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.