Veracity

by Mark Lavorato

  I untied the rope and stuffed it inside the blanket, thinking that at least this way, they would all have to fight through the tangled barrier of shrubs to get there. Then I slung the blanket over my chest, turned into the bushes, and started running for my life.

  * * *

  41

  The bushes had grown back quite a bit, and the spines, having healed and replaced themselves, caught and ripped both the blanket and my skin as I passed through them, beads of blood seeping from the scratches on my arms and under my shirt. As I didn't have a knife, I had no choice but to twist and yank out some of the new branches that were netting the spaces I'd cleared, ripping telltale scars along the bark and leaving an incredibly easy trail to follow.

  After a long battle, I jumped into the other end of the canyon and began heading up the river. I kept up a good pace, only slowing down every now and then to throw a piece of dried fruit in my mouth and drink from the stream, water still dripping from my chin as I hurried on. When I made it past the giant rock where I'd seen the Creature, I could tell, judging by the sun in the sky, that I was moving faster than I had that day. Which was crucial, knowing that the ground I gained while they fought through the bushes to access the trail was the only thing I had in my favour.

  There were times during that first day - while rushing over the rocks, my arms out to the sides to help me balance - that I would catch a glimpse of the raven watching me from a branch that hung over the bank. It would fly away as I approached, but would always reappear later on, a flashing set of eyes over my shoulder, a kind of obscure, recurring presence.

  I travelled until after dark, until it had become too dangerous to continue (as twisting an ankle or cutting one of my feet would have slowed me to a crawl, making the chase that much shorter for them). I felt my way to the soil under a tree and wrapped myself in the blanket, staring out into the dark, wild, fidgety. And, afraid of sleeping through even a few minutes of the morning's usable light, I chose to stay awake, to watch the grey rocks beside the river until they had enough shape and definition to step on again.

  On the second day, the river began to cut into that other zone of vegetation that I'd sighted when I encountered the Creature. It was just as sparse as I'd thought it would be, and would have made for easy travel were I not so reluctant to move away from the stream. The reason I was hesitant was that, not only was it difficult to find water on the mainland, but the fact that I didn't have sandals meant I wouldn't be able to move nearly as fast as I could on the rounded rocks and stretches of loose pebbles beside the river. I imagined myself heading into the sparse trees, swerving in every direction to try and mislead them, hobbling over the thorns and sharp rocks as they fanned out behind me with their sturdy footwear and well-honed tracking eyes, effortlessly gaining ground. No, I was sure that moving away from the river would put me at a disadvantage in every way; so I decided to continue along it, gambling on the hope that I would come across a better option somewhere along the way. And until I found or thought of that option, I would just have to move as fast as, or faster than they were.

  And I have to admit that, on the second night, after finding a tree to wait under in the dark again, I thought that was exactly what I'd done. I was exhausted, having run at a decent speed for most of the day, but was also somewhat smug, leaning back, convinced that I'd managed to widen the gap between us, that the number of frenzied miles I'd travelled would be impossible for the worn-down crew to match. I settled between the roots of the tree, staring in the same obsessive way at the rocks in front of me, waiting for enough light to keep running. As it happened, there was a light breeze against my face, which, after a few hours, would carry with it an unmistakable message. It was incredibly weak and fleeting when it came, but the smell could not be mistaken. Smoke. I couldn't stop myself from swearing aloud when I was sure of it, pounding a fist on the hollow-sounding earth beside me. They had made torches, and were continuing to cover ground through the night.

  Yet, I also knew that tracking me - by distinguishing overturned pebbles from the ones that weren't, or finding a barely-missing footprint in the fine silt covering of a rock - would be impossible to do by torchlight. Which meant that the only thing the crew were really concerned with was covering ground, that they had no reason to track me, that somehow they were confident in predicting where I was going. Maybe this was because they had maps and knew that this was the only watercourse nearby, and that if I ventured away from it I would eventually die of thirst. Or maybe, as they could see from my tracks that I didn't have footwear, they had figured out that the smooth rocks beside the water were the only part of the terrain I could run on, and so would be forced to stay there to move as fast as them. Maybe the only challenge they saw in catching me was in simply closing the distance between us, which, it seemed, they had already found a way to do.

  But then it crossed my mind that I could use this certainty of theirs against them, that this might be the golden opportunity I'd been waiting for. Because while the crew were travelling through the dark, it would be impossible to verify whether or not I was still moving along the river; and if, with the first light of day, they realized that there was no sign of me in front of them, they would have to turn around and backtrack to the point where they had last seen evidence of me, having to search over their own tracks for the spot where I'd entered the trees. Which meant that if I could time my leaving the river to coincide with a stretch of it that they would be travelling along at night, it would buy me hours of time, maybe an entire day, and maybe it would even cause them to lose my trail altogether.

  I tried to speculate how much ground they might have gained in total, estimating how long it would have taken them to cut their way along the rim of the canyon to the trail, how far smoke could travel in the wind and still be detected, and how much faster they would be moving with footwear. In the end, I guessed that they were a bit over half a day behind me. From this, I planned to continue upstream until about mid-afternoon, where I would hopefully find a long stretch of rocky shore - or some other land feature that would yield as little evidence of my passing as possible - and then carefully slip into the trees there. It was the best chance I had.

  As with the day before, I began moving with the first usable light, running whenever I could. By midday, the land was opening up, the trees thinning ever more, exposing long sweeping hills that rose on either side of the river; hills that were covered with a coat of short, dry grass, and that ended with jagged ridges that notched the skyline. However, when the time that I'd planned to leave the river came, I was never more hesitant to do it. Nothing was the way that I'd pictured it. Firstly, I wouldn't be able to move under the cover of vegetation, and if I'd underestimated them, and they arrived earlier, they would be able to see me from a long way off, scampering over the naked ground between the trees. Also, in this new, grassy terrain, the shores of the river had become muddy for the very first time, and I imagined that regardless of how careful I was, I would still leave behind some kind of obvious indication that I had stepped over the bank.

  I kept walking to look for a better place, and ended up searching for much longer than I'd wanted to before coming across something suitable, which was a small, dried up tributary to the river. I filled up my water bottle before I started tiptoeing into it, disturbing as few rocks and vegetation as possible. Then, after walking along this streambed for almost an hour, I found a place where I could climb out of it without leaving a trace, and was finally standing on the grassy slope among the thinly scattered trees.

  Once there, I tried to look for the shortest possible route up the valley side, where I would be able to disappear over the ridge. I decided to head for a rocky saddle that seemed quite close, knowing that, though it was exposed and in plain view from the river, once I reached it, there would also be places that I could hide, places where I could watch and see whether or not I'd managed to outmanoeuvre the crew.

  The long climb to the saddle was incredibly tiring, and I had to stop
to catch my breath in the shade of every low-lying tree, crouching beside it and looking out at the land behind me, hoping that I wouldn't see anything moving beside the water. Once, while I was turned around, I caught sight of a black bird gliding high across the valley, which flew almost directly above me and disappeared over the ridge. It hadn't come close or showed any interest, so I assumed that it wasn't the raven.

  I moved on, and as the afternoon turned into evening, I grew increasingly nervous, aware that every step I ascended I was becoming more visible from the river, and that the timeframe of the crew possibly coming into view was getting uncomfortably close. Until, after stopping to rest at one of the last trees on the slope, I decided that the risk of being seen had become too much, and that I would have to wait beneath the shade of the leaves until nightfall, when I could climb the rest of the way under the cover of darkness. I must have sat there for a few hours, drinking most of my water and eating the last of the dried fruit, watching the shadows in the valley swell into a pool of murky dark.

  When I felt it was safe enough, I climbed the rest of the way to the ridge, blindly groping along the ground, feeling less grass on my feet and more exposed rock and sharp edges the higher I climbed. And because I had to step so carefully onto things that were impossible to see, it took much longer than I thought it would, and by the time I poked my head above the crest and felt a cool wind drifting up the slope from the other side, I was beyond exhaustion. With the little starlight there was, I could just make out the valley on the other side, which was quite narrow and had a ridge that ran parallel to the one I was standing on. It seemed like the perfect place to vanish.

  I felt my way over to a few boulders, tucking myself into a protected corner that looked out onto the valley that I'd come from. I intended on spending the rest of the night there, watching for the crew's torches bobbing alongside the river, and after spotting them, watching them pass by the tributary that I'd used to leave the water, oblivious to the fact that they were losing my trail. And I can't say how long I actually spent like that, alert and waiting; nor can I really remember when it was that I dozed off, or if I'd fought for any length of time to keep my eyes open as the weight of my eyelids became heavier. Though, maybe, considering how tired I was and how little rest I'd had, falling asleep at some point that night might have been inevitable. In the same way that, maybe, what happened the next day might have been inevitable as well.

  * * *

  42

  I opened my eyes to the sound of the raven's feathers pulsing air into the ground as it landed, and found myself squinting at a dull, overcast sky. Which is how I stayed for a few seconds, blinking hard, letting my eyes adjust to the light. Then the memory of the crew seemed to wash over me like cold water, and I shot bolt upright, wide-awake, addled. "Shit!" I whispered, quickly scrambling forward to search the valley for movement. But the only motion to be seen was the flickering white of rapids in the distant river, which held to the rocks in the centre of the channel like flame to its fuel.

  Having fallen asleep during the night was a serious problem. I had no clue of what I was dealing with anymore: Were they upstream or downstream from the dry tributary? Was I fleeing from people who were hours behind me, or days, or weeks? Could I begin planning ways of eluding them long-term, or was it still just about making a mad dash out of throwing range? I felt like I needed to know these things before I could continue - or at least needed to know something, something that would allow me to make a reasonable guess, something more than the empty speculation that I'd been running on. Anything.

  I heard the raven scatter a few pebbles as it hopped forward on the ground to my left. I turned toward it, stunned, remembering that the sound of it landing had woken me; but more importantly, realizing that it had been there for some unknown period of time, probably circling above me, an obvious dark shape against the overcast sky, its thick fingers pointing out the exact place that I was hidden in the rocks. I whispered another curse and started clambering toward it, hoping that, once I'd scared it into the air, it would fly away from the ridge as discreetly as possible - pass unnoticed into another part of the world.

  "Go!" I hissed, throwing a hand into the air as I came closer to it. The raven crouched down, threatening to fly away, but didn't, its head confusedly darting in every direction as it tried to understand the sudden and complete change in my disposition. "Go!" I repeated once I'd come much closer to it, though being careful with the volume of my voice. After seeing that this wasn't working, I called out a third time while pretending to throw something at it, which was what finally caused it to take flight. It jumped into the air, climbed high above the ridge, circled once, twice, and then, on the third time, readied itself to land on a prominent rock a good distance from where I was.

  I shot a guilty look out at the valley as it landed, sure that the crew's eyes were on me, that they were all pointing at the ridge, focusing at the rocks that lined it, looking for the slightest indication that this was more than just a random black bird loitering on the top of a hill.

  I crawled along the ground, as low as I could, until I had dropped just below the ridgeline, where I began again to hobble toward the raven. But before I'd come close enough to make any threatening gestures, it took flight again, circling a few more times while cawing out. It landed a bit further off from where I'd sighted it at first, and began to hop playfully among the rocks as it waited for me to come after it again. It seemed to like this game.

  "No, no, no! Please, please... just... GO!!" I finally hollered. The raven, with the safety of distance between us, made one of its gurgling sounds and sprung onto a boulder with what appeared to be nothing short of elated mischief, curiously cocking its head in my direction.

  I sighed, defeated, and yet again, started walking toward it, stepping cautiously on the sharp stones, hoping to get close enough this time to throw something, to finally deliver an unmistakable message. "Please go. I really... I just need you to go. Can you do that for me? Just leave me alone? Because it's this simple: if they see you, they'll catch me, and if they catch me, they'll kill me." Just then, I stepped on a painfully sharp stone, having to suck in a burst of air through my teeth. But I didn't stop limping toward my obstinate friend; my pace was unbroken, and becoming more frustrated with every step.

  "You just... you don't get what's going on here, okay? I mean - it doesn't matter that you're only some sorry bird that I happened to find, or that I've come to understand a few things and regret a few more, or even that I've abandoned The Goal. None of these things matter to them. Alright?" I bent over and picked up some small stones, but let them spill from my fingers, looking for something better. I chose a fist-sized rock instead, testing its weight in my hand as I straightened up, still cautious to keep my head below the skyline.

  I took a few more steps and then stopped. I was close enough. "No, you have no idea what's happening here. Not the running, not me, not the crew. Because you can't. Because it's below you, it's beneath anything you are. Which is all the more reason for you to stay away. I mean - don't you get that much at least? That you don't belong here? That you don't belong anywhere near us... us vile... fetid..." I broke off, biting my lip.

  "So just go, will you!" I was trying to hold myself back, trying to contain myself, but couldn't. So I turned and threw the rock with all of the force I had. "I said GO!!"

  The bird jumped into the air to get out of the way, but found itself more in the rock's path than it had been on the ground. In mid-flight, it had to twist its body around to narrowly avoid it, maybe even feeling the rock brush against a few of its feathers as it whirled by. But once the danger had passed, the raven recovered quickly, gracefully turning toward the valley that the crew were in, and sweeping low inside of it, its head pointed forward, flying in exactly the opposite direction of where I was standing. There was no hesitation, no doubt. And there never would be. It had finally recognized me for what I was.

  I stood there for quite some time, watching its
black shape grow smaller, watching the flapping of its wings become more indistinct, until it was only a dark speck against the vegetation, and until that speck seemed to meld into the green and completely disappear.

  When I was sure that I'd lost sight of it, I covered my face with my hands, felt the muscles in my arms flex, my fingernails digging into the skin on my forehead. I let out a scream into the flesh of my palms, then screamed again, and began stumbling forward, blindly, moving away from something, or toward it - I don't really know. I took a few steps and then tripped on a rock, crashing to the ground with my hands still pressed against my face. There was pain on my right side, which seemed to be exactly what my body needed to finally let itself cry. And it did.

  I don't know how long I lay there, shouting out those long, muffled sobs into my hands, I only know that I didn't have any control over their coming or going, that I wasn't myself - or maybe that I was just too much of myself all at once. Too much frustration. Too much shame. Too much understanding. And it all seemed to come in waves that crashed against the walls of my rib cage, filling my chest until it felt like I would burst, only to subside again, to suddenly sink away, leaving me empty except for a dark trickling at the back of my throat.

  When I finally regained some sense of composure, it happened quickly. I stopped and took my hands from my face, looking around as if someone else had moved me to a new spot on the ridge. I was in plain view, making up part of the silhouette against the sky. Not, I thought, that it mattered all that much. If I had caught the crew's attention, it wouldn't have been my sitting in a conspicuous place on the ridge that would have done it, instead it would have been my yelling, or my hurtling fist-sized rocks into the valley they were in, or my pathetic staggering around through the boulders and screaming into my hands. I sniffled, wiped my eyes, felt ridiculous. And with the air of someone trying to shake off a moment in time he wished had never happened by determinedly moving onto the next, I started to busy myself with looking for the crew again, stepping down out of the skyline and squatting against a boulder, blinking to clear my eyes so that I could make out more detail.