A Dream of Ice (20 page)

“Who is ‘we'?” Ben asked.

“A man and a woman—the woman was on fire, burning the ship with her own body. I couldn't stop her.”

“It's over,” Ben said. “And you got what you went back for: names. That's what Jacob was trying to say.”

Caitlin pulled back. “Ben, is that woman here?”

“You mean talking through Jacob?”

“No,
now
. Did you see anything?”

“No, but I felt cold,” he admitted. “Very, very cold. I saw your hair rise, like it did at the UN. And the cat ran away.”

Caitlin continued to breathe heavily. She jerked her head around as if looking for something.

“What is it?”

“She's here. She is
here
.”

“Caitlin, no—we're alone.”

Caitlin got up, ran down the hall, putting her ear to Jacob's door. He was reading aloud. Captain Nemo was having a hard time of things with
his
ship but Jacob sounded fine. She turned and shuffled back unsteadily, falling into the nearest chair, and stared at the floor. After a moment, her eyes rose and found Ben.

“It was Maanik all over again,” she said.

“No, it was not that. What you saw was an old vision of fire.”

“I don't mean that,” Caitlin said. “I don't mean they were souls trying to do a ritual. The woman I saw, the woman I was, is trying to communicate something now, through a child.
Why?
Why Jacob?”

Ben crawled toward her. He took up her hands again. “Maybe it's got nothing to do with a child, or with trauma as it did last time,” he suggested. “Maybe they're doing it because they know you will listen.”

Caitlin stared at Ben and nodded. “Okay. That may be true. But . . . listen to
what
?”

“I don't know,” he said, picking up his phone.

“Did you at least get any new words?”

“Just the names. Which is pretty considerable, if you think about it. We can start building a who's who with Enzo and Dovit—”

No sooner had the names been uttered than the burst of cold returned with a plummeting shriek, a whistle that could have been the wind or a scream. It swept around them like an unbottled genie until they felt as if they were inside a column of ice.

“No,” Caitlin yelled, scowling at a point between her and Ben. “
No!
”

The wind stopped and an instant later Jacob cried out. Caitlin bolted from the chair and ran to his room. Squatting by his bedside, she looked into his eyes to make sure he was present.

He was. His eyes were searching behind Caitlin, but they were not lost in an ancient place. They were darting through the room as though he were looking for a loose parakeet.

“What is it, hon?” she asked, touching his hair with one hand as she signed with the other. “Did you just call me?”

“I thought there was a snowman,” he said.

“A snowman?” Caitlin said, forcing a smile. “Tell me about him.”

His eyes stopped moving and narrowed in contemplation. “Maybe not a snowman,” he said. “A snow woman. A pretty lady made of ice.”

That was all Jacob said before lying back on the bed. Caitlin did not press for more. She placed the covers under his chin and then lay beside him. Ben, who had been observing from the doorway, smiled and left them alone.

Mother and son stayed that way for quite some time as late afternoon shaded to dusk.

Ben stood staring out the window, where the last of a brilliant red sunset was ebbing from the dark sky.

“What do we do next?” he asked after she finally emerged from the bedroom.

Caitlin shook her head. “I hate to say it, but I'm thinking the next move is up to a snow woman.”

Ben made an unhappy face. “I don't feel good about leaving you here.”

“You know, I'm okay with that. Despite all that's happened with
Jacob,” Caitlin said. “This time I didn't get the feeling that . . . whoever I was wanted to hurt him, or me. Any of us.”

Ben's mouth twisted slightly. “Let me ask you this—and I need an honest answer. Would you have come back if I hadn't brought you back?”

“I don't know, Ben.”

“So what will you do if it happens again?”

“I don't know that either, Ben.”

“Two ‘Ben's,” he said. “In Caitlin speak, that means ‘Time to go.' ”

“It is, but only because I'm really beat,” she said. “I'm gonna make dinner for me and the lad and try not to think about any of this tonight.”

Ben nodded in accord. That was easy to do when there were no other options.

She thanked him for his help and for taking the time off from work and kissed him good-bye on the cheek. He gave her a brief, part-sad, part-wry look of
That's it?
before she shooed him out the door. The click of the latch sounded uncommonly loud, like the door of a walk-in freezer.

Caitlin stood by the window and looked at the remaining crescent of sun, the same sun that had set over Galderkhaan.

She woke Jacob for dinner and together they made franks and beans; why was it that passed gas always lifted boys' spirits? When they finished, they channel surfed for a while until Jacob fell asleep with his head in her lap. Not without effort, Caitlin carried him to bed. She wondered how many more times she'd be able to do this. The kid was getting big. She wondered if he would be six-foot-five big like his father, or five foot six like her father.

A pointless mom-exercise
, she thought, smiling at herself. But right now, pointless felt good.

The apartment was quiet. The whole city felt quiet. Caitlin looked at lamplights across the street, figures sitting down to meals, and thought about the people she and Ben had passed on their walk toward Paley Park. Everyone had seemed remarkably buoyant. It had
been such a difference in tenor from the weeks when Kashmir had verged on nuclear war. Individual confidence had surged back. People's lives were brightening here despite the darkness in other parts of the world.

The observation gave Caitlin no comfort. The opposite, in fact. The last recession had driven home the fact that confidence too easily spawns rashness, then crashes, then despair. She felt like she was seeing the beginning of the next end already.

She sat on the couch and rubbed her temples, trying to relax. It wasn't coming. Of course not: there was unfinished business. Whether it was her own life or the life of a patient, she could never compartmentalize that easily.

Caitlin was almost grateful when her phone rang and though her screen gave only a number, she accepted the call.

“Yes?”

“Dr. O'Hara?” said a young woman's voice.

“Yes, who is this?”

“It's Maanik Pawar.”

Nausea and fear filled her throat. Caitlin hunched and both hands involuntarily clutched the phone in panic.
It's starting again!
her mind screamed. She fought hard to sound natural.

“Maanik, hello! It's so nice to hear your voice. How are you doing?”

“Really well!”

Caitlin suddenly felt like crying. “Tell me!” she said.

“I've gained back all the weight I lost and you should see my arms. My papa arranged for a doctor to use this stem cell spray stuff. They said it was the fastest recovery they'd seen so far. My skin completely healed from the scratches in like a day. Well, they were more than just scratches, I guess.”

“Gouges,” Caitlin said very gently.

“Yes.” Maanik sounded thoughtful, not upset.

“That's, well, incredible, Maanik. How are you sleeping? Are you having any strange dreams or even daydreams?”

Maanik laughed. “I've been daydreaming about becoming a bioengineer instead of a diplomat, does that count?”

Caitlin laughed. “Sorry, no. By the way, you know I spoke to your parents last week.”

“They told me.”

“They said you didn't seem to remember anything that had happened?”

“Yeah,” Maanik said. “To be honest, I'm kind of relieved about that, Dr. O'Hara. Do
you
think my memory will return?”

“No,” Caitlin said. “At least it hasn't for others who experienced trauma like that.”

“Anyway, I wanted to call and thank you personally. I don't know what you did for me specifically but you saved my life. I don't think my parents were exaggerating when they said that. And I'm so grateful.”

Caitlin couldn't say anything for a moment. She was wiping tears from her eyes.

“How are you?” Maanik asked, her voice full of concern. “You experienced these things with me, right?”

“Fine,” Caitlin lied. “I absorb a little something from all my patients. I'm used to it. Lots of lead shielding.”

“My father has that too,” Maanik said. “I hope to be like you both.”

“I do hope you'll keep in touch sometimes,” Caitlin said, sad to let her go.

“Absolutely. Okay, I have to go now—”

“Quickly, Maanik,” Caitlin said, “how is Jack London?”

“Oh.” Maanik was silent for a long moment. “Well . . .”

Caitlin's stomach dropped through the floor. She remembered Maanik's mother threatening to put him down.

“He was a little crazy last week,” Maanik continued.

Caitlin was about to ask what kind of crazy, but Maanik kept going.

“We decided to put him through obedience school again,” the
young woman said. “He had his first class yesterday and he was a superstar, so we think that will do the trick.”

“That's good,” Caitlin exhaled.

“And now I have to go,” Maanik said. “But thank you, Dr. O'Hara. Thank you so much.”

They said good-bye and ended the call, and Caitlin sat there for a few minutes holding her phone like a warm mug of tea. The words had been comforting but the reconnection, even through the phone, had been unsettling. She was trying to understand why.

Unbidden, a thought occurred to her.

The
cazh
got the Priests' minds out of the way
.
Without it, they were no better at focusing than the rest of us.

And Maanik's phone call had gotten Caitlin's mind out of the way. Distraction, as she well knew, could be a useful psychological process, helpful for finding answers. Just stop thinking and it will come . . .

She and Ben had spent hours talking and thinking. Time to stop.

Caitlin put the phone down and uncurled herself on the couch, feet flat on the floor. She was going to begin with what she knew: the gesture she'd learned from Atash on his hospital deathbed. Caitlin crooked her right arm over her torso with her right fingers pointing toward her left shoulder. Then she angled her left hand to point away from her knees toward the floor, and immediately she felt something lift away from her left shoulder in a wave. The Galderkhaani gesture for “big water”—“ocean”—had worked. All of her intense emotions washed from her head down her spine and seemed to fly away from the base of her back. For the first time since she had helped Odilon, she felt in perfect balance.

She looked up and her eyes fell inexorably on her green globe. As if the orb felt her eyes upon it, the glass responded. The white web of lines inside elongated past the curve of the sphere into the air. It looked like the fin of a sailfish, glowing in light that wasn't really there, now that the living room had darkened into full night. It was so beautiful Caitlin wanted to infiltrate it, be part of it. The lines extended
forth, growing through the room until they filled half of it, with some of their tips touching Caitlin's throat. This was different from before. There was no other person present, just . . . joy? She found herself singing in her mind. She and the orb were in tune with each other.

The music of the spheres
, she thought.
The harmonics of the universe
. She didn't feel safe but she felt comforted, somehow. Not with a spirit but not alone.

Maybe you've been
cazhed
with someone without knowing it!
she thought, not entirely in jest.

In Iran, Vahin had suggested that the psychiatrist's closeness to patients who had been traumatized essentially bonded her to them, and through them to past events—the trauma of Galderkhaan.

Caitlin returned her focus to the living room. In memory, not vision, she saw Vahin drinking jasmine tea across from his red-patterned wall in Iran—but inexplicably, an image of Madame Langlois followed with even more intensity. Cigar smoke wafted between her and Caitlin.

This is not of Vodou
, the priestess had said toward the end of Caitlin's time in Jacmel.

And that
, Caitlin thought now,
is why I need you here, someone here who understands. I need an anchor.

Holding the madame's gaze through the smoke in her mind, Caitlin closed her eyes. Unbidden, she still felt the fingerlike span of light from the orb. Relenting, giving in to their touch, she gathered her deepest sense of self and slowly spun it forward, merging with the orb, while drawing on the energy of those she had met and bonded with over the last week—

And then the energy of another person was back, the newest bond, the dying woman falling from the clouds, fire all around. But in that fire was something else. Something green appeared in her mind's eye. Not a bottle green. Paler, more yellow in it, tessellated and glowing with its own light.

The object was oblong, a tile of some kind pulsing with incredible
power, like a magnet whose arcs of energy were visible. It blazed through the dying woman, all but obliterated that image, and dominated Caitlin's mind with other images.

Beckoning. Somehow, the object was pulling her toward it.

Caitlin suddenly felt an enormous pressure on her eardrums followed by rapidly increasing pain. The pain was not
in
the vision: it was real. The green object, too, seemed to have substance, presence,
power
.