I had listened to other mountain girls recount vivid dreams in which Prince Atlas carried them away on a horse of silver, made them his queen. But the prince slept in the shadows of my consciousness when I was a child. Had I known then what I know now, my imagination might have let me love him before our worlds collided. It would have been easier that way.
As a girl, I yearned for naught outside the enchanted, wooded fringes of our island. Nothing interested me more than my relatives, who were sorceresses, telepathists, changelings, alchemists. I flitted through their workshops, apprentice to all but the gossipwitches—whose powers rarely transcended petty human jealousies, which they never tired of saying were what really made the world go round. I was filled with the stories of my numinous ancestors. My favorite tale was of an uncle who could project his mind across the ocean and inhabit the bodies of Minoan men and women. His escapades sounded delicious. In those days I relished the taste of scandal.
I was sixteen when the rumors wafted from the palace to the mountains. Birds sang that the king had fallen ill with a strange sickness. They sang of the rich bounty Prince Atlas promised anyone who could cure his father.
I had never dreamed of crossing the threshold of the palace, but I had once cured my father’s fever with a powerful local herb. And so, under a waning moon, I traveled the twenty-six miles down to the palace, a poultice of artemisia in a pouch hanging from my belt.
Would-be healers formed a line three miles long outside the castle. I took my place at the back. One by one, magicians entered; one by one, they left, indignant or ashamed. When I was just ten deep in the line, the palace doors were closed. Black smoke twisted from the chimneys, signaling that the king was dead.
Wails rose from the city as I made my sad way home. When I was halfway there, alone in a wooded glen, I came across a boy about my age kneeling over a sparkling river. He was knee-deep in a patch of white narcissus, so immersed in his thoughts he seemed in another realm. When I saw that he was crying, I touched his shoulder.
“Are you hurt, sir?”
When he turned to me, the sorrow in his eyes was overwhelming. I understood it like I knew the language of the birds: he had lost the dearest thing he had.
I held out the poultice in my hand. “I wish I could have saved your father.”
He fell upon me, weeping. “You can still save me.”
The rest is yet to come, Eureka. Stand by.
SWAK
Madame B, Gilda, and Brunhilda
14
THE SHADOW
Tuesday meant another session with Dr. Landry. The therapist’s New Iberia office was hardly the first place Eureka wanted to drive to in her newly repaired Jeep, but in the cold standoff at breakfast that morning, Rhoda had ended all discussion with her usual soul-chilling line:
As long as you live in my house, you follow my rules.
She’d given Eureka a list of phone numbers for her three assistants at the university, in case Eureka got into trouble while Rhoda was in a meeting. They weren’t taking any more chances, Rhoda said when she handed Eureka back her keys. Dad’s wife could probably make I love you sound menacing—not that Eureka had ever received that particular threat from Rhoda.
Eureka was nervous about getting back behind the wheel. She’d transformed into a hyperdefensive driver—counting three seconds of space between cars, putting on her blinker half a mile before she turned. Her shoulder muscles were knotted by the time she got to Dr. Landry’s office. She sat in Magda under the beech tree, trying to breathe the tension out.
At 3:03 she slumped onto the therapist’s couch. She wore her weekly scowl.
Dr. Landry wore another pair of slip-on shoes. She kicked her feet out of the clunky orange flats, which had never been in style.
“Catch me up.” Dr. Landry tucked her bare feet under her on the chair. “What’s happened since we talked?”