The Sound of Seas Read online

  Vilu crouched lower and continued forward until he was close enough to hear what the woman was saying. It was difficult to understand the precise meaning of the woman’s words, since her arms were flailing, unable to qualify what her mouth was speaking. But Vilu understood the gist of her anger:

  “. . . must go!” the woman cried. “Must get back!”

  “Where?” Qala asked. She hugged her close, the Standor’s legs wide to brace herself.

  “My son . . . let me go!”

  “First, you must calm yourself!” Qala ordered.

  As the last of the shadows of the fishing fleet passed overhead, releasing the sun and causing the pool to sparkle wildly, the woman seemed to relax. She did not go limp but she ceased her struggles. Nonetheless, wily Lasha stood ready with a hemp noose he had just grabbed from the hut. He held it up, ready to slip it around the woman’s throat, but Qala shook her head.

  “She will be all right now, I think,” the Standor said. It was as much an order as an observation. She tilted her head, looked down into the woman’s wide eyes. “You will be, yes?” she asked, motioning gently.

  The woman didn’t answer but she stopped struggling. Vilu felt a release of tension from the crowd. It was like the Priests said: people could feel people’s moods if they were open to them. Now Vilu relaxed as well. Too late, he recalled why he had come running out in the first place. Shielding his gold eyes, he looked up at the great airship as it nosed up to the high mooring tower on the coast—his heart seemed to grow huge as he saw the pride of Falkhaan roped and planked to the simu-varkas, the highest column in western Galderkhaan. The great ship’s flipperlike wings rippled atop the envelope, catching the air, turning at the behest of the femora-sitas working the hemp. The tiny, distant deputy commanders were pulling hard. It was majestic, and yet—

  Vilu’s eyes returned to the dying conflict there on the ground. That struggle had power too. Something about it touched him inside; not just fear as he had never known in his young life, but the unfamiliar wildness of the woman and whatever had been compelling her to strike Lasha, to cry out. He had seen people who inhaled dried, burning seaweed act strangely, dance, roll on the ground—but never violently.

  The woman was tired and all but hanging limp in the Standor’s arms. The larger woman’s face was near her captive’s ear.

  “Can I release?” Vilu heard the Standor ask in basic Galderkhaani, since her arms were still occupied.

  Her captive hesitated then nodded.

  “First, tell who are you and why this anger.”

  The smaller woman was breathing heavily. She was looking ahead, scowling, as though she were trying to solve a problem posed by a numbers scholar. She seemed distracted and was moving her fingers as if they were weaving needles. Side to side, pointing down, tucking and untucking.

  “Did you hear?” Standor Qala asked.

  “Yes, yes,” the woman said. “I—I want to get home. To my son.”

  “Where is home?”

  “North,” she said after some hesitation.

  “You must be mistaken,” Qala told her. “You cannot dwell ‘north.’ There is no town ‘north.’”

  “There is,” the woman said, finding renewed life in her arms and gesturing emphatically. “I tried to tell that to this other one—”

  “Noose her!” Lasha said, shaking the hemp with fearful enthusiasm.

  “Quiet,” Qala said to the pool guardian. She turned her face back to her captive. “You wear the dress of a digger,” the Standor noted. “I will take you to the Technologists, perhaps they should be—”

  “No!” the woman said, then laughed. She moved her pinned arms as much as she could. “My god, the Technologists. This is madness. I cannot be here. I don’t belong here. I must go back!”

  Lasha had made his way around the woman then bent cautiously close to her hand. She was wearing a bracelet carved from stone.

  “She cut my cheek with this,” he said as he studied it.

  “Your cheek should not have been so close,” the captive said.

  Qala continued to examine the woman. “No arguing. You seem better now,” she said.

  “I can stand, if that’s what you mean.”

  “And have a conversation,” the Standor said. She bent and looked at the carvings in the stone. “‘To Bayarma from Bayarmii,’” she read.

  The smaller woman shook her head as the laughter turned to tears. “It isn’t possible,” she said. “I—I know that name.”

  “Which name?” the Standor asked.

  “Bayarmii,” she said. “That was the name of the young girl who tried to bond with the soul of Maanik, a young woman in another—place.”

  “Another place,” Lasha said, snorting. “North, you mean.”

  “That’s right. The girl who perished with her grandmother. Or . . . she will perish.” Caitlin looked at her hands. “I cannot be her . . . the grandmother. These are not old enough. I must be the girl’s mother.”

  “You are confusing me,” Qala said. “Who are you?”

  The captive looked from Lasha to the glistening pool to the little boy near it. Her expression softened when she saw him and a sob erupted from her throat. Her legs fell from under her.

  The Standor held her upright with strong but comforting arms. “What’s wrong?” Qala asked.

  “I left a sweet young boy behind,” the woman said. “I have to find him.”

  “And perhaps I can help with that,” the Standor said. “First, you haven’t told us who you are? Only who you are not.”

  “I am Caitlin O’Hara,” she said, the name sounding strange in a tongue that was not her own, “and I must get home.”

  “To the north?” Qala said.

  Caitlin nodded forlornly. “To the north . . . and a world farther than that.”

  CHAPTER 1

  It was nearly dawn when an exhausted Ben Moss left Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

  Nothing seemed real to the British-born UN translator. But that was becoming the new normal ever since he and Caitlin had been delving into the long-dead world of Galderkhaan and its living emissaries—ghosts, spirits, energies, or whatever they were; during those few weeks he had lost his old perspective on what constituted “real.”

  No, that is not entirely true, he thought. What is very real is that Caitlin is presently unconscious and nonresponsive.

  Yet even as he thought that, his arms moved. He had been spending all his spare time trying to piece together and translate the language of Galderkhaan—so much time that it seemed almost unnatural not to make superlative hand gestures as he spoke.

  That too was a new normal. Along with watching people who unconsciously moved their hands as they spoke, wondering, Are you descended from Galderkhaani?

  Ben walked onto Third Avenue, into the lamplit darkness of the New York predawn. It was late fall and, in addition to the darkness, a cold wind swept in from the East River, adding to his sense of desolation. He was unsure what to do next. That unfamiliar confusion frightened him. Typically, Ben followed the lead of the UN ambassadors. He didn’t have to plan very much, to think further than the next few words. The one time he had tried doing that, as a student at NYU—loving Caitlin—it ended with an estrangement that lasted for years.

  Galderkhaan had brought back all the old fears of wanting something, of planning for something, of being disappointed. Now Caitlin’s life might hang on him reengaging.

  Not being a family member, Ben was only able to get answers from attending physician Peter Yang because the linguist was the only one who could explain—more or less—what had brought Caitlin to this condition.

  “You told the EMT that she was—self-hypnotizing in the park?” Dr. Yang had asked as they stood in the hospital waiting room.

  “Yes,” Ben had said. That was the only way he could think
to describe what he suspected was going on.

  “Do you know why?” the doctor had enquired.

  “She was . . . she thought she might be able to contact spirits,” he said. “It’s become a professional hot topic for her.”

  “Why?”

  “Several of her patients needed help in that area—she didn’t tell me more.”

  “Several?” the doctor had asked.

  “Similar reactions to psychological trauma,” Ben replied.

  “Coincidence, then?”

  “That is what she was—exploring,” he said carefully.

  “I see. No mental illness in her past?”

  “None.”

  “Do you know if she has experienced visions, hallucinations?”

  That had been a question full of dynamite. Ben had thought carefully how to answer. “Yes, but I don’t think there’s a neurological—”

  “You’re a doctor, Mr. Moss?”

  “No. But she chose to do these things,” he said with some annoyance. He didn’t like being challenged on translations, and he didn’t like being challenged on this. “As I said a moment ago, Doctor, she was self-hypnotizing. A choice.”

  “All right, then,” the physician went on. “What about drugs, alcohol—”

  “No drugs, no alcohol in excess.”

  “Depression, schizophrenia, hysterical reactions, near-death experiences?”

  He answered yes to the last two, explaining—once again, revealing as little as possible—that Dr. O’Hara had been treating patients who suffered from both of those and she had experienced a kind of empathetic blowback.

  “Not uncommon with good hypnotists,” Dr. Yang mentioned. “Is this similar to the trauma work she did in Phuket, Cuba, and elsewhere?”

  Ben brightened. “You know about that?”

  “I’ve read what she has published.”

  “Yes, that work and this are very much related. Back then she was seeking a way to—short-circuit PTSD, if you will. She was continuing where she left off.”

  The doctor seemed less alarmed when he learned there was a context for the experiments. The diagnosis, for now, was psychogenic unresponsiveness. Dr. Yang said they would keep her in the hospital for more tests, but that was all he would say. Ben would have to find out more from Caitlin’s parents. He had phoned them, waking them, trying and failing not to alarm them. It was one of the few times his smooth British accent and composure had been a total fail. They were on their way in from Long Island.

  So Ben left the complex, largely uninformed, not quite aware of what had happened, and utterly unsure what to do next.

  There were no phone messages. He hadn’t expected any; neither Anita Carter nor Flora Davies had his cell number. Anita was a colleague and friend of Caitlin’s, a psychiatrist who had stayed with Caitlin’s son, Jacob, at the apartment; Davies was the head of the Group, an organization based in a Fifth Avenue mansion and which collected information and relics from Galderkhaan. Ben did not know anything about the latter. Neither had Caitlin before she went down to its headquarters, a visit that led directly to her collapse in the adjacent Washington Square Park.

  Bundled against the cold, Ben decided to do what he always did: take small steps and see where they went. He paused in the doorway of an office building to call Caitlin’s landline, to make sure Jacob was all right. That was what Caitlin would have wanted him to do.

  Anita picked up in the middle of the second ring. She said that the ten-year-old was in his room, up early after a restless night, but that there was something more pressing.

  “What’s wrong?” Ben asked.

  “There’s someone here,” Anita said with concern in her voice. “First tell me—how’s Caitlin? Where is she?”

  “In the hospital.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’s unconscious—doctors wouldn’t tell me much.”

  “Shit.”

  “Anita, who’s there?”

  The woman hesitated.

  “Just say it,” Ben told her. “Nothing would surprise me.”

  “All right.” She lowered her voice, said closely into the phone, “It’s a Vodou priestess. And her son.”

  “Madame Langlois and Enok?”

  “Jesus, yes!” Anita seemed caught off guard. “How did you . . . was Caitlin expecting them? I assume she met them in Haiti—”

  “Not expecting that I’m aware of,” Ben said. Caitlin had met the Vodou priestess and her houngan son while trying to help a young girl in Port-au-Prince. Gaelle Anglade was one of the youths whose trauma seemed linked to Galderkhaan. If the duo had been planning to visit, Caitlin would not have failed to mention it. “They just showed up?”

  “About an hour ago,” Anita said. “They flew in from Haiti, came right here, and the priestess flat-out announced that Caitlin is in the coils of a serpent.”

  “The great serpent!” Ben heard a woman’s voice say in the background.

  “Forgive me,” Anita said, lowering her voice. “The great serpent?”

  “We did not come right here,” the Haitian woman added. “Should have. I do not like Miami. Too chaotic.”

  “Right, right,” Anita said into the phone. “Ben, what the hell is going on?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” he answered truthfully. He did not know how much Caitlin may have told her about Galderkhaan and did not want to get into that now. Leaving the protection of the doorway, he saw a cab, hurried to the curb, and flagged it. “I’m coming over there. Has Jacob been in his room the entire time?”

  “Yes,” Anita said. “He’s been in there drawing a comic book about Captain Nemo . . . he’s fine. Ben, I’m a pretty good psychiatrist and very good listener and there’s something you’re not telling me. What exactly happened to Caitlin?”

  “Firefighters found her lying unconscious in Washington Square Park.”

  “Oh, Ben . . .”

  “I know. There were fires—maybe a gas leak. Perhaps she was overcome.”

  “I got the alert on my phone, didn’t put the two together. Should I call her folks?”

  “Done. They’re on the way to Lenox Hill.”

  “Jesus. What does the doctor say? Or wouldn’t they tell you?”

  “He was like the bloody sphinx, with occasional claws.”

  “Jesus,” she said again. “Maybe if I call him, doctor to doctor?”

  “From his questions, I don’t think he knows much. I’m more concerned about Jacob and your guests.”

  “I understand. Look, I’ll arrange with my office to stay here as long as I’m needed. Meanwhile, what do I do about . . . them?”

  “Nothing, other than keep them away from Jacob,” he said. “Have they asked about him?”

  “No—but they’re obviously involved in this whole ‘thing’ somehow,” she whispered. “How else could they know that something was going to happen to Caitlin?”

  “I just don’t know,” Ben said. “Look, Caitlin’s got a can of mace in her night table if you need it. I’ll be there in about ten minutes. And don’t ask how I know that.”

  “Wasn’t,” Anita replied. “What’s the doorman’s name? In case I need him?”

  “I think Elvis is on at this hour.”

  “Elvis?”

  “Yeah. He’s okay.”

  “What about you?” Anita asked. “How are you?”

  “I have absolutely no idea,” he told her. “Just moving ahead. See you soon.”

  Ben sat back in the cab, watched the video display in the seat, saw the news alert from Washington Square. There weren’t just fires; there were floods, water-main breaks, crowds of students who were being hustled from dorms into the streets. The driver was talking to someone in Nepali on his Bluetooth. Ben couldn’t even tune it out; he understood everything about the family’s dispute with
the city over a dangerous school crossing in Queens.

  Noise and unrest, Ben thought. It didn’t end with the tamping down of the tensions between India and Pakistan. It just went back underground, unsettling everyone at a low boil. Thanks to Caitlin and her commitment to helping, he was now acutely aware of it.

  Caitlin, he thought, choking up for the first time. What happened down there, Cai? But it was more than wondering; it was pain and guilt. While Caitlin sought a way to rescue the kids who had been assaulted by Galderkhaani spirits—Maanik Pawar in New York, Gaelle Anglade in Haiti, Atash Gulshan in Iran—Ben Moss, linguist, had been pushing the Galderkhaani language on her, calling and texting and meeting with her to describe with great enthusiasm each new discovery or supposition. He had made her part of a quest that should have ended, for her, with the curing of Maanik and Gaelle. He tried—and failed—not to feel resentment at the way she had kept him out of her research and discoveries. It brought up old feelings about the way she had conceived Jacob with a man she had only just met on a relief mission, someone who later became the very definition of “absentee father.”

  Tears pressed against the backs of his eyes as he thought of the girl he had shared so much with, who he had strongly reconnected with over Maanik, who he was now helplessly in love with. He wanted her back not just from this crisis but in all ways, and he didn’t know how to go about any of it.

  Baby steps? Ben thought with sharp self-reproach. His limited research into Galderkhaan barely translated the fragments of ancient language they possessed, let alone provided insights into the existence of souls in the Ascendant, Transcendent, and Candescent realms. How was he supposed to help Caitlin with this?

  Maybe the madame has insights, he thought then hoped. The priestess had been helpful in Haiti. She certainly has some kind of second sight.