Gillian Anderson - A Dream of Ice

She woke Jacob for dinner and together they made franks and beans; why was it that passed gas always lifted boys’ spirits? When they finished, they channel surfed for a while until Jacob fell asleep with his head in her lap. Not without effort, Caitlin carried him to bed. She wondered how many more times she’d be able to do this. The kid was getting big. She wondered if he would be six-foot-five big like his father, or five foot six like her father.

A pointless mom-exercise , she thought, smiling at herself. But right now, pointless felt good.

The apartment was quiet. The whole city felt quiet. Caitlin looked at lamplights across the street, figures sitting down to meals, and thought about the people she and Ben had passed on their walk toward Paley Park. Everyone had seemed remarkably buoyant. It had been such a difference in tenor from the weeks when Kashmir had verged on nuclear war. Individual confidence had surged back. People’s lives were brightening here despite the darkness in other parts of the world.

The observation gave Caitlin no comfort. The opposite, in fact. The last recession had driven home the fact that confidence too easily spawns rashness, then crashes, then despair. She felt like she was seeing the beginning of the next end already .

She sat on the couch and rubbed her temples, trying to relax. It wasn’t coming. Of course not: there was unfinished business. Whether it was her own life or the life of a patient, she could never compartmentalize that easily.

Caitlin was almost grateful when her phone rang and though her screen gave only a number, she accepted the call.

“Yes?”

“Dr. O’Hara?” said a young woman’s voice.

“Yes, who is this?”

“It’s Maanik Pawar.”

Nausea and fear filled her throat. Caitlin hunched and both hands involuntarily clutched the phone in panic. It’s starting again! her mind screamed. She fought hard to sound natural.

“Maanik, hello! It’s so nice to hear your voice. How are you doing?”

“Really well!”

Caitlin suddenly felt like crying. “Tell me!” she said.

“I’ve gained back all the weight I lost and you should see my arms. My papa arranged for a doctor to use this stem cell spray stuff. They said it was the fastest recovery they’d seen so far. My skin completely healed from the scratches in like a day. Well, they were more than just scratches, I guess.”

“Gouges,” Caitlin said very gently.

“Yes.” Maanik sounded thoughtful, not upset.

“That’s, well, incredible, Maanik. How are you sleeping? Are you having any strange dreams or even daydreams?”

Maanik laughed. “I’ve been daydreaming about becoming a bioengineer instead of a diplomat, does that count?”

Caitlin laughed. “Sorry, no. By the way, you know I spoke to your parents last week.”

“They told me.”

“They said you didn’t seem to remember anything that had happened?”

“Yeah,” Maanik said. “To be honest, I’m kind of relieved about that, Dr. O’Hara. Do you think my memory will return?”

“No,” Caitlin said. “At least it hasn’t for others who experienced trauma like that.”

“Anyway, I wanted to call and thank you personally. I don’t know what you did for me specifically but you saved my life. I don’t think my parents were exaggerating when they said that. And I’m so grateful.”

Caitlin couldn’t say anything for a moment. She was wiping tears from her eyes.

“How are you?” Maanik asked, her voice full of concern. “You experienced these things with me, right?”

“Fine,” Caitlin lied. “I absorb a little something from all my patients. I’m used to it. Lots of lead shielding.”

“My father has that too,” Maanik said. “I hope to be like you both.”

“I do hope you’ll keep in touch sometimes,” Caitlin said, sad to let her go.

“Absolutely. Okay, I have to go now—”

“Quickly, Maanik,” Caitlin said, “how is Jack London?”

“Oh.” Maanik was silent for a long moment. “Well…”

Caitlin’s stomach dropped through the floor. She remembered Maanik’s mother threatening to put him down.

“He was a little crazy last week,” Maanik continued.

Caitlin was about to ask what kind of crazy, but Maanik kept going.

“We decided to put him through obedience school again,” the young woman said. “He had his first class yesterday and he was a superstar, so we think that will do the trick.”

“That’s good,” Caitlin exhaled.

“And now I have to go,” Maanik said. “But thank you, Dr. O’Hara. Thank you so much.”

They said good-bye and ended the call, and Caitlin sat there for a few minutes holding her phone like a warm mug of tea. The words had been comforting but the reconnection, even through the phone, had been unsettling. She was trying to understand why.

Unbidden, a thought occurred to her.

The cazh got the Priests’ minds out of the way . Without it, they were no better at focusing than the rest of us.

And Maanik’s phone call had gotten Caitlin’s mind out of the way. Distraction as she well knew, could be a useful psychological process, helpful for finding answers. Just stop thinking and it will come…

She and Ben had spent hours talking and thinking. Time to stop.

Caitlin put the phone down and uncurled herself on the couch, feet flat on the floor. She was going to begin with what she knew the gesture she’d learned from Atash on his hospital deathbed. Caitlin crooked her right arm over her torso with her right fingers pointing toward her left shoulder. Then she angled her left hand to point away from her knees toward the floor, and immediately she felt something lift away from her left shoulder in a wave. The Galderkhaani gesture for “big water”—“ocean”—had worked. All of her intense emotions washed from her head down her spine and seemed to fly away from the base of her back. For the first time since she had helped Odilon, she felt in perfect balance.

She looked up and her eyes fell inexorably on her green globe. As if the orb felt her eyes upon it, the glass responded. The white web of lines inside elongated past the curve of the sphere into the air. It looked like the fin of a sailfish, glowing in light that wasn’t really there, now that the living room had darkened into full night. It was so beautiful Caitlin wanted to infiltrate it, be part of it. The lines extended forth, growing through the room until they filled half of it, with some of their tips touching Caitlin’s throat. This was different from before. There was no other person present, just… joy? She found herself singing in her mind. She and the orb were in tune with each other.

The music of the spheres , she thought. The harmonics of the universe . She didn’t feel safe but she felt comforted, somehow. Not with a spirit but not alone.

Maybe you’ve been cazhed with someone without knowing it! she thought, not entirely in jest.

In Iran, Vahin had suggested that the psychiatrist’s closeness to patients who had been traumatized essentially bonded her to them, and through them to past events—the trauma of Galderkhaan.

Caitlin returned her focus to the living room. In memory, not vision, she saw Vahin drinking jasmine tea across from his red-patterned wall in Iran—but inexplicably, an image of Madame Langlois followed with even more intensity. Cigar smoke wafted between her and Caitlin.

This is not of Vodou , the priestess had said toward the end of Caitlin’s time in Jacmel.

And that , Caitlin thought now, is why I need you here, someone here who understands. I need an anchor.

Holding the madame’s gaze through the smoke in her mind, Caitlin closed her eyes. Unbidden, she still felt the fingerlike span of light from the orb. Relenting, giving in to their touch, she gathered her deepest sense of self and slowly spun it forward, merging with the orb, while drawing on the energy of those she had met and bonded with over the last week—