In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  When he was six years old, he managed to climb the gnarled oak on the bluff by the south side of the house and teeter along the widest branch, just above the fence and overhanging the surf below, arms and scraggly wings outstretched. Sarah, at the edge of the garden, had an easel in front of her, and her fingers were smeared with paint. She looked up too late, just in time to see her son balanced fearless there in the sunshine and the scattered shadows of the leaves overhead. He sucked in a great lungful of air and spread his wings as far as he could, until the very tips brushed the twigs a foot past his fingertips. Then he leapt into the sunlight.

  For one glorious moment, he was free. His wings beat the air once, twice—he soared.

  That was the instant before he fluttered awkwardly, fell ten feet in a down draft, then twenty more, then floated to the left and up, flapping desperately, just before he smashed directly into the boulders by the surf and broke his left wrist.

  Sarah screamed.

  Véronique was the one who bound him up, bustling, muttering imprecations under her breath. She was a large woman, soft, her hair in heavy braids and her hands gentler than her words. Sarah never saw her so angry as that day, when Colin came with silent tears rolling and his cracked arm cradled in his opposite hand.

  “Did you think?” Véronique asked him roughly. “You are not a bird! Did you think? You could have died. You could have—we can’t take you to the hospital.” She broke the broom handle over her knee with a single, violent motion, and then again, so she could bind the pieces into a splint. “They’ll see you. They’ll take you away.”

  “But—” protested the boy, biting his lip.

  Véronique snapped, “Stop that.” She bound his wrist with stained cotton and wood—she pulled it tight, once, aligning the bone, and he shrieked without making a sound. That was the day they knew he really couldn’t fly. He was a little boy with tears on his cheeks and snot on his upper lip. Sarah wrapped her arms around him and he burrowed close against her; where his cheek brushed her neck, she felt the golden joy of their contact, and heard him sigh.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she told him. “You’re okay.”

  He was a happy enough child; the birds in the woods were his friends, and the squirrels and rats and centipedes would come writhing to his touch. He had books and paints and two women who made sure he was safe and warm and fed. He played by the sea and under the shade of the trees, and if occasionally he watched longingly as some strange family picnicked in the distance, such moments weren’t enough to trouble him.

  He performed his first miracle when he was seven. “Mama,” he said, “this bird is sick.” He was standing in the kitchen doorway, one hand on a rough stick he’d brought from the woods. His other hand was cupped around a yellow-black ball of fluff.

  Sarah looked up from the curtain she was inexpertly mending. “Put it outside. It could be diseased.”

  She saw him flinch. The guilt stabbing through her made her kinder when she added, “You don’t want to get a fever again.”

  “She isn’t that kind of sick,” said Colin, with a flash of little-boy stubbornness. His lower lip jutted. He curled his fingers carefully, stroking the edge of a tiny beak. “She has a lump inside.”

  “Let me see.” Sarah rose, walked over and peered down at the tiny bird nestled in Colin’s hand. Maybe it was a little misshapen, or a little too round. Certainly its eyes were dull and its beak opened and shut, opened and shut, as though it were panting. “Maybe we can find it a box.”

  Her son’s face was the picture of quiet agony. She would have done anything to soothe him. All she could do was reach for the bird, but Colin pulled his hand away, cupping the little creature close to his own thin chest. “No. I can fix her.”

  Something flared bright in the depths of his eyes. Sarah took her hand back.

  Colin turned around and limped back through the open doorway, moving three steps into the garden. Then he tossed the little bird gently into the air, and it flew away.

  The boy staggered slightly, or perhaps his crutch slid in the loose soil, but he laughed.

  That was it; that was the miracle, or at least the first one Sarah noticed. She started to see it, after that: the fox kit scratched by barbed wire, the seagull with the broken leg, the frogs and robins and centipedes.

  “Have you noticed the animals?” she asked Véronique, and Véronique chuckled.

  “Oh, yes. I think bees wouldn’t sting him. I asked him to keep the aphids out of the garden, but he said it didn’t work that way.”

  “What way?”

  “He says they don’t talk.” Véronique shrugged her shoulders. She was peeling carrots at the sink, tossing the long dirty skins into a colander. “Or he doesn’t talk to them. I don’t know, cherie. Maybe he’s an angel after all.”

  “Hm,” said Sarah. She peered out the window to where her son stood out on the bluff, an ungainly shape with his blanket-scrap coat too large over his wings and his weight leaning on the old branch. For a moment, she had the panicked thought he might jump again, but he was standing quite still, a score of yellow butterflies darting around him. His face was upturned to the sun.

  A month later, he brought home an ancient squirrel. It was grey and mangy; its tail had been broken once and hadn’t healed straight. “Just like me,” said Colin, pleased. “Kind of.” He fed it nuts and seeds and bits of his sandwich. He didn’t often name the animals, but this one was ‘Methuselah.’ It seemed to Sarah that Methuselah was mostly leather stretched over bone, with odd spots of rough fur and long, yellowed teeth.

  “Fleas,” said Sarah, dubiously, but Colin chirped, “None!” and that was the end of that.

  Like all living things, it seemed, Methuselah was happiest in the presence of a little boy with ragged dark feathers cresting at his shoulders. But when Colin went in the woods, Methuselah liked to stay around the cottage. She would perch at the top of Sarah’s easel, nibbling at a seed; she would scramble up Véronique’s back, stealing bits of vegetable from the kitchen counter. They got used to scritching the squirrel behind her ears. Véronique called her “old lady,” and the squirrel’s fur was maybe not so ratty after all.

  Sometimes, if Sarah took a nap in the afternoons, the squirrel would come and sleep curled in the curve of her neck, and Sarah would wake to the scent of fur and forest. She got used to stretching out her hand at odd intervals and having a warm little head nudged into her palm.

  “Squirrels don’t act like that,” noted Véronique, more amused than anything.

  “Hush,” said Sarah. “We’re friends.”

  Still, it was Colin’s squirrel, and he would hobble around the cottage with the skinny grey ghost on his shoulders.

  Methuselah stayed for months—a constant amid Colin’s parade of temporary pets and wounded creatures. Then Colin got sick again.

  At first, it was the usual: he would stagger a little when he got up in the morning and the squirrel jumped from the crook of his arm to land in the tangle of blankets on his bed. “You okay, honey?” asked Sarah, and Colin shrugged.

  After another week, his appetite failed. He would never eat much—and never meat—but now he picked listlessly at his salads. He fed the nuts to Methuselah, which kept the squirrel lurking, skeletal and ever-hopeful, at the edge of the kitchen table.

  Colin lay on his cot for a week, the fever blooming in red flushes and wet streaks across his skin. Sarah and Véronique took turns laying cool cloths across his forehead. Methuselah clambered up and down the wall, cavorting like a young thing.

  “What’s a baby squirrel called?” Sarah wondered aloud.

  Colin muttered, “Kit,” and tossed his blanket off.

  Sarah sat with her elbows on the armrests of her chair and her chin planted firmly in her hands. She stared at her sick son and silently counted every breath, every clench of his bony fingers. When the cloth on his forehead grew too warm and dry, she would reach for a fresh one on the table, then dip it in the bucket at her feet and wring it out
. She switched cloths and touched her fingertips to her son’s hair, still pale and baby-fine. It was not quite blond—it was translucent, rather, like an old man’s.

  “You’ll be better soon, baby,” she told him, because that was how it always worked. When she touched him, she felt golden reassurance bloom. She looked at her son and was satisfied and safe.

  She was startled when Methuselah scrabbled wildly at the wall and then fell, tumbling down to roll across Colin’s pyjama-clad chest. The little squirrel—ugly at the best of times—looked suddenly even more fossilized than usual, beady eyes glazed. She twitched stiffly, narrow claws scratching.

  “Oh dear,” said Sarah. “Not there.”

  She reached forward, thinking regretfully that the squirrel was very old, after all, and perhaps she could hold Methuselah through the last moments (and, more importantly, perhaps her son’s wayward pet should not expire in his bed).

  She saw it then: the way her son’s eyelids lifted and the flare of light in his irises when he shuddered, raising a hand to rest his palm on the squirrel’s knobby vertebrae. His pupils were pinpricks.

  Methuselah writhed to life, suddenly energized, and ran across Colin’s chest, then up the wall and onto the kitchen table.

  Colin stopped breathing.

  At least, Sarah thought so—she was frozen, a half-second’s dismay before her boy was coughing and choking, his breath coming in loud whoops that had her rushing for a bowl to catch the watery stream of his vomit.

  She was lost for a little while in the immediacy of his need. When he slept, though, she pulled the blanket back into place and sat with her hands in her lap, smoothing her palms over the wrinkles of her skirt. Methuselah darted across the floor and clambered up the back of the chair, nuzzling at Sarah’s shoulder.

  Sarah scratched the little head gently, three times. She stood and went to the kitchen nook, where she shook four unshelled peanuts from a jar onto the counter. The squirrel ran down her arm and sat snacking, yellowed teeth gnawing and mangy tail perked.

  “Go on,” said Sarah. She thought about it, and then she dumped the rest of the jar out, sending nuts rolling as Methuselah hopped and scrambled and whirled. When all of the food was gone and the squirrel’s stomach and cheeks were firm and round, Sarah picked Methuselah up in one hand and walked outside, blinking in the sunlight. She looked, but didn’t see Véronique—only the gulls over the ocean waves, and the yellow waving flowers in the garden.

  Sarah held the squirrel against her chest and picked her way across the grass and down the rocky bluff to the sea. She stood at the edge of the water with the salt wind tossing her hair; she cradled the squirrel’s frail body in her left hand and stroked, gently, with the right. She could feel the creature’s ribs, thin as toothpicks, and the throbbing heartbeat just beneath the tattered old fur. Methuselah nestled trustingly in the hollow of Sarah’s collarbone.

  Sarah thought about her son and the light in his eyes.

  She walked three steps into the ocean, to where the sharp chill of the water hit her knees and soaked the hem of her skirt. Then she tightened her grip on the squirrel—made sure it was firm—and felt Methuselah stiffen, squirming suddenly in the moment before Sarah plunged the tiny body into the sea.

  She held the squirrel under for a long time. When she straightened, hands empty, her wrists were scratched with red lines. She left Methuselah floating for the gulls.

  Colin’s fever broke that night. The next morning, he wondered about his pet, and Véronique searched at the edges of the forest, calling.

  “Squirrels aren’t meant to be pets,” Sarah told Colin. She felt a stab of guilt as her boy sighed, and then she shoved the feeling down, watching him eat a bowl of muesli and sliced banana. She fancied she could see a faint flush of pink creeping back to his cheeks.

  After that, she was careful about the animals that Colin brought home. The ones that were too old or too broken—the ones with the growths or the pus-filled eyes—were shooed out the door while he slept. Some met quietly bloodier ends. Sarah grew hard about it; she watched her child, and her eyes were chill with resolve.

  He was healthier after that.

  He still wondered why he was different and why he had to hide (and why the sky was blue and water was wet and birds could fly, but not he). That was when Sarah sat him down and told him about angels.

  The boy was not entirely sure what to make of the whole thing. “But why,” he asked again.

  “Well,” said Sarah, “angels talk to God.”

  “You don’t believe in God.”

  “That’s true.” Sarah pressed her fingers to her lips, and inhaled slowly, waiting for the pain in her gut to subside. Colin rested his thin fingers on her leg, and it did. “I don’t know what to believe,” she said, honestly. “Do you hear God? Does He—She—talk to you?”

  Colin thought about that. “I hear your heart,” he said, finally. “And the ocean. This morning I heard two foxes fighting over a bone. Was my father God?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was a—” Here, Sarah stopped, biting her lip against words she knew would only hurt the little boy at her knee. “Man,” she said instead. She never cried anymore, thinking of the stranger in the forest, but there were times when she would cough, deep and wet. The blue-eyed monster had left her a wound that wouldn’t heal.

  He had left her a son that wouldn’t heal as well, she reminded herself, and she covered her son’s small hand with her own when she saw him wince. His skin always felt like sunshine.

  “You’re bleeding again,” he said.

  Startled, she looked down, spreading her legs as she poked at her skirt. The pale green fabric was almost worn through, and touched with the rusty ghosts of old stains. Her alarm gave way to equanimity. “No. It’s all right.”

  “You will be bleeding,” asserted the child, gravely. “It’s okay. Hold still.”

  Sarah felt warmth rush through her—the pleasure she always felt at her strange child’s touch. She smiled down at him and he smiled back, his little face trusting. In the blue depths of his eyes, she saw the faintest hint of starlight. “Your heartbeat is normal,” he said. An instant later, he frowned as she froze.

  “Honey?”

  “Hold still.” He was a little boy in a quilted green coat, with stains on the hem and a ragged patch of fuchsia on the shoulder where Véronique had last mended it with a dishrag from the kitchen. The sleeves were slightly too short and his knobby wrists stuck out at the cuffs. “I’m helping,” he told Sarah earnestly.

  He turned his palm up, curling his fingers around hers. His touch spread pleasure through her, but for the first time, it couldn’t soften the ice that stabbed through. Sarah stared down at her strange angel child; she rested her free hand atop his head and felt the delicate bone of his scalp beneath the feathered strands of his hair. “Honey,” she said again, and watched the light in his eyes flare before his lashes fluttered.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I stopped it.” And, “Mommy, I’m tired.”

  She knew the signs well by then: the abrupt pallor of his already-pale skin, the tremble in his fingers, the way his breath hummed in the back of his throat as though each lungful were an almost-stifled cry. “Sure,” she said. “Nap time, okay?”

  Sarah freed her hand—any room was colder without her little boy’s touch—and then she leaned down and scooped her baby up, cautious of the wings she knew were folded close against his shoulders. He weighed almost nothing, a frail body tucked into her arms; she picked up his walking stick in her other hand and carried him to his cot in the corner of the room, where the blankets and pillows were piled high and coloured brightly. She set down the stick and laid the boy down more carefully, tugging a blanket over him. He was already closing his eyes.

  “Do you do that often?” she asked, though the answer was already a stone in her gut. “For me, I mean. When it bleeds.” She kept her voice low, so as not to alarm her boy; she tuc
ked another pillow beneath his head.

  “Sometimes,” he mumbled. “So it won’t get worse.” He frowned, his fluttering lids paper-thin. “But it gets worse.”

  “It’s okay, baby.” Sarah sat quietly until Colin slept, then she rose and smoothed her palms on the wrinkles of her skirt. She plucked her favourite orange shawl from the back of the chair and wrapped it around her shoulders, but felt no warmer. She walked outside, fingering the ragged tassels of silk. She strolled past the garden, past the oak tree, up the hill, to the highest point of the bluff, and stared out at the blue expanse of the sea below, where the seagulls were white specks dancing. When the sun was too bright in her eyes and the wind too sharp, she half-turned, one hand keeping the hair from her face as she looked back at the cottage. She could see Véronique’s sturdy shoulders and the back of her grey-black hair as she knelt, weeding busily in the neatly kept garden.

  Sarah looked at the cottage window for a long time, but all she saw were the curtains waving. She reached a hand into her skirt pocket and touched the feather she kept there.

  She felt strong. She could breathe. The ache in her gut was a shadow of memory.

  She thought about vanishing into the trees.

  She thought about a life long and empty, without black feathers or blue eyes or the opiate warmth of a child’s small hand.

  She smiled, then, at the kitchen window and the boy she knew lay sleeping beyond. She smiled at Véronique’s curved back and the memory of a velvet-rough voice. Then, without a word, she gathered an end of the shawl in each hand, spread her arms, and leapt.

  She was flying.

  The last thing she saw was the sea.

  8

  The Between

  From IKD, the Internet Knowledge Database

  This article is about the band. For the contraceptive device, click here.

  {{Editorial note: Portions of this article need citation. Some assertions are in dispute.}}

  The Between is the name of an indie rock band that tours in locations worldwide. While their discography is extensive, copies of their albums are rare even among collectors, and it is rumoured that pressings of their earliest releases number less than 100. Footage of their performances is equally rare, and aficionados are warned that files claiming to be MP3s or videos of The Between are frequently disguises for malware, trojans, and other viruses. {{Please provide a verified example of an existing album copy.}}