Waterfall

by Lauren Kate

  She was awake now, to a nightmare never more real or more dangerous. She thundered down the stairs. "Solon!"

  The cave was unrecognizable. A giant crack split the overturned dining table. The fire pit had been crushed, the tile mosaic on the floor melted by a burning log. Eureka slipped behind a rough-hewn pine bookcase and watched as a dozen gaunt and haggard men prowled through Solon's things. She felt the spear's hilt against her hip. Maybe it was precious and magical, but it must also be deadly. She would use it if she had to.

  A dark-haired boy about her age ran his hands along Solon's mural-painted walls. His eyes were closed. He paused at a portion of the mural that depicted a snake belching a fireball. He leaned against the wall and sniffed. Then he raised a crowbar and struck the mural. Shards of rock flew aside, revealing a closet stocked with canned goods.

  A heightened sense of smell must have been his quirk. Eureka looked around to see how the other raiders were using theirs.

  A man rushed to the exposed closet, but instead of grabbing cans with his hands, he held up a burlap sack. The entire contents of the pantry glided swiftly into the sack. When it was filled, the little boy who'd tried to run off with William and Claire cinched the sack tightly in his fists. Eureka knew there would be no prying his small fingers free.

  If she sang to him again, would he drop the food? Did she want him to? She didn't want him to starve. She thought about William and Claire and Dad at the top of the stairs. She didn't want them starving, either.

  In the center of the room, a tall man brandishing a J-shaped knife circled Solon. Solon was swinging something long and white--a femur he had snatched from a wall. He wheezed as he swung the bone. He was trying to use his Zephyr to fend off the attacker, but it did nothing more than rustle the man's hair. The cordon he'd made earlier must have exhausted his powers. He coughed and spat some phlegm in his opponent's face.

  "There are other ways to ask for a raise!" Solon yelled over his shoulder at Filiz.

  "I'm sorry, Solon." Filiz's voice trembled. "I didn't--"

  Solon's hacking cough cut his assistant off. He lunged and swung the femur at the intruder. He landed a blow to the side of the slower, malnourished man's head. When the man fell to his knees, Solon stood over him, quizzically triumphant.

  Eureka heard a cry behind her and turned to see William, Claire, and Dad at the bottom of the stairs. Her heart sank.

  "I told you to stay on the veranda!"

  One of the men held Claire by the arm. Dad's fists were white-knuckled and clenched tight, ready to punch. Eureka reached for the handle of the spear. Then she heard a snap, then saw a burst of fire erupt behind Claire's attacker.

  The man dropped Claire and swatted at his smoking head.

  "Do not touch the children," Filiz commanded.

  Solon's assistant had ignited a fireball with a snap of her fingers. Her quirk.

  "Thank you," Eureka said.

  But Filiz was tending to the man's burns and wouldn't meet Eureka's eyes.

  Someone had discovered Solon's booze. Men yanked open the drawers of a chest disguised as a rock. Corks popped like it was New Year's Eve. One man held up a bottle of deep green liquid.

  "Not my Swiss absinthe!" Solon shouted. "That bottle is one hundred and fifty-four years old. It was a gift from Gauguin."

  The largest of the raiders launched an empty prosecco bottle at Solon's ducking head. The tall man with the knife rose slowly to his knees. He said something to Filiz.

  "They say they are starving," Filiz translated. "They want to know why you feed the girl who made it so."

  "I planned to share all this with them as soon as the girl was gone," Solon said. He grabbed a bottle from one of the raiders and took a liberal swig. When the man swung at him, Solon casually smashed the bottle over his opponent's head. "But you must tell them if the girl starves to death before she fixes things, no one will ever eat again!"

  Eureka imagined each of these raiders with a full belly and a long drink of water. The ferocity in their eyes would soften. Their voices would smooth out. These were good people, driven to violence because of hunger and thirst. Because of her. She wanted to share the food.

  "Filiz," Eureka said, "will you translate for me?"

  The raiders crowded Eureka. They leered at her, studying her face. Their breath was sour, hot. One of them reached toward her eyes, then growled when she swatted him away. They all began to speak at once.

  "They want to know if you're the one!" Filiz called over the cacophony of voices.

  The one the dead speak of in our dreams, the Poet had said.

  Eureka was on trial, not just for her tears but for every mistake she'd ever made, every choice that had brought her to this moment.

  A deep buzzing filled her good ear. She flinched as a swarm of insects spilled into the salon. A million butterflies, bees, moths, and baby hummingbirds swirled around in mad circles.

  "They raided my butterfly room," Solon said. "What next?" He thought of something, then froze. A look of panic washed over his face. "Ovid." He shoved a raider aside and hurried down the spiral staircase to the lower level of his cave.

  "Who's Ovid?" Eureka asked, ducking under a cloud of wings.

  "Don't be a fool!" Filiz called after Solon. "No one cares about that."

  At the far end of the room, as hummingbirds whizzed and butterflies bumped against the ceiling, Dad snapped a sharp stalactite from the ceiling and followed a man carrying Solon's last jugs of water toward the cave entrance.

  Someone shouted a warning, and as the man with the water spun around, he knocked the stalactite from Dad's hand. Eureka saw another raider pick it up.

  She was old, with bushy white eyebrows and a dirty apron. She held the stalactite like a dart and faced Eureka's dad. She swatted a moth from her face and bared a mouthful of small, crooked teeth.

  What happened next happened quickly. The woman plunged the sharp rock into Dad's stomach. He sputtered in shock and doubled over.

  Eureka screamed as the woman kicked Dad onto his back, withdrew the stalactite, and raised it over Dad's chest. Eureka ran toward them, batting wings out of her way. They could have the food and water, but they could not take her father.

  She was too late. The stalactite plunged deeply into her father's chest. Blood spread over his rib cage. Dad lifted his hand toward Eureka, but it stilled in the air, an interrupted wave. She fell upon her father.

  "No," she whispered as blood soaked her fingers and her shirt. "No, no."

  "Reka," Dad's voice strained.

  "Dad."

  He fell silent. She laid her good ear against his chest. The maelstrom of the raid grew distant. She imagined the twins wailing, the cacophony of beating wings, the shattering of more glass, but she couldn't hear anything.

  Her eyes fixed on the dirty apron hem of the woman who'd stabbed her father. She looked up and saw her face. The woman muttered something at Eureka, then shouted something at Filiz, who drew closer. After a moment, she repeated her words to Filiz.

  "My grandmother says you are the world's worst dream come true," Filiz whispered.

  Eureka rose from Dad's bloody chest. Something inside her snapped. She leapt onto the old woman. Her fingers clenched white hair and yanked. Her fists rained down on the woman. Eureka kept her thumbs outside her fists, like Dad had taught her, so she wouldn't hit like a girl.

  Filiz screamed and tried to drag her off, but Eureka kicked Filiz away. She didn't know what she was going to do, but nothing was going to stop her from doing it. She felt the old woman buckle underneath her. Wings clouded her vision. The image of Dad's still hand waving goodbye flooded her mind. She had stopped thinking; she had stopped feeling. She had become her rage.

  Blood spurted from someplace on the woman's face, splattered across Eureka's chest, into her mouth. She spat, and hit harder, shattering the brittle bone that formed the woman's temple. She felt the squish of an eye socket caving in.

  "She begs for mercy!" she heard Filiz shou
t behind her, but Eureka didn't know how to stop. She didn't know how she'd gotten there. Her knee was against the woman's windpipe. Her bloody fist was in the air. She had not even thought to use the spear.

  "Eureka, stop!" Cat's voice was horrified.

  Eureka stopped. She was panting. She studied her bloody hands and the body beneath her. What had she done?

  A crowd of raiders drew near, some horrified, some with murderous expressions on their faces. They shouted words she didn't understand.

  Ander moved toward her. The shock in his blue eyes made her want to flee and never be seen by anyone she loved again. She forced herself to see her bloody hands and the woman's caved-in cheekbone, her vacant, blood-filled eyes.

  When one of the raiders tried to grab Eureka the cave filled with the strange whistle of wind. Everyone ducked and shielded their eyes. Ander was exhaling a great stream of breath. It flew around the cave like a helicopter landing. It drew every winged creature into its realm, like a lantern in a dark sky. The birds and insects still flew, but they flew in place, manipulated by Ander's breath.

  Ander's Zephyr had constructed a transparent wall of wind and wings that split the cave in two. On one side, close to the cave's entrance, stood the stunned intruders. On the other side, near the waterfall at the back of the salon, stood Cat, the twins, Ander, and, hunched over the old woman's body, Eureka.

  Ander's breath protected her from the Celans' revenge. They couldn't reach her on the other side of the beating, winged wall. They couldn't do to her what she had done to Filiz's grandmother, what Filiz's grandmother had done to Dad. Ander's breath had forged a temporary truce. Maybe he was the dealer in hope.

  But how long would it take for what she'd done to sink into Ander, into the hearts and minds of everyone she loved? How long until everyone turned away?

  Eureka hadn't had a choice. She saw her father die and she reacted without thinking. It was instinctual. But what would happen now? Were there still laws in this drowning world?

  "Take the food," Eureka heard herself tell Filiz. She gestured at the cans and packages scattered on the other side of the cave.

  This murder was a rift in Eureka's identity. She no longer belonged in the world she was trying to fix. She no longer recognized the girl who had come from there. She could never return home. The best she could hope for was that other people could return there.

  A shadow fell across her body. If it was Cat or the twins, Eureka would lose it. They would need consoling, and how could she console anyone after what she'd done?

  "Eureka." It was Solon.

  "If you want me to go, I'll understand."

  "Of course I want you to go."

  Eureka nodded. She had ruined everything, again.

  "I want you to go to the Marais," Solon whispered in her good ear. "Suddenly I think you might actually pull this off."

  15

  MOURNING BROKEN

  Murderer.

  The voice inside Eureka's mind that night was full of loathing. It had taunted her all day as she prepared Dad for a burial he wouldn't receive.

  There was no soil in the Bitter Cloud, and Solon wouldn't let them venture farther than the reaches of the witches' glaze. Instead, he suggested they give Dad a Viking funeral, sending his body out to sea in a blazing pyre.

  "But how--" Eureka had started to ask.

  Solon pointed at the watery tunnel Eureka had paddled down the night before. The aluminum canoe bobbed inside. "This channel is many-fingered," he said, and spread the fingers on his hand. "This finger leads swiftly to the ocean." He wiggled his ring finger. "It's really very dignified."

  "You just want everything to be as morbid as possible, all the time," Cat had said, helping Ander line the canoe with collapsed wooden prosecco crates. She had been raised to be superstitious about rites of passage, mindful of the fate of spirits, wary of forlorn ghosts.

  Murderer.

  Ander tried to catch her eye. "Eureka--"

  "Don't," she said. "Don't be tender anymore."

  "You were avenging your father," he said. "You lost control."

  She turned away from Ander and envisioned Dad's imminent conflagration. She liked that there would be no claustrophobic coffins involved, no dishonest formaldehyde embalming. Maybe out in the ocean Dad's ashes would find a piece of Diana and they would twirl together for a moment before drifting on.

  If Dad had known he was about to die, he would have written out a menu and started a roux. He would have wanted no memorial without an accompanying good meal. But they were down to two carafes of water, a small bag of bruised apples, a tub of salad dressing, a box of Weetabix, and a few bottles of prosecco that Solon had stashed in an ice bucket in his bedroom. Eating out of ceremony was impossible now that Eureka had met her starving neighbors.

  At least she could clean Dad up. So she started with his feet, stripping off his boots and socks, scrubbing his skin with water from the salty spring. The twins sat next to her, watching, silent tears cleaning their dirty cheeks as Eureka carefully groomed under Dad's nails with a knife. She borrowed an ornate Victorian razor from Solon and shaved the stubble on Dad's face. She smoothed the frown lines around his mouth. She cleaned his wounds, working lightly around the bruise at his temple.

  She found it easier to focus on Dad than on William and Claire or Cat and Ander. The dead let you help them any way you wanted to.

  When she'd made Dad look as peaceful as she could, Eureka turned to the woman she had killed. She knew the Celans would be back for the body and she wanted to show her respect. She removed the woman's filthy apron. Blood drained in a long red wash along the mosaic tiles on the floor. It became a gentle river, mingling with Dad's blood. Eureka mopped it up, as careful as she had been wild when the blood was spilled. She straightened the woman's hair, hating her for killing Dad, hating her for being pretty, hating her for being dead.

  A blaze of light drew near Eureka. She ducked to the left to avoid being singed as a sphere of fire the size of a baseball swerved past her face and struck a skull on the wall behind her.

  "Don't touch Seyma," Filiz said. A second sphere of fire burned at the tips of her fingers.

  "I was just--"

  "She was my grandmother."

  Eureka rose to give Filiz space with the dead woman. After a moment, she asked: "Do you believe in Heaven?"

  "I believe you have made it very crowded."

  The Poet appeared and slipped one hand under Seyma's back, another beneath her stout knees. He lifted the old woman up, and Filiz followed him out of the demolished cave.

  Cat stood over Dad's body. "We don't have a rosary."

  "Any necklace will do," Solon said.

  "No, it won't." Cat's brow was damp. "Trenton was Catholic. Someone should say the Lord's Prayer, but I can't get my teeth to stop chattering. And we don't have holy water for the blessing. If we don't do these things, he'll--"

  "Dad was a good man, Cat. He's going to get there no matter what we do."

  She knew Cat wasn't really upset about the rosary. Dad's death represented all the other losses they hadn't had time to mourn. His death had become everydeath, and Cat wanted to make it right.

  "Is Dad going to Heaven?" William tilted his head as he looked at his father.

  "Yes."

  "With Mom?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "Will he come back?" Claire asked.

  "No," Eureka said.

  "Is there room for him up there?" William asked.

  "It's like the country roads between New Iberia and Lafayette," Claire explained. "Wide open and full of room for everyone."

  Eureka knew the reality of Dad's death would bloom slowly and painfully for the rest of the twins' lives. Their bodies caved the way they did right before they cried, so she enveloped them--

  Murderer.

  She hummed an old hymn to silence the voice. She stared at Dad's restful expression and prayed for the strength to take care of the twins with as much courage as their parents had.
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  " 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,' " Solon said. "Isn't that how it goes?"

  The psalm used to thrill Eureka. It was one thing to walk through the valley of death--but to walk through death's shadow meant that you didn't know where death was, or what light behind it made its shadow. The psalm made death sound like a secret second moon in the sky, orbiting everything, making every minute night.

  On many nights, not long ago, Eureka had bargained with God to take her life and bring back Diana. She didn't want that anymore. She didn't look at Dad's body and wish she were in his place. In a way, she already was in his place, and in the place of everyone she had killed, regardless of whether she knew their names. Part of Eureka had died, was always dying now, and becoming part of her strength. This was a muscle she sensed she would use when the time came to defeat Atlas and redeem herself.

  " 'For thou art with me,' " she finished the psalm. " 'Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.' "

  "You couldn't cry at Diana's funeral, either." Solon took a seat on an antique cockfighting chair, sipping prosecco carefully from a glass with a broken handle. "What gets you through it? God?"

  Eureka stared at Solon's broken glass and remembered the window shattering above her head the night Diana left her family. She remembered the water heater bursting in the hallway, the storm entering their living room. She remembered being unable to tell what was hail against her skin and what was glass. She remembered her feet on the soaked and shaggy carpet on the stairs. Then sobbing. Then Diana's slap across her cheek.

  Never, ever cry.

  Solon was watching her as if he knew all about it.

  "She wanted to protect you," he said.

  "You can't control the way somebody feels," Eureka said.

  "No, you can't," Solon said, retying the satin ribbon of his robe into a sailor's knot. "Not for long, anyway."

  Eureka looked down at Dad in the canoe. Before he'd died they'd grown apart. It was Rhoda, and then it was high school, and then it was the fact that she'd grown apart from everyone after Diana's death. She'd always assumed she and Dad would have time to reconnect.