"After Diana died, the sunrise amazed me," she said.
"You used to watch it with her?" Ander asked.
Eureka shook her head. "We used to sleep until noon. But I couldn't believe the sun had the audacity to rise after she died. I remember at her funeral, I told that to my uncle, about the sunrise. He looked at me like I was crazy. But then, a few days later, I found Dad in the kitchen, frying eggs. He didn't think anyone was home, but he'd gone through an entire carton. I watched him crack one into a pan, stare at it as it cooked, then flip it onto a plate. They formed a stack, like they were pancakes. Then he tossed the whole plate in the trash."
"Why didn't he eat them?" William asked.
"It still works, he said, like he couldn't believe it," Eureka said. "Then he walked out of the kitchen."
Eureka was supposed to go on, to say that Dad had taught her how to tell a joke, how to whistle through a sugarcane husk, how not to punch like a girl. He'd taught her how to fold a cloth napkin into an origami swan, how to tell if a crawfish was fresh, how to two-step, how to play a G chord on the guitar. He'd cooked her special meals before her races, researching the right balance of protein and carbohydrates to give her the most energy. He had shown her that unconditional love was possible, because he had loved two women who hadn't made loving them easy, who took for granted that his love was always there. He'd taught Eureka one thing Diana never could have: how not to run away when it felt impossible to stay. He'd taught her to persevere.
But Eureka kept all that to herself. She gathered her memories around her like a secret shield, the shadow of a shadow in a flooded valley of death.
Solon poured another broken glass of wine and rose from the cockfighting chair. A cigarette dangled from his lips. "When a loved one dies in an untimely manner," he said, "one feels as if the universe owes one something. Good luck, invincibility, a line of credit with the man upstairs."
"You're so cynical," Cat said. "What if it's the other way around and the universe has already blessed you with the time you had together?"
"Ah, but if I'd never loved Byblis, I wouldn't miss her."
"But you did love her," Ander said to Solon. "Why can't you cherish the time you had, even if it couldn't be forever?"
"You see, this is the problem with conversation," Solon said with a sigh, and looked at Ander. "All we ever do is talk about ourselves. Let us stop before we bore each other, well, to tears." He turned to Eureka. "Are you ready to say goodbye?"
"Dad's supposed to be with us," William said. "Can't I use my quirk to make him come back?"
"I wish you could," Eureka said.
Solon unmoored the canoe, then pointed the vessel toward an opening in the darkness. "He will float through there and drift gently out to the sea."
"I want to go with him." Claire reached for the canoe.
"As do I," Solon said. "But we still have work to do."
"Wait!" Eureka pulled the canoe with Dad's body toward her a final time. She withdrew the slender orichalcum chest from the inner pocket of his jean jacket. She held it up in the candlelight. The green glow within it pulsed.
"There it is," Solon murmured.
Ander had already returned the spear and anchor to his backpack. Eureka claimed the heirloom Dad had never meant to leave her. She tucked the chest under her arm. Solon leaned in close, inhaling ferociously. When Ander leaned in, too, Eureka sensed she should keep the chest with her, in her bag with The Book of Love.
She pressed her lips against her father's cheek. He'd always hated goodbyes. She nodded at Ander, who poured a dark green bottle of pungent alcohol onto the wood crates beneath Dad. Eureka reached for the gossipwitches' torch, still lit, resting among the stalagmites. She tipped the flame over the alcohol. The fire caught.
Clare stared ahead numbly. William turned away and sobbed. Eureka gave the canoe the smallest push, and Dad entered the wet darkness, joined the rhythm of the current. She wished him peace and soft light in a heaven without tears.
16
THE FILLING
Late that night Eureka awoke in the dim stillness of the cave's spare chamber, her mind haunted by the fading ghost of a nightmare. She'd been back in the avalanche of wasted dead. Instead of scrambling atop decaying bodies, this time, Eureka drowned in them. She struggled to dig herself out, but she was too deep in bones and blood and slime. It sluiced over her, warm and rank, until she couldn't even see the rain. Until she knew the dead would bury her alive.
"You think you have all that you need!" Solon's voice boomed over the waterfall.
She rubbed her eyes and smelled death on her hands. After Dad's funeral, she'd washed them in the cave's salty spring and filed her nails with a porous stone until there was no place else for the blood she'd spilled to lodge. But she still smelled Seyma on her hands. She knew she always would.
"You're wrong," Solon said.
Eureka tilted her good ear toward the sound and waited for a response.
But Filiz and the Poet had gone home, and everyone else was asleep: William and Claire shared a blanket at the foot of Eureka's bed. Cat was passed out on her side next to Eureka, singing in her sleep as she had always done, since their earliest sleepovers. Tonight she softly slurred the bridge from Crystal Gayle's "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue."
On Eureka's other side, Ander slept on his stomach, his face buried in a pillow. Even in his dreams he disappeared. She laid her head close to his for a moment. She inhaled his scent and felt the warm power of his breath. Dim light displayed faint lines around his eyes and silver-blond hairs around his temple. Had they been there that morning? Eureka didn't know. When you spent so much time looking at someone it was hard to measure how they changed.
Yesterday, the idea that love aged Ander appalled Eureka. But it wouldn't matter now--Ander couldn't possibly love her anymore. No one could. She wouldn't let them. Freedom from love meant freedom to focus on getting to the Marais, damming her flood, finishing Atlas--and liberating Brooks.
What would Brooks think of what Eureka had done to Seyma? For the first time, she was glad that he was gone.
"I know," Solon's voice insisted. "I will deliver the last piece, but it's complicated. Delicate."
Eureka rose from her blanket and edged toward the hanging rug separating the guest room from the salon. The gossipwitches' torch burned low, balanced between two stalagmites. Its amethyst stones provided inexhaustible and intelligent fuel: the flame adjusted itself during the day, burning brightest just before bedtime, soft as candlelight when everyone retired.
A voice answered Solon:
"I turned my back on you."
A shiver went down Eureka's spine. It was her father's voice.
Eureka flew into the salon, expecting to find Dad sitting at the broken table, cracking an egg into a bowl and smiling, eager to explain the stunt he'd pulled.
The room was empty. The waterfall roared.
"Solon?" Eureka called.
A dim light glowed from the staircase that led to the cave's lower level. Solon's cloistered workshop lay below.
"I turned my back on you," the voice repeated, drifting up the stairs. It sounded so much like Dad's that Eureka stumbled as she hurried toward it.
At the base of the stairs, Solon sat on a spun silk rug under a hanging glass lantern. Someone sat across from him, his face turned away from Eureka. He was hard to make out clearly in the shadowy light, but Eureka knew it wasn't Dad. He looked as young as Solon, with a shaved head, broad shoulders, and a narrow waist. He was naked.
As Eureka reached the bottom stair, the boy's head turned toward her, and her breath caught in her throat. Something about the strange boy reminded her of--
"Dad?"
Tears glistened in the corner of Solon's eyes. "He fixed Ovid. Until now I wasn't sure it would work. There was gossip, of course, but one can never trust a witch. And anyone else who might remember is either dead or in the Sleeping World." He wiped his eyes. "Your father fixed it. Come and see."
Solon took Eureka's hand. She sat next to him on the rug, across from the naked boy. When she saw it more clearly, she realized it wasn't human--it was a gleaming machine crafted in the shape of a very fit boy.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Solon asked.
Eureka's eyes roved over the machine's anatomically impressive body, but when she looked at the robot's face, she found it hard to breathe. It was youthful, like an ancient Greek statue--but its features were unmistakably those of her father.
Heavy-lidded eyes gazed at her with paternal love. A hint of stubble stood along its chin. The robot smiled, and the crease along its nose was the one that Dad had passed down to Eureka and the twins.
"Eureka, meet Ovid, limited-edition orichalcum robot from Atlantis," Solon said. "Ovid, meet Eureka, the one who's going to take you home."
Eureka blinked at Solon, then at the robot, who extended its hand. She shook it, amazed to find it pliant like a real hand, with a firm, confident grasp.
"Why does it look like my father?" Eureka whispered.
"Because it holds your father's ghost," Solon said. "Ovid is a ghost robot, one of nine orichalcum siblings crafted before Atlantis sank. Eight still slumber in the Sleeping World, but Ovid got away. Selene stole it before she fled the palace, and it has lived in this cave ever since. If Atlas knew his precious robot was here, he would do anything to get it back."
For the second time Eureka considered telling Solon about her encounter with Atlas at the Tearline pond. But it felt like a betrayal of Brooks. If Solon knew Eureka had secretly met Atlas, he wouldn't let her out of his sight. And she had promised to find Brooks again soon. Their triangle was delicate--Atlas wanted Eureka's tears, Eureka wanted Brooks back, Brooks surely wanted freedom. It was best to keep things among the three of them for now.
"I turned my back on you." The robot spoke in Dad's voice.
Eureka pulled back her hand, horrified. Then, slowly, she touched the robot's cheek--supple as human flesh--and watched its face brighten with Dad's smile.
"I have looked after Ovid for many years," Solon said. "I always knew it was invaluable, but I could never fathom what made it run."
Eureka circled the robot and found nothing familiar about its body. From the back, it looked like a sculpture in a fancy French Quarter antique store. Only Ovid's face seemed possessed of Dad. She sat down facing Ovid. "How does it work?"
"Most modern robots are wired to function on a binary system," Solon said. "Ones and zeroes. But Ovid is a trinary being, meaning it operates in threes. It's very Atlantean. Everything is threes with them. Three seasons. Three sides to a story. Did you know they invented the love triangle?"
Eureka couldn't take her eyes off Dad's expression on the robot's face.
"Ovid is a soldier," Solon continued. "Like all things made of orichalcum, it is meant to be indentured to one master. You will find it very useful."
Eureka glanced at Solon. "Does it know where the Marais is?"
"Yes, it does."
"And it's going to take me there? And help me defeat Atlas?"
"That has long been the plan."
"When?"
"Soon."
She got to her feet. "Tonight?"
Solon pulled her back down. "The time is almost right, but Ovid will not go prematurely. It is ... special. Its orichalcum is but a shell for what--or rather, who--fills it with purpose. Today, your father became the first ghost to fill it."
"The Filling," Eureka said. Solon had mentioned it last night. She sensed it was something terrible. Why was Dad involved?
"The Filling is Atlas's master plan. It is what the Seedbearers are--and the rest of the world should be--so afraid of."
"Tell me."
Solon walked to the wall where a bottle of prosecco rested in an ice bucket in a stone recess. He poured himself a glass, drained it, and poured himself another. Then he lit a cigarette and took a long drag.
"The world into which Atlantis rises will be a muddy, unrecognizable slop. After the flood, everything will need rebuilding. And rebuilding requires workers. But workers have been known to revolt. To avoid that, Atlas plans to use the dead to build his empire by housing ghosts from the Waking World in invincible, weaponized bodies he controls. Imagine a billion souls' hopes and dreams and energies and visions, all of their intelligence and experience combined. This is how Atlas will conquer the world."
Eureka stared into the waterfall. "If Atlas wants a world of ghosts, doesn't he have to kill everyone first?"
Solon stared sadly at Eureka. "Atlas won't have to."
"Because I'm doing it for him," Eureka said. "My storm is going to poison the entire Waking World? How soon?"
"Most will die before the full moon."
"Then who am I trying to save?"
"Everyone. But you must take their lives before you save them."
"I don't understand."
"Eureka," Ovid said in Dad's familiar bayou drawl.
"You will have questions," Solon said. "First, let us hear what your father has to say."
"That is not my father. It's a monster Atlas made."
"Every ghost gets a dying message," Solon said. "Until they adjust to inhabiting the robot, this death letter forms the entirety of the ghost's language. Think of your father as a little baby ghost who needs time and nurturing to grow to his full potential. Now, listen."
A metallic tear glistened in the corner of Ovid's eye as it began to speak. "When you were born I was afraid of how much I loved you. You've always seemed so free. Your mother was the same way, not scared of anything, never needing any help."
"I need you," Eureka whispered.
"It was hard when your mom died." The robot paused, its lower lip jutting out the way Dad's did when he was thinking. "It was hard before that, too. I knew you were mad at me, even though you didn't. I was afraid you'd leave me, too. So I protected myself, added people to my life like armor against loneliness. I married Rhoda; we had the twins. I don't know how it happened, but I turned my back on you. Sometimes when you try not to repeat your mistakes, you forget that the original mistakes are still unfolding. I never planned to live forever and it wouldn't matter if I had. Man plans, God cancels. I want you to know I love you. I believe in you." His orichalcum eyes gazed into hers. "Ander makes you happy. I wish I could take back what Diana said about him."
Today I met the boy who's going to break Eureka's heart.
"I don't believe it anymore," Dad said. "So you tell him to take care of you. Don't make the same mistakes I did. Learn from mine and make your own and tell your children what you did wrong so they can do even better than you. Don't turn your back on what you love because you're scared. I hope we'll meet again in Heaven." The robot made the sign of the cross. "Make things right, Eureka. Stare your mistakes straight in the eye. If anyone can, it's you."
Eureka flung herself into Ovid's arms and embraced it. Its body felt nothing like Dad's, and that made her miss him more than she had since he died. She grew disgusted with herself for allowing one of Atlas's machines to make her feel.
When she pulled away the robot's face looked different. She couldn't see Dad anywhere. The orichalcum features seemed to be rearranging themselves in a deep tangle of movement. It was a horrifying sight. Eyes spread. Cheeks slackened. The nose hooked at the bridge.
"What's happening?" Eureka asked Solon.
"Another ghost is surfacing," Solon said. "Now that your father opened Ovid, it will draw all the newly dead within a certain radius to it. Think of it as a vortex of local ghosts."
"My dad is trapped inside with other dead people?" Eureka thought of her nightmare and drew her arms around her chest.
"Not dead people," Solon said. "Ghosts. Souls. Big difference. The biggest difference there is."
"What about Heaven?" Eureka believed in Heaven, and that her parents were there now.
"Since your tears began the Rising, all the souls who perish in the Waking World are trapped in a new limbo. Before you cried, they would have made the
ir way, like the souls that died before them, wherever they were destined to go."
"But now?" Eureka asked.
"They are being held for the Filling. They cannot flow into Atlas's other robots until those robots rise with the rest of Atlantis. And if Atlantis doesn't rise before the full moon, the dead's deterioration will be too great. The souls won't make it into the machines, or to Heaven--if there is such a place--or anywhere else, for that matter."
"That's what you meant about the wasted dead," Eureka said.
Solon nodded. "Your tears have already killed many. In order for their souls not to rot and waste away, Atlantis must rise in the next seven days. All ghosts must flow into the machines. Your mission will be to find some method of release."
"Release into what?" Eureka asked.
"A better fate than eternal enslavement by the Evil One."
As the features on the robot's face fixed into place, Eureka began to sweat. Solon didn't have to tell her who the other ghost was inside Ovid. She recognized Seyma, the woman she had murdered, wrinkling the robot's skin.
"Filiz!" Seyma's ghost began her death message in a language Eureka was surprised to understand. "Do not let the Tearline girl deceive you. She is the world's worst dream come true." The old woman's voice softened. "A blind man could see how much I love you, Filiz. Why you never saw it, I don't know."
Then the robot closed its orichalcum eyes. Seyma was gone.
"Ovid is programmed with some sort of translation device," Solon said. "It knows what the listener will understand."
"My father's ghost and the ghost of the woman who murdered him are together inside this machine? How does that work?"
"The mind boggles," Solon said. "An unfathomable number of ghosts can populate Ovid's body, propelling its thoughts and deeds like the atoms of a wave. They will make Ovid brilliant, and immortal--and conflicted, I assume. World wars could rage inside a single orichalcum body ... if some clever ghost were to organize a resistance." Solon paused and drummed fingers against his chin. "Actually, that sounds like fun."
"How many ghosts are in it now?" Eureka touched her yellow ribbon. "There was a girl we passed on the way to the Bitter Cloud. I wanted to bury her...."
"So far it seems only two ghosts are imprinted. Ovid's acquiring radius is quite small at the beginning, but will grow with each ghost that fills the machine. It will be a grand rite of passage when Ovid acquires its third ghost. Then this miraculous trinary robot will be fully operational, ready for the world, such as it is."