“Hey, hey, hey,” Ben cautioned. “Beating yourself up: not gonna help.”
Caitlin nodded. “Maybe I should go back and steal a goddamn telephone directory and a dictionary.”
“Not the worst idea I’ve heard,” Ben told her. “I wonder if they had something other than scrolls and tablets to write on. Just because they were pre-everything, doesn’t mean they were as relatively primitive as the ancient civilizations we know.”
While they spoke, Ben had been passing a large, green glass orb back and forth between his hands nonstop. The piece was beautiful, with an almost spectral aura created by the way the lines caught the light and shone white within the green. An artisan acquaintance of Caitlin’s had crafted it years before, using a kiln to bake the glass sphere and then submerging the orb in ice water.
Caitlin finally stopped him with a gentle hand.
“Sorry—making you nervous?” he asked.
“No, nothing like that,” she said. “But you keep doing it, you may induce a trance.”
He stopped at once but he didn’t put the orb aside. They just stared at each other.
“Well, hell,” Ben said after a moment.
“I know,” Caitlin agreed. “When all else fails, do what’s left.”
Ben couldn’t know how real Caitlin’s experiences were but they both knew, in that moment, they weren’t going to make any further progress unless he erred on the side of taking it very seriously. Though Ben couldn’t deny that he’d walked the rim of some of those experiences, he had said repeatedly through the afternoon that he preferred to seek a more logical, analytical approach to the questions they had to answer.
“I don’t know, Cai,” he said.
“I do,” she said. “When it’s the only proactive option on the table, you take it.”
Ben agreed that he would help to re-create an environment similar to what Caitlin had experienced before at the UN and see where it took her as long as she didn’t use the cazh.
“But you keep your hands away from me,” he said. “You can try any of the other techniques you know—hypnosis, energy direction, astrally projecting above the city—anything, but not that.”
“Why? You afraid it might work and you’ll be stuck with me for eternity?”
“You know I’d sign on for that,” he said, correcting her. “But right now we’re exploring, trying to help you and Jacob. That doesn’t include buying a one-way ticket to Neverland. Isn’t that exclusively what the cazh was designed for? Knock-knock-knocking on heaven’s door?”
“We don’t exactly know, do we?” she asked. “That’s one of the things we’re trying to find out.”
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “We’re trying to find out who may—may—have their hooks in Jacob and why. That’s it for now. Are we on the same page?”
“Don’t be dumb,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Of course this is primarily about Jacob but if I see something interesting, I’m going to check it out!”
“No! Caitlin, I am not going to try to explain to a 911 dispatcher that my friend has fallen into the past and can’t get up. If you can’t agree to that, then get yourself another playmate.”
Caitlin sighed hard. She could not help thinking that all the information about Galderkhaan was holistic: if she unraveled the riddle of their belief system she could understand everything about them and help Jacob at the same time.
But Caitlin put a hand on top of his. “All right. I mean it. You’re absolutely right. The chant isn’t appropriate for this situation. I have to get back to Galderkhaan and have a look around, that’s all.”
“Okay, then,” Ben said, smiling.
Following her instructions, Ben held the orb before her. He moved it slowly, the light shifting in her eyes, in the back of her eyes, in her brain. Nearby sounds were magnified: his breath, her breath, the cat moving away.
And then she was back.
“Shit and shit,” she said.
“What’s happening? Or not?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Something’s holding me back.”
He pushed his face toward her. “Don’t let it. I’m here. You won’t get lost there, I promise. Hey, remember? I’ve been down that road with you, Cai. I haven’t lost a trance walker yet.”
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.”