“Take your complaint to the Council,” Qala said. “I have patients for you.”
With a deft shrug of his wide shoulders, the physician extricated himself from the confines of the sling. The short but powerfully built man wore a blue tunic and skirt with a white sash pulled tightly from left shoulder to right hip, identifying him as a physician. His shoulder-length blond hair hung freely, framing a round face with wide-set eyes. His flesh was ruddy from hours spent in the rigging of the airship, where there were pots that grew medicinal herbs. Behind him were racks of narrow clay containers, over forty in all, that were painted a variety of colors denoting their contents. They were held in place by leathery bands that protected them during turbulence.
The physician contemptuously tossed the scroll to the floor as his eyes focused on the boy and the civilian woman.
“What did you do to them, Standor?” Zell asked. “They look quite terrified.”
“This woman is named Bayarma,” Qala said. “She was in a physical struggle with the water guardian and has no memory of that or the time it took to walk from the town—”
“I had just left the company of a Priest and now I’m here!” she exclaimed.
“That will teach you to mingle with Priests,” the physician muttered.
“—and she was talking strangely the entire time,” Qala said.
“About?” Zell asked.
“Being from another time,” she said. “And she occasionally used very odd words.”
Zell seemed intrigued. “Did she speak of the past?”
Qala shook her head. “She told me she is from the future.”
That seemed to take the physician by surprise. “So it’s not Candescent Yearning,” he said.
“I don’t believe so,” Qala replied.
“What is that?” Bayarma asked.
“The conviction that one is an all-knowing god,” Zell said casually. He looked away from Bayarma and stepped up to the boy. “And what about you?”
The boy buried the lower half of his face in Qala’s shoulder. He did not speak.
“Vilu fainted shortly after Bayarma and the guardian fought,” Qala said. “And now the woman seems all right but the boy is speaking oddly. He claims he was unable to hear, and now he can.”
“I can,” the boy raised his mouth and pouted. “And… my name is not Vilu.”
“Oh?” said the physician. “What is it?”
“Jacob,” the boy said. “Jacob O’Hara.”
“Jay-cup-oh-ha-rayaah,” the Standor said thoughtfully. “Oh-ha-rayaah was part of the woman’s name as well.”
“A shared delusion or something you overheard?” Zell wondered. “What was the rest of the other name?”
“The first part of it was Caty-laahn? Cayta-laahn? That’s how it sounded.”
“Caitlin,” Jacob said easily. “Caitlin O’Hara.”
“Yes,” Qala said at once. “That’s exactly it. Very impressive, Vilu.”
“I am not Vilu. Caitlin O’Hara, Dr. Caitlin O’Hara—she’s my mother,” the boy replied, his eyes shifting to Bayarma.
“Dahk-tar?” Zell said.
“Doctor, like they say you are, but she helps people with mental illness,” the boy said.
“These occurrences were in the same location?” Zell asked.
“At a pool. But Lasha, the water guardian, was unaffected. So were others who gathered around. So was I, for that matter.”
“My mother was here,” the boy insisted. He pointed a slender finger at Bayarma. “She was her.”
“But she isn’t now,” Zell said.
The boy shook his head once.
“Are you from the future?” Zell asked the boy.
“I am from New York,” he replied. “Not from Galderkhaan. I was reading about Nemo and a ship like this… then I slept… I think I am still asleep.”
Zell regarded Bayarma. “And you are not his mother.”
“No. As I said, my allotted birth child, Bayarmii, is with her grandmother in Aankhaan.”
Zell motioned for Qala to put the boy down in a hammock that hung high in the middle of the room. The Standor obliged. Vilu fought for a moment then dropped of his own weight when the Standor bent. The boy quickly gathered himself in a ball in the center.
“Did you two happen to eat from the same barrel of fish, drink from the same cistern?” the physician asked.
“You sound like the water guardian Lasha,” Qala said.
“There is truth in folk wisdom,” the physician said. He raised his brows inquisitively. “Well, Bayarma?”
“I had fish and cake this morning, but how am I to know?” Bayarma said. “I never saw the boy before now.”
Zell ran the side of his thumb absently along his sash. “Boy, you say your name is Jay-cupo-oh-ha-rah-ah. I have never heard such a name, and I have been many places in Galderkhaan.”
“Have you been to New York?”
“I have not heard of such a place,” Zell admitted.
“He kept touching around his ears,” the Standor said. “Here.” She touched her temples to indicate the spot. “Could that account for the strange words?”
“I did that because I could hear!” the boy said, trying to sit up in the swaying hammock. “I couldn’t before. Are you people even listening to me?”
“Cayta-laahn had a similar streak of disrespect,” Qala observed.
The boy threw himself back down on the mesh in frustration. Zell selected a bottle from the shelf. He shook it, unscrewed the top, and stepped over to the hammock. He moved the coral plug back and forth under the boy’s nostrils.
“Oh!” the youngster said and immediately opened his eyes wide.
Zell bent over him and leaned close to his ear. “I would like to speak with the core voice.”
The boy hesitated. Zell gave him a second whiff of the contents of the jar. The boy’s brows shot up and he stared ahead. For a time, only the creaking of the gondola and the breathing of the two observers could be heard. Bayarma grabbed the Standor’s arm. That too felt good.
“Who are you?” Zell asked.
“Vilu of Falkhaan,” the boy replied.
“Who is with you, Vilu?”
“A… a spirit.”
Bayarma held Qala’s arm tighter; whatever had happened to the boy, was inside the boy, most likely had affected her as well.
“Who is this spirit?” Zell asked, moving his hands carefully to repeat what the boy had said. Just asking the question sent a chill through the cabin. The word Vilu had used was not mazh, an ascended soul. He had said jatma, a noncorporeal being. The term was derived from maat, a Candescent.
“I do not know him,” Vilu replied. “He scares me. He is confused.”
Zell walked back and selected another bottle. He ran the stopper under the boy’s nose. This time Vilu relaxed.
“I would like to talk to the jatma,” Zell said.
There was a long pause, the quiet broken only by shouts of the crew from outside the thick walls, and the groaning of the balloon overhead.
“I… am… here,” the boy finally said in a different voice. “I do not want to be.”
“How did you get here?”
“I do not know. I just went to sleep.”
“Where?”
“In my room, in my bed. I was drawing… a… comic.”
The boy’s small hands moved tentatively, trying to find counterparts in the Galderkhaani vernacular for what he was trying to say. Suddenly, Vilu’s body became agitated. The Standor started toward him but Zell held up a hand.