by Lauren Kate
"We're nearly there," Brooks said. Atlas said. He turned his lips against her neck and whispered: "Cry for me."
"What?"
"It's the only way inside."
"No--"
"Still holding on to Mom's advice?" he asked, darkening as he spoke. "Wouldn't you say that ship has sailed? How does it feel to fail your dead mother's one request? How does it feel to fail the person who sacrificed her life in a war the world is really waging against you?"
She couldn't let Atlas trick her. She had to trick him. But the third tear still had to fall. That was why she'd come to the Marais. Atlantis had to rise so those she'd killed would not be wasted dead. Their souls had to go into the Filling. After that, Eureka's and Atlas's plans diverged. He thought the souls of her world would do his work, but she would find a way to set them free.
She felt for the pocket of her jeans. Her fingers traced the outline of the silver lachrymatory through the fabric. Solon had left it to her when he died. He'd known what she had to do. Eureka called on the bright strength of the ones she'd left behind. She called on the darkness within her.
"You're a pretty good villain, Atlas."
He raised an eyebrow at the sound of his name, but he did not deny it. The game was over. "Pretty good?"
"Everybody has a weakness."
"And what is mine?"
"Naivete," Eureka said. "You don't know what every girl knows, from New Iberia to Vladivostok: we make the best bad guys. Guys never stand a chance."
Eureka unscrewed the lachrymatory and pitched it over Peggy's wings. The orichalcum vial tumbled through a sea of clouds. Her tears poured out, glittering like diamonds. A swell of heat against her chest startled her. Her hand flew to the crystal teardrop and was burned.
Her throat tightened. Her chest heaved. She wasn't going to cry--but she felt the way she had when she shed the tears the lachrymatory contained. She felt those same tears form again, as if every tear had a ghost that could return.
The ground shuddered so hard it made the air above it shudder, too. Peggy bucked and whinnied. And then:
The rain stopped.
Clouds stretched apart like cotton. Round rays of sun shone through. Eureka let them punch her shoulders, her lungs, and her heart, telling her brain to get happy.
"We are home!" the witches shrieked. "Look!"
The sun lit a long crack in the marsh below. The crack widened into a gorge and then, at its center, a small green dot appeared--
And began to grow.
The tree stretched skyward first. Its trunk shot up like it had been launched from the core of the earth. Eureka heard its creaking groan, and more ... in both her ears. Birds singing, wind rustling, waves tumbling ashore--a wall of rich, reverberating stereo.
"I can hear again."
"Of course," Atlas said. "A wave of Atlantean origins took your hearing, now my kingdom restores it. There is yet more restoration in store."
"That wave took my mother, too."
"Indeed," Atlas said cryptically.
By then the tree was a hundred feet tall and as thick as the ancient redwoods in the California town where Eureka had been born. The tree branched out. Sinewy limbs spun from its trunk, twisting wildly until its boughs overlapped in long and tangled fingers. Leaves sprang, wide and thick and glossy green. Jonquil-like white flowers exploded from their buds. Narcissus, Ander would say. Eureka's ears heard each moment of this wild growth, as if eavesdropping on a sparkling conversation.
New trees sprang up around the first. Then a silver road encircled the sudden forest, which wasn't a forest, but a magnificent urban park in the center of a rising city. Blindingly pristine gold-and silver-roofed buildings ascended from the marsh, stretching in all directions to form a perfectly circular capital. A ring-shaped river bordered the city; its swift current moved counterclockwise. On the far bank of the river was another mile-wide ring of land, this one verdant green and blooming with fruit trees and terraced grapevines. The agricultural band was encircled by another, clockwise-current river. At its edges, a final ring of land rose into towering purple bluffs. Beyond the mountains, the ocean lapping its rocks stretched into a blurry blue horizon.
Atlantis, the Sleeping World, had awoken.
"What now, bad girl?" Atlas asked.
"Get off! Get off!" the witches shouted. "We are going home to our mountain!"
Esme snapped her whip at Peggy, who reared in the sky. Eureka slipped backward. Her hands grabbed at Peggy's mane, but not quickly enough. The horse threw Atlas and Eureka from her back.
They fell toward Atlantis. Eureka saw Atlas's panic flash in Brooks's eyes and it reminded her of something ... but she fell so fast, she soon lost the boy and the body and the enemy and the memory.
She fell and fell, as she'd fallen through the waterfall in the Bitter Cloud. Back then she had landed in water and her thunderstone had shielded her. Ander had been swimming toward her. No one would save her now.
She landed on a green leaf the size of a mattress. She wasn't dead yet. She let out an amazed laugh; then she slid off the leaf and was falling again.
Branches battered her limbs. She grabbed at a thick one. Her arms wrapped around it, as, incredibly, the branch wrapped around her. Its embrace held her still. Its bark was the texture of a tortoise's shell.
Eureka shook bark and leaves from her wet hair. She wiped blood from a scratch on her forehead. She felt for her necklace. Still hot, still there. The lachrymatory was gone.
Atlas was also gone.
All around Eureka, lush trees continued to grow from the marsh, until they matched the height of the first tree. She was in the center of a canopy of trees in the center of a park in the center of a city in the center of what might be the only land left on earth.
Strange birds sang strange songs that Eureka heard in both ears. Vines snaked up the tree trunk so quickly, she jerked her arms away, lest they become portions of the forest. The trees smelled like eucalyptus and pecans and fresh-cut grass, but in every other way they were unrecognizable. They were broader and taller and more brilliantly green than any tree she'd ever seen. She climbed across another bough. It swayed under her weight, but the wood felt steady, strong.
"You're losing, Cuttlefish." Atlas jumped from a branch above her to one below. He climbed downward, and when he reached the tree's lowest bough he turned slowly, winked at Eureka, and jumped.
He landed face-first in the thick-sprouting grass. After that he didn't move.
Another trick. She was meant to follow him, to fear for Brooks's well-being--and be trapped.
But she was already trapped. She was in Atlantis with her enemy. She was supposed to be here. This was a step along the path to redeeming herself. She couldn't stay in this tree forever. She was going to have to go down and face him.
She descended the branches. The longer she looked at Brooks's back, the more fearful she became. The body on the ground was the porch that led to the cathedral of her best friend's soul.
Her feet touched Atlantean earth. She grabbed Brooks's shoulders, rolled him over. She laid her head against his chest and waited for it to rise.
26
DISPOSSESSED
It wasn't the first time Brooks had fallen.
A wave of deja vu swept through Eureka as she laid her head against his chest:
They were nine years old. It was the summer before Eureka's parents divorced, so she'd still had a whole and buoyant heart, a matching smile. She didn't know that loss was alive in the world, a thief always about to slam you and steal everything you had.
That summer, Eureka and Brooks had spent sunsets high in the grand pecan tree in Sugar's backyard, past the city limits of New Iberia. Brooks had a bowl cut and light-up Power Rangers sneakers. Eureka had skinned knees and a gap between her front teeth. She'd been shredding her way through the endless smocked dresses Diana kept pulling from the attic.
It happened on a Sunday afternoon. Maybe it explained why Sundays always made Eureka lonely. Brooks
had been playing with the lyrics of her favorite Tom T. Hall song, "That's How I Got to Memphis." Eureka had been trying to harmonize with him. She'd grown annoyed with his improvisations and shoved him. He'd lost his balance, tumbled backward. One minute he was singing with her, and the next--
She'd tried to catch him. He fell for an eternity, his brown eyes locked on hers. His face grew smaller; his limbs stilled. He landed on his back, roughly, his left leg twisted beneath him.
Eureka still heard her scream in her mind. She'd leapt from the branch to the ground. She'd knelt beside him on skinned knees. First, she'd tried to pry his eyelids open, because Brooks's smile was mostly in his eyes and she needed to see it. She'd said his name.
When he didn't stir or answer, she prayed.
Hail Mary, full of grace ...
She said it over and over, till the words were tangled and held no meaning. Then she remembered something she'd seen on TV. She pressed her mouth against his ...
Brooks's arms encircled her and he kissed her, long and deep. His gleeful eyes popped open. "Gotcha."
She slapped him.
"Why did you do that?" She wiped her lips on the back of her hand, studied the shine their kiss made below her knuckles.
Brooks rubbed his cheek. "So you'd know I wasn't mad at you."
"Maybe now I'm mad at you."
"Maybe you're not." He grinned.
In those days, it was impossible to stay mad at Brooks. He'd limped back to the tree, and as he'd ascended its branches, he'd sung new, worse lyrics to the song:
If you shove somebody enough, you'll tumble wherever they go--
That's how I got to Memphis, that's how I got to Memphis.
They never talked about the kiss again.
Now, on the foreign forest floor, Eureka buried her face in his chest. His body seemed at peace. She wondered whether Atlas had finally gone away and left behind the body of her best friend.
She raised her head and studied the galaxy of freckles on Brooks's cheeks. She brushed hair from his eyes. She felt the scar of his wound. His skin was warm. Were his lips?
She kissed him lightly, hoping like a little girl to revive him, hoping like a little girl to pretend.
She might keep her lips against his forever, penance for having been stupid enough to leave with Atlas, stupid enough to drag Brooks's body here, stupid enough to abandon everyone else she loved.
He stirred.
"Brooks?" She gulped and said, "Atlas?"
His eyes were closed. He didn't seem to be conscious--but she had felt something shift. She studied him. His chest was still, his eyelids motionless.
There it was again.
Eureka's fingers vibrated where they touched his shoulders. A gale swept over Brooks. A warm, buzzy feeling spread to her arms, the back of her neck. She pulled her hands from Brooks's shoulders as an incandescence rose from his chest and hovered above his body.
Whose essence was this--Brooks's or Atlas's? Both of them had shared the body, like the ghost sharing Ovid. Eureka couldn't see the essence so much as she could sense it. She passed a trembling hand through it.
Cold.
Footsteps sounded on dewy grass. A boy about her age stood over her. She'd never seen him before, yet he was familiar.
Of course--she had seen him depicted in the illustrations of The Book of Love.
Atlas wasn't handsome, but there was something alluring about him. His smile was assured. He wore brilliant, finely tailored clothing in shapes and pieces Eureka didn't have words to describe. They glittered gold and red, as if made of rubies. His reddish-brown hair was curly and wild. His fair skin was lightly freckled, and his eyes were soft copper--but haunted, vacant. They looked past her, into a distance only they could see.
She stood up and matched his height. He'd been with her for so long, but this was the first moment they'd met.
"Atlas."
He didn't even look at her.
The incandescence above Brooks's body swirled toward the boy, and she knew it had not been her best friend's soul. It was Atlas, discarding Brooks's body in order to reclaim his own. But where was Brooks's soul? Atlas closed his eyes and absorbed the incandescence into his chest.
After a moment, when he opened his eyes, they had changed into a deep, penetrating brown, like the center of a redwood tree--far different from the irises he'd had before. Eureka knew she was standing before the most powerful person she had ever met.
She knelt beside Brooks again. His chest was no longer warm. What would happen if she wept now? Could her tears reflood Atlantis and send all of them back underwater? What would happen to the wasted dead?
Atlas tilted his head. "Save your tears."
His voice was rich and deep and strangely accented. Eureka understood him--and she understood he wasn't speaking English. He knelt over Brooks, too.
"I didn't know he was handsome. I can never tell if the inside matches the outside. You know what I mean."
"Don't talk about Brooks," she said. She wasn't speaking English, either. Intuition for the distant language must flow through her Tearline. The Atlantean tongue rolled fluidly from her, with the tiniest breath of translation in her mind.
"I don't believe we've properly met. My name is--"
"I know who you are."
"And I know who you are, but introductions aren't simply polite, they are law in my country, my world." He took her hand and helped her rise. "You must be my friend, Eureka. Only I am allowed enemies."
"We'll never be friends. You murdered the best one I had."
Atlas's lips turned downward as he glanced briefly at Brooks. "Do you know why I did it?"
"He was just a vessel to you," she said, "a way to get what you wanted."
"And what do I want?" Atlas stared into her eyes and waited.
"I know about the Filling."
"Forget the Filling. I want you."
"You want my tears."
"I will admit it," Atlas said. "At first you were just another Tearline girl to me. But then I got to know you. You're really very fascinating. What a strange, dark, and twisted heart you have. And what a face! Contrasts beguile me. The more time I spent inside that body"--he sighed, nodded at Brooks--"the more I relished being near you. Then you disappeared with ..."
"Ander," Eureka said.
"Never say that name in my kingdom!" Atlas shouted.
"Because of Leander," Eureka murmured. "Your brother who stole--"
Atlas grabbed Eureka's throat. "Everything from me. Understand?" His grip loosened. He composed himself with a breath. "He is flushed from both our lives now. We will not think of him again."
Eureka looked away. She would try not to think of Ander. It would make her mission easier, even though it was impossible.
"When you were gone," Atlas said, "the ghost of your beauty haunted me."
"You want one thing from me--"
"I want always to be near you. And I get what I want."
"You haven't gotten what you wanted in a long time."
"I didn't have to bring you here," Atlas said. "I saw your tears fill the lachrymatory. I could have taken it and left you rotting in those mountains. Think about that." He paused and gazed into the treetops thousands of feet above. "We were getting on so well," he whispered in her no-longer-bad ear. "Remember our kiss? I knew you knew it was me all along, just as I imagine you knew I knew you knew. Neither one of us is dumb, so why don't we stop pretending?"
He reached for her with a warm, strong hand. Eureka whipped away, mind whirring. She needed to resume pretending, to never stop, if she was going to survive. She had to trick him and she didn't know how.
"Are you wishing you had shot me when you had the chance?" Atlas asked, grinning. "Don't worry, there will be yet more chances for you to end my life--and to prove your love by sparing it."
"Give me the gun and I'll disprove it now," she said. "You know why I didn't shoot."
"Oh yes." Atlas gestured toward Brooks. "Because of this corpse."
"Hello, girls," Atlas said, and turned to Eureka. "My Crimson Devils. They will see to your every need."
"Her bed is ready," one of the girls said.
"Take her to it."
"Brooks!" Eureka reached for his dead body.
"You loved him," Atlas said. "You really loved him best of all. I know it. But you shall love again. Better, stronger"--he caressed Eureka's cheek--"deeper. As only a girl can do."
"What should we do with the body?" one of the girls asked, nudging Brooks's chest with her boot.
Atlas thought a moment. "Have my ostriches had breakfast?"
Eureka tried to scream, but a harness fell over her face. A metal bar snapped between her teeth. Someone tightened the harness from behind as green artemisia vapor swirled before her eyes.
Just before she lost consciousness, Atlas held her close. "I'm glad you're here, Eureka. Now everything can begin."
27
THE LIGHTNING CLOAK
Eureka awoke chained to a bed.
Her bed.
Four cherrywood bedposts rose above her on the antique queen she'd slept in before she cried. The thrift-store rocking chair swaying in the corner used to be her favorite homework spot. An Evangeline-green sweatshirt hung over its arm. Eureka's eyes throbbed from the haze of artemisia as her blurry reflection came into focus in her grandmother's old mirrored chest of drawers across from the bed.
Wide metal cuffs bound her wrists to the upper corners of the bed, her ankles to the lower corners, and her waist across the center. When she tried to jerk free, something sharp cut into her palms and the tops of her feet. The cuffs were barbed with spikes. Blood pooled over the cuff on her right wrist, then trickled down her arm.
"How does it work?" A husky voice startled her.
A teenage girl stood at her bedside, bent over Eureka's left hand like a manicurist. A laurel wreath adorned her amber hair. Her crimson dress plunged into a deep V ending just below her tattooed navel. She wore Eureka's crystal teardrop necklace.
"Give me back my necklace." The strange Atlantean words hurt as they left Eureka's parched throat. She tried to kick the girl with her knees. Metal spikes bit her waist. Blood bloomed through her shirt.