“I’m ready.”
Blavatsky stamped her cigarette out in the grass and withdrew a small, round tin container from a pocket of her cloak. She placed the blackened butt inside, next to a dozen others. “Tell me, then, where we left off.”
Eureka recalled the story of Selene finding love in Leander’s arms. She said: “Only one thing stood between them.”
“That’s right,” Madame Blavatsky said. “Between them and a universe of love.”
“The king,” Eureka guessed. “Selene was supposed to marry Atlas.”
“One would think that would indeed be an obstacle. However”—Blavatsky buried her nose in her book—“there appears to be a plot twist.” She straightened her shoulders, tapped her throat, and began to read Selene’s tale:
“Her name was Delphine. She loved Leander with all her being.
“I knew Delphine well. She was born in a lightning storm to a departed mother and had been nursed by rain. When she learned to crawl, she climbed down from her solitary cave and came to live among us in the mountains. My family welcomed her into our home. As she grew older, she embraced some of our traditions, rejected others. She was a part of us, yet apart. She frightened me.
“Years earlier, I had stumbled accidentally upon Delphine embracing a lover in the moonlight, pressed against a tree. Though I never saw the boy’s face, the gossipwitches used to titter rumors that she had the mysterious younger prince in her thrall.
“Leander. My prince. My heart.
“ ‘I saw you in the moonlight,’ he later confessed to me. ‘I had seen you before many times. Delphine had me spellbound, but I swear I never loved her. I fled the kingdom to be free of her enchantment; I came home hoping to find you.’
“As our love deepened, we feared the wrath of Delphine more than anything King Atlas could do. I had seen her destroy life in the forest, turn kind animals to beasts; I did not want her magic touching me.
“On the eve of my wedding to the king, Leander spirited me from the castle through a series of secret tunnels he had run through as a boy. As we hurried to his waiting ship under the glow of the midnight moon, I pleaded:
“ ‘Delphine must never know.’
“We boarded his boat, buoyant with the freedom promised by the waves. We knew not where we were going; we only knew we would be together. As Leander pulled up the anchor, I looked back to bid farewell to my mountains. I will always wish that I had not.
“For there I saw a fearsome sight: a hundred gossipwitches—my aunts and cousins—had gathered in the crags of the cliff to watch me go. The moon lit their craggy faces. They were old enough to lose their minds but not their power.
“ ‘Flee, cursed lovers,’ one of the elder witches called. ‘You cannot outrun your destiny. Doom decorates your hearts, and will forevermore.’
“I remember Leander’s startled face. He was unaccustomed to the witches’ way of speaking, though it was as natural to me as loving him.
“What darkness could corrupt a love as bright as this?’ he asked.
“ ‘Fear her heartbreak,’ the witches hissed.
“Leander wrapped his arm around me. ‘I will never break her heart.’
“Laughter echoed from the scarp.
“ ‘Fear the heartbreak in maiden tears that bring oceans crashing into earths!’ one of my aunts cried.
“ ‘Fear the tears that seal worlds off from space and time,’ another added.
“ ‘Fear the dimension made of water known as Woe, where the lost world will wait until the Rising Time,’ a third one sang.
“ ‘Then fear its return,’ they sang in unison. ‘All because of tears.’
“I turned to Leander, deciphering their curse. ‘Delphine.’