Eureka felt a burst of heat and heard something sizzle. Blue light flashed as the orichalcum chain holding the crystal teardrop entwined around the bronze chain of her mother's locket. The pendants shifted, ground against each other, like ghosts within a robot. After a moment, the teardrop crystal, the thunderstone, the lapis lazuli locket, even the faded yellow ribbon had converged to form a single, sparkling pendant.
It looked like a very large diamond in the shape of a tear. But inside its smooth, flat surface was a flicker of yellow--from the ribbon--then blue--from the lapis lazuli locket--then steely gray--from the thunderstone, refracting inside the crystal in the purple firelight.
"It fits," Esme said.
"But my thunderstone," Eureka said. "Will it still work?"
The skin where the pendant touched her chest was hot. It singed her fingers when she touched it.
Esme's expression was sphinxlike. She pulled a vial of purple salve from her pocket and pressed it into Eureka's hand. "For your friend. The bees will never leave her, but if I am right about her character--and I do loathe being wrong--she will grow to cherish them. This will disappear the pain. Do you have any more requests? Any other services you would like us to provide?"
Eureka produced The Book of Love's missing pages. "Can you read this?"
"Of course," Esme said. "It is written in our mother tongue, read best with closed eyes."
Behind Esme, the old witch with the monocle patted a purple pillow. "Make yourself at home," she hissed.
Eureka sat. She wanted to get the translation and hurry back down the mountain, back to the Bitter Cloud. But the fire was warm and the pillow was comfortable, and suddenly her hand held a mug of something steaming. She brought it cautiously near her face. It smelled like grape soda spiked with anise alcohol.
"No, thank you." Diana had read Eureka fairy tales. She knew not to drink.
"Please imbibe." The witch beside her pushed the cup to Eureka's lips. "You will need a tad of Dutch courage."
All around the lair, witches raised matching mugs, then drained them in a gulp.
The witch tipped the cup. Eureka winced and swallowed.
The brew tasted so unexpectedly wonderful--like caramel hot chocolate thickened with cream--and Eureka was so unfathomably thirsty, and that first swallow filled her body with such long-awaited warmth that she couldn't stop. She guzzled the rest before she knew what she had done. The witches beamed as she wiped her lips.
"What a joy to see the old language again," Esme sang, flipping through the pages Eureka had given her with her eyes closed. "Shall I begin at the beginning, which is never a beginning but is always in the middle of something already begun?"
"I already know some of the story," Eureka said. "I had a translator at home."
"Home?" Esme lifted her chin. Her eyes were still closed, amethyst lids glittering.
"In Louisiana, where I lived ... before I cried." She thought of Madame Blavatsky's crimson lipstick, her tobacco-scented patchwork cloak and flock of lovebirds, her compassion when Eureka needed it most. "My translator was very good."
Esme's painted lips pulled skeptically on her spiral pipe. Artemisia embers glowed. She opened her eyes. "One would have to be from our home, from Atlantis, in order to read this text. Are you sure this translator did not feed you lies?"
Eureka shook her head. "She knew things she couldn't have known. She could read this, I'm certain of it. I believe my mother could, too."
"You mean to suggest that someone has been dipping our pure tongue in the filthy creeks of your world?"
"I don't know about that--"
"What do you know?" Esme interrupted.
Eureka closed her eyes and remembered the exhilaration she'd felt when she first learned her ancestor's story. "I know Selene loved Leander. I know they had to flee Atlantis to be together. I know they boarded a ship the night before Selene was supposed to marry Atlas. I know Delphine was scorned when Leander chose Selene." She paused to survey the gossipwitches, who had never seemed so serious, so still. They were hanging on her words the way Eureka had hung on Madame Blavatsky's, as if she were telling the old tale for the first time. "And I know the last thing Selene saw when she sailed away were gossipwitches, who spoke the curse of her Tearline."
"Her Tearline?" Esme repeated with a strange lilt.
"Yes, they prophesied that someday, one of Selene's descendants would cause the rise of Atlantis. It would be a girl born on a day that doesn't exist, a motherless child and childless mother whose emotions brew like a storm her whole life until she couldn't withstand them anymore. And she wept." Eureka swallowed. "And flooded the world with her tears. That's me. I'm her."
"So you don't know the most important part." With great care Esme smoothed the missing pages, held them up to the amethyst light. "Do you remember where you left off with your imposter translator?"
"I remember." Eureka unzipped her bag and pulled out the plastic-sheathed book. She turned to a wrinkled page flagged with a green Abyssinian lovebird feather. She pointed at the bottom corner, where the text tapered off. "Selene and Leander were separated in a shipwreck. They never saw each other again, but Selene said"--Eureka paused to remember her exact words--" 'The witches' prophecy is the only lasting remnant of our love.' "
"Your translator guessed correctly. We witches clearly are the stars of this story, but there is one other ... lasting remnant about which you should know." Esme held the parchment up to the light again, closed her eyes, and uttered Selene's missing words:
"For many restless years I have kept the final chapter of my story locked inside my heart. I painted a romance using only bright colors. I sought to leave out the darkness, but as the colors of my life begin to fade, I must allow the narratory darkness in.
"I must face what happened with the child ...
"The last time I kissed Leander, we were sailing from the only home we'd ever known. The ghost robot Ovid steered our ship. We had stolen it to help us. It was still empty, devoid of souls. We hoped Ovid's absence might slow the Filling, that once we reached our destination, it might reveal how to defeat Atlas.
"Leander's caress soothed me when skies darkened; his embrace reassured me when they wept a chilling rain. He kissed me nine times, and with each tender touch of his lips, my lover changed:
"First came the lines around his smile.
Then his blond hair grew white.
His skin became papery, loose.
His embrace slackened weakly around my body.
His whisper became hoarse.
The need in his eyes dimmed.
His kiss lost its urgent lust.
His frame stooped in my arms.
"After his last, weary kiss, he pointed to the woven basket he had carried onboard. I assumed it contained a nuptial cake, perhaps some ambrosial wine to toast our love.
" 'What's mine is yours,' he said.
"I lifted the basket's lid and heard the babe's first cry.
" 'This is my daughter,' he said. 'She does not have a name.'
"When he had bid Delphine farewell, she presented the child--the child they shared. Leander could not bear to leave the infant with an evil mother, so he grabbed her and he ran. As he did so, Delphine cursed him:
"He would age rapidly if he loved anyone but her.
"I asked him jealous questions about the baby, about his love for Delphine, but he struggled to remember. His mind had become as feeble as his body.
"The child cooed in her bassinet. I feared her. What would she do, when she was older and felt betrayed? I looked at the sea and knew she would do worse things than her mother.
"I lost my love in that storm--Leander was so decrepit by the time a thick bolt of lightning split our ship, I knew he must have perished in the wreck that followed.
"But his daughter survived.
"When I awoke on a windswept abandoned shore, I found Ovid submerged in wet sand--and the baby in her bassinet, at the edge of soft ocean waves. I thought of killing her, leaving her to die--but
she had his eyes. She was all I had left of my love.
"In the early years the robot, the girl, and I spent together, I almost forgot who her real mother was. She was my treasure, my life.
"Over time, the girl grew to be like her mother.
"For seventeen years I kept her hidden, until one day I returned from bathing to find her disappeared. Ovid knew which path she'd taken, but something told me not to follow. Like a flame suddenly extinguished, she was gone, and I was cold and alone.
"I never saw her again. I had never given her a name."
Esme put the parchment on her lap. She opened her eyes.
"I don't understand," Eureka said.
"I shall put it plainly for you: the years have forged a false history of your lineage. Selene was a pretty girl and a decent horticulturist, but she was not your matriarch. You are descended from the grandmother of all dark sorcery. The Tearline springs from Delphine."
Eureka opened her mouth to speak but found no words.
"Her tears of scorn and heartbreak sank Atlantis," Esme said. "Yours will raise it."
"No, that's not what happened."
"Because you don't want it to be what happened?" Esme asked. "If the hero does not match the story, it is the hero, not the story, who must be rewritten."
Eureka's temples throbbed. "But I didn't cry from scorn and--"
"Heartbreak?" Esme asked. "Are you certain?"
"You're lying," Eureka said.
"I lie as frequently and as convincingly as I can. But then there is the matter of the Glimmering, which reveals only that which is truer than the truth. Do you happen to recall your reflection?"
The memory of that cold, cruel face flashed before Eureka's eyes and she knew that the girl in the reflection wasn't Maya Cayce. Her gaze had been wiser, darker, deeper. Her smile icier than that of even the most frigid high school queen. Eureka had been looking at Delphine. Her body tensed. She imagined squeezing Esme's cheeks until no laughter could escape her pretty, painted mouth.
She blinked, surprised by the violence of her fantasy.
Esme smiled. "Delphine is who you come from, why you are the way you are. Dark-hearted. Mind as deadly as a nest of vipers. You are capable of great and terrible things, but you must free yourself of the bonds of love and kindness holding you back. Come with us. We will show you the way to the Marais. Then you will show us the way to Atlantis--"
"No." Eureka rose and stepped backward.
"You'll change your mind." Esme followed Eureka to the doorway. She stroked the twisted end of her pipe. "Funny, isn't it? Everyone thinks the bad guy is Atlas...."
"Even Atlas thinks the bad guy is Atlas!" a witch in the background howled.
"When, actually"--Esme leaned forward to whisper in Eureka's bad ear--"it's you."
23
OVID'S METAMORPHOSES
Eureka could barely see Ander through the rain as he ran from the entrance to the Bitter Cloud and caught her in his arms.
"Where have you been?"
Everything was different about him. His hair was wet, his clothes soaked and stuck to his skin. His eyes were a pure, crystal-clear blue, where they used to be clouded by a lovely melancholy.
Was this how Ander wore joy? He looked fantastic, but far removed from the brooding, unreachable boy she'd fallen for back home.
That boy would have hated that she'd run off to an artemisia-drenched witches' lair. This boy's embrace said: All that matters is you're here.
The truth had done this to Ander. He knew who he was--or who he wasn't--and it looked good on him.
"I have something for you," Ander said.
"Ander, wait"--any word not confessing her secret was a lie--"before you--"
He shook his head. "This can't wait."
His arms curved around her back and pulled her body against his. He tipped her backward and pressed his lips to hers. The salty rain flooded between their lips. This was what heartbreak tasted like.
Eureka felt like an imposter. She couldn't breathe and she didn't want to. What if she could die while kissing him, allow his love to suffocate her? Then he'd never know who she really was, she would never have to face the grand lie she had become, and the rest of the half-drowned world could go on paying for her pride.
She touched the corners of his eyes where she'd found wrinkles days ago. "Your face."
"Do I look different?" Ander asked.
His eyes creased when he smiled. His hair was a thousand shades of flaxen gold. But Ander wasn't an old man any more than Eureka was an old lady. They were teenagers. They were growing up and changing all the time and it couldn't be stopped or slowed.
"You look like you," she said.
He smiled. "You look like you, too."
What did he see when he looked at her? Was her darkness swelling as visible as the shadows lifting from him?
He reached for the teardrop crystal that had absorbed her other pendants. He gasped and quickly drew his hand away, as if he'd touched a flame.
"From the gossipwitches?"
She nodded. "The locket, the thunderstone, and the ribbon are inside."
"I can't tell you how free I feel," Ander whispered. "There's no more risk in caring for each other. We can be together. We can go to the Marais. You can defeat Atlas. I can be with you the whole time. We can do this, together." He touched her lips. His eyes swam over her face. "I love you, Eureka."
Eureka closed her eyes. Ander loved a girl he thought he knew. He loved that girl very much. He had said it was the only thing he was sure of. But he could never love the person she truly was, a descendant of darkness, more evil than the most evil force Ander could imagine.
"That's great," she said.
"I have to kiss you again." He drew her close, but her heart wasn't in it. Her heart could never be in something so right, so good.
A violent rapping interrupted their kiss. Eureka jumped away from Ander and spun around. A shadowy figure leaned against the entrance to the Bitter Cloud holding an umbrella over its head.
Her heart quickened. Was it Brooks? She yearned to see him again--even though she knew he was bound to evil. Or maybe she yearned to see him because he was bound to evil.
"Who's there?" Ander put his body between Eureka and the figure.
"Only me."
"Solon?" Eureka wiped rain from her eyes and discerned Ovid's lithe frame. The robot's left hand had sprouted an orichalcum umbrella. Its face bore the loving, aged features that the lost Seedbearer had worn at his death.
" 'O a kiss, long as my exile, sweet as my revenge,' " the robot said in Solon's voice. "That's Coriolanus. Shakespeare already knew what you are learning, Eureka: the soldier can return from war but he can never go home." The robot tipped its umbrella toward the Bitter Cloud. "Let's talk inside. I'm waterproof, so rain makes me lonely."
Ovid collapsed the umbrella as they entered the cave through the hall of skulls. Water streamed past their feet, the flood flowing toward the salon. The Bitter Cloud was desolate now and filling with salt water, nothing like the fascinating chamber of curiosities it had been when they arrived. The air was cold and dank.
Claire was throwing fistfuls of colored mosaic tiles in the air. William used his quirk to retrieve them before they hit the rising water.
"Eureka's back!"
The twins splashed through deep puddles as they ran to her. William made it into her arms, but Claire stopped short of the robot and looked at it distrustfully.
She hunched her shoulders. "Why does Ovid look weird?"
"It looks like Solon," William said into Eureka's shoulder. "It's scary."
Cat sat in Solon's cockfighting chair with her eyes closed. Eureka poured some of the witches' salve into her hands and massaged it over the bees, which now crawled all over her friend's scalp. Cat flinched at first, then gazed up at Eureka. Tears dotted her eyes.
"Are they gone?" she asked, patting her hair.
"No."
"It doesn't hurt anymore."
"Good
."
Eureka helped Cat to her feet. Cat's heels sank into a puddle--then both of her feet lifted off the floor. It lasted just a second. Cat looked down at her feet, then at Eureka, then down again. She held out her arms and furrowed her brow and made herself levitate, this time for longer, a full foot off the floor.
She touched her bee braids and giggled a laugh that didn't sound like Cat. "That bitch turned me into a witch." She gazed at Eureka with wide eyes. "You know, this is the first thing in a long time that actually feels right?"
"Sit down." Solon's voice spoke through the robot. "Watch closely. Prepare to have your minds blown."
They gathered around the fire pit with the waterfall tumbling and the skulls eavesdropping, just as they had when Solon welcomed them to the Bitter Cloud. Ovid presided in Solon's place, holding his old, empty broken glass.
Solon's features wavered, then twisted gruesomely, like the robot's face was made of clay. William whimpered in Eureka's lap. Then Ovid's nose tapered. Its lips swelled. Its cheeks grew longer.
"Poet?" Cat leaned forward shakily.
The Poet within the robot seemed to size up Cat's new do approvingly, then he twisted out of recognition as another face filled the orichalcum void.
Seyma's features sharpened and squashed as if someone had pressed her face against a sheet of glass. She grimaced and was pulled away, replaced by the thin, old lips of Starling, then, more rapidly, by the dark grimace of Critias, the wizened ruthlessness of Chora, and, finally, by the cold hatred in Albion's eyes. He struggled to speak through the robot, but couldn't. Eureka got the gist of what he wanted to say.
At last, their father surfaced.
"Daddy--" Claire cried in the voice she used when she was having a nightmare.
Dad was gone, replaced by Solon.
"You will encounter all of them eventually," Solon's voice said. "For now, while they are learning to be ghosts, I control a great percentage of the robot's drive. I will sow seeds of resistance from inside, but as the others mature they will have their own agenda. We must make our move soon, while I can still be your primary guide."
Eureka rose. "Let's go."
"Sit," he said. "First I must show you the way." Again Ovid's features softened. This time, they became a screen on which a waterfall appeared. A projection of white water streamed down the robot's forehead. In the center of its face a strange bubble vibrated. It took Eureka a moment to recognize it was her thunderstone shield. A small version of Ovid appeared beneath the shield, its body arced in a gorgeous dive as it balanced the shield on its shoulders.