Waterfall (25 page)

The moths pulsed, calling Eureka with their glowing purple light when she thought she’d lost them in the rain. She followed them up a series of slopes that looked like gargantuan anthills, rounded a corner, and found even higher mountains.

In the distance, on top of the tallest peak balanced an immense rectangular rock. Dark crevices suggested doors and windows. A flat landing marked the entrance to the witches’ home.

“How do I get up there?” Eureka asked the moths.

They hung in the sky, glowing, disappearing into fog, glowing. She touched her thunderstone, her locket, the ribbon, and began to climb.

Mud oozed between her fingers as she picked her way up the rock. When the cliff grew sheer and Eureka didn’t know how she could continue, the guiding moths wove around her hands, gesturing whether the surest route up was a few inches
to the left or right. Loose rocks plummeted as Eureka climbed above them. The peak was so treacherous she wondered if it had ever been approached by anything that couldn’t fly.

At last Eureka stood before a doorway. It was made of a thousand dark gray moth wings woven together, fluttering, alive, in the shape of one majestic pair.

“Do I knock?” she asked the guiding moths. They flitted against the door until it absorbed them. Eureka could no longer distinguish them from the other wings.

The door parted, softly severing a vast web of tiny connections, revealing a dazzling room inside.

The walls were made of amethyst; the floor was strewn with orchid petals. Twenty or so gossipwitches lounged around a purple fire. Three of them shared a giant, swaying moth-wing bower. One hung upside down from a brilliant purple pole, her caftan draped over her face.

The witches smoked a long, reedy pipe that curled to a spiral tip. Bright green, licorice-scented fumes swirled in the air above the pipes’ embers. They were smoking artemisia, but unlike the Seedbearers, the gossipwitches seemed to thrive on the drug. They laughed as tipsy bees bumped clumsily around their heads.

Eureka spotted Esme on the far side of the room. She looked revived, as if the secret void in her head had never been exposed, her butterfly never crushed between Cat’s fingers. Eureka tensed with rage and fear that Cat would never recover as completely.

Esme whispered in another youthful witch’s ear, her hands cupped over her mouth, exuding glee over some secret. The way the witches giggled reminded Eureka of girls at Evangeline, girls she would never see again.

When Esme looked up at Eureka, her crystal teardrop necklace gleamed in the shallow of her collarbone. Suddenly Eureka knew what it was, why it had always drawn her eye.

“Your necklace,” Eureka said, feeling light-headed from the fumes.

Esme twirled the charm on its silver chain. “This old thing? Solon gave it to me ages ago. Don’t tell me he wants it back. Unless he changed his mind about the robot?”

“Solon is dead.”

Esme slid one hand onto her hip and walked directly through the fire to Eureka. “Isn’t it a pity,” she lisped through her forked tongue.

“That necklace wasn’t his to trade. It belongs to me.”

Eureka had come for more than the necklace, but since she had nothing to offer in return, she’d decided to make one demand at a time.

The witches whispered to each other, forked tongues flicking over their teeth. The sound became a single wet hiss that snaked its scaly way into Eureka’s bad ear.

Then the hissing stopped. Pouring rain flowed into the silence.

“You may have your family heirloom back.” Esme slipped her hands behind her neck and unfastened the chain.

Eureka nodded stoically, though she wanted to cheer. She reached for the chain, but Esme swung the teardrop crystal inches from Eureka’s hand. Then the gossipwitch jerked it back and cupped it in her own palm. She whispered into Eureka’s bad ear, her replenished stock of bees grazing Eureka’s cheek.

“You will owe us something in exchange.”

“The necklace is mine. I owe you nothing.”

“Perhaps you’re right. But you will still deliver what we want. Fear not, you want it, too.” She smiled. “May I fasten the clasp for you?”

Esme wrapped her long fingers around Eureka’s neck. She smelled like honey and licorice. Her touch was like the soft fuzz of a bee, or a rose just before you’re pricked.

“There,” Esme breathed.

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:

“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.