A Dream of Ice by Gillian Anderson

electrified to sit in a cab.
    She began the crosstown trek to Jacob’s school. She did it power-walking, burning off energy, pushing into the fear, into everything that was roiling inside. The session with Barbara had opened doors to . . . what exactly?
    There was no more dodging or denying this new reality.
    She continued to walk.
    Despite everything she had said to Barbara, Caitlin realized that she was fighting herself. She was a scientist who took rational steps, one at a time. Now she was forcing herself to jump into areas for which there were no reliable textbooks, no maps. There was just one consolation, something that hadn’t been present when she was working with Maanik and Gaelle: I’m not facing the same threat.
    But she was facing the mysteries of Galderkhaan and the feeling of awful terror when she thought Jacob was knocking in that opaque blank nothing place.
    Caitlin had just taken out her phone to call Jacob when the phone rang in her hand. It was a local number, elusively familiar. She answered and it was the vice principal of Jacob’s school.
    â€œDr. O’Hara, is Jacob with you?”
    Nothing from the past few weeks equaled the cold fear that smashed into Caitlin now.
    â€œHe is not with me,” she said tightly. “Is he not at school?”
    There was the tiniest of pauses during which a well-trained educator kept himself from cursing in the ear of a parent.
    â€œDr. O’Hara, we have lost track of your son. We think he may have walked from the building about half an hour ago but we aren’t sure. However, we have looked everywhere . . .”
    Caitlin had no idea what the man said next. She couldn’t hear him over her internal screaming. She stood on the street shouting into the phone for a few minutes but it felt like years. Then somehow she said to herself, beneath the screaming, Where would he go? Start there. Somewhere near school?
    Caitlin hung up on the vice principal, saying only, “I’ll call you back.” She glanced around, registered where she was, then started sprinting with a stamina she didn’t know she had.
    Her peripheral vision grayed out. Looks from the people she passed hardly registered. Vaguely she wondered whether she should try to reach for Jacob using this new power. Was it even possible? But the thought was a bare blip in the total urgency of running. She lunged across the street before traffic had fully stopped. Horns honked, someone yelled, she heard nothing. Her lungs started to beg for a pause. She didn’t notice.
    And then she was on Twenty-Seventh Street. Her phone buzzed in her bag while she was pounding up the stairs but somehow she knew and didn’t bother picking up. She shoved open the door to the lobby of Jacob’s cooking school and the receptionist stood up, the phone to her ear.
    â€œOh thank god, Dr. O’Hara, we were trying to—”
    Caitlin ignored her and looked around, gasping. No sign of him. She hurried past the desk and bashed open the door to the long, bright test kitchen. At the far end of the room Jacob was on his hands and knees on the floor. He looked like he was vomiting.
    The receptionist rushed up behind her. “He just wandered in here, he was talking but he wouldn’t respond to us—he kept saying something that sounded like ‘towers.’ ”
    Caitlin was already diving across the floor to him, her feet and then her knees skidding across spilled sauces and fragments of food. Large bowls were scattered everywhere. A small cluster of people surrounding him drew back as Caitlin reached him. His small back was arched and he heaved hard, but nothing came out but a horrible rasping. There was no vomit on the floor in front of him.
    â€œWhat is he trying to throw up?” Caitlin shouted, placing her hands on his back. “What did he eat?”
    â€œHe didn’t eat anything,” someone said. “We were watching. He came in