by Lauren Kate
"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 cafe, 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?"
11
STAY, ILLUSION
"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.
Once, a few months after Eureka's parents got divorced, Diana had taken her canoeing on the Red River. For three days it was just the two of them, earning sunburns on their shoulders, paddling in time to soul songs, camping on the riverbank, eating only the fish they caught. They'd borrowed Uncle Beau's tent but ended up sleeping in the open, at the bottom of an ocean of stars. Eureka had never seen stars so bright. Diana told her to pick one and she would pick one, too. They named their star after each other so whenever they were apart they could look at the sky and--even if they couldn't see the Diana-Star or Eureka-Star, even if Dad married another woman and moved her to a town where no one had ever been in love--Eureka could see her mother's presence, stand in her mother's glow.
She looked up now and tried to feel Diana through the spaces in the rain. It was hard. She wiped her eyes and lowered her head and remembered something she wished she'd never known Diana said--
Today I saw the boy who's going to break Eureka's heart.
Dad had quoted Diana's line the other day when Eureka introduced him to Ander. Diana had even sketched a picture of a boy who looked like Ander.
Eureka had dismissed Dad. He didn't know the whole story.
But how much of the story did she know? Ander was a Seedbearer, but he wasn't like his family. She thought she'd understood that. Now she was ashamed for doubting her parents. Diana had known that someday, some way,
Eureka and Ander would care for each other. She had known that this affection would drain the life from him. She had known that this predicament would crush Eureka's heart. Why hadn't she warned Eureka? Why had she told her not to cry but never told her not to love?
"Mom--" she moaned into the rainy darkness.
A pack of coyotes howled in response. She wished she hadn't left the cave. The lonely pond looked ominous when she wasn't imagining Diana in the sky.
Candles lit portions of the rock opposite the Bitter Cloud. Other caves, Eureka realized. Other people awake and alive. Was that where Solon's assistants lived? She realized this pond was new. She must have cried it. Her rain had filled what used to be a valley connecting Solon to his neighbors. It was a Tearline pond. She wondered how Filiz and the Poet reached Solon's cave now that she'd washed out their path.
She let the canoe drift, lifted the torch from the prow. She held it toward the other caves. The light revealed evidence of desperation: remains of bonfires, abandoned fishing lines, carcasses of animals, bones picked clean of flesh.
She spiraled downward, caught in depression's seductive pull. The boy she'd trusted couldn't help her without loving her, couldn't love her without hurtling toward senility. She would have to give him up. She would have to face Atlas alone.
"Hey, Cuttlefish."
Eureka scanned the rocks. Her heart pounded as she tried to trace the sound's origin. A shadow crossed a rock on the other side of the pond. She lowered the torch into its clip and let the stars light the silhouette of a teenage boy. Dark hair was matted to his forehead. His hand was raised toward her. His face was obscured by shadows, and he wore an unfamiliar raincoat, but Eureka knew it was Brooks.
And inside Brooks was Atlas.
A shiver spread through her. She became afraid. She picked up her paddle. She hadn't been thinking when she left the Bitter Cloud. Why had she abandoned the safety of its glaze? She dragged the paddle through the water, away from Atlas. Brooks.
Until he laughed. Throaty and deep, bright with shared secrets, it was the way Brooks always laughed at their many thousands of inside jokes.
"Trying to get away from me?"
She couldn't leave Brooks. Her arms reversed to paddle backward. If she left now she'd regret it forever. She'd lose her chance to see whether Brooks was alive or a ghost.
"That's more like it." A smile lit his voice. Eureka yearned to see it on his face.
She drew closer. Gray starlight touched his skin, the white of his teeth. She remembered the last moment they'd shared before Brooks had been taken. She wanted to go back there and stay, even though she'd felt depressed and afraid. Those final moments with uncorrupted Brooks shone in her memory like gold. They'd been lying on the beach under a haze of coconut sunscreen. Brooks was drinking a can of Coke. They had sand on their skin, salt on their lips. She heard the swish of his bathing suit when he rose to swim to the breakers. Then he was gone.
He looked the same now. Freckles dotted his cheeks. His brow cast shadows over his dark eyes. He'd come all the way around the world for her. She knew that was Atlas, but it was Brooks, too.
"Are you there?" she asked.
"I'm here."
Atlas controlled his voice, but couldn't Brooks still hear her?
"I know what happened to you," she said.
"And I know what's going to happen to you." He crouched on the ledge so their faces were closer. He held out his hand. "I've got my boat. I know a safe place. We can bring the twins, your dad, and Cat. I'll take care of you."
This was a trick, of course, but the voice that spoke it sounded sincere. She met his eyes, torn by all she found in them--enemy, friend, failure, redemption. If Eureka could not separate Brooks from Atlas, she should take advantage of being this close to the Evil One. "Tell me what the Filling is."
His smile caught her off guard. She looked away.
"Who's been filling your head with ghost stories?" he asked.
"Eureka." Ander's voice called from a dark distance.
She spun around. She couldn't see him on the other side of the pond. Because of the witches' glaze, she couldn't even see the cave from which she'd come. He must have noticed the light of her torch, but could he see her? Could he see Brooks?
Brooks squinted, also unable to see through the witches' glaze. "Where is he?"
"Stay here," Eureka said to Brooks. "He has a gun. He'll kill you." She didn't know if Ander still had that gun, or whether the eerie green artemisia bullets harmed anyone besides Seedbearers. But she would do anything to keep the two--three--boys apart.
Brooks rose to his feet. "That would be interesting."
"I'm serious," she whispered. "I say one word and you're dead." She narrowed her eyes, addressing Atlas. "You'd be sent back to the Sleeping World for who knows how long. I know you don't want that."
Eureka heard the click of a gun being cocked. Brooks held a black pistol to his temple. "Should I save him the trouble?"
"No!" She stood up in the canoe and reached for Brooks, needing that gun far from his head. She thought he was reaching for her. Instead he handed her the gun. The weight of it surprised her. It was warm from being in his hand. She darted a glance back in Ander's direction. She hoped he hadn't heard her. "What are you doing?"
"You said you knew what happened to me. Maybe"--he grinned--"you think I'm dangerous? Here's your chance. Stop me."
She stared at the gun.
"Eureka!" Ander called again.
"That's not what I want," she whispered.
"Now we're getting to the heart of things." Brooks touched her shoulder, steadying her in the canoe. "You want something. Let me help."
The tumble of rocks behind her made Eureka spin around again. Ander was closer, outside the glaze. The sudden sight of him tugged at her and she couldn't help wanting to be closer. He was climbing down a path that ended at a shallow ledge twenty feet above the pond.
"I have to go." Eureka used her paddle to push off Brooks's rock.
"Stay with me," he said.
"I'll find you when I can," Eureka said. "Now go." She sat back in the canoe and paddled away from the ledge, toward the center of the pond. "Ander." She waved. "Over here."
Ander's eyes found her in the water. He arched his arms over his head, bent his knees, and dove. She watched him glide downward, his blond hair rippling, his toes pointed to the sky. When his body broke the surface, it made no splash. Eureka held her breath as he disappeared into her tears.
She looked to the rock where Brooks had been, but he was gone. Had their exchange been real? It felt like a nightmare where nothing happened but the atmosphere was deadly. She slipped the gun into the pond. As it sank, she imagined it coming to rest at the bottom of the flooded valley in the hand of a drowned Turk.
A splash arose from the pond. Eureka ducked--then saw that Ander had risen with it. He stood atop a towering, starlit waterspout like he was a magnetizing moon.
He had dragged much of the water from the pond under him. As her canoe grazed the bottom, Eureka saw the muddy ghost of the path that had once connected Solon's cave to his neighbors'. This was what it had looked like before Eureka's tears. She tried to memorize every detail of the unflooded land below, imagining a past Poet and Filiz walking through it on their way to work, the Poet picking a bud from a drowned olive tree. She didn't see the gun.
Ander's waterspout subsided gently, refilling the valley with tears until he was level with the pond. Then he was hovering on a small wave alongside Eureka's canoe.
"Were you talking to someone?"
"My mom. Old habit." She held out her hand and he climbed into the canoe.
"I never wanted you to find out like this," he said.
"You didn't want me to find out at all."
"When you didn't know, I could pretend it wasn't happening."
Eureka shivered and looked around. The clouds had covered all the stars and Brooks was nowhere. "Everything is happening."
She searched Ander's face fo
r signs of aging. She wouldn't mind him having wrinkles or gray hair, but she refused to be the cause of his old age. Falling more deeply in love would drain Ander's life away. They shouldn't even have let it go this far.
"I trusted you," she said.
"You should."
"But why don't you trust me? You've known my secrets longer than I have. I don't know any of yours. I don't know if you've been in love before. I don't even know your favorite song or what you want to be when you grow up or who your best friend is."
Ander looked at his rain-blurred reflection in the water. He thought for a long time before saying, "I used to have a dog. Shiloh was my best friend." He smashed a fist into his reflection. "I had to let him go."
"Why?"
"It was part of my Passage. Until recently, I aged like any other boy, day by day, season after season, adding inches and scars to my body. But on my eighteenth birthday, I was inducted in a family ceremony." He gazed up, remembering. "I was supposed to repudiate everything I cared about. They said I'd live forever. When Seedbearers do something cruel, our bodies grow younger, like we're traveling back in time. I gave up Shiloh, but I couldn't give up loving you because it's all I am."
"I thought love was supposed to make a person more alive," Eureka said. "Your love is ... like I used to be--suicidal."
"Love is an endless drive on a winding road. You can't see everything about another person all at once." Ander leaned forward in the swaying canoe and inhaled. When he let out his breath, Eureka felt something warm curl around her body. He'd generated a gentle Zephyr that pulled her toward him. Her hands slid up his arms, then clasped around his neck. She couldn't deny how good it felt being pinned against him. She absorbed the tension in his muscles, his body heat, and, before she knew it, his lips.
But then a feeling crept over Eureka like ivy. Somewhere in the darkness Brooks and Atlas were watching them.
"Wait," she said.
But Ander didn't. He held her close and kissed her deeply. Her body was wet and Ander's was dry and not even the rain seemed to know what to do when it touched the places they overlapped. She gave in for a moment, felt his tongue touch hers. Her heart swelled. Her lips tingled.