Where the Veil Is Thin

by Alana Joli Abbott

  Jonas stroked his chin. “Mmmm, Rain’s dating a godling. Have you thought about sharing?”

  “I can still kick you out of my room.”

  He feigned a hurt look and stood, placing a hand mournfully over his heart. “I forgive you, but only because I know you have been pierced by love’s sweet sting.” She grabbed piece of paper from her desk, crumpled it, and threatened to throw it at him, but he just grinned. “I have some poems I’d like you to look over, if you have time. Mostly responses to Manx hymns and such. They could use a mythologist’s take.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Because your poems are mythic?”

  He sighed heavily and moved to the door. “There’s no romance in your soul, Rain.”

  Jonas shut the door quickly enough to avoid the crumpled paper Rain had aimed for his head.

  Maybe it was Jonas’s association of Fin and the Celtic god of the sea that made Rain want to go back to the House of Manannan, which she considered the best of the formal museums on the Isle, or maybe it was that she hadn’t been there since just after she’d arrived months before. In either case, she suggested it to Fin as they were leaving the Braaid, an archaeological site of two Norse longhouses next to an Iron Age roundhouse near the village of the same name. Their hands were intertwined, so she felt it instantly when he stiffened.

  “No.”

  She looked up at his face, frozen and stiff, no longer hiding behind his lazy smile. Her fingers tightened around his, small hand around his long one, like she could protect him from whatever had him—frightened, she realized.

  “It’s okay,” she said quietly. “What about Peel Castle?” She stopped, swinging around in front of him and grabbing his other hand. “We could look for the ghost.”

  His lips quirked, but he didn’t smile. “It’s a big black dog,” he said. “Do you really want to look for the ghost of a dog that’s bigger than you are?”

  “It’s supposed to protect people, not harm them,” she chided. “And besides, I’d have you to protect me.”

  He pulled away, looking back over his shoulder at the ruins. “I might not be as much help there as you’d think,” he said.

  Rain put her hand on his elbow, hiding behind the leather jacket, and he didn’t pull away. “It doesn’t matter to me where we go.” As long as I’m with you.

  He turned toward her, running his long fingers through her hair, a touch that Rain had begun to suspect was the closest he would come to kissing her. She looked up at him, wondering when her feelings for him had stopped being pretend.

  “Have you been out to the Calf?” She shook her head, feeling the tendrils loosen as she moved away from his hand. “Then that’s where we’ll go. Meet me at the harbor in Port St. Erin Tuesday morning.”

  The harbor was just a short walk from her house, so she nodded, again feeling the pull of her hair against his fingers. He pulled her closer then, kissing her forehead, so softly his lips might have been feathers. Fin let her go, backing away with his face still as closed as it had been when she’d suggested the museum.

  “Bring warm clothes,” he said, and she nodded.

  On Tuesday, she waited at the harbor, watching boats leave and come back with families and picnickers, out to enjoy the wildlife so carefully preserved on the island just south of the Isle of Man’s own shores. At noon, she took out the sandwich she had packed for herself. At two, she took out the one she had packed for Fin. She waited. He never came.

  It took only three days of moping before Jonas dragged the story out of her. He sat her down on the sofa with mugs of their favorite teas—Earl Grey for Jonas and raspberry leaf for Rain—and convinced her to tell him everything. He paced as he listened, sipping only occasionally.

  “Bastard,” Jonas said when she finished.

  “I just don’t get it,” Rain said.

  “Men are idiots,” Jonas said with a shrug. He pulled her up off of their sofa and looked her up and down. “Come on. We’re going to get you all dolled up—”

  “Jonas—” Rain protested.

  “—and once you’re looking incredibly hot, we’re going out.”

  Rain sighed. “Do I have to?”

  He put his hand in the middle of her back and guided her to her room. “Hot,” he repeated, shutting the door behind her.

  Rain changed, and little by little, she found herself feeling better. It was almost as though by changing her appearance, she changed herself. Eventually, she believed that she felt like going out, because her reflection obviously did. She pinned up her hair, letting two brown tresses fall just in front of her ears. Combined with the low dip of her blouse, the effect lengthened her neck, which she always thought made her look taller. She slid on a pair of heels, ones she usually left behind when she was going dancing because her ankles would be unforgiving at the end of the night.

  Jonas had already changed and was waiting outside her door.

  “That was fast,” Rain said.

  “I can only improve so much on nature,” Jonas answered, holding out her jacket. She slid her arms into the sleeves and rolled the coat up onto her shoulders. “You cleaned up alright yourself.”

  “Hot?” she asked.

  “Smokin’. Almost as good as me.”

  The taxi was waiting for them, and not long after Port St. Erin disappeared into the dark fog behind them, the lights of Douglas loomed ahead, diffused by the moisture in the air. As the cab navigated the streets, Rain grabbed Jonas’s wrist and squeezed.

  “Tell me we’re not going there.”

  Jonas patted her hand with the one she didn’t hold in a vice-grip. “You want to know,” he said. “And the mystery will just keep bothering you if you don’t find out.”

  She pursed her lips before responding. “You’re so incredibly mean.”

  He peeled her fingers from his arm. “That’s just one of the many reasons you enjoy my company.”

  Carter’s looked the same as it had the month before, though the decorations in the windows had changed. They now sported lanterns that looked like large turnips. Painted on the windows in bright red were the words “Hop-tu-Naa.”

  “Halloween?” Rain guessed.

  “Don’t let the locals hear you say that,” Jonas said wryly. “Hop-tu-Naa’s the old New Year. There’s singing, rather than trick or treating. Still costumes though. I learned one of the songs if you’d like me to recite.”

  “Not sing?” Rain poked Jonas in the shoulder. “If it’s a song—”

  “The world will be blessed for my having kept silent,” he said, and opened the door.

  Rain held her head high as she walked in, as though she and Jonas owned this place, as though they were the hottest people to come through the doors. She scanned the room, looking to compare their dress, intentionally not looking for Fin. “Top ten percent,” she murmured to Jonas, who raised both eyebrows at her disapprovingly. “You’re in the top one, but I’m dragging you down a little.”

  “I’ll forgive you this once.” He reached for her jacket and she slid out of it, letting him deliver both of their coats to the coat room. The music pulsed through the floor, just as bad as she remembered, but the familiar throbbing in her ribcage felt better than the sore heart she’d been nursing. Jonas returned, took her hand, and led her out to the dance floor.

  “What are you doing?”

  Jonas found a spot under the lights, near enough to the speakers that her whole body quivered. “Dancing, moron,” he said. “Start looking for likely candidates so I don’t have to spend my whole evening out here.”

  She smirked, squeezing his hand in thanks, and looked over his shoulder. She wondered what she would do if she saw Fin. The hurt of being left waiting for hours fought against logical excuses she’d made for him over the past several days. He didn’t have a phone number for her because they’d always made plans in person. He could have gotten sick. Maybe he actually did feel bad. And what if he doesn’t? she wondered. She pursed her lips, studiously avoiding letting Jonas see her fa
ce. That’s it, she decided. He gets one chance to apologize, and maybe I’ll accept it. Then we remedy the lack of contact info.

  But when she saw him, her whole body froze. He was leaning against the wall next to the door she wasn’t supposed to have seen, looking at her. But it wasn’t his gaze that held her—it was how sick he looked; so pale his skin glowed almost as much as his hair in the dim lights, so thin he looked like a ghost. He wasn’t wearing his jacket, like he had been every other time she’d seen him, and she wondered if he’d been losing weight since the first time they met.

  “You can do this,” Jonas murmured, taking her stillness for fear. But she wasn’t afraid of talking to him. She was afraid of whatever it was that made him look like that.

  Rain only moved because Jonas nudged her in the right direction, muttering how bad it made him look to be dancing with a mannequin. He made his way to the bar and she stumbled back toward the door Fin was supposed to guard. His eyes never left her as she walked toward him, stayed on her when she stopped just a few feet away. She reached for him with one arm and he cringed back into the wall. Her hand dropped to her side.

  “What happened to you?” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry, Rain,” he said, his voice scratchy and rough. “I never should have—”

  “Don’t.” The tears that pricked her eyes surprised her. “Tell me what’s happening.”

  “Rain—”

  “Tell me.”

  The club might have been silent for all Rain could tell, waiting for whatever words might come.

  He leaned off the wall, looking unsteady on his feet, tipped her chin up, and kissed her, fully. But despite the heat of it, it tasted sad, salty. Like goodbye.

  She pulled away. “Fin, whatever it is—”

  “You have to leave,” he said, and there was an edge of panic to his voice. “She can’t see you here, Rain, or she’ll think I’ve dragged you into the whole thing—”

  “What whole—”

  “Go!”

  He pushed her away, roughly enough that in the heels, she only barely kept her balance. Fin leaned back against the wall, eyes closed, head tipped back, and lights sparkling off of his piercings. Rain stumbled backward, then turned and hurried toward the bar, looking over her shoulder every few steps.

  The door behind Fin opened, and the red-headed woman stepped out, dressed to kill. Her hand wrapped around Fin’s arm, nails grazing him until dark spots popped up on his white skin. Rain made it to the bar, nearly sobbing, and turned back, torn between getting away and wanting to help Fin, to stop the woman from hurting him. The woman yanked Fin down to her own height. Dark streaks ran down his arm and his face was pinched with pain and terror.

  “Rain.”

  Rain buried herself in Jonas’s arms, letting the sob come out this time. “We have to call the police,” she begged.

  “Put on your jacket,” he said, holding it out for her.

  “She’s hurting him!”

  Jonas gritted his teeth and forced one of her arms into sleeve, then whirled her around and shoved her other arm into the second. At once, the lights shifted, and when she looked at Fin and the red-haired woman, she saw bright glowing forms around them, the woman’s much larger than Fin’s. Rain looked away from them and out onto the dance floor, where others—maybe one in ten—had the same glow: a brilliant light surrounding their bodies that was so beautiful it was almost painful.

  “The police won’t be able to do anything,” Jonas said quietly. “We’ve got to go.”

  He pulled her away and caught her as she stumbled on the too-tall heels. She kicked out of them, leaned over to pick them up, and then let Jonas help her outside. The concrete of the sidewalk was cold beneath her feet, but Jonas kept her walking three blocks until they got to a pub where three young people were exiting a cab. Almost before the last of them got out, Jonas was shoving her inside.

  “In a hurry?” the driver asked.

  “No,” Jonas lied.

  “Where to?”

  “Surrey,” Jonas supplied. “Port St. Erin.”

  The driver pulled back out into the street. “Turning in early,” he said casually. “Your jackets seem to be inside out. Did you know?”

  Rain looked down and saw that it was true. Jonas, ever perfect in his fashion, was wearing his jacket inside out, and he’d put hers on the same way.

  “How clumsy,” Jonas said, squeezing Rain’s knee. Despite the driver’s attempts at small talk, which Jonas would have normally engaged with flair, the conversation remained awkward and stilted all the way home.

  Jonas refused to explain until she had changed clothes. Rain pulled on her most comfortable jeans and a hooded sweatshirt with her college logo. Then she went into the bathroom and washed her face, surprised that there were tear streaks along her cheeks. The water helped her to stop shivering, and when she finished, she felt almost pulled together.

  Jonas was pacing in their living room, still wearing his inside-out jacket.

  “I hate it when I’m right,” he said to the floor, then scowled up at her. “And you really are the worst mythologist ever.”

  Rain slumped onto the couch, trying not to think of the blood she’d seen on Fin’s arm or the glow around his body. “Fine. I’m stupid. Tell me what I’m supposed to know.”

  Jonas ran his hand through his hair, and she realized he was shaking. “All right. God, I wish I smoked. I could use a cigarette.” He took a deep breath, and when he let it go, he seemed to have pulled himself together. “I didn’t think it would do that, by the way, but I had this hunch, have since you said Fin’s last name.” Rain bit her lip, trying to keep herself from interrupting. “Turning the jacket—or frock or whatever—inside out is an old trick. It used to be used to see past fairy glamour.”

  She blinked at him, trying to make the words make sense. “I don’t understand.”

  He sat down next to her on the couch, hard. “Rain, tell me what happens to the Tuatha de Danaan when the Milesians come.”

  “The Tuatha de Danaan, who had been like kings and gods of Ireland, lost the war to the new invaders, like the Fomorians had lost to them when they came,” Rain recited. “The Milesians won all of Ireland, but the Tuatha de Danaan stayed, living in sort of a shadow Ireland, behind illusions.”

  Jonas wrung his hands. “They were forced underground, and they came to live in hills, so that they were called the Sidhe, the hill folk,” Jonas said.

  Rain frowned. “Those are fairy tales.”

  Jonas snorted. “Rain, what do you think happens to myths when they stop being religion?” He picked at the seam of his jacket, still on the wrong side. “And beyond that, what do you do when old folk tales completely change how you see the world?”

  She looked at his inside-out jacket and thought of the glow that filled the night club, surrounding only a handful of the dancers, surrounding Fin and the woman who controlled him. “So you think it’s true.”

  “Truth is for philosophers,” Jonas said curtly. “I think that we have to look at the information we’ve got, figure out how to interpret it, and decide what to do from there. Option number one is we can forget all about this and never speak on it again.”

  Rain thought of the blood on Fin’s arm and shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “I knew that was too much to hope for.” Jonas leaned back on the couch, drumming his fingers on his knee. “God, I can’t focus. Remind me how the story of Manannan goes.”

  “What does that—?”

  Jonas bit his lip, and she noticed that the knee he was drumming was bouncing. “Humor me. I’m in no condition to go over it in my own head.”

  “Fine.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, breathing in and out, trying to focus. “In the Irish legends, he’s the sea god, husband to a giant, father of Llyr, who later took over as the sea himself. Roughly.” She rubbed her eyes, then pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them. “On the Isle, he’s the first ruler of the island, the son of Leirr—I looked it
up after you called me an idiot last time. He was a wizard, some say a necromancer, and he would wrap the island in fog any time the invaders came. He only asked for a tithe or tax of rushes, once a year, from the people of Mann to keep them safe.” She leaned her chin against her knee and looked at Jonas. “I’m not sure where we’re going with this.”

  He was still bouncing or shivering—it was hard to tell. “Imagine just for a moment that when the Milesians came, not all the Tuatha de Danaan stayed.” She started to interrupt, but he put his hand on her shoulder, leaning closer, and she could feel his jitters. “What if Manannan came here instead, with all the power he’d had before, and took the Isle of Man and made it his home? He would never have to hide the way the rest of the Tuatha de Danaan did.”

  “He could have had a family,” Rain murmured, finally seeing where Jonas was going. “Children.” She blanched. “When Fin’s boss first grabbed him, the night we met, she called him an above-grounder.”

  “Because the MacLeirrs were never hill-folk,” Jonas said, coming to the same conclusion she’d just made.

  “So those others in the club—” Rain faltered. “They’re fairies?”

  “Minus the little green coats and leather hats,” Jonas answered, and he stopped shaking. “I think I’ve just completely run out of energy.”

  Rain leaned back against the couch and Jonas mimicked her posture. They sat in silence, letting it all wash over them.

  “Tomorrow is Hop-tu-Naa,” Jonas said quietly. “The new year. It used to be a harvest ritual. And even you, the worst mythologist in the world, should be able to figure out what that must mean.”

  She didn’t have the energy to be frightened any more. “You think he’s going to be a sacrifice. You think they’ve made him the year-king, the one who has to die in thanks for the crops, to make sure that the land stays fertile for next season.” Jonas nodded. “How are we supposed to stop that?”

  Jonas’s fingers drummed against his knee. “I don’t know.” He looked down at his hand, as if just realizing that his fingers were moving. “I don’t even know where the ritual would take place. It doesn’t seem like—.” He cut off and then groaned. “Unless they’re doing it in their own realm.”