Waterfall (2 page)

“So then,” Critias said, “where is he? What’s he waiting for?”

“I don’t know.” Albion tightened his fist over the fire until
the smell of burning flesh alerted him to move it. “We were all there. We saw her cry!”

Starling thought back to that morning. When Eureka’s tears fell, her sorrow had seemed bottomless, as if it would never end. It had seemed that each tear shed would multiply the damage to the world tenfold—

“Wait,” she said. “Once the conditions of her prophecy were met, three tears needed to fall.”

“The girl was a blubbering mess.” Albion dismissed her. No one took Starling seriously. “Obviously, the three required tears were shed.”

“And then some.” Chora looked up at the rain.

Critias scratched the silver stubble on his chin. “Are we sure?”

There was a pause, and a burst of thunder. Rain spat through the cordon’s hole.

“One tear to shatter the Waking World’s skin.”
Critias softly sang the line from the Chronicles, passed down by their fore-father Leander. “That’s the tear that would have started the flood.”

“A second to seep through Earth’s roots within.”
Starling could taste the spreading of the seafloor. She knew the second tear had been shed.

But what about the third, the most essential tear?

“A third to awaken the Sleeping World and let old kingdoms rebegin,”
four Seedbearers said in unison. That was the tear that mattered. That was the tear that would bring Atlas back.

Starling glanced at the others. “Did the third tear fall to Earth or didn’t it?”

“Something must have caught it,” Albion muttered. “Her thunderstone, her hands—”

“Ander.” Critias cut him off.

Albion’s voice was high with nerves. “Even if he did think to catch it, he wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

“He is with her now, not us,” Chora said. “If the third tear was shed and captured, the boy controls its destiny. Ander doesn’t know the Tearline is tied to a lunar cycle. He won’t be prepared for Atlas, who will stop at nothing to get the third tear before the next full moon—”

“Starling,” Albion said sharply. “Where has the wind taken Ander and Eureka?”

Starling drew in her tongue, chewed and swallowed, belched softly. “She is shielded by the stone. I can barely taste her, but I believe Ander travels east.”

“It is obvious where he has gone,” Chora said, “and whom he has gone looking for. Outside of the four of us, only one knows the answers Ander and Eureka seek.”

Albion glowered into the fire. When he exhaled, the blaze doubled in size.

“Forgive me.” He took a measured inhale to tame the fire. “When I think of Solon …” He bared his teeth, stifled something nasty. “I am fine.”

Starling had not heard the name of the lost Seedbearer spoken in many years.

“But Solon is lost,” she said. “Albion searched and could not find him—”

“Perhaps Ander will look harder,” Critias said.

Albion grasped Critias by the neck, lifted him off his feet, and held him over the fire. “Do you think I have not been looking for Solon since the moment he fled? I would age another century in exchange for finding him.”

Critias kicked air. Albion freed him. They straightened their clothes.

“Calm, Albion,” Chora said. “Do not succumb to old rivalries. Ander and Eureka must come up for air sometime. Starling will discern their location.”

“The question is,” Critias said, “will Atlas discern their location first? In the body of Brooks, he will have ways to draw her out.”

Lightning flashed around the cordon. Water lapped the Seedbearers’ ankles.

“We must find some way to take advantage.” Albion glared into the fire. “Nothing is as powerful as her tears. Ander cannot be the one in possession of such power. He is not like us.”

“We must focus on what we know,” Chora said. “We know Ander has told Eureka that if one Seedbearer dies, all Seedbearers die.”

Starling nodded; this was the truth.

“We know he is protecting her from us using our artemisia, which would exterminate all of us if any of us were to
inhale it.” Chora strummed her lips with her fingers. “Eureka won’t use the artemisia. She loves Ander too much to kill him.”

“Today she loves him,” Critias said. “Name one thing more mercurial than a teenage girl’s emotions.”

“She loves him.” Starling puckered her lips. “They are in love. I taste it on the wind around this rain.”

“Good,” Chora said.

“How can love be good?” Starling was surprised.

“One must love to have one’s heart broken. Heartbreak causes tears.”

“One more tear hits Earth and Atlantis rises,” Starling said.

“But what if we gained possession of Eureka’s tears before Atlas could reach her?” Chora let the question seep into the others.

A smile filtered onto Albion’s face. “Atlas would need us to complete the rise.”

“He would find us very valuable,” Chora said.

Starling flicked a slug of mud from a pleat on her dress. “You are suggesting we align ourselves with
Atlas
?”

“I believe Chora is suggesting that we blackmail the Evil One.” Critias laughed.

“Call it what you like,” Chora said. “It’s a plan. We track Ander, take possession of any tears; perhaps we generate more. Then we use them to seduce Atlas, who will have us to thank for the great gift of his freedom.”

Thunder rattled the earth. Black smoke twisted up out of the cordon’s vent.

“You’re insane,” Critias said.

“She’s a genius,” Albion said.

“I’m afraid,” Starling said.

“Fear is for losers.” Chora sat on her haunches and stoked the fire with a wet stick. “How much time until the full moon?”

“Ten nights,” Starling said.

“Time enough”—Albion smirked into the distance—“for everything to change in the last word.”

T
he silver surface of the ocean danced above Eureka’s head. Her legs fluttered toward it—the urge to pass from water into air was irresistible—but she stopped herself.

This wasn’t the warm Vermilion Bay back home. Eureka was treading inside a transparent sphere in a dark, chaotic ocean on the other side of the world. The sphere and the voyage Eureka had made in it were possible because of the thunderstone pendant she wore around her neck. Eureka had inherited the thunderstone when her mother, Diana, died, but she’d only recently discovered its magic: when she wore the necklace underwater, a balloon-shaped sphere bloomed around her.

The reason the thunderstone shield encased her now bewildered Eureka. She had done the one thing she was not supposed to do. She had cried.

She’d grown up knowing tears were forbidden, a betrayal to Diana, who had slapped Eureka the last time she’d cried, eight years before, when she was nine and her parents split up.

Never, ever cry again.

But Diana had never told her why.

Then she died, sending Eureka on a quest for answers. She discovered that her unshed tears were connected to a world trapped beneath the ocean. If that Sleeping World rose, it would destroy the Waking World, her world, which she was learning to love.

She couldn’t help what happened next. She had stepped into her backyard to find her four-year-old twin siblings, William and Claire, beaten and gagged by monsters that called themselves Seedbearers. She had watched Dad’s second wife, Rhoda, die trying to save the twins. She had lost her oldest friend, Brooks, to a force too dark to fathom.

The tears came. Eureka wept.

It was a deluge. The storm clouds in the sky and the bayou behind her house joined with her sorrow and exploded. Everything and everyone had been swept up in a wild, new salty sea. Miraculously, the thunderstone shield had also saved the lives of the people she cared about most.

Eureka looked at them now, pitching unsteadily beside her. William and Claire in their matching Superman pajamas. Her once-dashing father, Trenton, with his lightning-struck heart yearning for the wife who’d fallen from the sky
like a raindrop made of blood and bone. Eureka’s friend Cat, whom she’d never seen look so afraid. And the boy who with one magic kiss the night before had gone from crush to confidant—Ander.

Eureka’s shield had saved them from drowning, but Ander was the one who’d guided them across the ocean, toward what he promised was sanctuary. Ander was a Seedbearer, but he didn’t want to be. He had turned away from his cruel family, toward Eureka, vowing to help her. As a Seedbearer, his breath, called a Zephyr, was mightier than the strongest wind. It had carried them across the Atlantic at an impossible speed.

Eureka had no idea how long the journey had taken, or how far they had come. At this depth, the ocean was unchangingly dark and cold, and Cat’s cell phone, the only one that had made it into the shield, had died a while ago. All Eureka had to measure time were the white creases at the corners of Cat’s mouth, the rumbling of Dad’s stomach, and Claire’s crouching squat dance, which meant she really had to pee.

Ander propelled the shield closer to the surface with a crawl stroke. Eureka was eager to break free of the shield and terrified of what she’d find on the other side. The world had changed. Her tears had changed it. Under the ocean, they were safe. Above it, they could drown.

Eureka held still as Ander brushed a strand of hair from her forehead.

“Almost there,” he said.

They had already discussed how they would make landfall. Ander explained the ocean surges would be treacherous, so their exit from the shield had to be calculated. He had stolen a special anchor from the Seedbearers that would grip a rock and steady them—but then they had to pass through the limits of the shield.

Claire was the key. Where everyone else’s touch met stone-like resistance, Claire’s hands passed through the shield’s edges like a wildfire through fog. She bobbed on her heels, swirling her hands against its surface, finger-painting an invisible escape. Her wrists passed in and out of the shield the way ghosts reached through doors.

Without Claire’s power, the shield would pop like a bubble when it crested the surface and touched air. Everyone inside it would be scattered like ashes across the sea.

So once Ander found a suitable rock, Claire would become their pioneer. Her hands would pass through the shield and hook the anchor on the stone. Until the others were ashore, Claire’s arms would remain partway in and partway out of the shield, keeping it open for their passage, keeping it from shattering on the wind.

“Don’t worry, William,” Claire told her brother, who was older by nine minutes. “I’m magic.”

“I know.” William sat cross-legged in Cat’s lap on the translucent floor of the shield, picking pills off his pajamas. Beneath them, the sea built hills and valleys of debris. Black
strands of algae slapped like shaggy beards against the shield. Branches of coral jostled its sides.

Cat hugged William’s shoulders. Eureka’s friend was smart and audacious—together they had hitchhiked to New Orleans, Cat wearing only a bikini top and cutoffs, singing raunchy Navy songs her dad had taught her. Eureka could tell Cat thought the plan with Claire was a bad idea.

“She’s just a kid,” Cat said.

“There.” Ander pointed to a broad, barnacle-covered slab of stone ten feet overhead. “That one.”

White foam sparkled beneath its crevices. The stone’s surface was above water.

Eureka’s arm joined Ander’s in propelling the shield higher. The water changed from black to dark gray. When they were as close as they could get without breaking the surface, Eureka clasped her thunderstone and sent a prayer Diana’s way that they make it out safely.

Though only Eureka could erect the shield they traveled in, Ander could maintain it for a while. He would be the last to leave.

He studied Eureka. She glanced down, wondering what she looked like to him. The intensity of his gaze had made her nervous when she first encountered him on the road outside New Iberia. Then last night he told her he’d been watching her for years, since both of them were very young. He’d betrayed everything he was raised to believe about her. He said he loved her.

“When we get above the ocean,” he said, “we will see terrible things. You must prepare yourself.”

Eureka nodded. She had felt the weight of her tears as they left her eyes. She knew her flood was more horrible than any nightmare. She was responsible for whatever lurked above, and she planned on redeeming herself.

Ander unzipped his backpack and withdrew what looked like an eight-inch silver stake with a wedding-band-sized ring at the top. He flicked a switch to release four curved flukes from the stake’s base, transforming it into an anchor. When he pulled on the ring, a fine chain of silver links spurted from the top.

Eureka touched the strange anchor, amazed by its lightness. It weighed less than half a pound.

“Pretty.” William touched the anchor’s sparkling flukes, which were forked at the edges and had a scalelike hammered texture that made them look like little mermaid tails.

“It is made of orichalcum,” Ander said, “an ancient substance mined in Atlantis, stronger than anything in the Waking World. When my ancestor Leander left Atlantis, he had five pieces of orichalcum with him. My family has held on to them for millennia.” He patted his backpack and managed a mysterious, sexy smile. “Until now.”