A Vision of Fire

by Gillian Anderson

  “Can we sit down?” Caitlin could hardly believe what she was hearing. She needed a bench to take it all in. She shook her head not just in awe but in relief. Seeing her old friend perform the gesture without an accompanying fit of screams and scratching was profoundly comforting.

  “You are amazing,” she said.

  “Eh, it’s just good software.” He grinned, shrugging away the compliment. “I only have about twenty-five percent of the words translated, and we don’t have that many to begin with. Nouns have been easiest. What’s most interesting to me is that the word for ‘fire’ and its superlative appear very near the word for ‘sky.’ ”

  “Do you have any idea why?”

  “Well, I’d like to be cautious about interpretation but I doubt the proximity is accidental. This shows up in ancient China as yin-yang, with the sky being the ‘fire’ force and earth being a ‘water’ force. But in this language, the superlative for ‘fire’ also appears very near what I think are the words for ‘arm’ and ‘pain.’ So maybe . . . ?” He urgently patted his forearms as if he were putting out flames.

  “God, yes!” Caitlin exclaimed when it had soaked in. “If burning sparks were falling on my arms and wouldn’t go out, burning deeper into my flesh, I might try to scratch them away, like Maanik. All right, so in the broadest of terms, what kind of causes do we have for fire in the sky? Either it was manufactured means—firebombing or a burning building—or there was a natural cause. Lightning? A volcano? A meteor?”

  “All of that is possible,” Ben said. He repeated another gesture they had seen in the videos: pointing his left hand away from him at an angle while crossing his body with his right hand. At the same time he said, “ ‘Ogrusse.’ That seems to be the superlative for ‘water,’ meaning ‘the biggest water,’ and it appears very near the word for ‘sky’ too.”

  “You mean they’re interchangeable? ‘Sky’ and ‘water’? Because they’re blue?”

  “I don’t think that’s it,” he said. “I took it to mean water that touches the sky.”

  “Like a tsunami?”

  “Again, still guesswork, but that’s a possibility.”

  Caitlin thought back to Phuket. “You’d have to be sitting on the beach to see it quite like that, rolling in from the horizon.”

  “If we’re talking about recent tsunamis, yeah. But what if this is a mega?” He extended his arms as if he were holding a barrel. “One big mother?”

  “How big are we talking?” she asked.

  “In living memory?” Ben replied. “Lituya Bay, Alaska, July 9, 1958. An 8.3-magnitude earthquake along the Fairweather Fault caused a landslide that pushed a hundred million cubic feet of earth and glacier into the narrow inlet of the bay. The result was a wave that rose 1,720 feet. That’s the tallest mega-tsunami of modern times, and I stress ‘modern times.’ There’s a whole lot of history that happened before we started keeping records.”

  “Apparently,” Caitlin said. She shook her head, not quite able to process all of this. Partly from gratitude, partly for comfort, she hugged her companion. “Thank you, Ben. I have no way to say it enough, thank you.”

  “Thurstillalotlfttoworkt,” he said into her collar.

  They laughed at his muffled voice and she pulled back.

  “There’s still a lot left to work out,” he repeated. “I was hoping you would bring back a video or something with more language from Haiti, but it doesn’t sound like you had a chance?”

  Caitlin deflated. “No. I brought back stuff but I don’t know what it was.”

  “More writing?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Caitlin?”

  “The Vodou vision I had there, and then the nightmare on the plane. When I was hit with—with whatever it was, I felt heat, I saw fire.”

  “Power of suggestion?”

  “Well, sure, maybe. But from whom? The madame and her son didn’t say anything about fire. I mean, I was choking on sulfur, Ben. What would do that except a volcano?”

  “But you weren’t around a volcano then. Or ever, were you?”

  “I was around a caldera, once, in Southern California.”

  “Right, dormant for how many thousands of years? How about incense, was there any of that in Haiti? Anything that could have suggested that smell?”

  She shook her head.

  Ben took a deep breath. “So, a volcano. How? Where?”

  “What about when?”

  “No.” Ben shook his head. “Not buying where you’re going.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know where I’m going but stay with me. We know that both of these girls experienced something—nightmares, visions, hallucinations, whatever you want to call them. And we know that they didn’t experience these things at any other time in their short lives. All they seem to share, what stands out, is that both have a parent or stepparent—in any case, a close adult figure—who recently experienced a near-death incident.”

  “And the suicidal boy in Iran that you mentioned, didn’t he have a relative who just died?”

  “Yes, a brother who was executed. So these physio-visual-linguistic reactions are being triggered by family trauma, even if there is no direct bloodline.”

  “Which tells you what?” Ben asked. “Other than some kind of post-traumatic stress being a possible trigger. Where’s the physical volcano? Where’s the water that touches the sky? You’re saying you all experienced some part of that. Where?”

  “That’s just it,” Caitlin said. “I don’t know.”

  “What else could it be, then? Genetic imprinting? Vodou? Aliens?” Ben said.

  Caitlin slumped. She thought for a moment, then shook her head slowly. “Yeah, I’m not there either,” she said. Then she started to get excited again. “But hold on. You just said genetic imprinting. What if it’s something similar? Jung talked about genetic imprinting—­feelings, ideas that were passed down from our ancestors. Maybe these three family bonds are creating a portal into that collective unconscious.”

  “But we’re not just talking about vague feelings or even ideas. Maanik and Gaelle seemed transported, almost totally.”

  “And me,” Caitlin said.

  “To where? A volcano somewhere in the past?”

  “Not just the volcano, the Vikings too,” she said. “A lost language.” Then she murmured, almost as if it came from her unconscious, going with the flow: “No, not genetic imprinting. That’s too specific, individual-to-individual, and Gaelle wasn’t related to her stepmother, at least not genetically. What about racial memory, Ben? Group experiences.”

  “You mean like past lives?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what I mean,” she said. “Because there’s something the girls and I share, my Viking ship and the Old Norse factor in their language.”

  Ben shook his head no. “That’s tenuous at best. And really, really specific. Besides, where do the Mongolian and Japanese fit?”

  “I don’t know, but my point is we are dealing with something way older than any of us that has somehow manifested itself here, now.”

  “I don’t know, Caitlin. If you’re going to consider racial memory and past lives, what’s to prevent you from considering future lives or—”

  “You’re right.” Caitlin nodded.

  “Cai, I wasn’t being serious.”

  “But I am! Ben, what if? What if these phenomena—or just a single big phenomenon—are somehow free of time constraints? What if there is some kind of communal stream that’s carrying images and language—information—from ‘somewhen’ to ‘now’ and we’re here to receive and pass it forward?”

  “Why you four?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I need to look up Pompeii, I remember there were eyewitness reports—”

  “Pliny the Younger,” Ben said. “Chilling stuff. One of my schoolmates did a trans
lation for his thesis.”

  “Atlantis,” she muttered.

  “Cai, don’t.”

  Caitlin was only half-listening. Her brain was free-associating all over the map and through all the calendars that were and ever would be.

  “Time to reattach your wires to the ground,” Ben said. “This is beyond speculation.”

  “I’m fighting myself,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “One of my professors always said that guesswork is part of the scientific method and if you skip that step, you just keep living in the same box that was handed to you at birth. I never really liked that intellectual bungee jump—but here I am, doing it!”

  “And heading for the rocks,” Ben said. “You remember what your sophomore roommate used to call you?”

  “ ‘The girl with rivets,’ ” Caitlin said. “Yeah. I like things to make sense. And this thing doesn’t seem to, does it?” Then she added almost dreamily, “But it must.”

  Caitlin’s phone buzzed with a text. It was from Mrs. Pawar: My husband suggested I send this to you. It’s from Maanik.

  Caitlin tapped on the attachment and a triangle made of triangles made of crescents filled the screen.

  “Oh no. No.”

  She turned the phone to show Ben.

  “Jesus,” he breathed. “That’s impossible.”

  “I’m going over there.” She stood, already tapping a reply to Mrs. Pawar. “I’ve got a couple hours before my first session.”

  Caitlin started walking toward the Pawars’ building, then turned and spoke as she walked backward. “Thanks, Ben. Thanks for everything.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “For everything.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Caitlin stood in the hall outside the Pawars’ apartment door for an unusually long moment. The corridor was thick with the same still, unwelcoming atmosphere as the last time she was there. And then a click on the other side of the peephole: someone had lifted the cover to look out. When the door opened, Caitlin realized why Mrs. Pawar had used it. The wife of an Indian diplomat would not allow most outsiders to see her in a housedress with no makeup. The woman clearly wasn’t eating or sleeping enough. When they’d first met, stress had penciled dark smudges around her eyes, but these past days had hollowed her cheeks. Caitlin was mildly shocked by her appearance.

  “I’m sorry you had to wait,” the woman said.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Caitlin answered, stepping into the apartment. She waited until the door was shut before asking, “Is Maanik all right?”

  Mrs. Pawar locked the door behind them. “The blackberries finally worked,” she replied, with no sign of being relieved.

  “Finally?” Caitlin asked. She noticed Kamala standing sentry several paces back. Caitlin guessed that Mrs. Pawar was beginning to micromanage the household, trying to control anything she could in the face of a nearly uncontrollable threat to her daughter.

  “Just after I sent you Maanik’s drawing, she began running around the room, shrieking,” Mrs. Pawar said as they walked down the hall to Maanik’s bedroom. “She could not hear me. Or would not, I do not know. Finally, her father managed to restrain her and I was able to use your cue.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Caitlin said. She gently took the woman by the arm and slowed them down. “Tell me something, Mrs. Pawar. Have either you or your husband been having nightmares?”

  “To have nightmares one must sleep,” the woman replied, stalwartly fighting tears. “Our world seems to be coming apart. There is no haven—not abroad, not in this city, not in our home. No, Dr. O’Hara, there have been no nightmares.”

  “I understand,” Caitlin said. She released Mrs. Pawar’s arm and they continued toward the bedroom.

  Proximity and a familial relationship clearly were factors in what was happening. Whatever nightmares Caitlin had experienced as a result of being with Maanik and Gaelle had come from a connection made through hypnosis . . . or possibly Vodou. Forces that operated on a subtle, subconscious level—but even accepting that, she could not even begin to see how such forces could generate the same symbol from two very different hands.

  In Maanik’s boldly colored bedroom, the rich scent of flowers and harsher smell of chemical fragrance failed to mask the stale, stagnant air. Caitlin spotted an air freshener incongruously plugged into a surge protector also feeding Maanik’s computer. About a dozen small bouquets were arranged around the room, most of them including stuffed animals, which suggested they had been sent from Maanik’s friends. Doubtless they’d heard she was going to miss a week of school and realized something more unusual than flu was going on. Perhaps the Pawars were claiming stress from the attack on the ambassador.

  The ambassador was sitting on his daughter’s bed with his arm around her shoulders, at once comforting and protective. Her freshly bandaged right wrist rested in his open palm. Her left hand rested on the back of Jack London, who was curled up and snoring. The ambassador looked up as Caitlin approached. He nodded courteously but he did not have a smile in him. Maanik was asleep, breathing through her mouth with a slight rasp. In contrast to her mother, she looked as though she had been eating: her cheeks had a healthy color and her face seemed fresh. But there was a shadowy quality in her brow, a pinching of the eyebrows, that showed distress even in sleep.

  “Thank you for coming,” the ambassador said as he gently withdrew his arm from his daughter. He stood, passing the responsibility of propping up his daughter to his wife, and shook Caitlin’s hand. She could see he was hiding his unease better than Mrs. Pawar, out of necessity. “I feel so helpless.”

  Caitlin impulsively placed her right hand on top of his. “Mr. Pawar, we are getting there.”

  He glanced back at the spent form on the bed. “I wish I could believe that.”

  Caitlin persisted. “I just spent time with a young lady who has a condition similar to your daughter’s.”

  “Were you able to help her?” Mrs. Pawar asked hopefully.

  “I was able to learn from her,” Caitlin said. She searched through the photos on her phone and held up Gaelle’s sketch. “She drew this too.”

  After taking it in they shook their heads in shock.

  “That’s what this phase is about,” Caitlin continued. “To learn. There is no easy explanation for why both girls are experiencing similar symptoms or why they both drew this symbol.” She put away her phone. “And there may not be a quick and easy fix for Maanik. I sometimes work with a high school for children from war-torn countries. They saw terrible things before America offered them political asylum. They experienced trauma as intense as your daughter’s and it takes months, sometimes years, before they find ways to be teenagers again.”

  “I do not want to hear that,” the ambassador said, as if his wish could somehow sustain him.

  “I understand,” said Caitlin, “but I will tell you this—you are lucky because Maanik has your support and the support of everyone around her, and she is a fighter.”

  The ambassador looked at the floor. “Understand this too. I don’t want my daughter to be a fighter. I want her to be my daughter.”

  “Of course. That’s my goal as well,” Caitlin said patiently. “Which is why I have several important requests to make.”

  “What kind of requests?”

  “First, I would like to hypnotize Maanik again.”

  Mrs. Pawar reacted instantly. “No! My daughter is not a laboratory animal!”

  “We cannot protect her, Hansa,” Mr. Pawar said evenly. “We can only love her, and loving her means taking the next necessary step.” He looked back at Caitlin. “All right.”

  Mrs. Pawar tensed when she heard his pronouncement but said nothing.

  “Thank you,” Caitlin said. “I won’t do it now but it does need to happen imminently. And for my second request, I would like Ben
to be present during the hypnotism. He is known to you and, more importantly, to Maanik, and his linguistic skills could prove invaluable.”

  Now the ambassador’s eyes sought his wife’s support. He received it in the slight softening of Mrs. Pawar’s expression.

  “I trust Ben like a son,” he said to Caitlin. “You may ask him.”

  “Thank you again.”

  The ambassador’s brow lifted slightly. “Have you finished with your requests?”

  “Not quite,” Caitlin said.

  “I admire your resolve,” he said. “Perhaps you should take my place at the negotiating table.”

  “Ben would tell you, sir, that I never give up.”

  He finally smiled. “I’ve missed hearing such a hopeful expression.”

  Caitlin smiled back warmly. “Hold the applause until I’m finished.”

  “With?”

  “Request number three. Jack London.”

  The ambassador looked at her as if she might be pulling his leg. “What about him?”

  “I want to try something. Now. It will just take a minute.”

  The ambassador opened his hands in a gesture of approval and sat with anticipation in the desk chair. He and his wife watched as Caitlin approached Maanik’s bed. She scooped her hands gently under Jack London. The dog opened his eyes and gave her nearest fingers a few licks. Carrying him, she walked around the end of the bed to Maanik’s right side, where she was leaning against her mother. Caitlin held the dog close to Maanik’s right hand, which was resting in her lap. Instantly, the dog snapped his teeth at Caitlin’s hand, at the fingers he’d just been licking. Caitlin moved in time to avoid more than a nip but had to drop the snarling dog. He landed on the bedspread in an aggressive crouch, barking loudly at Maanik’s hand, then leaped from the bed and ran around to the other side. He stood there shaking and barking, but also trying to edge closer to the bed and to Maanik. It was a strange tug-of-war, as though invisible hands were pulling him in two directions.