Veracity

by Mark Lavorato

  When I was finished resting, and turned around to face the peninsula again, I was amazed to see how much closer the currents had brought me. And even more amazed to see a recess in the cliff, something like a cave, which, in what little light there was left, looked like a yawning mouth with a tongue of rounded boulders, like giant taste buds, licking the very edge of the water with its tip. It wasn't a beach by any stretch of the imagination, but at least there seemed to be a possibility of getting onto land in the dark.

  I settled into an exhausted pace, steering myself in the cave's general direction while the current carried me along. I stopped counting my strokes, my movements becoming reflexive and constant. I lost track of minutes, of time. The sky darkened; everything became colourless, and then black. The fuzzy silhouette of the cliff neared, looming over my head, splashes resonating off of its walls in different directions. I continued until the rounded boulders at the mouth of the cave were taller than I was, their globular heads shimmering with night, looking down at me, feeling nothing.

  I could sense land everywhere; the crispness of the echoes, the loamy breath of rock, the pockets of warm water. My legs, overtired and heavy, sunk under my waist. My arms, still trying to make circles, but quickly fading into useless flaps instead, lifted out into the water at my sides. I seemed to be waiting for my body to bump up against something, a blade of coral, the spines of sea urchins, rock. Which happened. My knee finally struck one of the slimy boulders, and this is what initiated my flustered and pathetic scramble to find a way out. I seemed to wake up. I was there. I had made it. I just had to get out of the water.

  I felt around until my hand ran over another slick surface. I moved closer to it, pawing the stone until I found a divot on one of its sides. Then I started to pull myself through the water with one hand, and searching for the next hold with the other, moving toward the loudest sounds.

  Swells were bouncing off of rocks, capping, tossing me from side to side. One struck me from behind and pushed me forward. I felt things sliding along my legs, and ended up being jostled between two boulders, where I stopped, a hand on either of them, teetering on a notch that was made where they met under the water. I tried to steady myself, but couldn't, and fell forward into a channel that was filled with large rocks, my chest crashing against one of them.

  The sea rushed over me again, and I took in some water, my hands fumbling blindly in all directions. Finding nothing, I put my feet flat on the rocks and pushed off of them, shooting above the surface, and succeeded in hitting the side of my face against one of the boulders. I bounced off of it and fell once more to the side, somehow managing to land on my hands and knees in a pool of small stones. My head was above the water for the first time. Land.

  As much as I wanted to stand while I had the chance, I had to cough the water out of my chest before I could do anything else. I might have even been on my way to recovering when I heard another surge of water tumbling through the channel behind me. I hung my head in frustration, braced myself, and was hit from behind in mid-cough, and carried along with the rush of the swell. The water dumped me further up the channel, my hands and knees settling onto smaller stones where the pool was shallower.

  As soon as the wave subsided I tried to stand, still coughing, the earth swaying uncontrollably under my feet. I stumbled and fell backwards, but got up quickly and tried again, managing to walk two, three steps before falling. Only this time, when my hands hit the ground, they were holding onto a fistful of dry stones. But this wasn't enough; I needed to be higher; I needed to be sure that the sea couldn't find me in the middle of the night and drag me out again. I stood one last time, every muscle in my legs shaking with fatigue, and walked forward, feeling around, until my hands scuffled across a ledge of some sort. I pulled myself toward it, and, with all the energy I had left, lopped myself on top of it.

  The moment I'd settled there, and was sure I was secure enough and wouldn't fall off during the night, I let myself relax, coughing until I recovered. After that I just lay there, taking syrupy air into my lungs, breathing, breathing very deeply, my head resting against the cold stone, staring out into the noisy darkness, until my eyes closed of their own volition. The very last thing I remember about that night was the sensation of my tingling body, drained of everything, melting into the rock.

  * * *

  31

  I woke up coughing, a hand reaching out to steady myself on the ledge, the other in a fist at my mouth. When I recovered, I rubbed my eyes at the grey morning light, jumped off the ledge, and stood on one of the boulders, clearing my throat. The muscles in my legs and arms were stiff, and my nose, ribs, and the left side of my face were sore, but, really, considering all that could have happened to my body, there wasn't much to complain about.

  As I turned in a slow circle to take everything in, the first thing I noticed was that I'd somehow managed to stumble upon the ideal place to get out of the water. The channel that I'd accidentally fallen into, and was then pushed further along, seemed to be the only access to land that wouldn't have involved climbing. Steep boulders, which probably would have been impossible to scale during the day, let alone in the dark, rose out of the water everywhere else.

  I kept turning until I was looking up at the cave, where birds' nests clung to its roof, and stone protuberances of every imaginable shape dangled around them like petrified drips of water. The mouth of the cave seemed to be exhaling; a cool, stagnant air, which had a vague smell of urine and bird droppings, cascading over the boulders as slow and constant as breath.

  Then I looked to the right of the cave and noticed a weakness along the wall. There was a point where the cliff sloped to a more modest angle, and the limbs of bushes and stunted trees sprung out of a vertical crack that ran from the bottom of the cliff to the top, essentially creating a ladder of vegetation that disappeared above me, where the steepness of the wall tapered off even more.

  Seeing as there wasn't a shore to walk along, I really only had two options of finding a way out: I could either take my chances with the ocean again, swimming along the peninsula to look for a better way to access the top, or I could try to climb this weakness beside the cave. I looked at the swells just once before making my decision; then cleared my throat again, turned, and started making my way over the rocks toward the crack in the wall.

  It turned out that the ladder of vegetation was easier to ascend than it had looked, and only became more so the higher I climbed. Though, as the slope of the cliff tapered off, the crack also became more vegetated, which meant that I had to fight my way through denser foliage, branches scratching at my face, and pink lines streaking down my forearms where twigs had scraped them. Eventually, the rock on either side of me was replaced by sloping earth, and I clambered up on my hands and knees, grabbing onto grass and shrubs, pulling myself up the forested hill until I could finally stand. Once on my feet, I continued up the rise, this seeming like a natural thing to do. The forest that I climbed through was thick, and it was gruelling work hopping over and ducking under branches, breaking through the netting of underbrush, all while having to fight against the angle of the hill as well. After quite a while, the slope of the rise continuously lessening, I came to the rounded ridge at the top of the peninsula.

  I had imagined, for some reason, that once I found myself at the highest point there would be a grassy clearing; however, if anything, the forest had become thicker. I leaned against a tree whose texture I'd never seen before and caught my breath. And the more I was struck by this strange bark, the more I looked around and realized that everything was foreign to me; the insects crawling along the branches, the vegetation at my feet, the smells, the sounds of the birds, the calls of the animals in the distance, everything. And now that I was out of immediate danger for the first time in days, there was a part of me that just wanted to sit down and take it all in; to stare up at the sky and acknowledge that I was finally free, that I'd made it.

  But being out of immediate danger didn't mean I
was safe. I had no water, no food, and no shelter. Which meant that, realistically, I couldn't afford to waste a minute of daylight. I had to keep moving; at least until I found water.

  Luckily, like every ridge I have ever seen in my life, there was an animal trail that followed its crest, which made the going quite easy. While I walked through the forest toward the mainland, my bare feet getting used to the new ground, roots, and leaves, I could hear animals in front of me, fleeing from my smell and the sounds that I was making in what must have been their normally quiet world. Birds sprung out of trees and into the air, explosions of flapping sounds that quickly faded into silence, flashes of wings between the leaves that would vanish the moment they appeared. Once, I even caught a glimpse of a four-legged animal as it thrashed through the undergrowth, running down one of the sides of the ridge. I was happy to have come across it, as it meant that there was fresh water within a reasonable distance from where I was.

  After walking for an hour or two, I saw a break in the trees up ahead, a light that was brighter, filtering through branches that stood at the edge of a clearing. The trail became wider as it drew closer, and I walked along it as quietly as I could, thinking that I might come across some exotic animals grazing in it. But as I stepped out of the trees, I found something much more interesting than that.

  There was a tower sticking out of the shrubs of the clearing. It was incredibly thin and high, constructed of metal bars (that had since helplessly rusted), which were joined in a row of triangles that climbed toward the sky, getting narrower right at its peak. It probably would have crumbled to the ground years before were it not for the cables that were securing it from every side; some of which were taut, while others were drooping ineffectually with their own weight.

  As much as the Elders had educated me about the ruins I would come across in this land, there are some things that I couldn't exactly be prepared for. For some reason, I'd expected the relics to be quiet, had already pictured the tattered buildings, the glassless windows that would gape open like deadened eyes, woodless doorways creating awestruck mouths; I'd imagined the stillness in the settlements as the buildings slowly buckled at their joints and collapsed to the ground. Yet I could see that there was going to be nothing silent about these things. Unlike coming across a dead animal, which might give a few clues as to its death, things that were structural or inorganic had the capacity to relay a record of how they lived. I wasn't going to find a world of decayed flesh and liquefied remains which could no longer be recognized, but skeletons of an existence that were still poised in movement; things that not only asked questions, but responded to them. This tower was demanding me to contemplate what a massive finger of metal sticking up into the sky could possibly serve. I had no idea, of course - and still don't - but I know that the answer was there, somewhere. And though I didn't have time to try and find it, it was enough to recognize that this new land was going to be telling stories, that it would relate how my ancestors had seen the world around them, give an account of their accomplishments, their defeats, and where they went wrong. I watched the tip of the tower move steadily through the sky as I crossed the clearing, amazed, trying to imagine how they had built it, what they had done around it, and how often they had come to this place to use it.

  When I arrived at the other side of the clearing, to my surprise, I found a massive track along the ground that cut through the trees ahead of me. I'm sure that at one point, like the walls of the shelter, the entire lane was cemented over - a road, as I had seen in books - which must have been built to access the tower. Grass sprouted from the cracks in it and snaked along the surface in blotchy patterns, and there were a few trees that had fallen across the width of it, which would be nothing to hop over. I would be able to cover a lot of ground quickly and easily.

  I walked down the road for several hours as it meandered more or less along the ridge, watching the sea below through the few gaps in the trees, hoping to judge my progress, waiting to see a coast in the distance that would indicate how close I was to the end of the peninsula. At one point, the track dropped below the ridgeline, and I was glad to get a bit lower, thinking that I might come across a tiny stream of water collecting on a hillside. And though this wasn't the case, I did find something that was just as good.

  The road continued to descend until it passed through a kind of basin where water would naturally collect. There was no sign of a stream or pond, but the lush vegetation that grew at the lowest points was a sign that there was a lot of moisture underground. I noticed a different kind of tree that I hadn't seen anywhere else on the ridge, and as I got closer to them, I realized, excitedly, that there were long melons dangling from just below their tops.

  I quickly found the shortest tree and climbed it from a sloping side, my feet pressed flat against the bark, inching my way up until I was within reaching distance of the melons, and then, balancing delicately with one hand around the tree and the other on the fruit, I twisted them until they fell to the ground. After seeing one of them split open, and that it was dripping with yellow juice, I tried to toss a few others into bushes where they wouldn't break, hoping to take a couple with me.

  I climbed down and shoved my face into one of the broken halves. It was sweet, had an orange, fleshy texture, black seeds, and was saturated with water. The rind was bitter, and only after I'd tasted it did I notice that other animals had left them scattered around on the ground to rot. I ate faster than I should have, finishing a full three melons before stopping, when all I could do was lean against a tree, feeling bloated and sick to my stomach.

  After the waves of nausea subsided, I stood and wandered through the grove, poking around for other foods that I could take besides the melons. I didn't find much, but, looking up at these fruit trees, I did notice something that was a bit strange. It seemed that the steeper the tree, the more melons there were, which was something that was never the case on the island. And for some reason, I felt like I had to spend a few minutes trying to figure this out.

  The first thing I did was look at the bark of the trees to see if I could find any claw marks, as something like a sloth or a tree shrew might leave behind, but there weren't any. And as the animal that was feeding on these melons was so poorly adapted for climbing that it could only access the fruit from a sloping tree, it couldn't be a monkey, either. No, this was something quite different. Then I noticed that there were woody strands that stuck out from where the fruits had been twisted off of their stems, which meant they were removing them in the same way I had. I picked up the freshest looking rind to look at the teeth marks that were left in it, and saw that they were made from fairly uniform, small teeth, and that both the upper set and lower set met in a perfectly straight line; and, as there weren't any imperfections on either extremity of the marks, I imagined that they didn't have a pronounced set of canines, and so ate mostly fruits and vegetables. I compared the marks to those left in the rinds that I had eaten from, but found that they were nothing like a human's. Yet there was something similar enough (and maybe this was only in the way that we had picked the fruit) that made me resolve to learn as much as I possibly could about them. That day I would create a category in my mind for these creatures - which I would unimaginatively call 'The Creatures' - where I would sort out every piece of information I could gather about them. I'd already learned that they weren't very good climbers, the size of their teeth, the likely dimensions of their head to fit such teeth, their lack of claws, even more or less what they ate. And I would be keeping an eye out for anything else that I could learn about them along the way, tallying it onto my list whenever I did. There was, of course, something dangerous in all of this; but at the time, I was completely oblivious to it.

  I continued down the meandering road, carrying a melon in each hand, until the sun drew close to the horizon. At one point, it was perfectly aligned with the road, trailing behind me, making my shadow stretch out into a gangly man with enormously swollen stumps at the end of thin arms, his fee
t rising high with each step.

  I had planned on walking for another half hour or so before looking for a good tree to sleep under, when I came across the first building I would see on the mainland. It was a house on the side of the road, which was set at the end of a short track. It wasn't built like anything we had on the island, its walls being made of some kind of white plaster, which had since yellowed and cracked, vines netting its sides like arteries. Most of the windows were broken, but the door was still on its hinges, hanging ajar, leaves and plants creeping into the dark interior.

  I put the fruit on the ground and walked up to the entrance, pressing my face into the open space between the door and its frame. The air was musty and still. I pushed on the wood and felt a soft resistance on the other side, which finally gave when I put more force into it, and I could hear something sliding across the floor, being shoved out of the way as the door swung open. When there was enough room for me to squeeze through, I poked my head inside and could see that a thick cloth, which had since been devoured by mice and was gathered in giant folds behind the door after I'd forced it open, had once covered most of the floor. I stepped inside.

  The interior of the building had been ripped to shreds, the furniture turned over, drawers flung out of cupboards, sheets and blankets strewn throughout the rooms. Pictures, which could only have been cut out of books, and, for some reason, were encased with wood and glass, were sprawled all over the ground, the long shards still held by their wooden borders, pointing at the places where the glass was impacted; plain-looking people behind the spider web fractures, lined up shoulder to shoulder on closely cut grass, clasping each other with arms that seemed stiff. There were light-brown water stains that spread out along the walls like lobes of lichen, scat on the floor from the different animals that had scavenged or nested there, along with broken plates, utensils, pots, clay shards, and shredded decorations with bright colours.