A Vision of Fire

She could still question, she could still think: Is that the key? But how can I stop so many from completing the cazh at once?

But she threw the questions away, wanting only to be here and now, with them. One spirit turned from the group and looked into Caitlin’s eyes.

Not you, the grandmother told her. You are not one of us.

Though Caitlin longed to complete the transcendence with them, see what was out there, she obeyed.

I am still Caitlin, she told herself.

She held back, then withdrew. She focused on the conference room floor beneath her feet, heard the pounding rain on the windows.

I must remain myself.

She thought of the people in the park in Tehran, the men and women doing Tai Chi, moving with sublime balance. She pressed her left foot hard against the conference room floor, like a sprinter pushing her foot into a starting block. This reality, coming in through her left, would hold her here a little longer.

I am still me.

She felt stabilized, literally with one foot in each world. But she still had to stop the mass soul that was forming around her, above her, in Galderkhaan. The souls that were seeking other traumatized souls in Caitlin’s present.

* * *

Ben saw Caitlin’s smile vanish. He noticed the change in her position. She was speaking again but he was finding it harder to hear her. He realized suddenly that it wasn’t her voice that was changing; there was a pressure increasing in his head, and his eardrums were throbbing, as though he were in an airplane that had depressurized. He opened his mouth wide, worked his jaw, swallowed; it succeeded for an instant and then the pressure returned. With one eye on Caitlin he moved to the windows, trying to locate the source of the pressure. A vent… an ill-fitting window… a gap in the ceiling…?

There was nothing. The wind threw rain at the windows like stones.

He set his cell phone on the table and ventured closer to Caitlin, staggering against the pressure in his head. Caitlin’s hair was still floating. Her eyes were shut, her mouth was moving, her arms helping to fashion unfamiliar words. He fought against his brutal headache, to make his feet move toward the tin of tea.

“What do I do?” he whispered, half-praying for an answer.

* * *

Caitlin did not hear. Everywhere she looked, she could see the dead or dying. Beyond the trees she could see the same young man from Atash’s vision, performing the cazh. Across the water she watched as a boat smashed into one of the largest pillars, coming to pieces, its inhabitants clawing at the waves, or raising their hands in supplication even as they drowned. Gaelle, Caitlin thought helplessly. There was nothing she could do to save them from their deaths. She had to press on, had to stop the rising group soul and protect others in the present…

* * *

Ben saw smoke rising from her flesh.

“Caitlin!”

“Don’t… touch… me!”

There was a decanter of water on the conference table. He would use it if he had to. He did not understand very much but he knew this: they might never have this chance again. He had to let it play out.

* * *

Caitlin had no time left to think and not much of a rational mind to think with. Instead, she felt herself rise from the temple, rise from the conference room, beyond the ash and beyond the rain, into a cloud that was thunder and darkness, that was the coldness of the grave multiplied by eternity. Despite the grandmother’s warning, Caitlin allowed herself to ascend, carried by the older woman’s soul. Caitlin’s grip on her own living body grew weaker.

Two worlds were merging violently. The storm seemed to roil above Manhattan as Galderkhaan was pulled into the sea with the roaring hiss of dying flames. The innumerable souls of the ascended were everywhere.

Caitlin clung single-mindedly to one thought, one objective: the group soul trying to form and cross the barrier of time. She thought of the young people she knew and did not know in her own world, others like Maanik and Gaelle and Atash who were made vulnerable by trauma and were probably being assaulted, their own souls being dragged painfully upward along with those of these ancient beings, for reasons still unknown. She had to stop them.

Below her, she saw the entire city, the roads and streets, the line of columns that ran from the volcano to the sea, glowing green with their strange energy — but also, in the capstone of the tallest column in the sea, a symbol. A triangle made of crescents within crescents. It was the same symbol she had seen Gaelle draw. The same one Maanik had drawn.