“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.
Squawk!
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.”
Squawk!
“Well, how am I supposed to know where she is?”
Squawk!
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.