Gillian Anderson - A Dream of Ice

Caitlin smiled and nodded sweetly. Ben smiled back.

“Ready for takeoff?” he asked.

In response, she relaxed and stared into the orb. He began to move it again.

Almost at once, the tendrils of the glass turned from green to red. The red—

“Contrails,” she said softly. “I see… fingers of color, like smoke.”

Without stopping, Ben stretched his fingers to the dining room table and grabbed his phone. He began to record. He felt like the Infant of Prague, the orb resting in his cupped left hand, the phone upright in his right. He couldn’t help but wonder if every archetype in the history of humankind repeated itself and was perhaps traceable to Galderkhaan.

And then a sudden iciness fell on the room, as though someone had turned an air conditioner on low. Ben felt the shift instantly and then watched Caitlin’s hair begin to rise, as if reacting to static electricity. In the distance, Arfa bolted into the bathroom, to his litter box.

“There is ice… below,” Caitlin said. “Acres… more acres… miles… peaceful.”

She forced herself to look back up, back at the contrails.

“Red… above and… and behind,” Caitlin went on. “Fire!” she said more urgently. “Flames… Enzo! No!”

Caitlin’s eyes were still open, staring. They grew wider. Her breath came faster, harder. Her hands were reaching for something, holding something, pulling—ropes? She looked like a fisherman pulling his boat to its moorings.

“You’ve killed us! Why!? ”

Caitlin began swatting at her face, as though she were surrounded by gnats. She winced with pain.

“The name!” she said. “I will tell you… tell you…”

And then Caitlin screamed in her mouth. It rose up her throat and stuck at the top, as though she were vomiting.

Ben discarded the orb and phone down and took her hands in his, holding them tight. Almost at once he released one hand as if it were electrified: Ben had forgotten his own admonition. He did not want to give any Galderkhaani access to the cazh .

Even holding one of her hands, anchoring Caitlin in the present, caused the cold to begin to dissipate.

“No, Dovit! Let me go!” the woman wept.

“Cai, it’s Ben!” he said softly but insistently. “Cai, where are you?”

“Falling from the sky!” she said, gasping. “I told Enzo… why did she do it? It will never work! ”

And then Caitlin was back, panting, leaning forward, collapsing into Ben’s arms.

“I’ve got you,” he said.

“I… thought I died!”

“It wasn’t you,” he told her.

“I know, but I felt it. I felt it!”

“Who was it?”

Caitlin shook her head firmly. “I don’t know her name. We were in the air, in an airship of some kind, and it was on fire.”

“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.