get a pack of Marlboro’s,” she said. “Then to find a job.”

  Eve smiled, fished into her purse, and pulled out a pack. It had two missing, and she handed it to Melissa.

  “Why wouldn’t I like it,” she said. “That’s my brand, too. You keep the pack—mebbe it
’ll bring you some luck.”

  Her manners said refuse, but cigarettes were expensive. She gave the old lady a hug and a kiss, and she took the pack.

  Outside, she opened it, and she noticed something in the wrapper—a green slip of paper.

  She pulled it out and found four, one hundred dollar bills. Sometimes people put their change in their wrapper, but that wasn’t change.

  She turned back to the diner. It didn’t even occur to her to take off with the money. Even if it was a gift, the woman had to be asked if she meant to give it.

  Melissa just didn’t have it in her to steal, and old people lived on fixed incomes. This could be her rent money.

  She went in and the place was packed. Her seat was taken, and Eve’s as well. She went to the counter waitress and she waved.

  “Yeah?” the overworked counter waitress asked her.

  “What happened to the old lady I was talking to?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “The old lady—you know, the one—”

  “Hun, I don’t know any old lady’s and I don’t have time to kid around. If you want something, order. If not, get out.”

  She turned and left her standing with her mouth open.

  * * *

  In another reality, Adriam the All-Father held the perfect wife, Eveave, in his infinite arms.

  “This one?” he asked her.

  “She is perfect,” Eveave informed him.

  “There is nothing in this one,” he argued.

  Eveave’s lips remained in the grim line of balance. In glee she saw sadness, in hate she saw love. She knew the place between success and failure. Only in Adriam’s arms did she know peace.

  “This one is more than we could imagine,” she informed him.

  “The instrument of War is strong,” Adriam said, “as is Power’s. We have Life’s help, but the Almadain cannot fight the tide.”