“ ‘I will go to her and make amends before we sail,’ Leander said. ‘We must live unhaunted.’
“ ‘No,’ I said. ‘She must not know. Let her think that you have drowned. My betrayal will break her heart more deeply.’ I kissed him as if I were unafraid, though I knew there was no stopping the gossipwitches from spreading our story through the hills.
“Leander watched the witches hunching in their scarp. ‘It is the only way I will feel free to love you like I want to. As soon as I say goodbye, I will return.’
“With that, my love was gone and I was left alone with the gossipwitches. They eyed me from the shore. I was now an outcast. I could not yet glimpse the shape of my apocalypse, but I knew it lay just beyond the horizon. I will not forget their whispered words before they disappeared into the night.…”
Madame Blavatsky looked up from the journal and dotted her handkerchief along her pale brow. Her fingers trembled as she closed her book.
Eureka had sat motionless, breathless, the whole time Madame Blavatsky read. The text was captivating. But now that the chapter was over, the book closed, it was just a story. How could it be so dangerous? As a hazy orange sun crept up over the bayou, she studied the erratic pattern of Madame Blavatsky’s breathing.
“You think this is real?” Eureka asked.
“Nothing is real. There is only what we believe in and what we reject.”
“And you believe in this?”
“I believe I have an understanding of the origins of this text,” Blavatsky said. “This book was written by an Atlantean sorceress, a woman born of the lost island of Atlantis thousands of years ago.”
“Atlantis.” Eureka took in the word. “You mean the underwater island with mermaids and sunken treasures and guys like Triton?”
“You are thinking of a bad cartoon,” Madame Blavatsky said. “All anyone really knows of Atlantis comes to us from Plato’s dialogues.”
“And why do you think this story is about Atlantis?” Eureka asked.
“Not simply about but from. I believe Selene was an inhabitant of the island. Remember her manner of description in the beginning—her island stood ‘beyond the Pillars of Hercules, alone in the Atlantic’? That is just as Plato describes it.”
“But it’s fiction, right? Atlantis wasn’t really—”
“According to Plato’s Critias and Timeaus, Atlantis was an ideal civilization in the ancient world. Until—”
“Some girl got her heart broken and cried the whole island into the sea?” Eureka raised an eyebrow. “See? Fiction?”
“And they say there are no new ideas,” Blavatsky said softly. “This is very dangerous information to possess. My judgment tells me not to carry on—”
“You have to carry on!” Eureka said, startling a water moccasin coiled in a low branch of the willow. She watched as it slithered into the brown bayou. She didn’t necessarily believe Selene had lived on Atlantis—but she now believed that Madame Blavatsky believed it. “I need to know what happened.”
“Why? Because you enjoy a good story?” Madame Blavatsky asked. “A simple library card might satisfy your need and put us both at less risk.”
“No.” There was more to it, but Eureka wasn’t sure how to say it. “This story matters. I don’t know why, but it has something to do with my mother, or …”
She trailed off for fear that Madame Blavatsky would give her the same disapproving look Dr. Landry had when Eureka had spoken of the book.
“Or it has something to do with you,” Blavatsky said.
“Me?”