Waterfall

by Lauren Kate

  "Byblis?"

  "Your mother."

  Dad raised his chin. "How'd you say you knew Diana?"

  "She visited me here years ago." Solon popped the cork on his bottle. "Opa!" he shouted as it rocketed off one skull's forehead and lodged in the eye socket of another. There were more than a few skulls sporting cork eyeballs.

  "My mother--" Eureka said.

  "Diamond of a woman." Solon raised his glass, toasting Diana. He took a sip. "How is she?"

  "She--" Eureka didn't know how to end that sentence.

  "Damn them," Solon whispered, and Eureka realized that he knew about the Seedbearers' plans. "Did you know she had made a pact with them?"

  "What?"

  "She swore to keep you from crying," Solon said, "and to keep the truth of your lineage a secret from you. In exchange, they were supposed to let you live."

  Diana had never mentioned a Seedbearer pact or a journey to the Bitter Cloud. She had never mentioned so many things. Diana had known what Eureka faced, but she hadn't borne Eureka's burden. She hadn't been a Tearline girl--not born on a day that didn't exist, not a motherless child and a childless mother, not raised to withhold her feelings until they exploded from within her. Diana had been Eureka's greatest ally, but she'd never really understood what it was like to be Eureka.

  Still, her mother had had a gift for letting chaos swirl until its meaning took shape. Eureka touched her necklace and let the piercing sensation of missing her mother come.

  "Diana knew we'd get along," Solon said.

  Eureka squinted. "She did? Do we?"

  "I believe her words were 'If you survive each other, you will become great friends,' " Solon said. "I should warn you I am very hard to kill."

  "Same here," Eureka said. "Believe me, I've tried."

  "Yes?" Solon looked admiringly at Eureka. "Now I know we'll become friends."

  "I'm not suicidal now." Eureka didn't know why she said that--maybe it was for the twins, maybe for herself. In any case, it was true.

  "What makes you want to live?" Solon asked. "Let me guess." He snapped his fingers. "You want to save the world."

  "You think this is a joke?" she asked.

  "Of course it's a joke." Solon jerked his thumb toward Ander. "Especially on him. He's in love with you."

  "You don't know us," Ander said. "We came here for help defeating Atlas, not your twisted perspective on love. Diana must have made you promise to help Eureka. Are you going to or not?"

  "You talk as if you're unique." Solon spoke like he knew his words stung and was enjoying it. "And the rest of you. You're the collateral damage of a deadly teenage fling that these two were too self-absorbed to prevent."

  "Hey," Cat said. "I'm twice as self-absorbed as Eureka."

  "But not a tenth as deadly," Solon said.

  Behind Solon, snow-white water tumbled from the fall. Eureka studied the place where the orchid had been. She didn't know what she'd been expecting from Solon, but it certainly hadn't been this.

  "Why did my mother think you could help me?"

  "Because I can," Solon said, "and I should. I hope you're a fast learner. We have only until the full moon before this stupid world comes to its stupid end."

  10

  AS IT RELATES TO LOVE

  "What happens on the full moon?" Eureka asked hours later when she, Solon, and Ander were alone before the fire pit.

  Ever since his assistants had arrived that afternoon, Solon had been quiet. He would offer no further details on Eureka's Tearline while the redheaded girl Filiz passed in and out of alcoves, clearing dishes, making fires. She looked uneasy, like she'd gone to a party far from home and lost her friends.

  Before Filiz left for the night, she'd redressed Dad's shoulder and brewed a potent pennyroyal tea that tucked him into sleep in the guest room behind the orange and red hanging tapestry. The twins slept on pallets at his side. Cat had refused food or rest until she reached her family, so Solon's other assistant, a boy introduced as "the Poet," escorted her to a veranda where there was a slim chance his phone might find reception.

  The Poet was tall and sexy with the paint-stained fingertips of a graffiti artist. He and Cat had appraised each other intensely. As they spiraled up the winding staircase, Cat had drawn an aerosol can of paint from his cargo pocket. "So, you're an artiste...." Eureka assumed they'd be gone for hours.

  At last, Solon led Eureka and Ander to a stone table in the center of his salon. The waterfall's mist reached Eureka's skin, dampened the maroon satin bathrobes she and Ander wore while their clothes dried over stones around the fire pit.

  "The Tearline is tied to a lunar cycle," Solon said. "When you cried yesterday morning, you may have noticed the waxing crescent low in the sky? That was when the Rising began. It must complete before the full moon, nine days from now."

  "And if it doesn't?" Ander asked.

  Solon raised an eyebrow and disappeared into his kitchen. He returned a moment later carrying a tray filled with chipped, mismatched ceramic bowls of creamed spinach, egg noodles swimming in mushroom gravy, nuts and apricots drowned in honey, crunchy chickpeas, and a big wedge of dense, sugary baklava.

  "If Atlantis does not rise before the next full moon, the Waking World will become a swamp of wasted dead. Atlas will return to the Sleeping World, where he must await the next generation of Tearline girl, should there be one."

  "What do you mean--wasted dead?" Ander asked.

  Solon held up an earthenware platter and offered it to Eureka. "Schnitzel?"

  Eureka waved the plate away. "I assumed the rise was already complete."

  "That depends on how many of your tears hit the ground," Solon said. "It is my belief that you shed only two, but you must enlighten me. The number will establish our position in this catastrophe."

  "I'm not sure," she said. "I didn't know I was supposed to keep track."

  Solon turned to Ander, slid a cutlet onto his plate. "What's your excuse?"

  "I know each tear carries a unique weight," Ander said, "but I never knew the formula. I didn't know about the lunar cycle, either. The Seedbearers were secretive, even though I was family. After you left, they had to be careful who they trusted."

  "They keep secrets because they are afraid." Solon swallowed a bite of meat and closed his eyes. His voice assumed a soft lilt as he began to sing.

  "One tear to shatter the Waking World's skin.

  A second to seep through Earth's roots within.

  A third to awaken the Sleeping World and let old kingdoms rebegin."

  His eyes opened. " 'The Rubric of Tears' was the last song sung before the Flood. It's a metaphor, for life or death or--"

  "Love," Eureka realized.

  Solon tilted his head. "Go on."

  Eureka didn't know where the idea had come from. She was no expert on love. But "The Rubric of Tears" reminded her of how she'd felt when she met Ander.

  "Maybe the first tear," she said, "shattering our world's skin, represents attraction. When Cat likes a guy, she never calls it a crush. She says 'shatter' is more accurate."

  "I know what she means," Ander said.

  "But love at first sight doesn't lead anywhere," Eureka said, "unless the second sight goes deeper."

  "So the second tear," Ander said, "the one that seeps into the roots--"

  Eureka nodded. "That's getting to know someone. Their fears and dreams and passions. Their flaws." She thought of Dad's words earlier that day. "It's not being afraid to touch the other person's roots. It's the next thousand miles of falling in love." She paused. "But it still isn't love. It's infatuation, until--"

  "The third tear," Solon said.

  "The third tear reaches the Sleeping World," Ander said. "And awakens it." His cheeks flushed. "How is that like love?"

  "Reciprocation," Eureka said. "When the person you love loves you back. When the connection becomes unbreakable. That's when there's no turning back."

  She hadn't realized she was leaning toward Ander and he w
as leaning toward her until Solon wedged a hand between their faces.

  "I see you haven't told her about us," Solon said to Ander.

  "What about you?" Eureka asked.

  "He means"--Ander turned back to his plate and cut a bite of schnitzel but didn't eat it--"the Seedbearers' role in stopping your tears."

  Solon scoffed at Ander.

  "I know about that," Eureka said. Ander might have turned against his family, but he still cared about the fate of her tears. She thought of the icy Zephyr against her frozen cheeks. "Ander has it," she realized.

  "What?" Solon asked.

  "The third tear. I cried again on the way here, but his breath froze my tears. They didn't hit the earth. They're safe inside his lachrymatory."

  "Tearline tears are never safe," Solon said.

  "They're safe with me." Ander showed Solon the little silver vial.

  Solon rubbed his jaw. "You've been running with a bomb."

  "Bombs can be disarmed," Eureka said. "Can't we dispose of my tears without--"

  "No," Ander and Solon said together.

  "I'll keep this." Solon snatched the lachrymatory and glared across the table. "I didn't stockpile all this food for it to go to waste. Eat! You should see what my neighbors have for dinner. Twigs! Each other!"

  Eureka spooned some noodles onto her plate. She eyed the meat, which smelled like the kitchen of the Bon Creole Lunch Shack, whose crumpled, grease-stained takeout bags danced in the wind above the beds of most New Iberia pickup trucks. The scent awakened a nostalgia in her, and she wished she were straddling a sticky barstool at Victor's, where Dad used to fry oysters as small as quarters and as light as air.

  Ander tucked forkfuls into his mouth rapidly, without tasting, as if the void within him might be filled.

  Eureka was in awe of her own hunger. It had become a shape inside her, with edges sharp as broken glass. But Solon's words had made it hard to chew. She thought about Filiz's penetrating golden eyes.

  "That's why you sent Filiz and the Poet away before you brought out the food."

  "Did you really think a deluge of salt water could fall from the sky and not destroy the food chain?" Solon asked. "My assistants think I'm starving, just as they are starving. They must continue to think that. It wouldn't do for the neighbors to be crawling around on hands and knees, bumping their heads on my glaze. Understand?"

  "Why don't you share with them?"

  Solon picked up the pitcher, held it high over Eureka's empty glass, and poured a long stream of water to refill it. "Why don't you go back in time and not flood the world?"

  Ander snatched the pitcher from Solon and slammed it on the table. Water sloshed onto Eureka's thighs.

  "How very wasteful," Solon said.

  "She's doing the best she can."

  "She must do better than that," Solon said. "The third tear is in the world. Soon Atlas will get it."

  "No," Eureka said. "We came here so you could help me stop him."

  Solon dragged a finger down his plate and licked the grease from it. "This isn't a student council election. Atlas is the darkest force the Waking World has ever known."

  "How? He's been trapped under the ocean for thousands of years," Eureka said.

  Solon stared into the waterfall for a long time. His voice was faint when he spoke at last. "There was a boy who lived two blocks from Byblis when she was a girl in Munich. They took a painting class together. They were ... friends. Then Atlas took him. He possessed the mind of an ordinary boy and set a devil loose. At a certain point, Byblis died, but never mind that. Atlas didn't leave his host's body for years." He waved a hand dismally. "The rest, unfortunately, is history. And if Atlantis rises, what the future holds is worse. You have no idea what you're up against. You won't understand until you're face to face with him at the Marais."

  Eureka fingered Diana's locket. Inside, her mother had written the very same word. Eureka popped its clasp and pulled the chain taut to show Solon. "What happens at the Marais?"

  "Time will tell," Solon said. "What do you know about the Marais?"

  "It's the Cajun word for 'swamp.' " Eureka pictured the mythical city and its monster king rising from the bayou beyond her house. That didn't seem right.

  "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 g
lass--"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?"