The Sound of Seas (5 page)

Caitlin took a moment to try and find Azha with her mind. The
Femora
had contacted her in the twenty-first century—her ascended soul had to be here as well. If it was, she could not find it. Perhaps she was busy trying to find some spiritual means to stop Vol.

“Your name is Lasha,” Caitlin said, moving her arms now as she spoke. “And you . . . guard this pool?”

The man nodded gruffly, his leathery skin tight, his dark eyes narrowed. He looked like a purer version of Yokane, the Galderkhaani descendant Caitlin had met in New York. His features—like those of the
Standor
—were angular, narrow, the bone structure visible beneath the taut bronzed flesh.

“Can you tell me where I am?” Caitlin asked as a large gray-skinned creature scuttled toward the pool. She recognized the animal with its long, floppy ears and a tail; otherwise resembling a modern-day seal in size and general configuration, a kind of pet Bayarmii had. It was chased by Lasha with an adamant “Shoo!” The creature barked at him as it flopped off.

“Bold
thyodularasi
,” he said. “And they're getting bolder! Too many fish being harvested, not enough for them to eat. This one is very smart. He endears himself to the children and they feed him.” He stopped himself from another tirade and his eyes returned to Caitlin. “You asked a question. This is the port city of Falkhaan. We feed Galderkhaan, all of it. The fish below and the jasmine leaves grown in the clouds above. You—you look like a capitalist.”

Hand gestures told her that the word had a very different meaning here than it did in her time.

“What makes you think I come from the capital?”

“Your clothes, hands, suggest you are a digger, but your slender arms do not appear to do much digging. So I think you are a supervisor in the tunnels.”

“A good—” she sought but did not find a word for “forensics.” She settled for, “A good analysis, Lasha. Let me think about it.”

“I am sure of it,” he said. He moved his hands as though they were rising on heat but said no words. She understood that to mean it was the way she carried herself, proudly.

“I thought you might be here as a representative of the capital for the Night of Miracles,” Lasha added.

“What is that?” Caitlin asked.

The old man shook his head sadly, wriggled his fingers. “Your memory is truly vapor. It celebrates the dawn of the Galderkhaani, our rise from the fires.”

“The magma,” she said.

“Yes, the magma,” he replied. “The storm from above, the rocks exploding within the fire, life released from the heat and carried forth on the smoke. At least, that is the legend. Told by whom, though, I ask you?” he wondered aloud. “If no one was here, how could we know?”

“Perhaps by studying the rocks?” she suggested.

“The Priests would have you believe that they've consulted with the ascended, but—a study of the rocks?” He seemed to have just processed what she said. “What would you do, hit them against your head?”

“I don't know,” she said, smiling in spite of herself. Science was clearly not so advanced here in some areas. The celebration concerned her, though. Symbolically, that would have been the ideal time for Vol to make his move. And if this were the time when he was to act, there was something else on Caitlin's mind. Something so elusive she found it difficult to grasp: that conflagration was the time when she herself,
at the United Nations, opened a door between her time, her world, and Galderkhaan. Could she, even in spirit, exist in two places at once?

“The capital—is that where the Source is?” she asked, hoping that knowledge of the project was common.

“The Source is there . . . and here,” he said, stamping his sandaled foot on the packed earth. “That's what is heating the water—the runoff from the ice that is melting to the west. Do you have something to do with that dig? If so, I have much to say to you. Hot water is good for bathing, bad for fish.”

“I don't know if I'm involved,” Caitlin replied, suddenly thinking it would be a good idea to go where she knew there might be tiles, where she had faced Pao and Rensat in spirit. “How far are we from there?”

“A
timhut
by air,” he said, throwing a hand vaguely behind him, to the south. “
La-timhut
on foot.”

She knew, from the memories of Bayarma, that the first measure described a journey to be taken without need of sleep. The hand gestures indicated that it was half that. Five or six hours, perhaps? The second was about ten times as long. She would have to fly.

Caitlin rose suddenly. “The woman who just left—”

“Qala? The
Standor
?”

“Yes. Do you think she would take me? Or perhaps someone she knows.”

“I don't keep her schedule!” Lasha said with annoyance. He ran to the other end of the pool to chase away a trio of
mensats
that were trying to claw up the wall to get a drink. He swatted the noose at them then flung it under his arm as if it were a martial arts nunchaku. “You'll have to ask someone at the tower. Her ship is one of our proudest and is almost certainly headed there for the celebration.”

Caitlin was still a little too unsteady to run after her; then she remembered the boy she had seen before. He was still staring at her from the shadows. Caitlin suddenly felt very protective of him. She smiled sweetly, sincerely, and motioned him over.

Lasha laughed. “Good idea!” he said. “Vilu needs no excuse to talk to the
Standor
!”

Vilu welcomed the acknowledgment. He approached tentatively, his eyes on the woman. The
thyodularasi
waddled over behind him, huffing eagerly through its whiskers as it sniffed the boy's moving ankles.

“Your name is Vilu?” Caitlin said.

The boy nodded.

“Vilu, would you do me a favor?” Caitlin asked.

Lasha cut through the negotiation. “Boy, run and ask
Standor
Qala if she could delay a moment. This lady wishes to speak with her.”

The boy grinned and took off as she had seen Jacob run in the park so many times—bent low, head down, arms churning, legs pumping. Vilu seemed so free. Caitlin's heart ached for her son, but also for this boy.

Soon he would most likely be dead
, she thought,
along with every living creature in Galderkhaan.
And while she wouldn't be the reason—Vol would—the interference of her future self with the
cazh
would prevent their souls from transcending, from living together as spirits. He would be an ascended soul wandering alone for eternity. She wondered if wisdom and maturity came with that state or if he would be locked in boyhood and fear for eternity.

Caitlin turned away, tears behind her eyes.

“What is it?” Lasha asked.

“I'm still uncertain of my body,” she replied, neglecting to gesture to express the kind of uncertainty she was feeling. It was sickness, deep in her belly, in her soul.

“You may sit in the hut, out of the sun,” Lasha said. “That might help.”

“Thank you.” Caitlin was about to turn in that direction when she heard a small voice behind her.

“Mom?”

Caitlin spun and stared at Vilu. The boy had stopped running after
the
Standor
. He was standing unsteadily in the bright sun, his arms repeating a gesture that meant “birth mother” in Galderkhaani.

“Did you say something?” Caitlin asked.

“Yes, Mom,” he said, signing, not in Galderkhaani but in English. Just like the words he spoke. “I would much rather we go to the capital by Nemo's submarine.”

And then he fell to the ground.

CHAPTER 4

B
en Moss stood in Caitlin's living room. Anita Carter was behind him, just closing the door. She introduced Ben to the others.

Ben was looking down at Madame Langlois, who was sitting in a rattan chair that Caitlin kept by the south-facing bay window. The Haitian's son was standing behind her, protectively. The woman was dressed in a colorful orange skirt with embroidered patterns of interlocking half-circles—like “S” shapes, but overlapping. She was wearing a wool sweater. The tall young man, Enok, wore blue jeans and a leather jacket that was still zipped to the chin. Madame ­Langlois held a tall glass of ice water in her hand. Ben noticed a serpent tattoo that wound from the tip of her right thumb down the back of her hand then around and around the little he could see of her forearm.

“I am very pleased to meet you both,” Ben said, though he did not immediately move forward. “Caitlin has spoken to me of you both.” His eyes were on the woman. “Madame Langlois, you said that Caitlin is—”

“The doctor—her serpent came to me in my sleep,” Madame Langlois said in a casual voice.

“ ‘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 near
est 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!”

Ben heard her but he motioned for her to remain calm. Madame Langlois's hand seemed to be floating on the air, rotating slightly about the wrist, following the extended fingers. He was suddenly fascinated by her motion: now he recognized absolutely some of the moves Caitlin had executed at the United Nations, when she was making her spiritual journey to Galderkhaan.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Ben quietly asked as he sidled up to Anita. “The movement, I mean.”

“What? Ben—this is a
show
!”

“I'm not convinced of that. I've seen Caitlin hold her hand like that. And mesmerists. Even Dracula, in movies.”

“Jesus, vampires now?”

“Actors being intuitive, that's what an archetype is!” he said. “Please, just answer me.”

Anita frowned, struggled to focus. “In the park, I guess—­Columbus Park, in Chinatown,” she said. “Weekend tai chi. It looks a
little
like that.”

“In what way?”

“Floating hands. You move until they feel like they're separate from the body, carrying—” Anita stopped as she realized what she was saying.

“Carrying what?”

“All the energy of your body,” she said. “As if your body and arms no longer exist.”

Ben nodded. That, like what Madame Langlois was doing, could well be part of the common human experience. It was the same with language: the elements that show up over and over separate valid experience from affectation and trickery, like the need to shout an oath, not just cry out, after hitting your finger with a hammer. These are buried in the human condition though no one knows why or by what mechanism.

Perhaps they were rooted in Galderkhaan.

Ben pushed aside the woman's obduracy, watched her with fresh eyes. Madame Langlois's shaking subsided; she was slipping into some kind of relaxed trance yet the hand itself seemed to be floating, like a cork in water, the fingers moving in unison as if guided by an outside source. He saw the shadow they cast on the area rug but suddenly noticed the angle of the shadow relative to the fingers was increasing, somehow. It was as if the shadow were hooked like one of the curves on Madame Langlois's skirt, the base of the finger pointing straight ahead, the tip crooked toward one of the rooms.

Toward Jacob's room.

Anita noticed it too. “Ben!” she said in a loud, insistent whisper. “I don't care about the academic value of this. You've got to stop it.” The shadow grew longer and Anita's breathing came faster.

“Enok, tell me what's happening or we must intervene,” Ben said.

“Stop her and the snake will move freely among us,” the man warned stoically.

“What?”

“We do not want that, I think,” Enok said quietly.

“How do you know that will happen?” Ben demanded.

“I have seen it,” he replied. There was respect for the process in his voice, if not in his expression.

Either Enok was correct or Anita and Ben were sharing a delusion. The shadow began to wriggle though Madame Langlois's fingers remained steady. It was not Ben's imagination, it was not a hallucination, and from Anita's frightened expression, she was realizing that as well. The darkness of the serpentine shadow seemed to deepen, obscuring what was beneath it, as they watched it crawl along the rug. And there was something else within it: what looked to Ben like glitter, only it was something transitory. There were tiny facets that appeared and reappeared in roughly the same places, the same relationship one to the other as the shadow moved.

With a back-and-forth motion, the head of the serpent pulled the
rest of the body toward the hallway, to where Anita had solidly placed herself.

“Get it away,” she warned, choking on the sentence as she spread her arms and legs.

“It will not hurt you,” Enok said.

“It's not me I'm worried about,” Anita said, her eyes fastened on the shape.

“It will hurt no one,” he insisted.

“How do you know?” Ben asked.

“That is not its way,” Enok replied.

“More double-talk,” Anita said. “If you don't make her stop, I will!”

“Let it play out a little longer,” Ben said. “We can always take Jacob and go.”

“Can we?” she asked.

“It's not solid, Anita,” Ben pointed out. “It doesn't appear to be noxious.”

“It looks radioactive!” she said.

“That's not likely,” Ben said. “Anita, please . . . this is happening for a reason.”

The serpent expanded, thickened, seemed to take on size but not substance; it was like thick smoke with curling eddies of darkness becoming visible within. The tiny fireflies sparked and faded within as the inner clouds moved. Otherwise without features, the snake moved from the rug to the hardwood floor, writhed just feet from Anita where it suddenly stopped. It was almost as if the outer shape had suddenly frozen, while the turmoil and lights continued within. Ben began to walk toward Anita, slowly, around the shape, not sure what he was going to do. He stopped as the black snake rose like a cobra, turning toward him. Its head floated higher, bobbing from side to side until it reached the level of his eyes. A few moments after Ben stopped, the shape turned back toward Anita and moved forward, trailing neither glitter nor making a ripple on the floor. There was terror in the
wide set of the woman's mouth but she did not scream. She placed her hands hard against the frame of the hallway entrance, set her legs, and had no intention of moving.