Waterfall (12 page)

“But a swamp could be anywhere,” Ander said.

“Or everywhere,” Solon said.

“You know where it is,” Eureka said. “How do I get there?”

“The Marais is not on any map,” Solon said. “True places never are. Man has frittered away millennia speculating about where Atlantis once was. Did it droop beyond marlins in Florida, or amid icy Swedish mermaids? Did it sink alongside Antarctic seals? Is it undulating under Bahamian yachts, oozing beneath ouzo bottles in Santorini, wafting like palm fronds off the coast of Palestine?”

From the bedroom behind the tapestry, William whimpered in his sleep. Eureka rose to go to her brother, who often needed soothing from bad dreams, but the boy grew quiet again.

Solon lowered his voice. “Or maybe the whole continent just drifted, disinclined to settle down. No one knows.”

“In other words,” Ander said, “Atlantis could rise from anywhere.”

“Not at all.” Solon refilled his glass of prosecco. “Over the years the Marais’s latitude and longitude in the Waking World has shifted, but it is and always has been the place from where Atlantis must rise. The seafloor beneath the Marais is pliant in the exact shape of the lost continent. From there, Atlas can bring Atlantis up whole. A successful exhumation.”

“So it matters where the third tear hits the earth—” Ander said.

“
If
the third tear hits the earth,” Eureka said.

“Wherever the third tear hits, Atlantis will still rise,” Solon said, “but unless it falls on the Marais, it rises piecemeal, in jagged shards, like teeth growing in already decayed. Atlas would have ugly work to do to reunite his empire.” He grimaced. “And he would rather focus on … other things.”

“The Filling,” Ander said quietly.

“What is the Filling?” Eureka asked.

“You are far from ready to comprehend that,” Solon said. “The Marais is where Eureka must face the Evil One. He will be waiting there.”

Eureka remembered that vision of Brooks swimming toward her near the Turkish shore. It hadn’t been a vision. And it hadn’t been Brooks coming for her. It had been Atlas.

“No,” she said. “I think he’s here.”

Solon glanced around his cave and furrowed his brow at Eureka.

“Eureka’s confused,” Ander said. “On our way here she thought she saw the boy Atlas possessed. I told her it couldn’t be him—”

“You told her wrong.” Solon studied the lachrymatory in his fist. He slipped it inside his robe pocket. “Coming for the Tearline girl himself. Hiding somewhere in these mountains. One must admire Atlas’s commitment. It is essential, Eureka, that you keep your distance from him until you are prepared.”

“Obviously,” Eureka said, but she looked down at her plate so they wouldn’t see her eyes. If Atlas was here, Brooks was here. If he was here, she could still save him.

“If he’s here,” Ander said, “we have to kill him.”

“No one is touching Brooks,” Eureka said.

“
Brooks
is gone,” Ander said, and looked to Solon. “Tell her.”

“For now, the boy you knew still exists inside his body,” Solon said, “but once one is taken by Atlas, there is no way out. Were you sentimental about this mortal coil?”

“He’s my best friend.”

“Eureka.” Ander reached for her hand. “When you shed the first two tears in your backyard, what were you crying about?”

“It’s complicated. It wasn’t just one thing.”

But it wasn’t complicated at all. It was the simplest thing.
She’d been thinking about a pecan tree in Sugar’s backyard. Her mind had climbed the branches, searching for Brooks. He was always there in her happiest childhood memories, always laughing, always making her laugh.

Eureka realized Ander already knew what she was about to say. “I cried because I thought he was gone.”

“And you were right”—Solon raised his glass—“so let’s move on.”

“That was before I saw him swimming toward me this morning,” Eureka said. “As long as Brooks’s body exists, as long as his lungs still draw breath and his heart still beats, I won’t give up on my friend.”

“Your friend is but a tool now,” Solon said. “Atlas will use the boy’s memories to manipulate you. When he is done, he will take the boy’s soul with him.”

No. There had to be a way to stop the world’s worst enemy without ending her best friend. “What if I refuse to go to the Marais altogether? I’ll stay here until the full moon wanes, and Atlas will have to go back to the Sleeping World. He’ll leave Brooks’s body and go home.”

“That’s no better than Ander’s absurd idea to kill Brooks. Atlas’s mind would return to Atlantis. On his way he will discard your friend’s body and steal his soul,” Solon said. “In either case, you would be avoiding the one thing you must do. You must face Atlas. You must destroy the Evil One.”

“But Eureka has a point,” Ander said. “Under your cave’s
glaze she would be safe from the Seedbearers and Atlas. Why can’t we just ride out the storm until he sinks again?”

“Just kick the can down the road to the next Tearline girl?” Solon said. “And leave this world rotting with wasted dead while you’re at it?”

Shame washed over Eureka. She had started this rise. She would finish it once and for all. “Solon is right. This ends with me.”

“Now, there’s the girl Diana spoke of.” Solon’s eyes filled with boyish excitement.

Eureka studied the smoothness of his skin, the youthfulness of his dyed leopard-spotted hair, the vivid brightness of his pale blue eyes. But Solon was exiled from the Seedbearers seventy-five years ago. Nothing made sense anymore.

“Why aren’t you old?” The question escaped her before she realized it was rude.

Solon set down his mug and cast a wide-eyed gaze at Ander. “Do you want to field this one?”

“We should be talking about Eureka’s preparation to go to the Marais, not—”

“Not what?” Solon asked, beginning to stack their plates. “Your secret?”

“What secret?” Eureka asked.

“Don’t do this,” Ander said.

“It won’t take a minute. I have the story well rehearsed.” Solon grinned, gathering silverware from the table. “You really want to know how I stay so vibrantly young?”

“Yes,” Eureka said.

“Monkey glands. Injected straight into the—”

Eureka groaned. “I’m not kidding, Solon—”

“I! Feel! Nothing!” Solon flung out his arms and shouted at the waterfall. “No joy. No desire. No empathy. And certainly not”—he stared at her entrancingly—“love.” Solon tapped her bag containing
The Book of Love.
“Don’t you know the story of Leander and Delphine?”

“You mean Leander and Selene?” Eureka asked. Selene was her ancestor; Leander was Ander’s ancestor. Long ago, they had been deeply in love and escaped Atlantis so they could love each other freely—but they were shipwrecked and separated by a storm.

Solon shook his head. “Before Selene, there was Delphine.”

Eureka remembered. “Okay, but Leander left Delphine because he wanted Selene.” It sounded like locker-room gossip.

Solon had moved to a cupboard behind the table. He poured himself a shot of ruby-colored port. “You’re familiar with the expression, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’?”

Eureka nodded. “Ander, what is he talking about?”

“Imagine a sorceress scorned,” Solon said. “Imagine the blackest heart scorched into deeper blackness. Quadruple it. That is Delphine scorned.”

“This is not the way Eureka should—” Ander protested.

“I’m just getting to the good part,” Solon said. “Delphine couldn’t stop Leander from falling in love with another, but she could ensure that his love would lead to misery. She cast a
spell on him, one inherited by all his future descendants. Your boyfriend and I both endure under that spell: love drains our life away. Love ages us rapidly, decades in a moment.”

Eureka looked from Ander to Solon and back again. They both were just boys. “I don’t get it. You said you were once in love—”

“Oh, I was,” Solon said fiercely. He swallowed the last drop of port. “There was no way to stop our love. It’s fate—Seedbearer boys always fall for Tearline girls. We have Tearline fever.”

Eureka looked at Ander. “This has happened other times?”

“No,” Solon said sarcastically. “All of this began the moment you started paying attention to it. Good God, girls are dumb.”

“It’s different with us,” Ander said. “We’re not like—”

“Not like me?” Solon said. “Not like a murderer?”

It hit Eureka then, what had happened to Byblis. She shivered, then began to sweat. “You killed her.”

Seedbearers were supposed to kill Tearline girls. Ander was supposed to have killed Eureka. But Solon had actually gone through with it. He had murdered his true love.

Ander reached for Eureka. “What we feel for each other is real.”

“What happened with Byblis?” Eureka asked.

“After one astonishing and amorous month together”—Solon leaned back in his chair, hands clasped over his chest—“we
were sitting at a riverside café, our bodies turned toward each other, much like yours are now.” Solon gestured at Eureka’s and Ander’s knees brushing under the table.

“I reached my feeble hand across the table to caress her flowing hair,” Solon said. “I stared into her midnight eyes. I gathered all my waning strength and I told her I loved her.” He held out his hand and swallowed, drawing his fingers into a fist. “Then I broke her neck, as I had been raised to do.” He stared into space, his fist still raised. “I was an old man then, decrepit with the age that love had brought me.”

“That’s horrible,” Eureka said.

“But there’s a happy ending,” Solon said. “As soon as she was gone, my arthritis faded. My cataracts melted away. I could walk upright. I could run.” He smirked at Ander. “But I’m sure my story sounds nothing like yours.” He touched Ander’s eyes. “Not even in the pitter-patter of your crow’s-feet.”

Ander swatted Solon’s hand.

“Is it true?” Eureka asked.

Ander avoided her eyes. “Yes.”

“You weren’t going to tell me.” Eureka stared at his face, noticing lines she hadn’t seen before. She imagined him hobbling and wizened, walking feebly with a cane.

Solon said something, but Eureka’s bad ear had been turned to him, so she didn’t hear it. She spun around. “What did you say?”

“I said as long as he loves you, Ander will age. The more
intensely he feels, the more quickly it will happen. And on the off chance you’re
not
one of those entirely superficial girls—age will affect more than his body. His mind will go as swiftly as the rest. He will grow incredibly, miserably old—and stay that way. Unlike mortal aging, Seedbearer aging leads not to the sweet freedom of death.”

“What if he were to stop … loving me?”

“Then, my darling,” Solon said, “he would remain the strapping, frowning boy you see forever. Interesting dilemma, isn’t it?”

“I
need air,” Eureka said. The cave seemed to be shrinking, a hand tightening into a fist. “How do I get out?”

There’s no way out,
Solon had said about Brooks. She sensed the same was true for her. She was trapped inside the Bitter Cloud, trapped in love with a boy who should not love.

“Eureka—” Ander said.

“Don’t.” She left them at the table and took the staircase down to the lower level. The waterfall’s roar grew deafening. She didn’t want to hear herself think. She wanted to dive into the pool and let the fall pummel her until she couldn’t feel angry or lost or betrayed.

To the right of the waterfall, around the back of the curved staircase, was a heavy black and gray tapestry. She slipped
behind the staircase. At the far edge of the pool she steadied herself against the wall and lifted the tapestry’s corner.

A channel of water ran beneath it, leading from the pool to a dark, narrow infinity. Lifting the tapestry higher, she saw an aluminum canoe tethered to a post a few feet inside the watery tunnel.

The canoe was heavily dented and bore a cartoon profile of a Native American on the hull. A wooden paddle lay beneath its built-in seat, and a lit torch with a glowing amethyst base was inset in a groove in the prow. The current was lazy, gently undulating.

Eureka wanted to paddle to the unflooded brown bayou behind her house, glide beneath the arms of weeping willows, past jonquils sprouting from the banks, all the way back in time to when the world was still alive.

She climbed inside the canoe, untethered it, and raised the paddle. She was thrilled by her recklessness. She didn’t know where this tunnel led. She imagined Seedbearers tasting her in the wind. And Atlas inside Brooks tracking her in the mountains. It didn’t stop her. As the slosh of her paddle became the only sound Eureka heard, she watched the shadow show the torch cast on the walls around her. Her silhouette was a haunted abstraction, her arms grotesquely long. Peculiar shapes passed through her form like ghosts.

She thought of Ander’s body, the unfair shapes love would sculpt it into. What if Ander aged into an old man before Eureka turned eighteen?

The narrow tunnel opened and Eureka entered a walled pond. Rain fell on her skin. Its salt tasted like the lightest kiss of poison. She was surrounded by white peaks of rock pinching a purple-clouded night sky. Stars twinkled between the clouds.