The remaining Devil stood twenty feet away, her crossbow resting on her shoulder. As Eureka stumbled toward her, she loaded another arrow, aimed shakily, and fired. A green flash bloomed through the tunnel.
Eureka ducked. Or maybe she fell. She was on her knees. Breath was impossible, a knife slicing organs. She saw an orichalcum club lying on the floor and thought of the organs and blood and bones mined to build it. She thought of those ghosts trapped in the Filling. Adrenaline rushed through her. She crawled on her knees and reached a hand around the Devil’s ankle.
The pain of the arrow wound tripled as the essence of Eureka’s agony flowed into the girl and the girl’s agony flowed into her. This time the vision was of a dappled silver horse, stolen from the girl’s family by the gossipwitches.
Eureka got up slowly. Artemisia clouded her mind. She took limited, shallow breaths, hardly enough to sustain her as she moved through the tunnel, away from the castle, away from the fantasy of guilt.
Nothing was real but her pain. When she exited the coral tunnel on the sand dune, she didn’t believe it. She watched her fingers unbutton her shirt, her hands tie it around her chest to stanch her wound.
The moon looked like her mother’s face. The roiling ocean sounded like her father cooking in the kitchen. But her father never sang when he cooked. What did she hear? It was so familiar.
Music from Delphine’s waveshop boomed in Eureka’s ears. Her other mother. Mother murder.
Brooks was in there. She wanted to go to him. No. She spat on the sand, disgusted with herself. She turned toward the purple Gossipwitch Mountains. The only way to release Brooks was to win.
She remembered the gossipwitch salve that had healed her once before. One foot in front of the other. Up the slope. Tripping over rocks. Trail of blood behind her. Clouds over the moon. The tide of pain was high.
At last, Eureka saw the fire. Three gossipwitches sat in a bright circle, turning spits over the flame. She smelled roasted meat. She thought they were wearing purple. She thought she heard bees buzzing. She stumbled and caught herself on a massive rock. “I’m looking for my—”
“Haven’t seen them,” one witch said. The others laughed.
“Esme,” Eureka said breathlessly. “Do you know where Esme is?”
The witches gaped at her. “You are not one of us. How dare you spread the gossip of our names?”
Eureka let herself slide down the rock. She crawled on her stomach toward the fire. The heat was calming and the pressure of the earth felt good on her ribs. Her mouth was filled with dirt. She didn’t have the strength to spit it out. “You know who I am. You know why I’m here. You’re home now because of me. Where are my family and my friends?”
“You gave them up, remember?”
Eureka closed her eyes. Her fingers worried the earth, feeling for a switch to shut everything off.
31
NOSTALGIA
Fingers parted Eureka’s lips and a warm liquid filled her mouth. She swallowed once reflexively, then tasted the soothing caramel-chocolate broth and began to gulp.
She opened her eyes slowly. Ander leaned over her, smelling like the ocean. They were rocking, and for a moment she wondered if they were on a boat. His warm hand was on her forehead.
“I didn’t think the dead could dream,” she heard herself say distantly, which made her think of Brooks trapped in the waterfall in the waveshop. She yearned to go to him. But in the moments when her eyelids fluttered, she yearned for Ander, too. It made her feel weak, like she needed too much.
Ander’s eyes shone with a tenderness Eureka didn’t comprehend. His love was a language she had once known, but now it looked foreign, a sign in a station she didn’t understand.