Gillian Anderson - A Vision of Fire

“Come!” the figure shouted. “Now!”

Atash grabbed the nearest heavy object, an ice pick that stood on end like a candlestick holder, and bashed it across his older brother’s head—but lightly, only enough to knock him out. Then he picked him up under the shoulders and dragged him backward through the streets. But—Atash looked around—this was not Tehran. It was the flaming hell of someplace else.

As he lumbered backward Atash could see that his brother was bleeding from the wound on his head. Somehow he knew where he was going. It was a short haul to a courtyard through the sooty vapors and stench, made easier by the empty pathways. Ash fell, clogging his nostrils and drying his throat. He paused to pull a scarf of some kind in front of his mouth. Atash heard screams and running on other streets but then he saw them , lit by the fire in the center of the courtyard, ringed by very tall, dark, rectangular columns. The Believers were forming the sacred circle, white and yellow robes turning and turning. Their arms were moving up and down and around. Atash pulled his brother over and made as if to join the circle, but a tall man stepped forward and put out a hand, stopping him.

Atash had forgotten the oil. He laid his brother’s head and shoulders on the smooth cobblestones, then ran into the nearest house and pawed through the stranger’s shelves. He found some, ran back to the courtyard, and, uttering words that were familiar even if their meaning was not, he poured the oil all over his brother and then himself. He picked up his brother and continued into the circle of whirling robes—

But it was too late. He was struck in the face and chest by a wall of heat so powerful, so intense, that it knocked him onto his back and rocked the columns around him. He felt the oil sizzle on exposed areas of his flesh and then everywhere as his body ignited. He heard his brother wake from unconsciousness with a piercing shriek, heard cries ride the air like specters of those already dead. His eyes—what they could see before they melted—could not process the chaos and scope of what lay behind the superheated shock wave.

The nurses looked up at the small sounds coming from their patient.

“He is talking in his sleep,” one of them said quietly.

“I wonder what his thoughts could be,” said the other.

“Regret, I would think.”

“Perhaps he is discussing the secret to igniting cold sunflower oil.”

“Do not even begin to ask that question.”

“But it’s impossible—”

“Quiet! Do you want to attract accusations of black magic?”

The curious nurse hushed, and the nurses continued their gentle work in silence.

Before sitting down to dinner, Caitlin did some prep work for the session with Maanik. There were still some matters she had to resolve in her own mind.

The day’s events and her return from Haiti had been disorienting, yet she was surprised by how normal dinnertime with Jacob seemed. Ordinarily, whenever she returned from being away her son overwhelmed her with questions about where she had been and who she had seen and what she had done. She had always assumed that this was more than just his way of reconnecting. It was his way of feeling as though he hadn’t lost her for those few days, that she had somehow been collecting information and experiences to bring back for him .

Tonight, however, Jacob was utterly uninterested in Haiti. Caitlin even tested it, dangling a few unfinished sentences about her trip, but he never took the bait. He just kept up a steady monologue about Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , which he was reading for school, and how he was going to use the novel as the basis for an essay about endangered animals.

“The Mexican walking fish is so doomed,” he said with a fervor that caused him to half-speak, half-sign in order to get it all out. “So are big creatures like manatees and orcas.”

“Do you have a favorite?” Caitlin asked.

“I love them all,” he said. “I was wondering, would Captain Nemo be an ocean conservationist if he were alive today?”

“Honey, he was never actually alive—he’s a fictional character.”

Jacob rejected that thought with a shake of his head. “Every fictional character is based on someone. My English teacher told us that.”

“Oh?” Caitlin said. “Winnie-the-Pooh?”

“He was a real teddy bear,” Jacob said. “Just not alive.”

He had her; that was true.

Her son was no different than on any other evening. She realized as she considered it that she had been expecting him to be different because she herself had been through so much. But he wasn’t the one who was adrift. She was, and he was the anchor.

Over ice cream, Jacob was telling her he wanted to read the second Nemo adventure, The Mysterious Island , when Caitlin impetuously interrupted him.

“Hey, do you want to do an experiment with me?” she signed.

He shrugged like a bored teenager but curled up one leg and leaned forward at the same time, interested. She hoped it would be a few years before he discovered the “too cool for school” attitude.

“Okay, we’re going to hold hands for one minute,” Caitlin signed.

Jacob opened his eyes wide, rolled them, and pretended to die in his chair.

“Don’t worry,” she signed. “It’s nothing mushy. I just kind of want to see what happens.”

“Can I be timekeeper?” he signed, and she handed over her phone. Then she explained that she didn’t want him to do or think anything in particular while they were holding hands, and she wouldn’t either. They were just going to see if anything happened on its own. He nodded—the suggestion seemed remotely interesting—then tapped her phone and signed, “Go.” She held his right hand with her right hand.

Nothing happened on her side. She still felt unsettled. Jacob got restless but only in the way a ten-year-old fidgets as a minute ticks by. When the phone beeped she asked if he’d felt anything and he said no.

“Okay,” she said. “Again.”

“Last time?” he asked.

She shrugged noncommittally.

This time when he started the countdown, she held his left hand with her left hand.

Again, nothing happened in her heart, her mind. Jacob’s attention strayed to the phone and she had to stop him from playing with it.

After the beep she said, “Once more, please.”

He huffed but set the countdown, and she picked up his left hand with her right. Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then Jacob suddenly focused, like the time he’d seen a hawk fly by the window. She wasn’t sure what he was focused on—he seemed to be looking at the table rather than at her hand—but she recognized the stillness that settled into his body, the serious expression on his face. She felt nothing in her hand or anywhere else but clearly something was happening for him.

Suddenly Jacob broke their connection. Not violently but with some urgency, as if he’d touched a hot pan handle. He leaned across the table and put his hands on her cheeks and held her head. Staring at her face he said, “Mommy… ,” as if he was affirming it was her.

“I’m here. Are you okay?”

He moved his hands away to sign but held her firm with his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he signed. “I’m not big enough to help hold it.”

The look on his face showed the feeling of his phrase.

“Hold what?” she asked. But he was sliding off his chair and not looking at her. He gave her a hug and went to his room. Caitlin was about to follow when she was interrupted by the arrival of the sitter, Theodora, who would watch him when she went to the Pawars’.