The Sound of Seas Read Free Page B

said. “I have to find him.”
    â€œAnd perhaps I can help with that,” the Standor said. “First, you haven’t told us who you are? Only who you are not.”
    â€œI am Caitlin O’Hara,” she said, the name sounding strange in a tongue that was not her own, “and I must get home.”
    â€œTo the north?” Qala said.
    Caitlin nodded forlornly. “To the north . . . and a world farther than that.”



CHAPTER 1
    I t was nearly dawn when an exhausted Ben Moss left Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
    Nothing seemed real to the British-born UN translator. But that was becoming the new normal ever since he and Caitlin had been delving into the long-dead world of Galderkhaan and its living emissaries—ghosts, spirits, energies, or whatever they were; during those few weeks he had lost his old perspective on what constituted “real.”
    No, that is not entirely true , he thought. What is very real is that Caitlin is presently unconscious and nonresponsive .
    Yet even as he thought that, his arms moved. He had been spending all his spare time trying to piece together and translate the language of Galderkhaan—so much time that it seemed almost unnatural not to make superlative hand gestures as he spoke.
    That too was a new normal. Along with watching people who unconsciously moved their hands as they spoke, wondering, Are you descended from Galderkhaani ?
    Ben walked onto Third Avenue, into the lamplit darkness of the New York predawn. It was late fall and, in addition to the darkness, a cold wind swept in from the East River, adding to his sense of desolation. He was unsure what to do next. That unfamiliar confusionfrightened him. Typically, Ben followed the lead of the UN ambassadors. He didn’t have to plan very much, to think further than the next few words. The one time he had tried doing that, as a student at NYU—loving Caitlin—it ended with an estrangement that lasted for years.
    Galderkhaan had brought back all the old fears of wanting something, of planning for something, of being disappointed. Now Caitlin’s life might hang on him reengaging.
    Not being a family member, Ben was only able to get answers from attending physician Peter Yang because the linguist was the only one who could explain—more or less—what had brought Caitlin to this condition.
    â€œYou told the EMT that she was—self-hypnotizing in the park?” Dr. Yang had asked as they stood in the hospital waiting room.
    â€œYes,” Ben had said. That was the only way he could think to describe what he suspected was going on.
    â€œDo you know why?” the doctor had enquired.
    â€œShe was . . . she thought she might be able to contact spirits,” he said. “It’s become a professional hot topic for her.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œSeveral of her patients needed help in that area—she didn’t tell me more.”
    â€œSeveral?” the doctor had asked.
    â€œSimilar reactions to psychological trauma,” Ben replied.
    â€œCoincidence, then?”
    â€œThat is what she was—exploring,” he said carefully.
    â€œI see. No mental illness in her past?”
    â€œNone.”
    â€œDo you know if she has experienced visions, hallucinations?”
    That had been a question full of dynamite. Ben had thought carefully how to answer. “Yes, but I don’t think there’s a neurological—”
    â€œYou’re a doctor, Mr. Moss?”
    â€œNo. But she chose to do these things,” he said with some annoyance. He didn’t like being challenged on translations, and he didn’t like being challenged on this. “As I said a moment ago, Doctor, she was self -hypnotizing. A choice.”
    â€œAll right, then,” the physician went on. “What about drugs, alcohol—”
    â€œNo drugs, no alcohol in excess.”
    â€œDepression, schizophrenia,