What follows is an excerpt from Vera & Linus, a collection of prose poems published in 2006 in Iceland by Nyhil. Originally printed in an edition of four thousand copies, it has yet to be published in the US.

According to Jesse Ball:

Vera & Linus can best be understood as a manual of behavior, a product of a dialogue between two minds. There are two Veras: the Vera written by myself, and the Vera written by Thordis Björnsdottir. Two Linuses exist in the same manner. These Linuses and Veras might also be masks both for the authors and for their ideas of each other, as they engage in the play of identities and avatars. The acts of the individual who dismisses rights and judgments, but welcomes and delights in savage consequences—this is a way of world-building.

Now, you must forget all this and read on.

The Willow Path

A man in town knew about Vera and Linus, yet still he asked Vera if she would go walking with him, still he spoke to her as if he would like to be her lover.

-Go with him then, said Linus, and expect me by the willow tree that stands so proudly by the riverside.

So Vera went into town and took this town-man walking to the river. She did not suffer him to touch her, and she did not speak to him kindly. Yet still she led him down the path.

In the stable, Linus gathered himself. He put on his hate-coat of black stiffness, and his gloves of madness, and upon his feet his iron-shod boots.

-Watch how I go, he said to his dark preparations.

Then through the wood by a hidden way, the willow path, they called it ever after, in tribute to the thing he would then do.

Behind the willow, Linus. Up the river road, Vera and the town-man.

-It is nice here by the river, said Vera. One can hear the hours stirring in their sleep.

-Is it that, said the town-man, or just the world trembling at the touch of your beauty?

Out then Linus from behind the willow. He held a black hate in his hands, a red hate in his eyes, and a yellow hate laced like light through his boots.

-I am for you, he said.

and he took the town-man’s neck and broke it with the strength of his hands.

-Sleep, said Linus. Sleep awhile.

And he tossed the limp body into the water.

-Shall we dance? Asked Vera, lifting up her dress to show her ankles.

-Let us dance, said Linus.

And then they were three dancing, three then four then five—Vera, Linus, the willow path, the moon, and again the willow path.

Linus looks up from his lifetime of work as an undersecretary in the Department of Implausible Devices and Vera is standing there, newly come from a wooden crate shipped in haste across the border.

She is a bit shy. All of this is new to her.

-Excuse me, she says. Is this the Department of Implausible Devices?

In answer, Linus takes off his hat and arranges his hair in the manner of a jury of a wolves.

-But have you, asked Vera, seen this one?

With a snapping of buttons, her clothes are dismissed. Underneath Linus can see years of Thursdays, all in a row, with nary a Wednesday, a Tuesday, a Friday, a Sunday, a Saturday, a Monday between.

-How did you do that? howled Linus.

-I was always thinking of something else, said Vera, and wandering off. One day, in the midst of studying a book about trees, I had the clearest thought. I felt that I would die on a Thursday, and I saw myself then, in my last moments. The time between was negligible. I was a child and I was an old woman. I was dying and I was practically still being born. And now here I am again, stuck between.

They looked at each other in the crumbling light of a photograph hung upside down from a string.

And withal they dreamed first of a house in which they might live and built it night by night with the luminous labor of their sleeping minds.

One day—shall we go and find this place?

The dressing then in clothes prepared. The right-hand road that may yet lead left.

A long while upon the road. They passed down through a glen, through a burrow and out a tunnel through a farrier’s hut. In through a stable where sable mares drowsed beneath unkempt gables.

With a wink and a clapping of hands, with small leaps afoot, they came to a small hill and atop the hill, this dreamed place.

-Shall we live here, asked Linus, so far from what we know?

There’s nothing dear to you in the piles of the known, my Linus, said Vera.

And she was wrong, but he believed her. Settle here, settle here, called the house.

Drowse you too, called the stable, and the hill, and the road.

The path is gone, said the farrier’s hut, departing.

And they were left there then, with the day paused as though upon one’s outstretched fingers.

Linus had made a dress for Vera. The dress was of dark green material with two pockets attached by a thick and brown string of leather.

They had sewn one of the pockets together but inside five little children were in a silent heap.

The other pocket was open. It was slightly smaller; inside there was a single child behaving badly, repeatedly sticking its head up

-I want to go home, it whined.

Never! Vera said and pushed the head down.

Crying then inside the pocket and striving around.

-We must sew this one up as well, said Linus. Otherwise we get no peace.

-I agree with you, said Vera.

Linus sought a thread and a needle and started slowly sewing the pocket together. The child's crying increased and it tried to squeeze both hands and head through the hole. But Vera pushed it back down and all the while Linus kept on with the sewing.

Vera felt the child kicking and struggling in the pocket. But the wailing soon became less, at last turning to quiet sobbing. Then Linus finished the sewing.

Day passed, and the child's movements kept on. Now and then one could hear it sobbing in the pocket.

By evening the child had stopped struggling. No sound came from it any more, neither wailing nor sobbing. No sound anymore.

Vera and Linus learned of a woman living then in the town. She was a sculptor of dogs and other tame animals. What do I mean by this? Well, she would break their legs and paws and muzzles and fuse them with other animal parts. In her yard, dogs with bird heads nosing in old snuff boxes for bits of thread with which to weave their enormous nests. In her pond, a duck with the body of a duck and the neck of a duck, but the cumbersome head of a bear. This last so delicate he could do naught but beg for crumbs and bits of fish. Oh, if you could hear the sound of his pleading!

Linus took himself to her fence and peered and peered. Vera too.

-Shall we hurt her? Asked Vera. Shall we fuse her broken limbs to the limbs of another?

-Let us, said Linus.

and

-Yes,

and

-Dearly, I want to.

So they caught this woman in a net and pinioned her arms and severed them and killed a sea turtle with vile words and emptied it from its hardness and invested her there and then set her afloat with a sentence of several turtle lives to live. And oh, the oblivion, the long oblivion of a turtle life!

Linus surprised Vera in her bath.

Linus had killed a man and was wearing his skin like a coat, with the skin of the face making a clever sort of hood.

-How Aztec! said Vera.

-I’ve had it drying in the barn at least a month, said Linus, and each day I go and rub ointment in to keep it supple. One wouldn’t want to wear a rough and brittle skin-coat.

They looked at each other. Linus did a glad dance.

-Who was he? Asked Vera. Where did you catch him?

-By the stream, said Linus. I was napping and he came with a question. By chance I had my skinning knife there in the grass at my side.

-What was his question? asked Vera.

-He wondered, said Linus, if I’d been sleeping long and whether I knew if it was to rain, and if so whether it would be very much.

-Sounds nice enough to me, said Vera. You might have let him go and waited for someone else.

-I could not, said Linus stiffly. I wanted his skin and now I have it.

-Anyway, said Vera. Let’s go reconnoiter. As you have a skin coat, I shan’t rest until I have one as well. What sort do you recommend?

-A portly man, said Linus, of ample means and little foresight.

Vera and Linus undid the ropes that were wrapped and tied around the tree at the cliff edge. So suddenly the ropes shot away!

Vera’s fingers were burned.

And Linus, by the cliff edge:

-Now they are falling. Now they are falling. Now they have gone among the rocks.

Then Vera and Linus went with a great canvas sack and gathered the parts from among the rocks.

What did they do with this bag of limbs?

I suppose you would like to know, and although I had every intention of telling you when this story began, I find that your manner has become now so impertinent that I am compelled not only to leave the room, but further, to consider in passing whether or not I should cut you in the face with the razor blade I carry in my pocket, so then to leave you a lasting scar. You won’t be so insolent then, will you?

A Lesson in Dreams

Devices to be employed while traveling in sleep. Gestures of the hand, memorized cants, ideas of light, circular steps and methods of backtracking. The primary skill of dreams is that of ambuscade. A man named Drago Pentacost, finding himself alive in the twelfth century, was undoubtedly the greatest dreamer in recorded history. His manual, Psyche and Tools of Water, was only made in six copies, all of which were destroyed by the church, yet tales of his deeds can be found in church archives and relate to us a genius such as has seldom been equaled. It is said in dreams that one may request of someone a service and, if the request is stated properly, one may not be refused. Thus Pentacost built his home with the aid of crickets and weasels. He set a guard over himself by day with the aid of clouds. His way through thick fields was made easy by the bending of grass, the beckoning of wind. Indeed, he is said never to have walked up a hill, so kind was the ground to his passing. He made a compact in his last days and found a place in a deep turn where rows of trees made increased of morning. Is it known to you? For many have lost their way in this guess, that the shape of the land and light can make doors in the mind. Faring now on a ship out of storms and Zanzibar, I carve a figure out of bone, a man in a cloak. Of course, there is a compartment hidden beneath the cloak, and in it a slip of paper naming my successor. On a day like this anyone may be found or lost. Things happen with such ease I can’t describe.

Vera and Linus found a large and long box made from wood.

-Here I want to go, said Vera and lay down in the box.

She fit herself perfectly in, then smiled and closed her eyes.

-I will go then, Linus said and started walking away.

But when he had taken several steps he realized that he was incapable of leaving Vera behind in the box. He walked back and had a look in. But Vera was no longer there. The box was empty.

-Vera my Vera, where are you! he shouted.

He fell to his knees and set his head against the side of the box, then rose up and looked within again.

-I also will go, he said so only he could hear, and lay down in the box as well.

For Linus the box was too short and he was forced to bow his knees so he would fit.

He closed his eyes and hoped he would soon be lost, and then one day later found again, deep underneath.

Vera turned away from the little tea party. The day was hot and the grass seemed to her full of sadness, as though life could never go very far before being called back. She thought then of Varsithon, Linus’s hero.

And Varsithon, he knew how to command a troop of men. He knew how to give a building eyes, a tree hands. He knew how to come in great strength out of unlikely places, when all seemed lost in a riven occupied country.

And Varsithon, he brought the water out of the hills and besieged even the town of Yent with waves, though from its walls no sea was ever seen. All therein perished and he gave the land to his brother to rule.

And Varsithon became Emperor of the Air by a grand trick. He had gone on foot to the Devil and they spoke together, not in Hell, but in that far land on the far side of Hell, of which so little is reported or known.

-Shall I be Emperor of the Air? asked Varsithon, hearing all things through the eyes of birds, seeing all things through their beaks, passing all manner of time in the speed of clouds which seem so slow in the distance, but move, as we know, faster than horses or the bold fathers of horses.

-You shall be, said the Devil, Emperor of the Air, but you must give a thing to me.

-What, pray tell, may that be? asked Varsithon.

He stood up and walked to the very water’s edge.

-What shall I give you? he said again.

-Bring me, said the Devil, upon a great wooden barge:

• the tails of a hundred cats
• the noses of three kings
• an apple grown by chance on a lemon tree
• a flock of tethered birds contained somehow yet still in flight
• the smallest grain of sand in all the Orient
• the mandibles of a mandarin beetle, insect that knows all things but speaks not
• the names of ten children who died before they could be named
• a flock of sheep dressed as scribes and trained in every clerical task
• a box of fingers kissed in parting by chaste lovers in elder days

And Varsithon brought these things and was declared and made for then and always

Emperor of the Air.

Linus reached under Vera’s dress and discovered that beneath her stockings and beneath all her thin fabric, her legs were made of straw. He tore open her dress. Her hips were straw. Her chest was straw. Straw, her throat. Her head was scarcely recognizable.

Vera, he cried.

And Vera stepped out from behind a curtain.

-Let us burn ourselves in effigy, she said.

And in her arms was a straw Linus, correct in every regard.

With what book can you reckon death? With an old book? With a bible? With a book bound in the skin of a priest? For there are such books, but they cannot be found easily, and the cost is much, perhaps more than you can pay.

Linus lifted his heart in the midst of a crimson pond. This is the last time we will see each other, he thought, and then the rowboat was abreast of him, and Vera was there, and he climbed up and in.

-You were too long in the wilds, my love, said Vera. For look now, even the hairs of your face and head have grown long.

-Yet my eyes are thin and small, said Linus. And I drape over the same bones.

Then the sky was filled with kites that rustled with the uncertainty of war. Has the time at last come upon us? they cried, but no sound came. For even then the world was being folded up in immense sheets of paper. Six men came along a crease, wearing the heads of frogs, laden down with an enormous burden.

-We shall help you! cried Vera, abandoning the boat.

But the burden was only enough for the frog-men, and when it was threatened, they disappeared.

Where they had been there was only the sound of pages being turned deep within a house.

-Such has always been my inheritance, said Linus.

And they walked hand in hand to where no fate would spare them.

Linus crept out in the night to go and see about a garden he had laid in the cemetery of his devastated family.

He passed then along thin roads in beams of light like the glances of animals through leaves in Decembers of the fourteenth century.

A gate then in the dim air.

Linus thought of a stone and a river within a stone and a town beside the river. He began to think about it and he saw it vividly. He felt it rushing towards him. He could make out the steeple of the town, the tops of the houses. He saw faces in the street looking. He felt if he thought for even an instant longer about the town he would be lost in it and might never return.

And seldom can we arrive in the night without the vestiges of other beings, other needs troubling us.

We are strongest when alone, acting in legion as all that of which we are capable. Yet precisely thus we can be mistaken for nothing less than nothing, a cloud of dust on the road, a darkening archive of filaments and silhouette.

This is some of what Linus felt.

And then with a jumping of fences he came to the garden.

Six stones in a circle, all written over with the lives of those who raised him. A tree long begun from red Japan, with the most elegant leaves, leaves like learned speech heard in passing upon a street one knows quite well one will never walk upon again.

Linus touched the dirt with his hands. He turned it over once, twice, as one turns a coin, for the garden loved him well, would do anything to please him, and above him the moon remembered this and that compact they had made, and cast for him an especial torchlight and sang even the quietest of river songs.

For though the moon is not a river, it is the mother of all rivers and the songs that rivers sing they learned long ago when the moon spoke and went about as you or I, though better.