Waterfall (16 page)

“I’m sorry,” she told Solon. “I’m just worried that I’m running out of time.”

“Now you have to say you’re sorry, too.” Claire held out a cherry to Solon.

“I regret nothing,” Solon said, and turned away. “Trenton, you’re next.”

“Wait,” Cat said. “I could do more. If we went back to those hazelnut trees, I could revive them. My grandfather grew pecans—one tree produces six hundred pounds of nuts per year. Say there were fifty trees in that grove. That’s three hundred thousand pounds of food. The Poet said his family is starving. I could help.”

“None of you will leave the protection of the glaze,” Solon said.

“My family could be starving right now,” Cat said. “If there was something someone could do to help them—”

“You cannot handle what is out there.” Solon glared at Eureka, making her wonder if he knew where she had been last night.

Dad approached Solon. “I’ll give it a shot. What do I do?”

“You don’t have to, Dad,” Eureka said. “You’re not well.”

Solon looked hard at Dad. “Your quirk is likely buried very deep within you. But it’s there. It’s always there. Perhaps a tool might help. Ander, the orichalcum?”

Ander unzipped his backpack and withdrew three silver objects. First was the delicate anchor they’d used yesterday to make landfall. It gleamed as if recently polished, as all the objects did. There was also a sheath, six inches long, and made of thinly hammered silver. From it Solon drew a futuristic-looking spear that was, amazingly, many times longer than the sheath. It was nearly four feet long, with a thin serrated blade.

The last object was a small rectangular chest about the size of a jewelry box. It contained Atlantean artemisia, a substance deadly to Seedbearers. Ander had flashed that chest at his family when they tried to run Eureka off the country road in Breaux Bridge. Its green glow had scared them off. Solon eyed it greedily.

“The objects before you are made of orichalcum,” he said
to Dad. “Before Ander brought them here, I had not seen them in three-quarters of a century and was beginning to think they were mystical aspects of my imagination. Orichalcum is an ancient metal. It is also an indentured metal, which means it works for its owner. You may choose one—which is to say one may choose you—as a talisman to help uncover your quirk.”

Dad stared at the objects. “I don’t understand.”

“Can we please stop trying to make sense of things?” Solon said. “It’s supposed to be natural, like it was for your children. For example, this one speaks to me.” He lifted the chest’s lid and gave a deep, sensual sniff.

Ander snapped the lid shut. “Are you suicidal?”

“Of course I’m suicidal,” Solon said, laughing. “What kind of insane lunatic isn’t suicidal?”

“If you die, I die,” Ander muttered. “I won’t abandon Eureka because you’re too much of a coward to live.”

Solon raised an eyebrow. “That remains to be seen.”

“Dad, take the chest,” Eureka said.

“Yeah, I like this one.” Dad eased the chest from Ander’s and Solon’s grips. He opened the lid and recoiled at the sharp odor. Solon leaned forward, breathing in, enchanted. Eureka noticed that Ander leaned forward, too. Seedbearers couldn’t resist artemisia.

As Solon bent over in another consuming coughing spell, Dad watched with a concern that Eureka recognized. He’d looked at her that way all her life.

“You have cancer,” he said.

Solon straightened, stared at Dad. “What?”

“Your lungs. I see it clearly. There’s darkness here”—he gestured toward Solon’s heart—“and here, and here.” He pointed at two other places along Solon’s lower ribs. “Artemisia could help. The herb eases inflammation.”

“Hear that, Ander?” Solon laughed.

“This artemisia comes from Atlantis,” Ander said. “It’s far more potent than any herb you are familiar with.”

“Dad,” Eureka tried to explain, “Solon can’t inhale artemisia without dying from it, without killing Ander, too.”

“There are other homeopathic remedies,” Dad said, pacing, excited. “If we could get our hands on some Venus flytrap extract, I could make a tea.”

“There’s a health-food store about a mile underwater,” Solon said.

“You’ve always had your quirk,” Eureka said to Dad. “That’s why you try to heal us all with food. You can see what’s wrong inside us.”

“And you want us to get better,” William said.

“Your mother always said I could see the best in people,” Dad said.

“Which one?” Eureka asked. “Rhoda or Diana?”

“Both.”

“Now it’s Eureka’s turn,” Claire said.

“I think my quirk is my sadness,” Eureka said. “And I’ve already used it enough.”

Solon frowned. “Your mind is much narrower than Diana’s.”

“What do you mean?”

“There
is
a wider spectrum of emotions than just sorrow and desolation. Have you ever considered what might transpire if you allowed yourself to feel”—Solon’s eyes widened—“joy?”

Eureka looked at William and Claire, who were waiting for her response. She recalled a quote she’d once seen tattooed on a boy’s neck as he fought with another kid at Wade’s Hole:

A LEADER IS A DEALER IN HOPE.

At some point, Eureka had become Cat, Dad, and the twins’ leader. She wanted to give them hope. But how?

She thought of a popular phrase in the chat rooms she had trolled after Diana died: “It gets better.” Eureka knew it was originally offered as encouragement to gay kids, but if there was one thing she’d learned since Diana’s death, it was that emotions didn’t travel in a straight line. Sometimes it would get better, sometimes it would get worse. Sure, Eureka had known joy—in the tops of live oak trees, in dilapidated boats cruising the bayou, on long runs through shady groves, and in peals of laughter with Brooks and Cat—but the sensation was usually so fleeting, a commercial in the drama of her life, that she’d never put much stock in it.

“How would joy help me defeat Atlas?” Eureka wondered aloud.

“Solon!” a voice called from behind them. The Poet
appeared at the top of the stairs. He looked terrified. “I tried to stop them … but beggars must be choosers.”

“What are you talking about?” Solon asked.

From behind the Poet an enraged voice shouted something Eureka didn’t understand. A young man with a stubbly beard joined the Poet on the stairs. Every muscle in his body was tensed, as if he were in shock. His chest heaved and his eyes were wild. He pointed a trembling finger at Eureka.

“Yes,” the Poet said with heavy regret. “She is the one the dead speak of in our dreams.”

“S
tay there!” Solon shouted at Eureka. His silk robe trailed behind him as he rushed past the Poet and down the stairs. Without the protection of his cordon, rain returned to the veranda.

“What’s going on?” Cat asked the Poet.

The other boy moved quickly across the veranda, splashing through puddles, trampling on swirls of cherry blossoms, heading for Eureka.

A silver flash caught her eye as the orichalcum chain of Ander’s anchor tightly encircled the boy’s bony rib cage. He grunted, struggling to breathe.

Ander held the shank of the anchor over his shoulder, the chain coiled around his wrist. He shoved the bearded boy and
the Poet against the veranda’s rail. He pressed their necks over the overlook. A sheet of mist spread toward them and the boys slipped in and out of foggy, white obscurity.

“Who’s down there?” Ander’s grip tightened on both boys’ necks. “How many?”

“Don’t hurt him!” Cat said.

“Let go, please,” the Poet grunted. “We come in pieces.”

“Liar,” Ander said. Lightning split the sky, illuminating his shoulder muscles through his T-shirt. “They want her.”

“They want food.” The Poet gasped and struggled to break free.

The Poet’s companion began whipping his head back in violent jerks, trying to strike Ander’s face.

Claire tugged on the sleeve of Dad’s jean jacket. “Should I spear that boy?”

Dad locked eyes with Eureka. Both of them had noticed the orichalcum sheath in Claire’s hand. Dad lifted it from one daughter and passed it to the other. Eureka slipped it through the belt loop of her jeans as Dad tucked the orichalcum chest inside his jacket.

A series of thumps drew Eureka’s attention to Ander and the boys. The sharp point of Ander’s elbow snapped into the back of the bearded boy’s head, over and over, until the boy grunted and finally went limp.

Dad tried to shield the twins from the violent sight, and Eureka was surprised she hadn’t thought to do the same. It
hadn’t shocked her the way it would have once. Now violence was ordinary, like the ache of hunger and the dull edge of regret.

Dad moved the twins toward the staircase. Something in Eureka lightened as they slipped away. The sensation came and went quickly, and she couldn’t put it into words, but it made her wonder whether she would rather be like Cat, with no knowledge of her family, with no special responsibility to protect them.

A crash below made Dad jump away from the head of the stairs. There was nowhere safe to go.

“Stay up here!” Eureka called.

Behind her, the Poet was on his knees, lightly slapping the unconscious boy’s cheeks, murmuring something in their language.

“Take this to your family,” Cat said, her crossed arms full of cherries. The Poet gave her a grateful nod and a shy smile that belonged on the outskirts of a high school football game—not over an unconscious body somewhere near the end of the world.

“We have more food,” Eureka heard herself say.

Ander moved next to her. She felt his heat pulse near her body. He was bleeding above his eyebrow where the boy’s head had struck him.

“If we feed them,” Ander said to the Poet, “do you swear they’ll leave her alone?”

Another crash sounded below. Eureka heard Solon wheeze: “I said
hit
me, you pathetic weaklings!”

“Solon, you idiot,” she muttered as she rushed for the stairs.

Dad’s arm shot out, trying to block her. “This isn’t your fight, Reka.”

“It’s only my fight,” she said. “Don’t go down there.”

Dad started to argue, then realized he couldn’t stop her, or change her mind, or change the person she’d become. He kissed her forehead lightly, between her eyes, the way he used to after her nightmares.
You’re awake now,
his soft voice once reassured her.
Nothing’s gonna get you.

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.