Teardrop

31 TEARDROP

Eureka didn’t think. She charged Ander and knocked the gun from his hand. It spun in the air and slid across the grass, which had been dampened by Rhoda’s pocket of open rain. The other Seedbearers lunged for the gun, but Eureka wanted it more. She snatched it, fumbled its slippery grip in her hands. She nearly dropped it. Somehow she managed to hold on.

Her heart thundered. She had never held a gun before, had never wanted to. Her finger found its way around the trigger. She pointed it at the Seedbearers to keep them back.

“You’re too in love,” Starling taunted. “It’s wonderful. You wouldn’t dare shoot us and lose your boyfriend.”

She looked at Ander. Was it true?

“Yes, I will die if you kill any of them,” he said slowly. “But it’s more important that you live, that nothing about you be compromised.”

“Why?” Her breath came in short gasps.

“Because Atlas will find a way to raise Atlantis,” Ander said. “And when he does, this world will need you—”

“This world needs her dead,” Chora interrupted. “She is a monster of the apocalypse. She has blinded you to your responsibility to humanity.”

Eureka looked around the yard—at her father, who was weeping over Rhoda’s body. She looked at Cat, who sat huddled, shaking, on the porch steps, unable to raise her head. She looked at the twins, bound and bruised and made half orphans before their own eyes. Tears streamed down their faces. Blood dripped from their wrists. Finally, she looked at Ander. A single tear slid down the bridge of his nose.

This group comprised the only people Eureka had left to love in the world. All of them were inconsolable. It was all because of her. How much more damage was she capable of causing?

“Don’t listen to them,” Ander said. “They want to make you hate yourself. They want you to give up.” He paused. “When you shoot, aim for the lungs.”

Eureka weighed the gun in her hands. When Ander said none of them knew for sure what would happen if Atlantis were to rise, it had sent the Seedbearers into a fervor, a total rejection of the idea that what they believed might not be true.

The Seedbearers had to be dogmatic about what they thought Atlantis meant, Eureka realized, because they didn’t really know.

Then what did they know about the Tearline?

She couldn’t cry. Diana had told her so. The Book of Love spelled out how formidable Eureka’s emotions might be, how they might raise another world. There was a reason Ander had stolen that tear from her eye and made it disappear in his.

Eureka didn’t want to cause a flood or raise a continent. And yet: Madame Blavatsky had translated joy and beauty in portions of The Book of Love—even the title suggested potential. Love had to be part of Atlantis. At this point, she realized, Brooks was part of Atlantis, too.

She had vowed to find him. But how?

“What is she doing?” Critias asked. “This is taking too long.”

“Stay away from me.” Eureka wielded the gun from one Seedbearer to the next.

“It’s too bad about your stepmother,” Albion said. He glanced over his shoulder at the twins writhing on the swing set. “Now give me your hand or let’s see who’s next.”

“Follow your instincts, Eureka,” Ander said. “You know what to do.”

What could she do? They were trapped. If she shot a Seedbearer, Ander would die. If she didn’t, they would hurt or kill her family.

If she lost one more person she loved, Eureka knew she would fall apart and she wasn’t allowed to fall apart.

Never, ever cry again.

She imagined Ander kissing her eyelids. She imagined tears welling up against his lips, his kisses skating down the slide of her tears buoyant as sea foam. She imagined great, beautiful, massive teardrops, rare and coveted as jewels.

Since Diana’s death Eureka’s life had followed the shape of a huge black spiral—the hospitals and broken bones, the swallowed pills and bad therapy, the humiliating bleak depression, losing Madame Blavatsky, watching Rhoda die …

And Brooks.

He had no place along the downward spiral. He was the one who’d always lifted Eureka up. She pictured the two of them, eight years old and up in Sugar’s soaring pecan tree, the late summer air golden-hued and sweet. She heard his laughter in her mind: the soft glee of their childhood echoing off mossy branches. They climbed higher together than either of them ever would alone. Eureka used to think it was because they were competitive. It struck her now that it was trust in each other that led the two of them almost to the sky. She never thought of falling when she was next to Brooks.

How had she missed all the signs that something was happening to him? How had she ever gotten mad at him? When she thought of what Brooks must have gone through—what he might be going through right now—it was too much. It overwhelmed her.

It started in her throat, a painful lump she couldn’t swallow. Her limbs grew leaden and her chest crumpled forward. Her face twisted, as if pinched by pliers. Her eyes squeezed shut. Her mouth stretched open so wide its corners ached. Her jaw began to shudder.

“She isn’t …?” Albion whispered.

“It cannot be,” Chora said.

“Stop her!” Critias gasped.

“It’s too late.” Ander sounded almost thrilled.

The wail that surfaced on her lips came from the deepest reaches of Eureka’s soul. She dropped to her knees, the gun at her side. Tears cut trails down her cheeks. Their heat alarmed her. They ran along her nose, slipped into the sides of her mouth like a fifth ocean. Her arms went slack at her sides, surrendering to the sobs that came in waves and racked her body.

What relief! Her heart ached with a strange, new, gorgeous sensation. She lowered her chin to her chest. A tear fell on the surface of the thunderstone around her neck. She expected it to bounce back. Instead, a tiny flash of azure light lit up the stone’s center in the shape of the tear. It lasted for an instant and then the stone was dry again, as if the light was evidence of its absorption.

Thunder cracked across the sky. Eureka’s head shot up. A splinter of lightning stretched through the trees in the east. The ominous clouds, which had been shielded by the Seedbearers’ cordon, suddenly dropped. Wind slammed in, an invisible stampede that knocked Eureka to the ground. The clouds were close enough to brush her shoulders.

“Impossible,” Eureka heard someone warble. Everyone in the yard was now obscured in fog. “Only we can collapse our cordons.”

Sheets of rain lashed Eureka’s face, cold drops against hot tears, proof that the cordon was gone. Had she broken it?

Water poured from the sky. It wasn’t rain anymore; it was more like a tidal wave, as if an ocean had been turned on its side and ran from the heavens to the shores of Earth. Eureka looked up but she couldn’t even see it. There was no sky from which to distinguish water. There was only the flood. It was warm and tasted salty.

Within seconds, the yard had flooded up to Eureka’s ankles. She sensed a blurry body moving and knew that it was Dad. He carried Rhoda. He was moving toward the twins. He slipped and fell, and while he tried to right himself, the water rose to Eureka’s knees.

“Where is she?” one of the Seedbearers shouted.

She glimpsed gray figures wading toward her. She splashed backward, unsure where to go. She was still weeping. She didn’t know if she would ever stop.

The fence at the edge of the yard creaked as the surging bayou tore it down. More water swirled into the yard like a whirlpool, making everything brackish and muddy brown. The water uprooted centuries-old live oak trees, which gave way with long, painful creaks. As it swept under the swing set, its force broke the twins’ chains free.

Eureka couldn’t see William’s or Claire’s face, but she knew the twins would be frightened. Water soaked her waist as she leapt to catch them, propelled by adrenaline and love. Somehow, through the deluge, her arms found theirs. Her grip tightened into a stranglehold. She would not let them go. It was the last thing she thought before her feet were swept off the ground and she was treading chest-deep in her own tears.

She pumped her legs. She tried to stay afloat, above the surface. She raised the twins as high as she could. She ripped the duct tape from their faces and tossed the swing seats violently aside. She ached at the sight of the tender red skin along their cheeks.

“Breathe!” she commanded, not knowing how long the chance would last. She tilted her face toward the sky. Beyond the flood, she sensed that the atmosphere was black with the kind of storm no one had ever seen before. What did she do with the twins now? Salty water filled her throat, then air, then more salty water. She thought she was still crying, but the flood made it hard to tell. She kicked twice as hard to make up for the paddling her arms weren’t doing. She gagged and choked and tried to breathe, tried to keep the twins’ mouths up.

She nearly slipped below with the effort of bracing them against her body. She felt her necklace floating along the surface, pulling on the back of her neck. The lapis lazuli locket was keeping the thunderstone above the sloshing waves.

She knew what to do.

“Deep breath,” she ordered the twins. She clutched the pendants and plunged underwater with the twins. Instantly a pocket of air erupted from the thunderstone. The shield bloomed around all three of them. It filled the space beyond her body and theirs, sealing out the flood like a miniature submarine.

They gasped. They could breathe again. They were levitating just as they had been the day before. She unbound the ropes from their wrists and ankles.

As soon as Eureka was sure the twins were okay, she pressed against the edge of the shield and began to paddle bewildered strokes through the flood of her backyard.

The current was nothing like the steady ocean. Her tears were sculpting a wild and whirling tempest with no discernable shape. The flood had already crested the flight of stairs leading from the lawn to her back porch. She and the twins were floating in a new sea, level with the first story of her house. Water battered the kitchen windows like a burglar. She pictured the flood lashing inside the den, through carpeted hallways, washing away lamps and chairs and memories like an angry river, leaving only glittery silt behind.

The vast trunk of one of the uprooted oak trees swirled by with chilling force. Eureka braced herself, her body sheltering the twins, as a giant branch thrashed into the side of the shield. The twins screamed as the impact reverberated through them, but the shield did not puncture, did not break. The tree moved on for other targets.

“Dad!” Eureka shouted from inside the shield where no one would hear her. “Ander! Cat!” She paddled furiously, not knowing how to find them.

Then, in the dark chaos of the water, a hand reached toward the boundary of the shield. Eureka knew instantly whose it was. She fell to her knees with relief. Ander had found her.

Behind him, holding his other hand, was her father. Dad was holding on to Cat. Eureka wept anew, this time with relief, and reached her hand toward Ander’s.

The barrier of the shield stopped them. Her hand bounced off one side. Ander’s bounced off the other. They tried again, pushing harder. It made no difference. Ander looked at her as if she should know how to let him in. She banged on the shield with her fists, but it was useless.

“Daddy?” William called tearfully.

Eureka didn’t want to live if they were going to drown. She shouldn’t have invoked the shield until she’d found them. She screamed in futility. Cat and Dad were trying to writhe toward the surface, toward air. Ander’s hand wouldn’t let them go, but his eyes had filled with fear.

Then Eureka remembered: Claire.

For some reason, her sister had been able to penetrate the boundary when they were in the Gulf. Eureka reached for the girl and practically shoved her against the border of the shield. Claire’s hand met Ander’s and something in the barrier became porous. Ander’s hand broke through. Together Eureka and the twins yanked the three soaking bodies inside the shield. It swelled and resealed into a snug space for six as Cat and Dad sank to their hands and knees, gasping to regain their breath.

After a stunned moment, Dad grabbed Eureka in a hug. He was weeping. She was weeping. He gathered the twins in his arms as well. The four of them rolled in a wounded embrace, levitating inside the shield.

“I’m sorry.” Eureka sniffed. She’d lost sight of Rhoda after the flood began. She had no idea how to console him or the twins for the loss.

“We’re okay.” Dad’s voice was more uncertain than she’d ever heard. He stroked the twins’ hair as if his life depended on it. “We’re going to be okay.”

Cat tapped Eureka’s shoulder. Her braids were beaded with water. Her eyes were red and swollen. “Is this real?” she asked. “Am I dreaming?”

“Oh, Cat.” Eureka didn’t have the words to explain or apologize to her friend, who should have been with her own family right now.

“It’s real.” Ander stood at the edge of the shield with his back toward the others. “Eureka has opened a new reality.”

He didn’t sound angry. He sounded amazed. But she couldn’t be certain until she saw his eyes. Were they lit up with turquoise luminescence, or as dark as a storm-covered ocean? She reached for his shoulder, tried to turn him around.

He surprised her with a kiss. It was heavy and passionate, and his lips conveyed everything. “You did it.”

“I didn’t know this was going to happen. I didn’t know it would be like this.”

“No one knew,” he said. “But your tears were always inevitable, no matter what my family thought. You were on a path.” It was the same word Madame Blavatsky had used the first night Eureka and Cat went to her atelier. “And now we are all on that path with you.”

Eureka looked around the floating shield as it pitched through the deluged yard. The world beyond was eerie and dim, unrecognizable. She couldn’t believe it was her home. She couldn’t believe her tears had done this. She had done this. She felt sick with strange empowerment.

An arm of the swing set somersaulted over their heads. Everyone ducked, but they didn’t need to. The shield was impenetrable. As Cat and Dad gasped in relief, Eureka realized she hadn’t felt less alone in months.

“I owe you my life,” Ander said to her. “Everyone here does.”

“I already owed you mine.” She wiped her eyes. She’d seen these motions made countless times before in movies, and by other people, but the experience was entirely fresh to her, as if she’d suddenly discovered a sixth sense. “I thought you might be mad at me.”

Ander tilted his head, surprised. “I don’t think I could ever be mad at you.”

Another tear spilled down Eureka’s cheek. She watched Ander fight the urge to abscond with it to his own eye. Unexpectedly, the phrase I love you sprinted to the tip of her tongue. She swallowed hard to keep it back. It was the trauma talking, not real emotion. She hardly knew him. But the urge to voice those words wouldn’t go away. She remembered what Dad had mentioned earlier about her mother’s drawing, about the things Diana had said.

Ander wouldn’t break her heart. She trusted him.

“What is it?” He reached for her hand.

I love you.

“What happens now?” she asked.

Ander looked around the shield. Everyone’s eyes were on him. Cat and Dad didn’t even seem to begin to know what kinds of questions to ask.

“There is a passage near the end of the Seedbearer Chronicles that my family refused to talk about.” Ander gestured at the flood beyond the shield. “They never wanted to anticipate this happening.”

“What does it say?” Eureka asked.

“It says the one who opens the fissure to Atlantis is the only one who can close it—the only one who can face the Atlantean king.” He eyed Eureka, gauging her reaction.

“Atlas?” she whispered, thinking: Brooks.

Ander nodded. “If you have done what they predicted you would do, I’m not the only one who needs you. The whole world does.”

He turned in what Eureka thought was the direction of the bayou. Slowly he started to swim, a crawl stroke like she and the twins had used to get to shore the day before. His strokes increased as the shield moved toward the bayou. Without a word, the twins began swimming with him, just as they’d swum with her.

Eureka tried to grasp the concept of the whole world needing her. She couldn’t. The suggestion overpowered the strongest muscle she possessed: her imagination.

She began a crawl stroke of her own, noticing Dad and Cat slowly do the same. With six of them paddling, the wild currents were just barely manageable. They floated over the flooded wrought-iron gate at the edge of the yard. They pivoted into the swollen bayou. Eureka had no idea how much water had fallen, or when, if ever, it would stop. The shield stayed several feet below the surface. Reeds and mud flanked their path. The bayou Eureka had spent so much of her life on was alien underwater.

They swam past broken, waterlogged boats and busted piers, recalling a dozen hurricanes past. They crossed schools of silver trout. Slick black gars darted before them like rays of midnight.

“Will we still look for the lost Seedbearer?” she asked.

“Solon.” Ander nodded. “Yes. When you face Atlas, you’re going to need to be prepared. I believe Solon can help you.”

Facing Atlas. Ander could call him by that name, but to Eureka what mattered was the body he possessed. Brooks. As they swam toward a new and unknowable sea, Eureka made a vow.

Brooks’s body might be controlled by the darkest magic, but inside he was still her oldest friend. He needed her. No matter what the future held, she would find a way to get him back.