A Dream of Ice Page 6

  “Ma. Ma. Ma.”

  The drumming grew more desperate, like someone trapped behind a door with something they had to escape—

  The cold mist unfolded toward the boy’s bed. It stopped and slowly rose up, towering above Jacob with a slow, writhing presence that stirred the drawings pinned to his walls and rippled through the open pages of Verne on the bed, then it stealthfully lay across him.

  There was a whisper, a breath warmer than the rest. It touched the boy’s cheek and the knocking slowed, then stopped. A word swept into his ear.

  Tawazh.

  • • •

  At breakfast, Jacob was grumpy. “Did you take a pill last night?”

  “Half of one. Why?”

  “You never hear me knock when you take those.”

  “Jacob, you’re always asleep when you drum on the wall.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Sorry, kiddo,” she said. “Really, I am.” She got up and crossed to hug him but instead tickled him out of his grump.

  “I heard something in my sleep,” he said.

  “Oh? What was it?”

  “A word,” he replied.

  “What word? ‘Nemo’? ‘Nautilus’?”

  “No,” he answered. “I can’t remember. But I heard it,” he insisted. “Inside my ears.”

  “A dream,” his mother said, kissing him on both ears.

  After a relatively cheery breakfast and warm good-byes at the school gate, her mood quickly reverted to unease. She was eager for her morning appointment with Barbara and headed straight uptown to arrive early.

  Barbara’s apartment was one of the high-ceilinged gems hidden above Manhattan’s flower district, though only a handful of shops there still sold potted trees and orchids. Six floors up, with wood-paneled walls and tall, sun-filled windows, the apartment always reminded Caitlin of an old but beautifully restored ship. The impression was inevitable, given the number of intricate knots displayed around the room—in table legs, fabric runners, throw pillows, and various media framed and mounted on the walls. Barbara’s first career had been as a mathematician specializing in topology. Her friends and family had decided that knots were her thing, and despite the fact that it had been ten years since she’d changed professions, they continued to gift her display-worthy examples for her collection.

  Barbara had a round, open face with a strongly pointed chin and sculpted eyebrows. But what everyone noticed first were her crystal-blue eyes. If you stayed with them, they shone like hopeful, helpful lights.

  The women embraced warmly at the door before Caitlin found the familiar comfort of the armchair across from Barbara’s. Concise and controlled, she then told her everything that had happened, from the first trance with Maanik to the “journeys” to Galderkhaan to Odilon’s energy to the strange woman on the train.

  When she was finished, Barbara smiled warmly. “How many times did you rehearse that in your head?”

  Caitlin laughed. “Twice on the way here. I wanted to give it to you as objectively as possible.”

  “Well, you tipped the narrative into clinical. In your ten minutes left, are you prepared to tip back into the personal?”

  Caitlin looked at her watch. “Yikes,” she said, suddenly feeling anxious that she wasn’t going to get what she needed before the session was over. She took a deep breath and pressed her back against the chair, uncrossed her feet so they were flat on the ground, and placed her hands cupped one inside the other on her lap. “Okay, Doc. I’m ready.”

  “All right, let’s start with something big and basic. Which concerns you most: the idea of new, expanded abilities—”

  “Am I crazy to believe they’re even possible?” Caitlin blurted.

  “I’m asking the questions,” Barbara reminded her.

  “Sorry. Right.”

  “Which concerns you most: the idea of expanded abilities, or the belief that Galderkhaan existed and in some way you might be linked to it?”

  “Oh god, Barbara. Both. I feel—stupid. Really stupid. And afraid. The lady who runs into disaster scenes is cowering in a closet. Why aren’t I exhilarated? Why aren’t I . . . I don’t know. Taking charge? Writing a paper about it or . . . ?”

  “Didn’t you do that with Maanik and the others? Take charge?”

  “Yes, but when it’s just me I can’t . . . think myself out of paralysis.”

  “Is there something specific you are afraid of?”

  “Oh yeah,” Caitlin said. “That with all the evidence that’s piling up—”

  “Each scrap of which is still circumstantial or has an alternative explanation, as far as I can see—”

  “Fine,” Caitlin said. “Fine. I’m still very afraid that everything I’ve experienced is real. I scared myself last night, Barbara. I told Ben unequivocally that I’d witnessed history that’s long gone. Not imagined it, not dreamed it, saw it. I was so sure. Yet even that doesn’t scare me as much as the fact that someone will find out and decide I’m losing my mind.”

  “You aren’t,” Barbara assured her.

  “I’m not so sure,” Caitlin said. “If we buy that I self-hypnotized at the United Nations, what if I’m doing that unwittingly, over and over, in small bites—on the subway, remembering people and places that may be fiction, imagining the cat brushing against people who aren’t there?”

  “Cats were wiccan familiars for a reason,” Barbara said.

  “What, you’re saying I’m a witch?” Caitlin laughed.

  “No, no—I’m saying cats are unexpected little creatures. That there are explanations for everything, including unremembered dreams surfacing when you’re awake and post-traumatic stress triggered by people making strange gestures in your direction, like Maanik did.”

  Caitlin sighed. “Maybe. Maybe. But what if what I’m doing, and the time I’m taking to do it, causes me to lose my job? What happens if the decision makers happen to see or hear and label me a quack?”

  “And if you didn’t look at the negative? These experiences have been liberating. I see a change in you, Caitlin. What about Maanik and Gaelle and the other people you have helped and will continue to help?”

  “I know, and maybe that’s ultimately what I’m afraid of,” Caitlin said. “That all my training goes out the window and . . . like I said, I become the crazy lady who does some weird semaphore thing with kids.”

  Caitlin moved her arms willy-nilly but what was meant as a joke hit her in a very different way. It felt comfortable, like she was communicating something very personal.

  “Let me take this in another direction,” Barbara said.

  “Please do.”

  “Are you afraid you’ll start having episodes like Maanik?”

  “No,” Caitlin answered without hesitation. “This is different. I mean, I don’t feel in danger of causing physical damage to myself or anyone else. But taking this further—” She swallowed a lump in her throat, paused, and breathed deeply. “For the sake of argument, whether this is real or imagined, what if I fail to recognize my reality anymore? The one I’m in with my son, and my work? What if I explore in here”—she said pointing to her head—“and I get to a place where I can’t go back to normal?”

  “Again, you’re anticipating what may never occur,” Barbara said. “You’re creating the perfect storm for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever is going on, might this just be a phase?”

  “Jesus!”

  Barbara started. “What?”

  “I thought you said ‘aphasia,’ like I had a mental dysfunction.”

  “Caitlin, I said ‘a . . . phase.’ ”

  Caitlin fell silent and Barbara gave her the space to calm. She forced herself to breathe. “You know what’s sad? All this talk and thinking and heightened emotions and ‘powers.’ God, it might actually be easier if I were crazy. Easier for me to deal with, easier to fix.”

  “I don’t agree at all,” Barbara said. “What’s more, in my professional opinion you are quite sane. And I think you know it. Which is no
t a bad thing,” Barbara pointed out. “You retain the capacity to be there for everyone who needs you. Focus on that. Stop playing with these ideas like they’re all loose teeth.”

  “Easy for you to say. You don’t speak Galderkhaani.”

  Barbara smiled strangely. “No, but I came close.”

  Caitlin looked at her in shock. “Wait, when? How? What?”

  “No. This is your session, not mine.”

  “My session ended five minutes ago—I was watching the clock. What are you saying, Barbara? You can’t just let that drop.”

  Barbara sighed and leaned back. She dropped her professional mask. “It was while I was doing postgrad at the University of Virginia. I agreed to a past-life regression for a neurobehavioral class.

  “With about two dozen people as witnesses, I was hypnotized and led back to some time and place when I could make click consonants like the Xhosa people in South Africa, though I was speaking in a language no one recognized. I did that for about ten minutes, then came back through my own life—speaking English.”

  “What did the professor say about it?” Caitlin asked, fascinated.

  “That either I went back through racial memory or it was a past-life experience—someone’s, if not my own.”

  “Someone’s?”

  “I shouldn’t do this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to prejudice your perceptions or my own.”

  “Too late,” said Caitlin.

  Barbara shook her head. “The professor said some schools of thought believe that when we are hypnotized we slip into a kind of astral ‘pool’ of experiences, if you will. We just grab one, or it grabs us, and for that time the experiences merge.”

  “An astral pool,” Caitlin said thoughtfully. “Like the transpersonal plane some Hindus believe in. I like that—the idea that under a controlled, scientific situation you had a remotely similar experience.” She then stood up, shook out her arms and legs, flexed her fingers, rolled her neck, and sat down in her chair again, feeling lighter, feeling finally ready for her day.

  “I have a suggestion,” Barbara said, just as the bell rang to signal her next patient’s arrival. “Don’t worry, it’s Simon, he’ll understand.” Barbara buzzed him into the lobby and continued. “When was the last time Jacob saw his aunt Abby in LA?”

  Caitlin smiled at her friend. “Nice carom shot, Doctor. I haven’t seen her in a long time either.”

  “Go out there,” Barbara said. “Get some family time embedded in your body and your brain. You never know when you might need it as a reference, a touchstone.”

  “Okay, maybe. Once I’m fully back on track with my regular clients.”

  “All right. How’s everyone else in your life?”

  Caitlin ran through the short list, starting with her parents and ending with Ben, their night together, and how it was better that they were proceeding as friends.

  “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Caitlin said, convincing herself. “For now.”

  “For now,” Barbara said, nodding in agreement. She then took a meaningful beat. “Speaking of ‘for now,’ want to schedule another one?”

  “Probably a good idea,” said Caitlin. “Strike while the iron’s hot.”

  While Barbara walked to her desk, Caitlin let her eyes drift around the room and ended up gazing at a lamp stand, amazed at how brass could be twisted so extensively, with such precision. Suddenly, she wasn’t thinking about the lamp. With eyes still on the brass, she slowly brought her hands together, her right hand slightly curved below her left hand, a few inches away from it. Instantly she felt energy coil in her chest, and her sight changed into—vision. The brass began to move. Just as the silvery metal poles and bars in the subway train had come alive with reflections, the shining patches of sunlight on the brass flared. They began to extend in the same curious geometry, reaching toward and running through her. She felt herself expand mentally, emotionally, and physically. Optimism, ebullience, pure joy surged back into her.

  She slowly looked around the room and Barbara’s multitude of knots was magnificent. They were all pulsing as the light side of each rope strand pushed against the side in shadow, and their loose ends extended past their frames through the air. Caitlin laughed in her throat and turned to take in more of them.

  Suddenly, the room flashed white, as if an old-fashioned reel of film had snapped and there was just a bare, brightly lit screen. Only it wasn’t entirely opaque; Caitlin could see a turquoise color swirling toward her from behind the white, and there was sound—several quick thuds, a pause, more thuds. They were amplified to the degree that Caitlin could feel them in her chest, in her back. There was an echoing quality to them but no actual echoes, just thuds.

  The rest of her senses, she realized, had vanished. She tried to raise her arms and step forward, to find something to hold on to in the whiteness. The motion was almost impossible, as if she were moving through mud. Using every ounce of her strength to push against the arrhythmic thuds, she managed to stretch out her hand. Then something darkened before her, a shape. Was it shoulders and a head?

  Caitlin thought she heard her name called, thin and wispy beneath the thudding. Slowly, she managed to pick up a foot and move it a couple inches ahead of her. Suddenly, her chest went empty with horror. She recognized the thudding. This drumming with no consistent beat was Jacob, drumming hard with his fingertips on the wall between their bedrooms.

  She tried to scream, tried to curve her hand into knuckles so she could knock back, if there was anything to knock against—but her mouth and her hand would not—

  Jacob! she yelled in her mind. Where are you? Who is with you?

  “Caitlin!” she heard again, to her left, louder and sharper. “Come back!”

  With monumental effort, Caitlin moved two of the fingertips of her outstretched hand slightly to the right, as the woman in the subway had done.

  At once, the whiteness and the thuds vanished. Caitlin fell back into the armchair, causing Barbara to pitch forward.

  “Oh my god,” Caitlin said, “Oh my god, Jacob.”

  Barbara crouched so they were face-to-face with her hands firmly placed on Caitlin’s shoulders. “Caitlin, what just happened?”

  “I went away. Somewhere. White clouds, or whitecaps on water, everywhere white. And drumming. I couldn’t find Jacob. Was he . . . were we drowning? Flying?”

  “Neither. You were right here,” Barbara said. “You didn’t go anywhere.”

  “Oh no,” Caitlin said. “I was not in this room.”

  “Caitlin, you were. Listen to me: are you tired?”

  “What? No! Barbara, it wasn’t petit mal. I didn’t have a seizure.”

  “How do you know? Perhaps we should schedule an EEG.”

  “That’s not it!” Caitlin said, pushing herself from the chair, making and unmaking fists. “No dizziness, muscles working fine. Not sweating and I wasn’t twitching, was I?”

  “No . . . ,” Barbara said, rising to face her. “Caitlin, at least sit and talk it through. Simon texted and said he could use some more time to make a phone call.”

  “I can’t,” Caitlin said. “I have to go.”

  “Caitlin, do you know where you are?”

  “Yes!”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To check on my son,” Caitlin replied, heading toward the door.

  “You should go home.”

  “No,” Caitlin replied. “I have to make sure he is okay.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Caitlin was too electrified to sit in a cab.

  She began the crosstown trek to Jacob’s school. She did it power-walking, burning off energy, pushing into the fear, into everything that was roiling inside. The session with Barbara had opened doors to . . . what exactly?

  There was no more dodging or denying this new reality.

  She continued to walk.

  Despite everything she had said to Barbara, Caitlin realized that she was fighting h
erself. She was a scientist who took rational steps, one at a time. Now she was forcing herself to jump into areas for which there were no reliable textbooks, no maps. There was just one consolation, something that hadn’t been present when she was working with Maanik and Gaelle: I’m not facing the same threat.

  But she was facing the mysteries of Galderkhaan and the feeling of awful terror when she thought Jacob was knocking in that opaque blank nothing place.

  Caitlin had just taken out her phone to call Jacob when the phone rang in her hand. It was a local number, elusively familiar. She answered and it was the vice principal of Jacob’s school.

  “Dr. O’Hara, is Jacob with you?”

  Nothing from the past few weeks equaled the cold fear that smashed into Caitlin now.

  “He is not with me,” she said tightly. “Is he not at school?”

  There was the tiniest of pauses during which a well-trained educator kept himself from cursing in the ear of a parent.

  “Dr. O’Hara, we have lost track of your son. We think he may have walked from the building about half an hour ago but we aren’t sure. However, we have looked everywhere . . .”

  Caitlin had no idea what the man said next. She couldn’t hear him over her internal screaming. She stood on the street shouting into the phone for a few minutes but it felt like years. Then somehow she said to herself, beneath the screaming, Where would he go? Start there. Somewhere near school?

  Caitlin hung up on the vice principal, saying only, “I’ll call you back.” She glanced around, registered where she was, then started sprinting with a stamina she didn’t know she had.

  Her peripheral vision grayed out. Looks from the people she passed hardly registered. Vaguely she wondered whether she should try to reach for Jacob using this new power. Was it even possible? But the thought was a bare blip in the total urgency of running. She lunged across the street before traffic had fully stopped. Horns honked, someone yelled, she heard nothing. Her lungs started to beg for a pause. She didn’t notice.

  And then she was on Twenty-Seventh Street. Her phone buzzed in her bag while she was pounding up the stairs but somehow she knew and didn’t bother picking up. She shoved open the door to the lobby of Jacob’s cooking school and the receptionist stood up, the phone to her ear.