Gillian Anderson - A Dream of Ice

The smaller woman looked up. “To help you protect this world? Would you have refused? Should we waste more time with debate?”

Caitlin moved away in disgust. She didn’t like being outmaneuvered and out-thought.

“You must not interfere,” Yokane said.

“You can’t ask that.”

“I don’t ask it, I insist,” Yokane replied. “Are you really prepared to feel around and across the planes of existence blindly , with your son?” she asked. “There are more powerful, elemental forces and greater minds at work than yours or mine. There is no room for trial and error like you had with your two clients.”

Caitlin could not find a reply.

Yokane settled into a more relaxed tone of voice. “Now that I know there is another presence near Jacob, I will make sure they are never alone.” Yokane’s dark eyes bore into Caitlin’s and once again, Caitlin believed her.

“So you’ll be a guardian,” Caitlin said. “You won’t ‘inhabit’ Jacob.”

Yokane nodded once. “I am not a vandal.”

There was no irritation or condescension in her tone. Caitlin relaxed a little more. Yokane turned and Caitlin followed her back toward the living room. There, showing the same reverence as before, the woman wrapped and pocketed her stone.

“In return for my help,” Yokane said, “you will do something for me, since we have limited time and I cannot pursue two goals at once.”

“There is another stone,” Caitlin said.

For the first time, Yokane seemed surprised.

“You’ve had that one for a while, and the animals have only been acting up for a couple of weeks,” Caitlin said. “Something else had to be the cause.”

“The stone has a companion,” Yokane acknowledged. “It is located in a mansion on Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street, home of the Global Explorers’ Club. It is comprised of people who know about Galderkhaan.”

“Know… what?” Caitlin asked.

“That is what you must find out,” Yokane told her. “Specifically, why have these artifacts suddenly become more active? Why is an ascended soul trying to contact Jacob?”

“Why can’t you go?”

“I have been too long around this stone,” she replied, patting her coat. “I vibrate with it; it knows me. If I were to get close to the other stone it would cause more havoc. Already, the two are forming lines of connection with their companions in the South Pole. Together, their impact would be exponential.”

Caitlin understood, then, just how powerful the Galderkhaani mosaics had to be. Yokane wasn’t subtle, but it was possible she wasn’t exaggerating, either. “What do I have to do?” Caitlin asked.

“Speak to the people in the mansion, determine if they are somehow using the other stones… or the Source. They will not want to talk to you,” she muttered as she walked to the front door. “You must make them.”

Realizing that Caitlin hadn’t followed her, she motioned urgently.

“I mean now,” Yokane said. “You must go now.”

“I’m not waking Jacob and bringing him to that place,” Caitlin said. “And no, you cannot babysit.”

Yokane brushed the air with her hand. “The Galderkhaani woman will not allow Jacob to be harmed.” She smiled a little for the first time. “Not physically.”

“Where was she when Jacob had a freakin’ seizure?”

“No doubt she caused that establishing contact,” Yokane said. “As you know, it is not a pleasant process nor a predictable science. If it helps, I am sure she watched over him when you went to the roof.”

“That was the roof; but you’re talking about sending me miles downtown,” Caitlin said. “The only way I’ll leave is to have someone stay with him. Sit there while I make a call.”

Yokane sat. So she could be reasonable.

But when Caitlin picked up her phone, she wasn’t sure who to ask. She was afraid to try to explain this to her parents, and besides, they lived too far away for “right now.” Ben? She was afraid of explaining it to him too, especially with his recent commendable but inconvenient protectiveness. What about Barbara or Anita? It would certainly open their eyes to see a descendant of the civilization they didn’t really believe had existed.

Christ. She didn’t want to call anyone.

But she remembered with horror her vision, Jacob’s terror, and called Ben with one hand while using the other to search through the kitchen for jasmine tea.

Aquarter hour later, assured that Benjamin Moss was on his way, Yokane departed. Then she walked to the nearest intersection and vomited into a trash can. She held the edge of the bin for a moment, her eyes closed, waiting to see if anything else was going to come up.

“Are you all right?” a man asked as he stepped from a taxi.

“Thank you, yes.” Yokane smiled. “Bad seafood, I think.”

“Would you like my cab?”

“No, thank you,” she said. “The air will help.”

The man turned and hurried on his way. Yokane pushed herself from the bin and stood more steadily than she had a right to.

This had happened frequently over the past few days—both food and images coming up. It began when her kavar suddenly and surprisingly linked to another power source, another stone, crafting something more potent. It had happened about two weeks ago on a street north of Washington Square Park, when she was walking home from one of her frequent late-night strolls. She had regained consciousness in the stairwell of the Group’s mansion. It was the claws that had woken her up, and the writhing, and the piercing squeaks of hundreds of rats on top of her, claws and tails scraping across her face, catching in her hair, burying her from sight. She’d frozen in a fetal position, in abject horror as the rats scrabbled in their mad panic.

It was over an hour before the rodents finally relaxed and wandered off, the ones that were still alive. Yokane, shaking, had stood among the lumpen piles of death and staggered away. No matter how many showers she took, eye rinses, teeth brushings, she didn’t feel clean for days afterward.

Now, having involuntarily relived the experience again in her open state, her stomach had rebuked her. She walked west toward the Hudson River, then south. She hoped that the view of the water, the river emptying into the bay, would steady her. It did, somewhat. But not nearly enough.

The situation was dangerous, more dangerous than she had let on to the psychiatrist. Someone was trying very hard to get through—someone who had cazhed with another. A woman and a man, both of them pushing toward any soul that could hear them.

They had found Caitlin O’Hara but Caitlin O’Hara refused to listen. So they sought her son.

Why? Yokane wondered. It had to have something to do with the two kavars’ being active. The timing was too proximate.

Yokane continued to walk. Whatever the cost, she could not give up. She wished she could go in Caitlin’s stead but that was not possible. She had gone back to the mansion one more time, only to feel the young scientist die. She was too afraid to go back again, so there was only the other path available to her.

Is she varrem ? Yokane asked again and again as she walked. That was a crucial question. Is she ours? She seemed to be a person of strong spirit, but that did not mean she was descended from the Priests. Though the lineage had been carefully tracked, the chaos of the last day left potential loopholes. Galderkhaani may have slipped through, those who had put flight ahead of cazh .

Yokane had nursed a hope that Caitlin was varrem . But even there, she was torn. The doctor had fought to prevent Maanik from bonding with a desperate soul from Galderkhaan. And then there was the rainy, genocidal night when Caitlin had rent the sky with her force, and suddenly Yokane had felt soul after soul, her entire Priestly family, simply wink out of existence.