Teardrop

panicked, and then, in the distance, through the wispy branches of a willow tree, she saw him perch on the shoulder of an old woman wearing a vast patchwork cloak.

Madame Blavatsky reclined against the willow’s trunk, her mane of auburn hair haloed in humidity. She faced the bayou, smoking a long, hand-rolled cigarette. Her red lips puckered at the bird. “Bravo, Polaris.”

Reaching the willow, Eureka slowed her pace and dipped under the tree’s canopy. The shadow of its swaying branches enveloped her like an unexpected embrace. She wasn’t prepared for the joy that rose in her heart at the sight of Madame Blavatsky’s silhouette. She felt an uncharacteristic urge to rush the woman with a hug.

She hadn’t hallucinated this summons. Madame Blavatsky wanted to see her—and, Eureka realized, she wanted to see Madame Blavatsky.

She thought of Diana, how close to life her mother had seemed in the dream. This old woman was the key to the only door Eureka had left to Diana. She wanted Blavatsky to make an impossible wish come true—but what did the woman want from her?

“Our situation has changed.” Madame Blavatsky patted the ground beside her, where she’d laid out an acorn-brown quilt. Buttercups and bluebonnets rose from the soil bordering the blanket. “Please sit.”

Eureka sat cross-legged next to Madame Blavatsky. She didn’t know whether to face her or the water. For a moment they watched a white crane swoop up from a sandbar and glide over the bayou.

“Is it the book?” Eureka asked.

“It is not the physical book so much as it is the chronicle it contains. It has become”—Blavatsky took a slow drag on her cigarette—“too perilous to share via email. No one must know of our discovery, understand? Not some slipshod Internet hacker, not that friend of yours. No one.”

Eureka thought of Brooks, who was not her friend now, but who had been when he’d expressed interest in helping her translate the book. “You mean Brooks?”

Madame Blavatsky glanced at Polaris, who had settled on the patchwork cloak covering her knees. He chirped.

“The girl, the one you brought to my office,” Madame Blavatsky said.

Cat.

“But Cat would never—”

“The last thing we expect others to do is the last thing they do before we learn we cannot trust them. If you desire to glean knowledge from these pages,” Blavatsky said, “you must swear its secrets will remain between you and me. And the birds, of course.”

Another chirp from Polaris made Eureka massage her left ear again. She wasn’t sure what to make of her new selective hearing. “I swear.”

“Of course you do.” Madame Blavatsky reached into a leather knapsack for an ancient-looking black-bound journal with thick, rough-cut pages. As the old woman flipped through the pages, Eureka saw they were splattered with wildly varying handwriting in a plethora of colored inks. “This is my working copy. When my task is complete, I will return The Book of Love to you, along with a duplicate of my translation. Now”— she used a finger to hold open a page—“are you ready?”

“Yes.”

Blavatsky dabbed her eyes with a gingham handkerchief and frown-smiled. “Why should I believe you? Do you even believe yourself? Are you truly ready for what you are about to hear?”

Eureka straightened, attempting to look more prepared. She closed her eyes and thought about Diana. There was nothing anyone could tell her that could change the love she had for her mother, and that was the most important thing.

“I’m ready.”

Blavatsky stamped her cigarette out in the grass and withdrew a small, round tin container from a pocket of her cloak. She placed the blackened butt inside, next to a dozen others. “Tell me, then, where we left off.”

Eureka recalled the story of Selene finding love in Leander’s arms. She said: “Only one thing stood between them.”

“That’s right,” Madame Blavatsky said. “Between them and a universe of love.”

“The king,” Eureka guessed. “Selene was supposed to marry Atlas.”

“One would think that would indeed be an obstacle. However”—Blavatsky buried her nose in her book —“there appears to be a plot twist.” She straightened her shoulders, tapped her throat, and began to read Selene’s tale:

“Her name was Delphine. She loved Leander with all her being.

“I knew Delphine well. She was born in a lightning storm to a departed mother and had been nursed by rain. When she learned to crawl, she climbed down from her solitary cave and came to live among us in the mountains. My family welcomed her into our home. As she grew older, she embraced some of our traditions, rejected others. She was a part of us, yet apart. She frightened me.

“Years earlier, I had stumbled accidentally upon Delphine embracing a lover in the moonlight, pressed against a tree. Though I never saw the boy’s face, the gossipwitches used to titter rumors that she had the mysterious younger prince in her thrall.

“Leander. My prince. My heart.

“ ‘I saw you in the moonlight,’ he later confessed to me. ‘I had seen you before many times. Delphine had me spellbound, but I swear I never loved her. I fled the kingdom to be free of her enchantment; I came home hoping to find you.’

“As our love deepened, we feared the wrath of Delphine more than anything King Atlas could do. I had seen her destroy life in the forest, turn kind animals to beasts; I did not want her magic touching me.

“On the eve of my wedding to the king, Leander spirited me from the castle through a series of secret tunnels he had run through as a boy. As we hurried to his waiting ship under the glow of the midnight moon, I pleaded:

“ ‘Delphine must never know.’

“We boarded his boat, buoyant with the freedom promised by the waves. We knew not where we were going; we only knew we would be together. As Leander pulled up the anchor, I looked back to bid farewell to my mountains. I will always wish that I had not.

“For there I saw a fearsome sight: a hundred gossipwitches—my aunts and cousins—had gathered in the crags of the cliff to watch me go. The moon lit their craggy faces. They were old enough to lose their minds but not their power.

“ ‘Flee, cursed lovers,’ one of the elder witches called. ‘You cannot outrun your destiny. Doom decorates your hearts, and will forevermore.’

“I remember Leander’s startled face. He was unaccustomed to the witches’ way of speaking, though it was as natural to me as loving him.

“What darkness could corrupt a love as bright as this?’ he asked.

“ ‘Fear her heartbreak,’ the witches hissed.

“Leander wrapped his arm around me. ‘I will never break her heart.’

“Laughter echoed from the scarp.

“ ‘Fear the heartbreak in maiden tears that bring oceans crashing into earths!’ one of my aunts cried.

“ ‘Fear the tears that seal worlds off from space and time,’ another added.

“ ‘Fear the dimension made of water known as Woe, where the lost world will wait until the Rising Time,’ a third one sang.

“ ‘Then fear its return,’ they sang in unison. ‘All because of tears.’

“I turned to Leander, deciphering their curse. ‘Delphine.’

“ ‘I will go to her and make amends before we sail,’ Leander said. ‘We must live unhaunted.’

“ ‘No,’ I said. ‘She must not know. Let her think that you have drowned. My betrayal will break her heart more deeply.’ I kissed him as if I were unafraid, though I knew there was no stopping the gossipwitches from spreading our story through the hills.