“Think about your father,” Ander said. “And my family, who will find you if we don’t find the Bitter Cloud first. You can do more to honor this girl by moving on, finding Solon, learning what you must do to redeem yourself.”
Eureka stopped digging. Her arms shook as she reached for the girl’s yellow ribbon. She didn’t know why she pulled on the bow. She felt it loosen as it slid from the girl’s wet black hair. The wind wove the ribbon between Eureka’s fingers and blew a sudden lightness into her chest.
She recognized the sensation distantly—it was an old friend, returned after a long prodigal journey: hope.
This girl was a bright flame that Eureka’s tears had extinguished, but there were more flames out there burning. There had to be. She tied the yellow ribbon around the chain bearing her thunderstone. When she was lost and disheartened, she would remember this girl, the first tear-loss Eureka had seen, and it would spur her on to stop what she had started, to right her wrongs.
Eureka didn’t realize she had tears in her eyes until she turned to Ander and saw his panicked expression.
He was at her side immediately. “No!”
He grabbed her broken wrist. The pain was blinding. A tear rolled down her cheek.
Out of nowhere she remembered the heirloom chandelier back home, which Eureka broke when she slammed the front door in a rage. Dad had spent hours repairing it and the chandelier had looked almost like new, but the next time Eureka closed the front door, carefully, so lightly, the chandelier had trembled, then shattered into shards. Was Eureka like that chandelier, now that she’d cried once? Would the lightest force suddenly shatter her?
“Please don’t shed another tear,” Ander pleaded.
Eureka wondered how anyone ever stopped crying. How did pain fade? Where did it go? Ander made it sound temporary, like a Lafayette snowfall. She touched the yellow ribbon.
She had already cried the tear that flooded the world. She’d assumed the damage was done. “What more can my tears do?”
“There is an ancient rubric predicting the power of each tear shed—”
“You didn’t tell me that!” Eureka’s breath came shallowly. “How many tears have I shed?”
She started to wipe her face, but Ander grabbed her hands. Her tears hung like grenades.
“Solon will explain—”
“Tell me!”
Ander took her hands. “I know you’re scared, but you must stop crying.” He reached around and cradled the back of her head in his palm. His chest swelled as he inhaled. “I will help you,” he said. “Look up.”
A narrow column of swirling air formed over Eureka’s head. It twisted faster, until a few raindrops faded and slowed … and turned into snow. The column became thick with bright, feathery flakes that tumbled down and dusted Eureka’s cheeks, her shoulders, her sneakers. Rain thundered against the rocks, splashing into the puddles all around them, but over her head the storm was an elegant blizzard. Eureka shivered, enthralled.
“Stay still,” Ander whispered.
She felt goose bumps as hot tears cooled, then froze against her skin. She reached to touch one, but Ander’s fingers covered hers. For a moment they held hands against her cheek.
He drew a spindle-shaped silver vial from his pocket. It looked like it had been crafted of the same orichalcum as the anchor. Carefully, he pulled the frozen tears from Eureka’s face and dropped them into the vial, one by one.
“What is that?”
“A lachrymatory,” he said. “Before the flood, when Atlantean soldiers went to war, their lovers made presents of their tears in vials like this.” He placed the pointed silver lid atop the vial, slipped it into his pocket.
Eureka was jealous of anyone who could shed tears without deadly consequences. She would not cry again. She would make a lachrymatory in her mind where her frozen pain could live.
The snowflakes on her shoulders began to melt. Her wrist ached more deeply and miserably than before. The windy rain returned. Ander’s hand brushed her cheek.
There now, she remembered him saying the first time they’d met, no more tears.
“How did you do that,” she asked, “with the snow?”