Chapter Seven

Jacob drove them to a location, not on the GPS, over two hours away. He confirmed Ethan would be paid for all of his time, in addition to the items he purchased while at the duty-free shop, but Jacob couldn’t hand out the payment until he met with Gilda, the buyer. Ethan watched from the passenger seat as the familiar locations off the 401-Highway became less and less prominent. Snow littered the evenly spaced trees on farmland and the fields. About when Ethan was sure he was about to be eighty-sixed, Jacob turned onto a dirt road. Light brighter than the fairies emerged from a crack in a rock face, slicing the earth of a hillside in two and melting the snow instantly. Jacob drove straight toward the hill until a city bloomed, as if carved out of the hill in the middle of nowhere—an island of light surrounded by nothing.

“Is…this place on a map?”

“Yeah. But not as what you think it is and definitely not where you think it is.” Jacob didn’t expand on what he meant, and for once, Ethan was okay with it. He sank into the passenger seat as the hum of the midnight jazz radio station soon became static.

They turned into an industrial building’s parking lot, which looked exactly like the bus stop where Ethan had found the eggs, only inverted and buzzing with life. Lockers lined one side of the bus station, painted with gold and all occupied with brightly coloured locks. A red car with bumper stickers sat next to a bus with the final destination of TORONTO on its visor. The bus didn’t appear to be moving anywhere any time soon, but a dozen people were aboard, sleeping under the bus’s low lights. Music spilled from their seats and open windows.

A large group of people walked out of the bus station. They spotted the car and called for Jacob in high-pitched voices, both in English and French, and followed by another language Ethan couldn’t decipher. A woman in a long red peacoat led the group. Two men stood by her side, and another person, gender indeterminate, stood behind her with a long cigarette.

Jacob pulled up beside a tree which had been split in two by a bolt of lightning. He stepped outside the car and signalled for Ethan to stand next to him, bag in tow.

“Gilda.” Jacob grinned. “How have you been?”

“Wonderful. You have what I need?”

They were close enough now for Gilda’s skin to reveal itself as murky green and covered with scales. She was half-lizard, or a new type of hybrid species Ethan had never seen before, but possibly read about in the pamphlets. The men behind her were human, as far as Ethan could tell. In a flash, Gilda’s golden eyes trained directly on Ethan and the bag he held.

“Your friend, Jacob? How’d he do tonight?”

“Don’t address people like they’re not in the room. Or the parking lot. Gilda, this is Ethan. Ethan, Gilda. My boss for this trip. And he did well.” Jacob glanced between both parties. “Right?”

“Yeah, well enough,” Ethan said. “We got what we needed. And nothing’s broken.”

Gilda stepped forward and extended her hand. Ethan was about to hand her the bag, only to realize she wanted to shake. The scales were softer than he thought. Gilda’s grip was strong, almost predatory, but her open expression calmed him.

“Nice to meet you,” she said. “Jacob is right. I sometimes forget my manners.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Ethan said. Jacob ended up being the one to grab the bag from Ethan and give it to Gilda. Once she undid the zipper, the key chains became visible as well as the eggs. One of Gilda’s men approached, and with a star-eyed expression, took the eagle key chain and added it to his pocket.

“You’ll get a nice tip. Thanks, Jacob.” She extended her hand to him, shook it, and slipped him an envelope. Jacob grasped her hand cordially and whispered something close to her ear (though there was no ear Ethan could see, and her head was covered by a hood). When she laughed, the ambiguously gendered person stepped forward to share in the joke. They extended cigarettes from their pack. Gilda took one, along with Jacob.

“And Ethan?” Gilda asked.

He grabbed a cigarette as well, though the secondhand smoke was already heady and sweet. While Ethan smoked, the group’s conversation continued on neutral topics, like the city’s weather and the new people moving in. Ethan pieced together the town’s name was Notlimah, a backward spelling of Hamilton. The highest spot in Hamilton proper was jokingly called “the mountain” by all the residents; little did they know an entire ecosystem existed underneath, carved out of the slate rock which gave the mountain its height. Ethan glanced up and realized the night sky he’d thought black and immense was a slate surface. The stars were glittering wet spots on the rock. The space seemed infinite and yet defined. He longed to reach a hand out and curiously probe, but he stuck to his cigarette. He marvelled at the new geometries and geographies while his head swum.

“Well, this has been a nice chat,” Gilda said. “But I must retire for the night. Thank you both. Nice meeting you.”

More handshakes ensued. Gilda gave Jacob a quick peck on the cheek, murmuring again in the same indistinct language as before. Jacob laughed melodramatically before tugging Ethan back into the car. They drove in silence until the radio signal found the midnight jazz station once again. Jacob shut it off, clearly no longer amused by staccato rhythms.

“You handled yourself well,” Jacob said. “Most people can’t stand Gilda.”

“The lizard?”

“Dragon.”

“Ah. That makes more sense. It was a shock at first. But I’m getting used to it…and rethinking Canada in the process. I feel like I’m a tourist now, instead of a resident.”

“I hear that.”

“So what happens next?” Ethan asked. 

“Gilda will raise the dragons until they’re suitable for homes. She’s only half dragon, and mostly a shifter creature, so she can become bigger and develop a lot easier than the purebred dragon eggs can. She’s a half-breed, as some would say.”

“Half-breeds don’t usually like to be called that, you know.”

“I do. That was a test.” Jacob flashed a grin. “But I also forgot what the dragon equivalent was to the term Métis. But yeah, she’s exactly like that. Most of the people in Notlimah are Métis in some form or another.”

“That’s interesting… But that’s not what I meant when I asked what’s next. What’s next for us?”

“I want to finish this.” Jacob produced another cigarette he’d been given from Gilda’s worker. He lit it up with one hand as he drove with the other. The familiar etchings of Canadian landscape returned to Ethan outside the windows; evenly spaced trees, farmland, deer-crossing signs. Ethan glanced at the stars, disappointed by the clouds and the moon, all of which was real but not enough at the same time.

“And then?” Ethan asked.

“You’ll be paid. Actually, if you reach into my pocket, you can take three hundred now.”

“You trust me?”

“I still have your phone. So of course I trust you.”

Ethan wasn’t quite sure, but Jacob appeared to wink. The cigarette hung on the right side of his mouth, the side without the scarring, making facial ticks harder to decipher. When he talked, he had to shift the cigarette to the scarred side. Each action was like an acrobatic feat.

Ethan withdrew the money from Jacob’s pocket, counted out his own, and set it all back. He waited for the next part of the conversation to unfold. Then you’ll come inside my apartment. We will get to know one another again.

Nothing but smoke, dense and sweet-smelling, came from his mouth. 

“So, you’re from Canada,” Ethan said. “You knew what Métis meant. You spoke French back there. And Spanish on the night you were with me. Also, a bunch of other languages I don’t know. So what’s the deal?”

“I speak seven languages.”

“You told me. But I thought that was bragging.”

“Yeah, it is—but it’s also true. Even if I only write in two of them,” Jacob said. “Back there with Gilda—that was Ladino, which is a mix of Spanish and Hebrew. My grandfather taught me. She grew up with it as her first language.”

“Huh,” Ethan said. “You said before your passport was dual citizenship. But you know Canadian history. So where did you grow up? Where are you from?”

“Two places at once. Or seven, all of them a language for home.”

Ethan scoffed. “No one can be from two places at once. And no one can have seven homes.”

Jacob didn’t answer until he’d let out several long, pungent inhalations from the cigarette. “Have you never heard of broken homes? The divorce rate is climbing. Why wouldn’t I have seven places I call home?”

“Fine. But I still think it sounds like braggadocio. My parents are divorced but they moved to a different city afterward. Not a different country. I didn’t learn seven languages being carted around from house to house. I barely learned French, and they make you do it here.”

“That’s because they teach it awfully in school. But you know, all families are unhappy in their own way.” Jacob’s voice still teased. “My dad and mom were happy, but then they weren’t. So I moved to be with whoever was the happiest at the time. And sometimes, that meant learning to talk to other people because my parents became too silent to reach. Hence seven languages.”

“Fine,” Ethan said. “Is that how you got those scars? All that moving between broken homes?”

Jacob smiled, but it was bitter this time. “Yeah, actually. That is exactly how I got that scar.”

When Jacob didn’t offer any more information, Ethan didn’t ask. It was pointless to talk to someone about their history when they only spoke in riddles. Even though it felt unfair that Jacob already knew so much about him, Ethan let Jacob skirt the issue and talk about his other favourite topics. He complained about the way French was taught in elementary schools in Canada, how it was Parisian French and not Quebecois French like it should have been. Jacob even found a French radio station, and the last forty-five minutes of the trip were spent with Ethan attempting to remember all the French he’d learned in grade school, only to undo hat work when he remembered all his adjectives in his mind had feminine endings. When Ethan grabbed his phone out of Jacob’s pocket, the time was nearly four in the morning. Exhaustion tugged on his bones. He wanted more than the doughnut he’d eaten at the border, and he didn’t want to smell like cigarettes anymore, but he didn’t want to leave Jacob.

“So.” Jacob pulled up to a stop sign, pausing for longer than the standard two seconds. “The parking lot is around the corner. You want to stop there?”

“Sure. You wanna go in the back seat?”

Jacob raised his brows. “Only if you’re willing.”

After they parked, Ethan crawled across the emergency brake one last time for the night. He straddled Jacob’s waist, allowing their bodies to melt together as select items of clothing came off. When he glanced through the back window, in the midst of their bodies interlocking, there were only stars, somehow more disappointing than ever before.