Solon said something, but Eureka’s bad ear had been turned to him, so she didn’t hear it. She spun around. “What did you say?”
“I said as long as he loves you, Ander will age. The more intensely he feels, the more quickly it will happen. And on the off chance you’re not one of those entirely superficial girls—age will affect more than his body. His mind will go as swiftly as the rest. He will grow incredibly, miserably old—and stay that way. Unlike mortal aging, Seedbearer aging leads not to the sweet freedom of death.”
“What if he were to stop … loving me?”
“Then, my darling,” Solon said, “he would remain the strapping, frowning boy you see forever. Interesting dilemma, isn’t it?”
11
STAY, ILLUSION
“I need air,” Eureka said. The cave seemed to be shrinking, a hand tightening into a fist. “How do I get out?”
There’s no way out, Solon had said about Brooks. She sensed the same was true for her. She was trapped inside the Bitter Cloud, trapped in love with a boy who should not love.
“Eureka—” Ander said.
“Don’t.” She left them at the table and took the staircase down to the lower level. The waterfall’s roar grew deafening. She didn’t want to hear herself think. She wanted to dive into the pool and let the fall pummel her until she couldn’t feel angry or lost or betrayed.
To the right of the waterfall, around the back of the curved staircase, was a heavy black and gray tapestry. She slipped behind the staircase. At the far edge of the pool she steadied herself against the wall and lifted the tapestry’s corner.
A channel of water ran beneath it, leading from the pool to a dark, narrow infinity. Lifting the tapestry higher, she saw an aluminum canoe tethered to a post a few feet inside the watery tunnel.
The canoe was heavily dented and bore a cartoon profile of a Native American on the hull. A wooden paddle lay beneath its built-in seat, and a lit torch with a glowing amethyst base was inset in a groove in the prow. The current was lazy, gently undulating.
Eureka wanted to paddle to the unflooded brown bayou behind her house, glide beneath the arms of weeping willows, past jonquils sprouting from the banks, all the way back in time to when the world was still alive.
She climbed inside the canoe, untethered it, and raised the paddle. She was thrilled by her recklessness. She didn’t know where this tunnel led. She imagined Seedbearers tasting her in the wind. And Atlas inside Brooks tracking her in the mountains. It didn’t stop her. As the slosh of her paddle became the only sound Eureka heard, she watched the shadow show the torch cast on the walls around her. Her silhouette was a haunted abstraction, her arms grotesquely long. Peculiar shapes passed through her form like ghosts.
She thought of Ander’s body, the unfair shapes love would sculpt it into. What if Ander aged into an old man before Eureka turned eighteen?
The narrow tunnel opened and Eureka entered a walled pond. Rain fell on her skin. Its salt tasted like the lightest kiss of poison. She was surrounded by white peaks of rock pinching a purple-clouded night sky. Stars twinkled between the clouds.