But Eureka kept all that to herself. She gathered her memories around her like a secret shield, the shadow of a shadow in a flooded valley of death.
Solon poured another broken glass of wine and rose from the cockfighting chair. A cigarette dangled from his lips. “When a loved one dies in an untimely manner,” he said, “one feels as if the universe owes one something. Good luck, invincibility, a line of credit with the man upstairs.”
“You’re so cynical,” Cat said. “What if it’s the other way around and the universe has already blessed you with the time you had together?”
“Ah, but if I’d never loved Byblis, I wouldn’t miss her.”
“But you did love her,” Ander said to Solon. “Why can’t you cherish the time you had, even if it couldn’t be forever?”
“You see, this is the problem with conversation,” Solon said with a sigh, and looked at Ander. “All we ever do is talk about ourselves. Let us stop before we bore each other, well, to tears.” He turned to Eureka. “Are you ready to say goodbye?”
“Dad’s supposed to be with us,” William said. “Can’t I use my quirk to make him come back?”
“I wish you could,” Eureka said.
Solon unmoored the canoe, then pointed the vessel toward an opening in the darkness. “He will float through there and drift gently out to the sea.”
“I want to go with him.” Claire reached for the canoe.
“As do I,” Solon said. “But we still have work to do.”
“Wait!” Eureka pulled the canoe with Dad’s body toward her a final time. She withdrew the slender orichalcum chest from the inner pocket of his jean jacket. She held it up in the candlelight. The green glow within it pulsed.
“There it is,” Solon murmured.
Ander had already returned the spear and anchor to his backpack. Eureka claimed the heirloom Dad had never meant to leave her. She tucked the chest under her arm. Solon leaned in close, inhaling ferociously. When Ander leaned in, too, Eureka sensed she should keep the chest with her, in her bag with The Book of Love.
She pressed her lips against her father’s cheek. He’d always hated goodbyes. She nodded at Ander, who poured a dark green bottle of pungent alcohol onto the wood crates beneath Dad. Eureka reached for the gossipwitches’ torch, still lit, resting among the stalagmites. She tipped the flame over the alcohol. The fire caught.
Clare stared ahead numbly. William turned away and sobbed. Eureka gave the canoe the smallest push, and Dad entered the wet darkness, joined the rhythm of the current. She wished him peace and soft light in a heaven without tears.
16
THE FILLING
Late that night Eureka awoke in the dim stillness of the cave’s spare chamber, her mind haunted by the fading ghost of a nightmare. She’d been back in the avalanche of wasted dead. Instead of scrambling atop decaying bodies, this time, Eureka drowned in them. She struggled to dig herself out, but she was too deep in bones and blood and slime. It sluiced over her, warm and rank, until she couldn’t even see the rain. Until she knew the dead would bury her alive.
“You think you have all that you need!” Solon’s voice boomed over the waterfall.
She rubbed her eyes and smelled death on her hands. After Dad’s funeral, she’d washed them in the cave’s salty spring and filed her nails with a porous stone until there was no place else for the blood she’d spilled to lodge. But she still smelled Seyma on her hands. She knew she always would.
“You’re wrong,” Solon said.
Eureka tilted her good ear toward the sound and waited for a response.