“What is it?” Ander asked.
She wanted to trust him, but everything was muddy. Ander saw Brooks only as Atlas, the enemy. He wouldn’t understand that Eureka loved and needed part of the enemy to survive. Her encounter with Brooks had to be a secret, at least until she was clear on how to save her friend.
“You can’t love me without growing old,” she finally said. “And I can’t know that about you without wanting to cry. And my tears are the end of the world.”
Ander touched the corners of her eyes with his lips to reassure her they were dry. “Please don’t be afraid of my love.”
He took the oar and paddled twice to spin the canoe around. His soft breath sent them gliding toward the entrance to the tunnel, back to the Bitter Cloud. Just before the rock swallowed them, Eureka looked back to where she’d seen Brooks. Atlas. The ledge he’d stood on was invisible. Low clouds had reclaimed the sky and were busy covering the world in darkness.
12
OCCUPY ATLANTIS
That night the Poet caught up with Filiz on her new, more arduous route home from work, all the way around the new pond. That Filiz no longer thought of the Poet by his given Celan name—Basil—suggested the impact Solon had on Filiz’s way of thinking.
The Poet listened to a Discman as he walked—so prehistoric—an old country song twanging in his earbuds when he took them out to call her name. His lips had been swollen and she knew he’d been kissing the Tearline girl’s friend. It made Filiz jealous, not because she wanted to kiss the Poet, but because she had never kissed anyone.
He tossed her a parchment-wrapped package. It was the size of the loaves of bread Filiz’s mother used to bake when she was a girl and hunger was a greedy pleasure, dispelled by a ready meal. The Poet had another package under his arm.
“This is what Solon offers special guests,” he said in their native tongue.
They were the first comprehensible words she’d heard him say in months. She unwrapped the package.
It was food—warm, fried meat next to a mound of honey-glazed nuts and dried fruit the color of jewels. Something gooey smelled like paradise. Baklava.
It was all Filiz could do not to devour the entire contents of the package on the path in the rain. But she thought of her mother’s bony face.
“He’s been building a hidden stash for months,” the Poet said. “This was what I snuck today. But tomorrow …”
He trailed off, and Filiz knew that everything was about to change. As soon as she shared this food with her family, and the Poet with his, the whole community would know. Solon’s cave would no longer be a haven for Filiz—or anyone else.
“They’ll kill him,” Filiz whispered. She felt protective of Solon—or, at least, of the pleasure she derived from working in his cave. She knew it was selfish, but she didn’t want to lose the only touch of glamour in her life.
But her people were starving, so Filiz looked away from the Poet and said, “See you at Assembly.”
Back at the cave where she lived with her mother and grandmother, Filiz pulled a handful of branches from her coat and dropped them in the center of the floor. She snapped her fingers, igniting a flame from the tips of her chipped blue nails.
Not long ago, they’d had enough wood to keep a fire always burning. Now it was dark and cold when Filiz came home, and she knew it had been like that all day.
The branches crackled, hissed, smoked. Burning wet wood was like forcing love, but since the Tearline girl had cried, nothing was dry. The entire world was dark and cold and wet. The flickering light warmed Filiz’s mind and illuminated her sleeping mother. People said Filiz looked like her, even though Filiz dyed her hair and wore heavy makeup she stole from a drugstore in Kusadasi. She saw nothing of herself in her mother’s weary face.