Teardrop

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