The Veil by Cory Putman Oakes

Gate Strait, or the place where San Francisco Bay meets the Pacific Ocean. But that had never made very much sense to me either. “Is it real?”
    “Yes, it’s very real. Just as real as the bridge and the city you’re used to.”
    “But how can they
both
be real?” I asked. “How can there be a golden bridge and a red bridge in the exact same place?”
    “The two bridges exist together. You might say they overlap.”
    I squinted down at the bridge, wishing for the first time that I could creep down off of the bunker, toward the edge, in order to get a closer look.
    “What are those things coiled around the bridge supports?”
    “Snakes,” Lucas replied, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
    My eyes grew wider when I saw he wasn’t joking; there were very clearly two giant serpents, the exact same color as the bridge, each with their lower halves wrapped around one of the bridge supports. Their upper halves stretched up to the sky, and their heads were in the center of the bridge, almost touching.
    “They’re guards,” Lucas explained. “Just like them.” He pointed back behind me, to the highest levels of the Headlands. I could just barely make out large circular shapes dotting the very tops of the mountains. Some of the circles had dark shapes inside of them. “Griffins.”
    I turned back around; I was pretty sure my mouth was hanging open. “You’re kidding me.”
    But I knew he wasn’t. As much as I’d been questioning my sanity lately, there had also been a very strong sense of certainty running alongside my strange visions. A sense that they were not to be questioned, that as alarming and weird as they might seem to me, there was nothing false or tricky about them. They just
were
, exactly as this strange new world in front of me just
was
. I had no more ability to doubt this than I had to doubt my own face in the mirror.
    And I recognized the exact same certainty in Lucas’s voice, even as he was telling me things which, logically, only a crazy person would actually believe.
    “We call it Fort Francisco,” he told me. “It’s an outpost, one of our more important strongholds. We work very hard to keep it well guarded.”
    “And who is ‘we’?” My pulse quickened a bit; this was it. This was the question that was the key to everything.
    Lucas opened his mouth to reply, then hastily glanced down at his watch. “Damn, a quarter after nine. We’ve got to move if we’re going to get you home by ten.”
    ——
     
    I couldn’t believe it when Lucas suddenly jumped down from the bunker and started heading toward the car. I stayed where I was, cross-legged on the edge of the concrete, watching him curiously.
    When he realized I wasn’t behind him, he turned around and waved his arm impatiently at me. “Let’s go!” he called. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back. I promise.”
    “Gran said you’d answer all of my questions,” I pointed out, still sitting securely on the bunker. “But I have more. Lots more. More than I had this afternoon, in fact.”
    “Tomorrow,” he said firmly. “You’ve seen and heard a lot today. Your brain must be overloading. If I try to squeeze anything more in there right now, it might explode.”
    “You’re only saying that because you have precalc with me. Other than math, I’m actually very smart.”
    “Smart has nothing to do with it. You need to
process
the things you’ve learned today so you can handle what I’m going to tell you tomorrow. Trust me, a good night’s sleep is what you need. Let’s get you home.”
    With one last glance down at the bay, I swung myself down from the bunker and followed him reluctantly to the car.
    I had a strangely emotional reaction to leaving the Headlands behind, one that distracted me from the windy, curvy drive back down to 101 that ordinarily would have terrified me to my very soul. Instead of feeling fear, I felt an immense, unexpected sadness. As though I’d seen something I would never