“The king,” Eureka guessed. “Selene was supposed to marry Atlas.”
“One would think that would indeed be an obstacle. However”—Blavatsky buried her nose in her book—“there appears to be a plot twist.” She straightened her shoulders, tapped her throat, and began to read Selene’s tale:
“Her name was Delphine. She loved Leander with all her being.
“I knew Delphine well. She was born in a lightning storm to a departed mother and had been nursed by rain. When she learned to crawl, she climbed down from her solitary cave and came to live among us in the mountains. My family welcomed her into our home. As she grew older, she embraced some of our traditions, rejected others. She was a part of us, yet apart. She frightened me.
“Years earlier, I had stumbled accidentally upon Delphine embracing a lover in the moonlight, pressed against a tree. Though I never saw the boy’s face, the gossipwitches used to titter rumors that she had the mysterious younger prince in her thrall.
“Leander. My prince. My heart.
“ ‘I saw you in the moonlight,’ he later confessed to me. ‘I had seen you before many times. Delphine had me spellbound, but I swear I never loved her. I fled the kingdom to be free of her enchantment; I came home hoping to find you.’
“As our love deepened, we feared the wrath of Delphine more than anything King Atlas could do. I had seen her destroy life in the forest, turn kind animals to beasts; I did not want her magic touching me.
“On the eve of my wedding to the king, Leander spirited me from the castle through a series of secret tunnels he had run through as a boy. As we hurried to his waiting ship under the glow of the midnight moon, I pleaded:
“ ‘Delphine must never know.’
“We boarded his boat, buoyant with the freedom promised by the waves. We knew not where we were going; we only knew we would be together. As Leander pulled up the anchor, I looked back to bid farewell to my mountains. I will always wish that I had not.
“For there I saw a fearsome sight: a hundred gossipwitches—my aunts and cousins—had gathered in the crags of the cliff to watch me go. The moon lit their craggy faces. They were old enough to lose their minds but not their power.
“ ‘Flee, cursed lovers,’ one of the elder witches called. ‘You cannot outrun your destiny. Doom decorates your hearts, and will forevermore.’
“I remember Leander’s startled face. He was unaccustomed to the witches’ way of speaking, though it was as natural to me as loving him.
“What darkness could corrupt a love as bright as this?’ he asked.
“ ‘Fear her heartbreak,’ the witches hissed.
“Leander wrapped his arm around me. ‘I will never break her heart.’
“Laughter echoed from the scarp.
“ ‘Fear the heartbreak in maiden tears that bring oceans crashing into earths!’ one of my aunts cried.
“ ‘Fear the tears that seal worlds off from space and time,’ another added.
“ ‘Fear the dimension made of water known as Woe, where the lost world will wait until the Rising Time,’ a third one sang.
“ ‘Then fear its return,’ they sang in unison. ‘All because of tears.’
“I turned to Leander, deciphering their curse. ‘Delphine.’
“ ‘I will go to her and make amends before we sail,’ Leander said. ‘We must live unhaunted.’
“ ‘No,’ I said. ‘She must not know. Let her think that you have drowned. My betrayal will break her heart more deeply.’ I kissed him as if I were unafraid, though I knew there was no stopping the gossipwitches from spreading our story through the hills.
“Leander watched the witches hunching in their scarp. ‘It is the only way I will feel free to love you like I want to. As soon as I say goodbye, I will return.’
“With that, my love was gone and I was left alone with the gossipwitches. They eyed me from the shore. I was now an outcast. I could not yet glimpse the shape of my apocalypse, but I knew it lay just beyond the horizon. I will not forget their whispered words before they disappeared into the night.…”
Madame Blavatsky looked up from the journal and dotted her handkerchief along her pale brow. Her fingers trembled as she closed her book.
Eureka had sat motionless, breathless, the whole time Madame Blavatsky read. The text was captivating. But now that the chapter was over, the book closed, it was just a story. How could it be so dangerous? As a hazy orange sun crept up over the bayou, she studied the erratic pattern of Madame Blavatsky’s breathing.
“You think this is real?” Eureka asked.
“Nothing is real. There is only what we believe in and what we reject.”
“And you believe in this?”
“I believe I have an understanding of the origins of this text,” Blavatsky said. “This book was written by an Atlantean sorceress, a woman born of the lost island of Atlantis thousands of years ago.”
“Atlantis.” Eureka took in the word. “You mean the underwater island with mermaids and sunken treasures and guys like Triton?”
“You are thinking of a bad cartoon,” Madame Blavatsky said. “All anyone really knows of Atlantis comes to us from Plato’s dialogues.”
“And why do you think this story is about Atlantis?” Eureka asked.
“Not simply about but from. I believe Selene was an inhabitant of the island. Remember her manner of description in the beginning—her island stood ‘beyond the Pillars of Hercules, alone in the Atlantic’? That is just as Plato describes it.”
“But it’s fiction, right? Atlantis wasn’t really—”
“According to Plato’s Critias and Timeaus, Atlantis was an ideal civilization in the ancient world. Until—”
“Some girl got her heart broken and cried the whole island into the sea?” Eureka raised an eyebrow. “See? Fiction?”
“And they say there are no new ideas,” Blavatsky said softly. “This is very dangerous information to possess. My judgment tells me not to carry on—”
“You have to carry on!” Eureka said, startling a water moccasin coiled in a low branch of the willow. She watched as it slithered into the brown bayou. She didn’t necessarily believe Selene had lived on Atlantis—but she now believed that Madame Blavatsky believed it. “I need to know what happened.”
“Why? Because you enjoy a good story?” Madame Blavatsky asked. “A simple library card might satisfy your need and put us both at less risk.”
“No.” There was more to it, but Eureka wasn’t sure how to say it. “This story matters. I don’t know why, but it has something to do with my mother, or …”
She trailed off for fear that Madame Blavatsky would give her the same disapproving look Dr. Landry had when Eureka had spoken of the book.
“Or it has something to do with you,” Blavatsky said.
“Me?”
Sure, at first she’d related to how fast Selene had fallen for a boy she shouldn’t fall for—but Eureka hadn’t even seen Ander since that night on the road. She didn’t see what her accident had to do with a mythical sunken continent.
Blavatsky stayed quiet, as if waiting for Eureka to connect some dots. Was there something else? Something about Delphine the abandoned lover, whose tears were said to have sunk the island? Eureka had nothing in common with Delphine. She didn’t even cry. After last night, her whole class knew about that—more reason to think she was a freak. So what did Blavastky mean?