Free The Veil by Cory Putman Oakes Page B

barely visible on the far side of the bridge, its searchlight making slow circles and flashing a light in our direction every couple of minutes. The very far left of the picture, where the bridge met land again, was Marin County. Could you see Sausalito from here, and all of its colorful houses on the hills overlooking the water? No, probably not; I’d gone too far to the left now. I brought my mental camera back slightly to the right.
    “I’ve got it,” I told Lucas.
    “Okay, now I want you to imagine that the image in your head is actually a painting. It’s two-dimensional, flat and on a giant piece of canvas. Can you see it?”
    “Yes.” That wasn’t too hard. I’d seen enough paintings of this very view.
    “Now picture the canvas becoming thinner and thinner. Not see-through, still totally opaque, but thinner. Picture a slight breeze. The breeze starts to flutter the edges of the canvas, which is still getting thinner. Are you picturing that?”
    “Yeah.” Without his face to distract me, I could concentrate entirely on his voice, which was indescribably alluring. He was very relaxing to listen to—so relaxing I realized I was actually fighting to stay awake as he continued to talk.
    “The breeze is getting a little bit stronger, and the canvas is getting thinner. A lot thinner, until it’s as thin as a piece of cloth. The breeze is starting to move the cloth a little bit. Do you see that?”
    “Yes.”
    He paused for a moment.
    “Let the cloth blow away entirely, and then open your eyes.”
    I did as he said, and blinked in wonderment at the world spread out before me.
    ——
     
    The first thing I noticed was that it was not nearly as dark as it had been a few minutes ago. Moonlight filled the scene in front of me, casting dark shadows over the water but, at the same time, lighting up the city in the same way the sun would have in the very early hours of the morning.
    The city was different. Gone were the skyscrapers, the triangle building, and the familiar skyline. In their place were buildings made of very shiny metal, exactly the type of structures I’d seen outside of Ghirardelli Square last night. Except now, we were far enough away that I could look at them without straining my eyes. I saw flashes of gold, but mostly I saw silver—the same color I’d been seeing so often lately, in the strange sights and creatures that had been popping up, uninvited in front of my eyes. The city was surrounded by a massive silver wall that rose right out of the waters of the bay and several stories into the air.
    But by far the most spectacular thing I could see right then was the bridge. It was in the same place as the bridge I’d just been looking at, and it also had two pillars holding it up, but
this
bridge was golden. It stretched across the shadowy water like a gold spider’s web, so thin and light that it looked like a strong breeze could have blown it to dust, yet at the same time I could tell—I wasn’t quite sure how I could tell, I just could—that this structure had been here long before the one
we
called the Golden Gate, and that it would be here for a long time afterward. This bridge and the city beside it, both drenched in moonlight, were two of the most breathtaking things I had ever seen.
    I looked over at Lucas and then hurriedly turned my eyes back to the view; I was suddenly afraid it would disappear if I looked away for too long. But it was still there, just as real and unwavering as the other view had been, just a few moments ago.
    When I managed to tear my eyes away again, I saw Lucas smiling at me. For a moment, I thought I saw . . . something. A glimmer of something in his eyes. But then he blinked and looked away.
    “And to think, nobody ever wonders why they call it the
Golden
Gate,” he said with a slight shake of his head.
    “
I
always wondered,” I told him, turning my eyes back to it. I dimly recalled a teacher once telling me the bridge had been named after the Golden