Waterfall (10 page)

E
ureka plummeted through cold mist. She heard the twins scream. She reached out for the blur of their bodies as she hurtled downward, through the space in the floor of the cave and into a wide, shadowy chute.

Darkness swallowed her. She crossed her arms over her chest, clutching the orchid with one hand, her thunderstone with the other. The yellow ribbon slapped her chin to remind her she had failed that girl. She braced herself for whatever she would soon be crashing into. Every waterfall had an end.

She worried about plunging into water too shallow for her shield. She thought back to the rainy night her grandmother Sugar had died, the soles of her feet slowly turning blue, and the old woman’s hoarse last word:
“Pray!”
For some
reason, the memory was calming. She whispered, “I’m coming, Sugar,” then, “I’m coming, Mom.”

She fell faster. Then she did a somersault. If these were her final living moments, she wouldn’t spend them like a mannequin.

She thought of a million things at once—a poem she’d read in the psych ward called “Falling,” by James Dickey, a movie about people who committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, her first taste of whipped cream on pancakes, the aching baroque sweetness of the world, the luxury of letting yourself feel lonesome and sad.

Suddenly the chute opened into a vast dim chamber and Eureka saw water below. From the movie about the Golden Gate suicides, she knew to assume a sitting position before she broke the water’s surface.

She rocketed underwater as if strapped to an invisible chair. The shield sprang up around her. She gasped and whooped and looked beneath her. It had saved her from being impaled on a dense metropolis of stalagmites. Their spires had come within inches of her skin.

She collapsed against the surface of the shield. She tried to breathe, to slow her sprinting heart. She tried to recover what she’d been thinking as she fell, but those thoughts were flying up wherever dreams lived.

She heard shouting, her name being called. A great splash blew the shield backward. Ander swam toward her. He arrived
in front of her shield and pressed his hands against its surface. He looked desperate to hold her.

Eureka released the orchid. She pressed her hands against the shield, her palms against Ander’s. Then, slowly, she pressed her forehead and her shoulders against it. Ander lifted his chin, rapt, as she pressed her lips to the shield.

She gazed at him. His lips were slightly parted. He hesitated for a moment, then took his finger and traced her lips lightly through the shield. She could feel the subtle pressure of his touch but not the softness of his skin.

Heat coursed through Eureka. They were tantalizingly close—

They could swim to the surface and the shield would fall away, but Eureka suddenly sensed that a powerful force might always lie between them, teasing her, torturing her.

Ander had been underwater a long time without air. Within her shield, Eureka could breathe, but Ander’s lungs must have ached. She pulled back from the edge of the shield and pointed toward the surface. When Ander nodded, she picked up the orchid and they kicked themselves higher, higher, until Eureka’s head broke the surface and the shield shattered again.

They faced each other and tread water, which was as warm as a just-drawn bath. Her arm brushed Ander’s thigh. His foot pedaled into her knee. Her guilt grazed his, then got lost in the dark water. Eureka didn’t know how to stay connected and not sink.

“Don’t mind me.” Solon smirked at them from the edge of the pool.

Beyond Solon, Eureka saw a curved staircase built into the stone. Cat and the twins leapt from the bottom step and ran toward her. Dad’s winged bower hovered at the foot of the stairs.

She waved the orchid to signal she was okay. She was still adjusting to the idea that she wasn’t about to die.

The cave was darker down here, undecorated. Only a few stalagmite candelabra lit the yawning space, but Eureka sensed there was more to this underground cistern than she could see from the pool.

A spray of water erupted behind Eureka. She lunged forward.

“Just a little blowhole,” Solon said. “It’s not another test. Why don’t you calm down and emerge? We have much to discuss.”

Ander pulled himself out of the pool and turned to help Eureka. She was soaking; he was as dry as ever.

Solon tossed her a robe identical to his. She put it on over her wet clothes and wrung the water from her ponytail. Cat and the twins embraced her—her friend high up on her body, her siblings low.

“So. You passed,” Solon said. He glanced at Ander. “With only some cheating.”

Ander chested up against Solon. “She was almost killed.”

Solon stumbled backward, amused. “Some would say that’s the point. I’m sure you know who I mean.” He turned back to Eureka. “Your friend is mad because when I realized he was using his Zephyr to aid you, I used mine to disengage his. That’s when you fell.” He used two fingers to mimic the flailing legs of a falling girl and whistled the sound of her descent.

“You
wanted
me to fall?” Eureka asked.

“
Want
is a strong word. Mostly, I
don’t
want a Seedbearer paraded into my home.”

“I’m not a Seedbearer anymore,” Ander said. “My name is Ander. Like you, I turned my back—”

Solon scowled and shook his head impatiently. “Once a Seedbearer, always a Seedbearer. It is the most unfortunate aspect of a vividly unfortunate existence. And you are nothing like me.” He paused. “Ander? After Leander?”

“Yes.”

“Rather pretentious, isn’t it?” Solon asked. “Have you had your Passage yet?”

Ander nodded. “I was eighteen in February.”

Eureka’s gaze darted between the two boys, trying to keep up. All of this was news to her. She imagined Ander’s birthday, months ago in Lafayette. Whom had he celebrated with? What kind of cake did he like? And what was a Passage?

“Whom did you replace?” Solon asked Ander. “Wait, don’t tell me, I won’t get stuck at that dysfunction junction just because some kid walks into my cave like a bad joke.”

Eureka threw the orchid, striking Solon in the face. “Here’s your flower, asshole.”

“Blow it out your blowhole,” Cat muttered.

Solon caught the orchid by its stem. He brought it to his chest and patted its petals. “How much time will you buy me?” he asked the flower.

When he looked up at Eureka, an eerie smile haunted his face. “Well, you’re here now, aren’t you? I might as well get used to it. Privacy and dignity are temporary states.”

“Water, water, everyone?” Solon held out a copper carafe when they were back upstairs and dry, seated around his fire. He’d distributed alpaca blankets, which they all wrapped around their shoulders.

Cat flexed her feet in a pair of Solon’s moccasins.

“These things will be the death of me,” she’d told one of the skulls on the wall when she’d slipped off her red stilettos and hooked their heels through its eye sockets. “You feel me, right?”

Dad’s moth-wing bower had begun to sag during Eureka’s adventure with the orchid. The moths were dying. When the bower drooped all the way to the ground it unfurled, looking as magical as a drab gray quilt. As Solon and Ander carried Dad closer to the fire and propped him up on a mountain of pillows, Eureka fingered the bower’s strange material. The moths’ wings were changing, from thin, chalky sheets to dust.

She took the carafe from Solon, aching to down its contents in a few gulps. She held it to her father’s lips.

He drank weakly. His dry throat made scraping noises as he strained to swallow. When he seemed too tired to drink any more he turned his eyes on Eureka. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”

She wiped the corner of his mouth. “We take care of each other.”

He tried to smile. “You look so much like your mother, but …”

“But what?”

Dad rarely brought up Diana. Eureka knew he was tired, but she wanted to stay in the moment, to keep him there with her. She wanted to learn as much as she could about the love that made her.

“But you’re stronger.”

Eureka was amazed. Diana had been the strongest person she knew.

“You aren’t afraid to falter,” Dad said, “or to be around others when they falter. That takes strength that Diana never had.”

“I don’t think I have a choice,” Eureka said.

Dad touched her cheek. “Everybody’s got a choice.”

Solon, who had disappeared behind a hanging rug that must have led to a back room, returned carrying a wooden tray of tall ceramic mugs. “I also have prosecco, if you’d prefer. I do.”

“What’s prospecto?” William asked.

“Do you have popcorn?” Claire asked.

“Look at us”—Solon tossed an empty mug to Cat, who caught it by the handle with her pinky—“having a little party.”

“My dad needs a doctor,” Eureka said.

“Yes, yes,” Solon said. “My assistant should be here presently. She makes the loveliest painkillers.”

“His wound needs redressing, too,” Eureka said. “We need gauze, antiseptic—”

“When Filiz gets here. She handles what I don’t.” Solon reached into his robe pocket and withdrew a hand-rolled cigarette. He put it in his mouth, leaned over the fire, and inhaled. He blew out a great puff of smoke that smelled like cloves. William coughed. Eureka fanned the smoke away from her brother’s face.

“First,” Solon said, “I must know which one of you saw through the witches’ glaze into my cave?”

“Me,” Claire said.

“Should have known,” Solon said. “She’s three foot two and exudes the knowledge that adults are full of crap. Her quirk is still quite strong.”

“What’s a quirk?” Cat asked, but Solon only smiled at Claire.

“Claire is my sister,” Eureka explained. “She and William are twins.”

Solon nodded at William, exhaled out the corner of his mouth to be polite. “What’s your brand of magic?”

“I’m still deciding,” William said. He didn’t mean it as a joke—to William, magic was real.

The lost Seedbearer rested his cigarette on the stalagmite he was using as an ashtray. “I understand.”

Ander picked up the cigarette and sniffed it as if he’d never seen one before. “How can you smoke?”

Solon snatched the cigarette. “I have forsaken a million pleasures, but I am faithful to this.”

“But what about your Zephyr?” Ander asked. “How can you still—”

“My lungs are ruined.” Solon took a puff and exhaled an enormous plume of smoke. “Derailing you a moment ago was the first I’ve used my Zephyr in ages. I suppose, if my death depended on it, I could still erect a cordon.” He tapped the tip of the cigarette. “But I prefer this little buzz.”

He turned away, cigarette dangling from his lips, and plucked the orchid petals from their branch. He dropped them into a glass soda bottle, counting the petals under his breath, as if they were precious gold coins.

“What are you going to do with those?” Claire asked.

Solon smiled and continued his weird work. When he had filled the bottle, he pulled a small black velvet pouch from his pocket and poured the remaining amethyst petals into it.

“I’ll save these for a slightly less rainy day,” he said.

“Now that you have your little flower,” Cat said, “is there any chance I could use a phone, or hop on someone’s Wi-Fi?”

“He’s been living under a rock,” Eureka said. “I doubt he’s hooked up to broadband.” She glanced at Solon. “Cat was separated from her family. She needs to reach them.”

“We’re off the grid down here,” Solon said. “There used to be an Internet café a couple of miles to the west, but now all of that is waterworld, thanks to Eureka. The entire worldwide cobweb has been washed away.”

Cat gaped at Eureka. “You killed the Internet.”

“The witches may know where your family is,” Solon continued, “but they don’t provide information for free.” He glanced at the petal-filled bottle. “I’d think thrice before becoming indebted to those beasts.”

“We met them,” Eureka said. “They helped us find you. They carried Dad and—”

“I know.” Solon turned to the disintegrated bower. He ran his hand lightly over the moth-wing dust. “I would recognize the remains of my darlings anywhere.”

“Can the witches really put Cat in touch with her family?” Eureka asked.

“They can do many things.” Solon flung down the velvet pouch, reached for a burlap sack behind him. He spilled out a mass of colored stones and began sifting through them. “Scavenging vultures. Whorish harpies. You met Esme? The young one—very pretty?”

“We didn’t catch their names,” Eureka said.

“You never will—and you must never call her by it. Their
names are secret from everyone but other gossipwitches. Anyone who knows one must pretend that she does not.”

“Then why tell me her name?” Eureka asked.

“Because Esme is the smartest and the loveliest and therefore the most terrible.”

“What about the witches’ glaze?” Claire scooted closer to Solon, who gave her an alarmed smile, as if no one had been close to him in years.

“I pay the hags to enchant the entrance to my cave. The glaze is a special camouflage so my family can’t find me. It’s imperceptible to the senses, or it’s supposed to be. I shall demand a refund.” He looked at Ander. “How
did
you get this far?”