In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  Reports conflict as to whether the band is from Norway, the United States, or Canada, or whether it has five members or four. A 2009 feature in Rolling Stone suggested the group was all-female, but the drummer and lead guitarist are known to be male. {{Please link to article.}}

  Some people claim there is no band, or that there are multiple bands, and the entire thing is some weird piece of performance art. Those people are just disgruntled hipsters. {{Citation needed.}}

  Discography: Matador (1979), Sharpshooter (1988), Walls (2001), Terminal (2010). Track listings unavailable. {{Please update this information.}}

  OCTOBER

  Verity sits on the couch with a blanket over her shoulders. She isn’t cold, but she holds the soft edges of the fleece because it will make Jacob feel better. Jacob is sitting in an armchair three feet away, staring at her, his hands twisting in his lap. He hasn’t touched her since he brought her a clean shirt and tucked the blanket over her. She has a headache.

  “I don’t understand,” he says, carefully, “what you’re trying to tell me.” She knows he thinks he is being patient. His words send citrus streaks down her vision. She shakes her head and the streaks go flying in droplets only she can see, so she squeezes her eyes shut and presses her palms against her closed lids.

  “Between the walls of the old theatre. A woman stabbed me.” She’s been saying the same thing for hours.

  “I don’t—”

  “I don’t know how else to say it.” Verity doesn’t lie, and she most especially doesn’t lie to Jacob. She knows it would be easier if she did. I was mugged, she could say, or there was an accident; the words would be tar, toxic and simple. She could bite them off with her teeth. Jacob would believe her.

  She presses a knuckle into her temple and says, “Inside the walls,” but she has tried that already.

  She is momentarily confused by a bell that stabs her in the eye—or maybe the dig of her knuckle sounds like a bell—but then Jacob says, “It’s the door.” His explanation is automatic but curt. He gets up and vanishes through the door that leads downstairs.

  Verity sits quietly, breathing in the fleece against her neck and the feel of Jacob’s old blue t-shirt against her skin. Her legs are bare and she draws her knees up, curling her toes against the couch cushions.

  It isn’t very long before the door from the upstairs hallway opens again, and Jacob says, “Uh ... it’s for you.” He is taken aback, though he has not forgotten to be angry with her. His voice is flat.

  Verity blinks. She draws the fleece closer yet and thinks of the magician. She waits for the scent of smoke and blossoms, and the smooth dark undulations of the dog.

  It’s the boy who enters, though—white haired, limping, his thin shoulders swimming in a big navy trench coat and half his weight resting on the cane in his left hand. He pauses three steps inside the living room, Jacob following, and looks around. Verity is abruptly self-conscious—not of her bare legs, but of the monochrome furniture, the white couches and empty walls. Jacob’s eyes are fixed downward on the centre of the boy’s shoulders. The boy’s slight hunch suggests he can feel the stare.

  “Ah....” says the boy, awkwardly.

  “Jacob, could you, um....”

  Jacob blinks, raising his incredulous attention to the couch. “You’re joking.”

  “No. It’s ... could you...?” Verity waves at the hall but she doesn’t need to; Jacob emits a low, dissatisfied rumble and is already stalking out.

  Verity wants to apologize, but she doesn’t know what she would say; then he’s gone, and there’s an angel standing lost in the middle of the hardwood floor.

  Verity still doesn’t know what to say. She pulls the t-shirt more firmly over her knees.

  “Sorry. For the whole mess, I mean. Here, let me see.” The boy approaches, leaning on the cane. A hint of stale sweat clings to him, and his coat whispers against his ankles, the ragged hem brushing the floor. He’s wearing hiking books. Verity can’t see his wings, though she knows now that they’re there. She has seen them graceful and spreading. She sees now the subtly curved lines beneath the folds of the coat, where bones shouldn’t be. The pull of him is subdued, here in the linen-domesticity of her living room, but she feels her breath catch all the same.

  The boy extends a hesitant hand toward her face and asks, “May I?” She breathes the cut-glass delicacy of his cheekbones. There are no lights in his eyes today; they are bottomless navy, circled with the sort of tiredness that leaves bruises. His face is alert but his fingers tremble with some slight palsy.

  When Verity doesn’t object, the boy cups her chin in his hand. The instant he touches her, she feels the light through her skin, though it’s less than before; her headache eases. The room around her settles momentarily into clear, amazing relief. She draws one easy breath before it blurs.

  “Knife wound’s better,” comments the boy, absently. “Not the rest of it. I knew you were built strange. Everything hurts you, doesn’t it.” His tone is too matter-of-fact for a question. Through his fingertips flows a weak trickle of purest joy.

  Verity wants to wrap her hands around his wrist to hold him there. Instead, she turns her head and pulls her chin away. “You, too.” She isn’t surprised when the boy wavers. She curls her toes hard against the couch, bereft. “Please. Sit.”

  She gestures to the overstuffed white chair recently abandoned by Jacob. “Thank you,” she adds. “You make the world ... a little clearer. Less, today. Are you okay?” Her own voice threatens to shatter the remnants of that tentative peace, but she inhales after speaking and waits while the boy sits.

  The coat around his shoulders pulls, the lines of it all askew. She imagines the wings beneath. She wants to kneel on the floor and press her cheek against his knee like a child.

  “I’m Colin,” he says. “Yeah, sorry, I’m just not as strong out here. The air, I guess. So you’re Verity, huh?”

  “You can call me Vee.”

  Colin grins, like she’s given him a gift. Verity supposes she has. The expression makes him look older; it draws lines along his mouth, and wrinkles at the edges of his eyes. “That guy your boyfriend?”

  Verity shrugs—a little helpless, as she always is when faced with the question. “Jacob,” she supplies.

  “He’s not one of us.”

  Verity wonders what us means. She would ask, but the boy continues, “Do you love him?” He asks as if it were a perfectly normal question—as though he’d asked her about a hometown, or a favourite book. He sounds sympathetic. In the aftermath of his touch, Verity hears the tenor of his voice unadulterated. She marvels at the sharpness of the room and the worn cushion fibres beneath her toes.

  She hesitates again. “I don’t understand that word.”

  “What?” Colin is startled. “Love?”

  “People use it....” Verity shakes her head. “They love ice cream, or sunsets, or their children, or the scent of the shampoo in someone’s hair. A word doesn’t mean anything when you use it for everything. It tastes like week-old oatmeal.” She considers, then concedes, “I think I might use ‘love’ for what you are. Jacob is—he’s there in the morning.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much.”

  “Then I’m not saying it right.” Verity looks down at the long grains of the hardwood floor. “He makes me coffee, black, and he answers the door so I don’t have to,” she tries again. “He tells me things. He knows I won’t lie to him. He’s there in the morning. He’s there at night. He’s there when your magician frightens me, or when I come home covered in blood.” The boy’s touch has left her able to speak, words running like water. She doesn’t mean the last of it to sound accusatory.

  Still, Colin winces. “Sorry about that.”

  “It wasn’t you. And, um, thank you.” Verity flutters her fingers over the spot between her ribs. She is still startled with the wholeness of each breath she takes. “It costs you something for that. It costs Jacob something to ... listen. To live with me. But we ha
ve each other. No one else.”

  “You wouldn’t call that love?” The boy is honestly intrigued. One pale hand fingers the head of his cane.

  “Jacob is Jacob.” Perhaps belatedly, Verity ventures, “Why?” It doesn’t occur to her not to answer the broken angel with his porcelain face and his shoulders slumping in her living room chair.

  “Oh. Just, it doesn’t tend to go well, between us and them.”

  There must be a strange expression on Verity’s face, because Colin flushes. The flash of pink across his cheekbones is bright and illuminates delicate spots—he might have had freckles, thinks Verity distantly, in another life.

  She is beginning to lose track of her own life.

  She wonders when, precisely, everything got so odd.

  She thinks of the magician, but the angel is already saying, “No, I don’t mean—look.”

  This time, something awkward and concerned lurks beneath the wry twist of his lips. “What’d you tell the guy? About last night?”

  “That a magician with a dog that is sometimes a snake took me to a hall between the walls of a theatre, and a woman stabbed me.” Verity hesitates. “Or a thought that resembles a woman. I’m—the words aren’t right. Though when you touch me, it feels like they could be. Thank you for that.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Everything usually ... fractures. Fragments. You let me hold it, for a little while.” Verity pauses again, and then she pushes her hair back, studying the boy. There are no sparks in her vision; she looks him directly in the eyes, revelling in the sheer simplicity of the act. When he flinches, she blinks away. “I’m sorry.”

  “Look through a guy, why don’t you. Listen, did you tell him, uh,” Colin shifts his shoulders, the vast coat flowing around him. “About my feathered friends?”

  “The wings?” Verity pauses. “I don’t—no. He kept asking about the blood.”

  “Okay.” There’s no mistaking the relief in the boy’s voice. “I don’t need anyone trying to sneak peeks.”

  “Maybe ‘not yet’,” confesses Verity. “I don’t lie to him.”

  “Well, it’s a noble choice, but wait until I’m gone. Or, you know, just wait, would be my advice. My pathetic plea, I guess.”

  Verity savours the translucent purity of Colin’s hair. She fights the urge to go outside—to immerse herself in the sights and sounds of a city that briefly doesn’t wound her, even as the hint of gossamer mint wafts across the back of her throat. She sits quietly and inhales the perfection of his worn work boots against the scratched floor.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  “Yeah. I’m your guy.” The corner of the angel’s lips curls. “Or at least, Stefan’s shit for straight answers, and good luck getting anything out of Jihan pretty much ever.”

  When Verity is silent, Colin looks puzzled. Then—as he registers her soundless expectation—he folds his palms together, fingers twining. “Ah. So how much do you know?”

  “That a magician with a dog that is sometimes a snake took me to a hall between the walls of a theatre, and a woman stabbed me,” repeats Verity, with a little shrug. “That the dog and the magician are the same. That doors can have only one side. That you healed me. And maybe you’re an angel? Except that’s very, um....”

  “Judeo-Christian?” he suggests, wryly. “Yeah, I know. But I’ve never talked to any great being upstairs. I’m just an unlucky bastard most of the time. Sometimes I can help people. I’m glad I was there—although usually where she is, I am. Or vice versa.” At Verity’s parted lips, he adds, “No, she’s not here right now. I told her to bug off. That’ll be good for an hour or a day or, well, three weeks once, before she forgot and showed up with a pigeon wing and a fifth of bourbon.” He rubs his hand across the back of his neck, then drops it back to clasp his wrist between his knees. “She’s, ah, my fault. Sorry. That’s kind of beside the real point, I guess.”

  Colin pauses, but Verity only waits, so eventually he ducks his head and says, “I don’t really know how it works for you. I felt some of it, but the best I can figure—wait. Let me start with the door. You’re right; it only has one side. And that’s impossible, right?”

  He seems to want an answer this time—his anticipation brings the faint scent of autumn leaves, which makes Verity exhale. She shakes her head. “No. Yes.”

  “Yeah. That’s pretty much the hangup. Though you’re pretty chill about the whole thing, I have to say. Stefan said, too.” The boy’s mouth twitches at the corner. He adds, not unkindly, “There’s usually a lot of oh-my-god and this-can’t-be-happening.”

  “Except it did.” Verity spreads her hands. “I, um ... there are a lot of things,” she says, slowly, “that are and are not. I know. I feel truth like ... fire, or light, or maybe the taste of honey. And if something is true....”

  “No need to argue about it, then?”

  His understanding is an unexpected relief. Verity flashes Colin another look; she doesn’t meet his gaze this time. His words have left a faint silver mist barring the way.

  “Right. Okay. So there are doors, we’re clear on that, that exist but shouldn’t, because they defy any law of physics. And laws of physics are real, right? Like, gravity is a thing that’s true. And dimensions. And mass and time and ... okay, I’m actually terrible at physics. But that stuff’s all legit, yes?”

  “Yes,” says Verity, puzzled. “And no. Mostly yes.”

  “This is not the easiest conversation I’ve ever had,” notes the angel, gently. When she would apologize, he shrugs, shifting his weight in the chair. He drops one hand to massage his knee. “Right. Well. Take all those rules that everyone knows. Gravity. Electricity. Thermodynamics. Science words. Then imagine there’s a type of person—a pretty unusual type—who’s allergic.”

  Verity blinks.

  “‘Allergic’ isn’t really the right—words are important with you, huh? It’s the best I’ve got. And all I have is what I’ve figured out, or what someone’s told me about their grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother. Anyway, let’s say there are two ways of knowing the world, and one way has three dimensions and cell phone networks, and the other doesn’t.”

  Verity hesitates. “Like magic?” The word is stiff on her tongue; she is not surprised when Colin shakes his head.

  “That’s their word for it,” he says. “We’ve forgotten ours. I just ... Christ. How do you explain things there aren’t words for? Do you know what that’s—” He cuts off, looking at Verity. Leaning forward, he rests his elbows on his thighs and lets his long fingers dangle between his knees. “Yeah you do, don’t you. That’s your whole thing.”

  There’s warmth in his voice. Verity lets herself smile at him, briefly, but she drops her gaze to the too-wide cuffs of his sleeves before the honeyed comfort of his tone can drip over her. She is trying to listen.

  “The lazy thing to do is break it down to science or magic, but that’s not—magic’s a stupid word. It’s their word.”

  Verity frowns. “It tastes like iron filings.”

  “Sure. Magic isn’t real, right? That notion of ‘magic’ tells a story that says one thing is possible and the other thing isn’t, like a wall can’t be both solid and hollow or a door needs two sides. Ignore that word because it says we don’t exist. Imagine, instead, two kinds of people who walk in the world. Thousands and thousands of years ago, both were just fine. One rode horses; one rode the wind. One built with stone; one built inside. Everyone was happy. Then the people with the horses and the stone, they started making wheels and writing and paper and mathematics. They started taking up more space—not on purpose, not to be evil. They worked with gravity and electricity and walls that were solid in the middle. They got strong—so strong they didn’t know any other way was possible—or if they ever did, they forgot. The world was just as they made it. But anyone else got squeezed. I guess go back a few thousand years and there were whole cities with people who’d crawled inside the walls.
I don’t mean lost cities—I mean London, St. Petersburg, Damascus, anywhere you can think. Then the squeeze kept coming, and the people between, they got fewer and fewer. They lost their spaces, their histories, even their children. These days, most of the folks born to it never even know. They stumble through the world and they just can’t quite function. Their computers don’t work or their bank accounts get axed or their credit cards won’t swipe. Little things. You follow?”

  “I think so.”

  “Mostly they’re just unlucky, or think they are.” Colin grimaces. “Then generally at some point when they’re young, they develop some kind of disease no one can identify. I mean, someone’ll say it’s cancer or lupus or autoimmune. It’ll bounce from one diagnosis to another, if they’ve got the means. But the upshot of it is there’re people born in this world who can’t live in this world. The rules aren’t made for them anymore.”

  “Made?” The word shines brightly in the room—brighter than the late morning light that filters through the window. Verity tilts her head, studying the shape of the boy’s voice. She has no cause to disbelieve him; his explanations are sharp against her skin.

  “Yeah, it’s ... knowing, I guess. Common sense. It’s not about belief. People out here know there’s no such things as dragons, and no way a crowd of misfits fits inside a wall. People know doors need two sides. And the people who know that far outnumber the ones who don’t, or who aren’t made for it. I guess it was different, before. It’s like there’s a war no one ever declared, and the side that won didn’t even realize what was going on. Still doesn’t. Like your boyfriend, there.”

  Verity feels a piece of the world slide into place. Still, she ventures, “You have wings. He would see them, wouldn’t he?”