The most remarkable thing about the cave was the absence of rain. Eureka had grown accustomed to the constant sensation of storm on her skin. Under the cave’s cover, her body felt numb and charged at the same time, unsure what to make of the lull.
The torch illuminated a dark space in the center of a small wall of swirling skulls at the far end of the passage. Eureka approached and saw that it was the entrance to a narrower passage. She pushed the witches’ torch into the gloom.
More skulls lined this smaller path, which narrowed into dark endlessness. Eureka’s claustrophobia awakened and her hand tightened around the torch.
Dad lifted his head from the mystical moth bower. He had talked his daughter down from panic attacks in elevators and attics since she’d been a child. She saw recognition on his face and was relieved he was still cognizant enough to understand why she was frozen at the door.
Dad nodded toward the daunting darkness. “Gotta go through it to get through it.” That had been his line in those bleary days after Diana died. Back then he was referring to grief. Eureka wondered if he knew what he was referring to now. No one knew what lay on the other side of darkness.
Dad’s bayou drawl was more pronounced away from home. Eureka remembered that the only other time he’d left the country was when he and Diana went to Belize for their honeymoon. The sun-soaked photographs were imprinted on her brain. Her parents were young and golden and gorgeous, never smiling at the same time.
“Okay, Dad.” Eureka let the walls embrace her.
The temperature dropped. The ceiling did, too. Lit candles flickered sporadically along the way. Their shallow light faded into long stretches of darkness before the next candle appeared. Eureka sensed her loved ones at her back. She had no idea what she was leading them toward.
Distant sounds echoed off the walls. Eureka stopped to listen. She could only hear them in her good ear, which she realized meant the voices were of her world, not Atlantis. They grew louder, closer.
Eureka widened her stance to shield the twins. She held the torch with both hands like a bludgeon. She would strike whatever came.
She cried out and swung the torch—
At the edge of its light stood a small, dark-haired, barefoot child. He wore nothing but a pair of ragged brown shorts. His hands and face were grimy with something black and glossy.
He called to them in what could have been Turkish, but Eureka wasn’t sure. His words sounded like the language of a nearby planet from a thousand years ago.
Slowly, William stepped out from behind Eureka’s leg. He waved at the little boy. They were the same age, the same height.
The boy grinned. His teeth were small and white.
Eureka relaxed for half a second—and that was when the boy lurched forward, grabbed William’s and Claire’s hands, and dragged them into the darkness.
Eureka screamed and ran after them. She didn’t realize she had dropped the torch until she’d run deep into blackness. She followed the sounds of her siblings’ cries until somehow her fingers found the waist of the boy’s shorts. She jerked him to the ground. Cat held the torch to light Eureka’s struggle with the boy.
He was shockingly strong. She strained fiercely to pry the twins from his grip.
“Let go!” she shouted, not believing that anyone so small and young could be so strong.
Ander heaved the boy into the air, but the child wouldn’t let go of the twins—he lifted them off the ground with him. William and Claire writhed and cried. Eureka wanted to dismember the boy and make his head part of the mosaic on the walls.
Neither she nor Ander could pry the boy’s tiny fingers free. Claire’s arm was swollen and red. The boy had worked himself out of Ander’s hold, had slipped through Eureka’s exhausted hands. He was dragging the twins away.
“Stop!” Eureka shouted, despite the absurd futility of the word. She had to do something. She scrambled after the three of them and, without knowing why, she began to sing:
“To know, know, know him is to love, love, love him.”