In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  The angel blanches, porcelain fading to bone. “Maybe. Might be he’d change them by looking. All the shit they think is impossible can’t endure their looking—they know it isn’t so, and the world is what they make it. Like how dragons aren’t real. You ever see one of those little dragons half-warped, with pigeon feathers or a rat tail because someone stared too long? If he saw my shoulders, he’d want to know why, and the whole thing would end up with me in a lab or a zoo and probably someone would say something about genetic mutation or vestigial limbs. I can’t do for him what I did for you, though—I can’t ‘prove’ any of this shit is real. Going by past experience ... to him, I could be a freak with growths on my back, but I couldn’t heal him if he had a knife in his gut—at least, not if he knew I were trying. He’s not made for me to help.”

  “Can you fly?” Verity doesn’t expect to ask the question, but it comes. It is tinged, somehow, with wonder, and her own curiosity is rich on her tongue.

  “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” Colin pulls a wry face and continues to knead his fingers around the knob of his knee. “No good. Gravity, mass, I don’t know. Physics says no. The wings are stronger between, but there’s no room to spread them in the walls. Can’t fly, and if I’m God’s messenger, hell if I know what He wants me to say. And I can’t fix my own damn leg, but anyone else, sure. They come to me, see, with the sickness on them, the hole inside.” The angel’s shrug is nearly lost in the vast tent of his coat; the gesture is casual, though his eyes are pained. “My turn,” he adds, cheerfully enough. “You’re weird. I don’t get you. I guess you’re one of us but you’re all right out here. What is it you do here? Or downstairs. Or wherever.”

  “Oh. Anything Jacob wants.”

  “Sorry?”

  “He hasn’t decided.” Verity tugs at the edge of the blanket, orienting herself in the spare familiarity of the room. The angel’s presence is a subtle disruption, like a lamp left shining in the wrong place. “We try things. We’ve been, um, photographers. Caterers. Accountants. Detectives.” She shrugs. “Usually, we make mistakes. But I try what he wants.”

  “But what do you want?”

  “I want Jacob to be happy.”

  “Ah.” Colin looks down at the floor as though he might see through it to the man downstairs. Verity wonders if maybe he can.

  When he doesn’t continue, she blurts, on impulse, “I want to know. To understand. A door or a feather or the fall of a leaf. Anything.”

  “Ah.” This time, the angel seems satisfied. “Well, look, you’re pretty set up here. Food, place to sleep, that sort of thing. The theatre ... it’s a bit of a shelter right now, for the ones who can’t cope. If you need it, though, it’s there. I guess you know how to get in now.”

  “The door that isn’t,” murmurs Verity. “Who built it?”

  “Who knows?” The angel shrugs. “Some of the older buildings—here, other cities—they have these spaces carved out in them.”

  “The between.”

  “Yeah.”

  “There isn’t really a band, is there?” It isn’t quite a question. Verity feels the truth on her lips as she speaks it, like water over parched skin.

  “Nah. I mean, sure, every so often a couple of us will bust out guitars or a cello or something for a night, keep the name alive, but really it’s just the signal. Sign, countersign, whatever. Actually, that’s kind of why I’m here. Something’s off.” Colin rubs a hand over his face, the other hand still kneading absently at his knee. The coat pulls over the long lines of the hidden wings tucked down the sides of his legs. Verity catches a glimpse of oiled black feathers. “Jihan wrote your name on the wall. I don’t know what that means. And now she’s wearing your scarf. It’s got blood all over it. She picked it out of the puddle and knotted it around her arm like some kind of mourning band. I can’t take the thing away. It’s like fighting a cat.”

  “She attacked me.” Verity thinks she is quite calm in pointing this out.

  “I know.” Colin sighs. “Look, she’s ... not like us. She’s not all there. She’s the worst thing I’ve ever done to anyone.”

  “What did you do?” Verity finds it hard to believe anything ill of the boy. He sits tired and remorseful. She remembers the golden sunlight of his touch.

  “I made her live.” Colin’s fingers press at the bridge of his nose. “It’s a long story. Anyway. Like I said, she wrote your name on the wall, and she doesn’t do that kind of thing. So I think you’re important. And we’ve just started seeing these.”

  Verity supposes there are a number of responses she could make. Instead, she sits quietly and waits for Colin to fish around in one of his giant pockets. He withdraws a crumpled piece of paper, folded into quarters, and unfolds it before leaning forward and extending it to Verity.

  She accepts it cautiously, smoothing the rumpled paper against her knee. The thin photocopy is tattered at the edges, impenetrable ink block printed on a dubious shade of pale rose. The logo for The Between is splashed across the top, just above the stylized image of the dog. Live in Concert, promises the poster. Lansdowne Park Aberdeen Pavilion. March 5.

  The paper makes Verity’s fingertips tingle unpleasantly. It takes her a moment to figure out why. She traces the concert date lightly with her index finger. “It doesn’t say cancelled.”

  “No. Damned if I have any idea why.” Colin shakes his head, looking at the paper. “When we make those, they’re just signals for gatherings and safe spaces—like, they tell people to go to McLuhan’s. No one who’s not in the know is going to show up for a cancelled event for a band that doesn’t exist. Ouro’s on ours so people will know to watch for the big black dog. But we didn’t make that one. Apparently there are some in a few other cities. We’ve had folks trickle in from Toronto, Winnipeg, New York in the last few days—one guy almost killed himself taking a bus. Border crossings are a bitch, incidentally. Jihan had me stumbling through a forest in the dark when we came up. Still, whatever this poster is—there aren’t a lot of us, but people are going to gather. Word’s spreading.”

  “Hm.” Verity turns the tattered poster in her hands. “Rotting gardenias,” she observes. “That’s probably not helpful. I’m not sure what I can...? I’ve seen one of these, though. There was a girl. Her name was Privya.”

  “Oh, Christ. Not her again.” Colin is both startled and suddenly sad. His regret is gentle but unyielding, blending salt and the sound of a distant ocean.

  “Vee?” Jacob’s voice comes from downstairs, drifting thinly through the door. It isn’t often that he shouts. There’s something in the tone—some edge of iron and glass—that has Verity suddenly on her feet, puzzled.

  “Um,” is all she says, but she paces quickly to the door, and the angel puts his cane to the floor and levers himself up to follow.

  Verity’s feet are bare on the hardwood, but she hurries out to the hall and leans over the banister, Colin just behind her. She is, abruptly, overwhelmed by the scent of coal and blood—by a dust storm of static.

  She closes her fingers around the smooth wood of the banister, squeezing, until her vision clears and she can gaze down into the townhouse foyer. She sees Jacob, his hair mussed and his t-shirt untucked. She sees Jihan, two steps up from the landing, poised like a missile ready to launch. In the morning light, the woman from the walls is the same—spidery frame, misbuttoned lavender sweater, grey hair pulled back in a smooth braid. She is wearing Verity’s formerly grey scarf tied unevenly around her left bicep; it is now a splash of rusted fabric with the ends gone stiff, mottled with dried brown stains. Her shoe is still untied, and now one of the laces is broken.

  Jihan is half-turned toward Jacob and Jacob has one hand extended, as though he would have prevented her from ascending the stairs. He hasn’t touched her, but she has stopped, regardless. She is staring at Jacob; profiled from above, her expression is hidden but her posture is that of a raptor waiting to strike, the planed bones of her face as smooth and streamlined as a bird’s.

>   “Look, you can’t just—” Jacob begins but does not finish. His eyes are wide, his expression wondering as he looks up at the woman.

  To Verity, it tastes of sun and rain simultaneously. She is distantly aware that this expression on Jacob’s face is new—that he has never looked at her that way. That he has, perhaps, never looked that way before.

  She feels, entirely unexpectedly, a stabbing sense of loss.

  “Shit,” breathes the angel behind her, then he’s lurching past and half-hopping down the stairs. “Don’t touch her,” he snaps. “You, don’t touch him, and hell if I didn’t say leave me alone this morning. For one goddamn morning. Sorry about this.” It’s not clear whether the apology is for Jihan or Jacob, but he pulls up next to Jihan and grasps her arm—smoothly, without fear, his cane in the other hand, his greatcoat dragging on the steps. “Sorry,” he calls up, and that one is clearly for Verity.

  The woman in Verity’s stained scarf acknowledges nothing, but she bends her elbow when the angel touches her, easing the angle of his grip. She stares at Jacob for a hard moment longer. Jacob only holds himself brittle, as if the slightest breeze would crack him.

  Verity, watching the angel and the woman in their vagabond clothes, swallows a misty morning that doesn’t belong in the solidity of the staircase. She sees the impossibilities dancing around them. She tastes the wire familiarity of Jacob’s hair and understands, suddenly, how well his loose grin fits with the plaster of the walls and the pull of gravity against his shoulders.

  She tightens her hold on the banister.

  By the time she descends the stairs, Colin has tugged Jihan past the unresisting Jacob, and is heading for the door. When Verity’s bare foot hits the bottom step, Jihan turns her head and Verity sees that mirrored gaze again, blank and polished as a knife blade.

  Verity presses her palm to her ribs, reflexively, but the taller woman shows no recognition and makes no move toward her—only glances at Jacob again and then allows Colin to tug her down the hall and outside. “I’ll send Stefan—sorry, Santiago—by,” says Colin, “for anything else you need. Crap, sorry again.”

  Jacob hasn’t moved except to turn his head. He stands staring at the door as it closes, his hands loose at his sides. When Verity touches his wrist, he lifts his arm automatically, pulling her close. She turns her shoulder and fits just exactly into the curve beneath his. He smells of coffee and flannel.

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “Colin.” She answers without hesitation but knows that’s not what he’s asking.

  “I meant—”

  “I know. She isn’t.”

  “Vee.” There’s a ragged edge threatening his patience that she’s never heard—not even in the small hours, with blood and shivering and stories that can’t be. His arm is warm across her shoulders.

  “She isn’t my friend,” says Verity. “I don’t know if she’s his. I don’t know if she’s a person, or just shaped like a woman. But they call her Jihan.”

  Jacob doesn’t answer. He’s looking at the door.

  Verity adds, “She’s the one who stabbed me.”

  “Oh.” Jacob frowns at that, then glances down at Verity sidelong, briefly tightening his fingers. “Well,” he says. “You’re okay now, right?”

  Verity isn’t sure how to answer, so she remains silent. She leans her head against Jacob and feels his lips brush her hair. She is very cold.

  “Some guy called,” he adds. “Wants us to look after his sister. I guess she caught that mad cow thing; flipped out overnight, just kind of stares at the wall.”

  “We don’t do medical.” Verity’s response is automatic. “You’re not a nurse.”

  “Well, no, but we could hire one. Help them out, you know. Give it a try.”

  “You could if you wanted to. I don’t, um....” Verity gnaws at her lower lip. “No medical.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, you’re probably right. Anyway, I was thinking we could be quantity surveyors, except I’m not sure yet what that is. I heard it somewhere, though.” Jacob is rambling as he stares at the door; Verity finds the rumble in his chest comforting. He is not a large man, but she compares him to the delicate fragility of the boy breaking beneath the world.

  “Hey,” says Jacob. “Was that your scarf?”

  Nestled against Jacob’s side, in the stillness of the hall, Verity thinks about spaces that cannot be, and wonders at hollow walls. She is looking at her hand—at the sudden bloom of impossibility beneath her skin. It is a gleam like fireflies.

  “Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on Earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.”- Katherine Mansfield

  9

  She has lost something.

  She lets him touch her, though the walls melt around her and his fingers ask questions she doesn’t understand. His need is a puzzle she has never minded solving, but now she lets him close and regrets it. He kisses her neck; from behind, he runs his tongue along the edge of her ear. The sounds he whispers burn like bitterest poison. His hands are too tight on her hips.

  “Stop,” she says.

  He does, though he’s mystified and maybe a little hurt. He hesitates there with his breath hovering at her earlobe and his palms on her bare skin.

  She offers, “I know what you’re going to be. What you are, now.”

  She feels the curve of his mouth, the brush of stubble as he smiles. “Oh yeah? Lawyer? Rock star? Astronaut?”

  “Hers,” she murmurs, and he tenses against her back. “Don’t,” she adds. “Don’t touch me and think of her. It’s a lie.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Don’t!” She doesn’t mean to snap; it’s defence against the shuddering cloud of his denial.

  There is a pause. His arms slide around her, salt-sweat and sticky.

  “I’m sorry,” he says; he buries his face in her hair. “I’m sorry. I love you.”

  She tastes the word as she always does, mouldy and colourless. The apology is pure, though; she squirms in his arms, turning, and curls herself against him. It’s warm there. She wonders how much longer that will last.

  OCTOBER

  “Did we get a dog?” Jacob asks Verity the next morning. She pauses, hands wrapped around the heat of her mug, not certain she’s heard correctly.

  “What?”

  “Did we get a dog? I mean, it’s cool if we did. It just probably needs to be walked or fed or something.” Jacob pours milk into a bowl of cereal, then puts the bowl down on the floor. “Here, boy! Girl?”

  Verity doesn’t know how she’s missed the sense of smoke; she breathes it in as Ouroboros glides in from the hall, tail plumed and feet silent on the hardwood floor. The dog sits in front of the cereal bowl, tongue lolling, and laughs at her (she is sure) while Jacob scratches it behind the ears.

  “That’s Ouroboros.” Verity cranes her neck so she can watch over the back of the couch. “The dog that’s a snake.”

  “Looks an awful lot like a dog.” Jacob crouches, placing his hands on both sides of the dog’s head, mashing back its ears with rough goodwill.

  “That, um, might not be a good idea.”

  “He’s a good boy. Isn’t he? Aren’t you a good boy?”

  Ouroboros wags its tail. Jacob ruffles its fur; it stares at him, yellow eyes impassive.

  “You know, I had a dog. When I was a kid, I mean. Are you a snake, dog? Come on. Show us what you got.”

  Jacob leans close, looking into the dog’s face, wrapping a hand around its muzzle. It tosses its head, like any irritated but well-mannered beast, and looks toward Verity.

  “Come on,” says Jacob. “Be a snake.”

  They wait. The request hangs in the air. For all of Jacob’s playful tone, everyone is suddenly still.

  Verity is surprised to taste the bright citrus splash of Jacob’s hope; she sees his shoulders sharpen, and she suspects he has startled even himself with the suddenness of possibility and the realization that he
doesn’t want Verity to be wrong.

  She presses herself into the back of the couch. She says to Ouroboros, “Please.”

  She surprises herself, too, with her own hope, tentative and chest-tight.

  The dog pulls its head free and grins, exposing too-white teeth. Jacob waits for half a breath longer, then puffs out air between his lips. He pats Ouro on the head one more time before he rises and steps back to the kitchen counter. He leaves the cereal for the dog (who ignores it) and pours two more bowls, adding milk and fishing two spoons from the drawer before he walks to the living room. He places Verity’s bowl on the coffee table and drops down next to her on the couch, settling his breakfast on his stomach.

  By then, Verity has had time to swallow back the sourness of her disappointment. She is not particularly shocked.

  Jacob slides an arm around her shoulders and stirs the spoon in his cereal. He lifts the spoon a few inches to let milk and muesli dribble back into the bowl. “Here, boy. C’mere.”

  Ouroboros glides to the side of the coffee table, an oil-slick ghost. Verity looks at the floor, where she sees the shadows of the table and the faded armchair and Jacob’s legs as he stretches them out. The dog’s paws touch the hardwood and spread, inky and two-dimensional, no distinction between fur or shade.

  “It’s its own shadow,” she says. “Look.”

  Ouroboros lays back its ears, molten gaze abruptly baleful.

  Jacob sighs and turns his head, glancing at the dog. His gaze skims briefly over the black-furred form and then he focuses on his cereal again. “Listen.” He tightens his arm around Verity just slightly, cupping her shoulder. “I was thinking we could make you an appointment.”

  “No.”

  “Vee—”

  “No. We promised.”

  “Look, I know. But just to see someone—like an actual qualified someone, not one of those quacks. Nothing permanent, or drastic, or—babe, you came home with blood all over you and I don’t know what to do.”

  Verity stares past Jacob’s warm cedar eyes; she can smell his anxiety, a burning metallic overlap to the dog’s perfumed smoke. The dog is on the floor watching them both, one ear now perked. Verity feels herself trapped by the weight of Jacob’s arm. She squirms free and stands.