Eureka stole down the stairs and gently opened the back door. The only one who saw her was Squat, who came trotting out with her because he loved to get muddy in the rain. Eureka scratched his head and let him jump up to kiss her face, a habit Rhoda had been working on breaking him of for years. He followed Eureka as she moved down the porch stairs and headed for the back gate to the bayou.
Another crack of thunder forced Eureka to remind herself that it had been raining all evening, that she’d just heard Cokie Faucheux say something on TV about a storm. She raised the latch on the gate and stepped onto the dock where their neighbors slipped their fishing pirogue into the water. She sat down at the edge, rolled up her pajama legs, and sank her feet into the bayou. It was so cold her body stiffened. But she left her icy feet there, even as they started to burn.
With her left hand, she pulled the stone from her pocket and watched thin raindrops ricochet off its surface. They drew Squat’s bewildered attention as he sniffed the stone and got water up his nose.
She made a fist around the thunderstone and plunged it into bayou, leaning over and straightening her arm in the water, inhaling sharply from the cold. The water shuddered; then its level rose, and Eureka saw that a large bubble of air had formed around the thunderstone and her arm. The bubble ended just below the surface of the water, where her elbow was.
With her right hand, Eureka explored the underwater bubble, expecting it to pop. It didn’t. It was malleable and strong, like an indestructible balloon. When she pulled her wet right hand from the water, she could feel a difference. Her left hand, still underwater, encased by the pocket of air, wasn’t wet at all. Finally, she pulled the thunderstone out of the water and saw that it, too, had remained absolutely dry.
“Okay, Ander,” she said. “You win.”
24
THE DISAPPEARANCE
Tap. Tap. Tap.
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 The Book of Love had become Eureka’s most compelling mission since Diana died. Somehow, as the tale grew wilder and more fanciful, Eureka’s connection to it cemented. She felt a childlike curiosity to know the details of the gossipwitches’ prophecy, as if it bore some relevance to her own life. She could hardly wait to meet the old woman down at the willow tree.
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.