24
THE DISAPPEARANCE
When Polaris arrived at her window before sunrise Tuesday morning, Eureka was out of bed by the third tap on the glass. She parted her curtains and slid the cold pane up to greet the lime-green bird.
The bird meant Blavatsky, and Blavatsky meant answers. Translating
She’d slept with the thunderstone on the same chain as the lapis lazuli locket. She couldn’t bear to wrap it up and stow it away again. It was heavy around her neck, warm from lying against her chest all night. She decided to ask Madame Blavatsky’s opinion on it. It meant welcoming the old woman deeper into her private life, but Eureka trusted her own instincts. Maybe Blavatsky would know something that would help Eureka better understand the stone—maybe she could even explain Ander’s interest in it.
Eureka held out her hand to Polaris, but the bird flew past her. He swooped inside her room, flew in an agitated circle near the ceiling, then darted back out the window into the charcoal sky. He flapped his wings, sending a draft of pine-scented air Eureka’s way, exposing the variegated feathers where his inner wings met his breastbone. His beak widened skyward in a shrill squawk.
“Now you’re a rooster?” she said.
Polaris squawked again. The sound was wretched, nothing like the melodic notes she’d heard him trill before.
“I’m coming.” Eureka looked at her pajamas and bare feet. It was cold outside, the air moist and the sun a long way off. She grabbed the first thing her hands found in her closet: the faded green Evangeline tracksuit she used to wear to cross-country away meets. The nylon suit was warm and she could run in it, and there was no reason to be sentimental about the team she’d had to beg to quit. She brushed her teeth and whipped her hair into a braid. She met Polaris by the rosemary bush at the edge of the front porch.
The morning was wet, filled with the gossip of crickets and the clean whisper of rosemary swaying in the wind. This time, Polaris didn’t wait for Eureka to tie her running shoes. He flew in the same direction she’d followed him the other day, but faster. Eureka started to jog. Her eyes were somewhere between groggy and alert. Her calves burned from yesterday’s run.
The bird’s squawk was persistent, abrasive against the dormant street at five in the morning. Eureka wished she knew how to quiet him. Something was different about his mood today, but she didn’t speak his language. All she could do was keep up.
She was sprinting when she passed the paperboy’s red truck at the end of Shady Circle. She waved as if she were friendly, then turned right to cut through the Guillots’ lawn. She reached the bayou, with its army-green morning glow. She’d lost sight of Polaris, but she knew the way to the willow tree.
She could have run it with her eyes closed, and it almost seemed as if she did. Days had passed since Eureka had slept well. Her tank was nearly empty. She watched the moon’s reflection shimmering on the surface of the water and imagined it had spawned a dozen baby moons. The infant crescents swam upstream, leaping like flying fish, trying to outpace Eureka. Her legs pumped faster, wanting to win, until she stumbled over the woody roots of a fern and tumbled into the mud. She landed on her bad wrist. She winced as she regained her footing and her pace.
Polaris swooped over her shoulder as she ran the last twenty yards to the willow tree. The bird held back, still making the strangled squawks that hurt both of Eureka’s ears. It wasn’t until she reached the tree that she realized the reason for his noise. She leaned against the smooth white tree trunk and rested her hands on her knees to catch her breath. Madame Blavatsky was not there.
There was now an angry undertone to Polaris’s chirping. He moved in wide circles over the tree. Eureka looked up at him, bewildered, exhausted—and then she understood. “You didn’t want me to come here in the first place.”
“Well, how am I supposed to know where she is?”
He flew in the direction Eureka had just come from, turning back once in what was clearly, if absurdly, a glare. Chest heaving, stamina fading, Eureka followed.
The sky was still dark when she parked Magda in the potholed parking lot outside Blavatsky’s office. Wind scattered shadowed oak leaves across the uneven pavement. A streetlight lit the intersection but left the strip mall eerily dark.
Eureka had scribbled a note saying she was going to school early for science lab and left it on the counter in the kitchen. She knew it must have looked absurd when she opened the car door for Polaris to fly in, but so did most of Eureka’s actions recently. The bird was a great navigator once Eureka realized that two hops to one side or the other on the dashboard indicated which way she was supposed to turn. Heat on, windows and sunroof rolled down, they’d sped toward the translator’s storefront on the other side of Lafayette.
Only one other car was in the lot. It looked like it had been parked in front of the tanning salon next door for a decade, which made Eureka wonder about Madame Blavatsky, how the old lady got around.
Polaris soared out the open window and up the exterior flight of stairs before Eureka had turned off the car. When she caught up to him, her hand hovered anxiously over the antique lion’s-head knocker.
“She said not to bother her at home,” Eureka told Polaris. “You were there, remember?”
The pitch of Polaris’s squawk made her jump. It didn’t feel right to knock so early, so instead Eureka gave the door a light shove with her hip. It swung open to Blavatsky’s low-ceilinged foyer. Eureka and Polaris moved inside. The entry was quiet and humid and smelled like spoiled milk. The two folding chairs were still there, as were the red lamp and the empty magazine rack. But something felt different. The door to Madame Blavatsky’s atelier was ajar.
Eureka looked at Polaris. He was silent, wings close to his body, as he flew through the doorway. After a moment, Eureka followed.
Every inch of Madame Blavatsky’s office had been ransacked; everything breakable had been broken. All four birdcages were mangled by wire cutters. One cage hung misshapen from the ceiling; the rest had been tossed to the floor. A few birds chattered nervously on the sill of the open window. The rest must have flown away—or worse. Green feathers were everywhere.
The frowning portraits lay smashed on the muddied Persian rug. The pillows on the couch had been slashed. Stuffing spilled from them like pus from a wound. The humidifier near the back wall was burbling, which Eureka knew from nursing the twins’ allergies meant it was almost out of water. A bookcase lay in splinters on the floor. One of the turtles explored the jagged mountain range of texts.
Eureka paced the room, stepping carefully over the books and shattered picture frames. She noticed a little butter dish brimming with bejeweled rings. The scene did not look typical of a robbery.
Where was Blavatsky? And where was Eureka’s book?
She started to sift through some crumpled papers on the desk, but she didn’t want to go through Madame Blavatsky’s private things, even if someone else already had. Behind the desk, she noticed the ashtray where the translator put out her cigarettes. Four cigarette butts were kissed with Blavatsky’s unmistakable red lipstick. Two were as pale as the paper.
Eureka touched the pendants around her neck, hardly realizing she was developing a habit of calling on them for help. She closed her eyes and lowered herself onto Blavatsky’s desk chair. The black walls and ceiling felt like they were closing in.
Pale cigarettes made her think of pale faces, calm enough to smoke before … or after, or during, the
