Her eyes opened in the solitary darkness of her bedroom. She gulped air and wiped her sweat-dampened brow. The dream song rang though her mind, a haunting sound track in the night’s stillness. She massaged her left ear, but the sound didn’t go away. It grew louder.
She rolled over to read a glowing 5:00 a.m. on her phone’s display. She realized the sound was just the song of morning birds that had infiltrated her dream and woken her. The culprits were likely speckled starlings, which migrated to Louisiana this time every fall. She wedged a pillow over her head to block out their chirping, not ready to rise and recall how thoroughly Brooks had betrayed her at the party the night before.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Eureka shot up in bed. The sound came from her window.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She threw off her blankets and hovered near the wall. The palest thread of predawn light brushed her gauzy white curtains, but she saw no shadow darkening them to indicate a person outside. She was dizzy from the dream, from how close she’d been to Diana and to Ander. She was delirious. There was no one outside her window.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
In a single motion Eureka threw back the curtains. A small lime-green bird waited calmly outside on the white windowsill. He had a diamond of golden feathers on his breast and a bright red crown. His beak tapped three times on the glass.
“Polaris.” Eureka recognized Madame Blavatsky’s bird.
She slid the window up and opened the wooden shutters wider. She’d cut the screen out years ago. Icy air billowed in. She held out her hand.
Polaris hopped onto her index finger and resumed singing vibrantly. This time, Eureka was certain she heard the bird in stereo. Somehow his song came through the left ear that had heard nothing but muffled ringing for months. She realized he was trying to tell her something.
His green wings flapped against the quiet sky, propelling his body inches above her finger. He swooped closer, chirped at Eureka, then turned his body toward the street. He flapped his wings again. At last he perched on her finger to chirp a final crescendo.
“Shhh.” Eureka glanced over her shoulder at the wall her room shared with the twins’. She watched Polaris repeat the same pattern: hovering above her hand, turning toward the street, and chirping another—quieter—crescendo as he landed back on her finger.
“It’s Madame Blavatsky,” Eureka said. “She wants me to follow you.”
His chirp sounded like a yes.
Minutes later, Eureka slipped out her front door wearing leggings, her running shoes, and a navy Windbreaker from the Salvation Army over the Sorbonne T-shirt she’d slept in. She smelled dew on the petunias and the oak branches. The sky was muddy gray.
A choir of frogs croaked under Dad’s rosemary bushes. Polaris, who’d been roosting on one of the feathery boughs, fluttered to Eureka as she closed the screen door behind her. He settled on her shoulder, momentarily nuzzled her neck. He seemed to understand that she was nervous, and embarrassed by what she was about to do.
“Let’s go.”
His flight was swift and elegant. Eureka’s body loosened, warming, as she jogged down the street to keep up. The only person she passed was a groggy newspaper-delivery kid in a red low-rider pickup, who took no notice of the girl following the bird.
When Polaris reached the end of Shady Circle, he cut behind the Guillots’ lawn and flew toward an unfenced entrance to the bayou. Eureka banked east just as he did, moving against the bayou’s current, hearing it rustle as it flowed on her right side, feeling worlds away from the sleepy row of fenced-in houses on her left.