Gillian Anderson - A Vision of Fire

“The transpersonal plane!” she cried. “Souls are rising! My god, it is powerful ! I am ascendant! But there’s more… I can’t see…”

Other minds brushed past her, transcending spirits interlacing with each other as they departed one realm and entered another, unified in a churning mass soul. Yet everywhere, too, bodies were perishing before the ritual could be completed, before they could link with the group soul. Those souls were rising alone.

She could still question, she could still think: Is that the key? But how can I stop so many from completing the cazh at once?

But she threw the questions away, wanting only to be here and now, with them. One spirit turned from the group and looked into Caitlin’s eyes.

Not you , the grandmother told her. You are not one of us.

Though Caitlin longed to complete the transcendence with them, see what was out there, she obeyed.

I am still Caitlin , she told herself .

She held back, then withdrew. She focused on the conference room floor beneath her feet, heard the pounding rain on the windows.

I must remain myself.

She thought of the people in the park in Tehran, the men and women doing Tai Chi, moving with sublime balance. She pressed her left foot hard against the conference room floor, like a sprinter pushing her foot into a starting block. This reality, coming in through her left, would hold her here a little longer.

I am still me.

She felt stabilized, literally with one foot in each world. But she still had to stop the mass soul that was forming around her, above her, in Galderkhaan. The souls that were seeking other traumatized souls in Caitlin’s present.

Ben saw Caitlin’s smile vanish. He noticed the change in her position. She was speaking again but he was finding it harder to hear her. He realized suddenly that it wasn’t her voice that was changing; there was a pressure increasing in his head, and his eardrums were throbbing, as though he were in an airplane that had depressurized. He opened his mouth wide, worked his jaw, swallowed; it succeeded for an instant and then the pressure returned. With one eye on Caitlin he moved to the windows, trying to locate the source of the pressure. A vent… an ill-fitting window… a gap in the ceiling…?

There was nothing. The wind threw rain at the windows like stones.

He set his cell phone on the table and ventured closer to Caitlin, staggering against the pressure in his head. Caitlin’s hair was still floating. Her eyes were shut, her mouth was moving, her arms helping to fashion unfamiliar words. He fought against his brutal headache, to make his feet move toward the tin of tea.

“What do I do?” he whispered, half-praying for an answer.

Caitlin did not hear. Everywhere she looked, she could see the dead or dying. Beyond the trees she could see the same young man from Atash’s vision, performing the cazh . Across the water she watched as a boat smashed into one of the largest pillars, coming to pieces, its inhabitants clawing at the waves, or raising their hands in supplication even as they drowned. Gaelle , Caitlin thought helplessly. There was nothing she could do to save them from their deaths. She had to press on, had to stop the rising group soul and protect others in the present…

Ben saw smoke rising from her flesh.

“Caitlin!”

“Don’t… touch… me!”

There was a decanter of water on the conference table. He would use it if he had to. He did not understand very much but he knew this: they might never have this chance again. He had to let it play out.

Caitlin had no time left to think and not much of a rational mind to think with. Instead, she felt herself rise from the temple, rise from the conference room, beyond the ash and beyond the rain, into a cloud that was thunder and darkness, that was the coldness of the grave multiplied by eternity. Despite the grandmother’s warning, Caitlin allowed herself to ascend, carried by the older woman’s soul. Caitlin’s grip on her own living body grew weaker.

Two worlds were merging violently. The storm seemed to roil above Manhattan as Galderkhaan was pulled into the sea with the roaring hiss of dying flames. The innumerable souls of the ascended were everywhere.

Caitlin clung single-mindedly to one thought, one objective: the group soul trying to form and cross the barrier of time. She thought of the young people she knew and did not know in her own world, others like Maanik and Gaelle and Atash who were made vulnerable by trauma and were probably being assaulted, their own souls being dragged painfully upward along with those of these ancient beings, for reasons still unknown. She had to stop them.

Below her, she saw the entire city, the roads and streets, the line of columns that ran from the volcano to the sea, glowing green with their strange energy—but also, in the capstone of the tallest column in the sea, a symbol. A triangle made of crescents within crescents. It was the same symbol she had seen Gaelle draw. The same one Maanik had drawn.

Caitlin glanced at the powerful, rising group soul, and then she knew what she had to do. She turned and plunged across the sky toward the largest column. There was no sense of weight or weightlessness, no sense of motion, only a sensation of sudden, lightning-like extension—point to point to point. Arms outstretched, she grabbed at the energy around the column as if it were tangible.

And it was. She felt it writhe in her embrace, become one with her, like the power she’d received from the snake but exponentially more. She wrenched her body around and with a long sweep of her arms, she cast the power toward the courtyard. It flew through and away from her, as in Haiti when, out of control, Caitlin had thrown Gaelle against a wall.

But this time she directed it.

The tsunami of lava was perilously close to the city as the energy reached the courtyard and infused it. The paving stones erupted in light from beneath, a brilliant glow that blazed through the huge triangle carved into them, the crescents within crescents.

Those who were still standing and chanting the cazh , those shocked Galderkhaani, screamed as the fusion of earth, fire, water, and light swept over them. Their movements changed from swaying to lurching tremors as their souls were yanked one from the other from the other, unlinked. Abruptly, their mortal screams stopped as their right and left brains ceased to function together. Their mouths remained frozen for a moment; an instant later the right sides of their bodies crumpled. They fell heavily to the stones where they died. Thick, bloody liquid flowed from their noses and mouths onto their burning white and yellow robes.

And Caitlin saw that once more their souls rose, invisible yet somehow tangible. But with this death, a death without the cazh , they were ascending as individuals. The group soul was no more. Whatever its purpose had been, that goal was unrealized. Whatever power had allowed the bonded souls to reach through time, that was gone.

The mammoth wave of lava broke over the city and destroyed it. There was nothing epic or prolonged about its demise: one moment Galderkhaan struggled, then it was gone. Caitlin felt the ecstasy of the energy depart from her; no longer immaterial, she plummeted into the sea…

And dropped to the floor of the conference room. Ben broke her fall.

There was a quiet hiss as the smoke rising from her body was suddenly doused. Ben stroked her hair back. Her eyes were closed, her mouth relaxed.