“‘Her’ serpent,” Ben said. “How do you know it was Caitlin’s?”
“It was the same as she saw in a vision. It was very active. It coiled around me then they bid me come here. Very active.”
Anita Carter was standing well away from the group, near the dining room table, hovering in front of the hall that accessed Jacob’s room. She had been very upset after Ben had phoned and told her what had happened. Now that she’d had a few minutes to collect herself, she was trying to understand where their guests fit into that.
“You said ‘they’ bid you come,” Ben said. “Was there more than one?”
Madame shrugged in a noncommittal manner. “One who is many.”
“I don’t understand,” Ben told her.
The woman said “eh” and shrugged again, as if Ben failing to understand was neither a surprise nor her concern. From the corner of his eye Ben saw that Anita was frowning. But he had worked at the United Nations too long to be insulted by the madame’s dismissiveness; he was busy trying to find a place in Galderkhaani lore for the imagery she had described, and also for the designs on her clothing, which seemed to fit somewhat into the research he and Caitlin had been doing on Galderkhaan. There was a strong resemblance of her tattoo to the dragonlike prow of a Viking ship that Caitlin had drawn after experiencing a profound and terrifying trance… in Haiti.
Madame Langlois turned to stare out at West Eighty-Fourth Street, her dark eyes settling briefly on the rooftops of the brownstones across the way.
“The leaves are dead here,” she said. “The branches are sad.”
“I’m not too happy either,” Ben said.
“Why? You do not die every year,” she said.
Ben didn’t know how to respond to that, so he didn’t. He also wasn’t in the mood for verbal or philosophical game playing. Then she leaned her head into the bay window and looked toward the part of Central Park she could see. The sun was just rising above the nearest line of trees, casting the tips of the bare limbs in a light, almost glowing, shade of bronze.
“But they are God’s fingers, and the promise of resurrection,” she said.
“You’re still talking about the trees?” Ben asked.
Madame Langlois appeared reflective. “He fashion all living things, push them from the earth to the sun,” she said.
“From darkness to light,” Enok added in a quiet monotone, almost as though it were the response to a prayer.
“All right,” Ben said with fast-growing impatience, “what does this have to do—”
“But too much light is death,” the woman went on as though he hadn’t spoken. She turned back toward Ben. “Dr. O’Hara saw the fires.”
“Yes. I was with her when she did,” Ben said.
“Not here,” Madame Langlois said. “Somewhere else. Some time else.”
Ben started. Caitlin had been to Haiti before she had witnessed the destruction of Galderkhaan. This woman could not possibly have known about the incident at the United Nations. Even if they had been in contact—which Ben doubted—Caitlin probably wouldn’t have mentioned it. Her experience in Haiti was not a pleasant one.
The woman’s bracelets rattled as she held out a bony hand to her son. Enok Langlois dutifully reached into a large satchel he carried and removed a cigar, handed it to her.
“Dr. O’Hara does not permit smoking in here,” Anita said firmly.
“The airplane did not allow my matches,” Madame said. “They fear fire too. I will just hold it for now and smell these leaves, remember the smoke.” She put the cigar in her mouth, looked back at Ben, and said nothing. Apparently, it was his turn to speak.
He turned slowly away from them, looking to Anita for direction. The psychiatrist had nothing and shook her head. Ben glanced at Enok, who did not look happy to be there.
“What can you tell me about the snake, about what Caitlin saw and did in Haiti?” Ben asked.
Enok remained defiantly silent.
“We await the snake,” Madame announced. “We wish it to show us things. Then we can say more.”
In an environment where nothing should have surprised Ben, that did. “Are you saying… it’s coming? A snake?”
The woman nodded once. “It ask me to come. To witness things. I did. Now it must tell more.”
“What kinds of things are you supposed to witness?” Ben asked with growing exasperation. “You came all this way because you felt there was danger. You flew up without even knowing if anyone would see you—”
“Didn’t matter,” she said, looking back out the window. “Would have waited out there. There is movement all around. I still feel it.”
“What kind of movement?” Ben asked.
In response, Madame waved her hand in a small, circular motion like the Queen of England waving. “I felt Dr. O’Hara open a door.” She jabbed a finger upward. “There.”
“The roof?” Ben said.
Madame lowered her hand. “And then, as we crossed the water in a taxi, she opened a larger one. This new door, Dr. O’Hara went through.” She touched her chest with an open palm. “This part of her left us.”
Anita gasped. “What are you saying?”
“She is not dead,” Madame Langlois assured her. “She is very much alive.”
Ben regarded the priestess with a blend of confusion and awe. She knew things—or, more likely, intuited them—that she had not personally experienced.
“Madame Langlois, Enok,” Ben said, “at the risk of pressing you on matters you are unwilling to discuss—”
“Except leaves,” Anita muttered.
“—have either of you heard the name Galderkhaan?”
Madame shook her head once. Enok remained still. Ben took that as a no. They did not ask what it was or why Ben was inquiring. It frustrated him that they weren’t curious about anything outside their sphere.
“Ben,” Anita said, “before Caitlin’s parents get here, I think we should put these two in a cab and send them back to—”
Suddenly, as if from a great distance, Ben heard a clacking sound, like dice in a cup. Anita fell silent. It took a moment for Ben to realize that the sounds were coming from Madame Langlois, from around her neck. Mostly concealed by the sweater was a necklace of black beads and hematite tubes. Enok bent over her shoulder and gently pulled the necklace from beneath the white wool. At the bottom of the necklace was a thumbnail-sized human skull artfully carved from what appeared to be polished bone.
Ben watched with growing disenchantment. The beads were vibrating because the woman was shaking—very slightly at first, as if she were shivering, and then more pronounced. There was nothing mysterious or supernatural about it, or about her.
She shut her eyes. Ben wanted to ask what was happening but he didn’t think she would answer, or she would respond with one of her riddles, and Enok would remain mute. Ben didn’t understand how Caitlin had survived a full day of being stonewalled like this. He just watched through eyes that burned with exhaustion, with a mind that was struggling to make sense of anything.
Then Madame Langlois spoke.
“They seek…” she said around the cigar in a raspy whisper, raising her index and middle fingers together. “They… seek…”
Anita moved toward the hallway as the madame’s extended fingers turned in that direction. Two long, bony fingers swung around slowly but firmly like the compass on a needle. They were not quaking like the rest of her.
“Ben, you have to stop this,” Anita said as the fingers moved closer to the hallway. “Ben?”
“Caitlin pointed like that,” he said. “Let it play out.”
“There’s a boy here, Ben!”