“It might be dangerous,” Blavatsky continued. “Knowledge is power; power corrupts. Corruption brings shame and ruin. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it is perhaps preferable to a life lived in shame. Do you agree?”
“I’m not sure.” Eureka sensed Diana would have liked Madame Blavatsky. She would have trusted this translator. “I think I’d rather know the truth, regardless of the consequences.”
“So you shall.” Blavatsky offered a mysterious smile.
Cat leaned forward in her chair, clasped the edge of the woman’s desk. “We want your best price. No funny business.”
“I see you’ve brought your business manager.” Blavatsky cackled, then inhaled and contemplated Cat’s request. “For something of this magnitude and intricacy … It’s going to be very taxing for an old woman.”
Cat held up her hand. Eureka hoped she wouldn’t tell Madame Blavatsky to talk to it. “Cut to the chase, lady.”
“Ten dollars a page.”
“We’ll give you five,” Eureka said.
“Eight.” Blavatsky pinched another cigarette between her bright red lips, clearly enjoying this ritual.
“Seven-fifty”—Cat snapped her fingers—“and you throw in the chemicals to fix that water damage.”
“You won’t find anyone else who can do what I can do. I could ask for a hundred dollars a page!” Blavatsky dabbed her eyes with a faded handkerchief, measured Eureka. “But you look so very beaten down, even though you have more help than you know. Know that.” She paused. “Seven-fifty is a fair price. You have a deal.”
“What happens now?” Eureka asked. Her ear was ringing. When she rubbed it, for a moment she thought she heard the chatter of the birds’ song coming clearly through her left ear. Impossible. She shook her head and noticed Madame Blavatsky notice.
The woman nodded at the birds. “They tell me he’s been watching you for a very long time.”
“Who?” Cat looked around the room.
“She knows.” Madame Blavatsky smiled at Eureka.
Eureka whispered, “Ander?”
“Shhh,” Madame Blavatsky cooed. “My lovebirds’ song is brave and auspicious, Eureka. Do not be troubled by the things you cannot yet understand.” Suddenly she swiveled in her chair to face her computer. “I will send the translated pages in batches via email, along with a link to my Square account for payment.”
“Thanks.” Eureka scrawled her email address, slid the paper to Cat to add hers.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Cat handed Madame Blavatsky the paper with their information. “Emailing a translation of something so ancient?”
Madame Blavatsky rolled her watery eyes. “What you think is advanced would embarrass any of the masters of the old. Their capabilities vastly surpassed ours. We are a thousand years behind what they achieved.” Blavatsky opened a drawer and pulled out a sack of baby carrots, breaking one in half to split it between the two turtles awakening from their nap on her desk. “There, Gilda,” she sang. “There, Brunhilda. My darlings.” She leaned toward the girls. “This book will tell of far more exciting innovations than cyberspace.” She slid her glasses back up on her nose and gestured at the door. “Well, good night. Don’t let the turtles bite you on your way out.”
Eureka rose shakily from the couch as Cat gathered their things. Eureka paused, looking at the book on the desk. She thought of what her mother would do. Diana had lived her life trusting her instincts. If Eureka wanted to know what her inheritance meant, she had to trust Madame Blavatsky. She had to leave the book behind. It wasn’t easy.
“Eureka?” Madame Blavatsky raised a pointer finger. “You know what they told Creon, of course?”
Eureka shook her head. “Creon?”
“ ‘Suffering is wisdom’s schoolteacher.’ Think about it.” She drew in her breath. “My, what a path you are on.”
“I’m on a path?” Eureka said.
“We look forward to your translation,” Cat said in a much steadier voice.
“I may start right away; I may not. But don’t hassle me. I work here”—she pointed at her desk—“I live upstairs”—she jerked her thumb toward the ceiling. “And I protect my privacy. Translation requires time and positive vibrations.” She looked out the window. “That would be a good tweet. I should tweet that.”
“Madame Blavatsky,” Eureka said before she stepped through the atelier door. “Does my book have a title?”
Madame Blavatsky seemed far away. Without looking at Eureka, she said very softly, “It is called The Book of Love.”
From: [email protected]
Date: Sunday, October 6, 2013, 1:31 a.m.
Subject: first salvo
Dear Eureka,
By dint of many hours of focused concentration, I have translated the following. I have tried not to take liberties with the prose, only to make the content as clear as water for your reading ease. I hope this meets your expectations.…
On the vanished isle where I was born, I was called Selene. This is my book of love.
Mine is a tale of catastrophic passion. You may wonder whether it is true, but all true things are questioned. Those who allow themselves to imagine—to believe—may find redemption in my story.
We must start at the beginning, in a place that has long ceased to exist. Where we’ll end … well, who can know the ending until the last word has been written? Everything might change with the last word.
In the beginning, the island stood beyond the Pillars of Hercules, alone in the Atlantic. I was raised in the mountains, where magic was abided. Daily, I gazed upon a beautiful palace that sat like a diamond in the sun-dappled valley far below. Legends told of a city with an astonishing design, waterfalls ringed with unicorns—and twin princes maturing inside the castle’s ivory walls.
The elder prince and would-be king’s name was Atlas. He was known to be gallant, to favor hibiscus milk, to never shy away from a wrestling match. The younger prince was an enigma, rarely seen or heard from. He was called Leander, and from an early age he found his passion in voyaging by sea to the king’s many colonies around the world.
I had listened to other mountain girls recount vivid dreams in which Prince Atlas carried them away on a horse of silver, made them his queen. But the prince slept in the shadows of my consciousness when I was a child. Had I known then what I know now, my imagination might have let me love him before our worlds collided. It would have been easier that way.
As a girl, I yearned for naught outside the enchanted, wooded fringes of our island. Nothing interested me more than my relatives, who were sorceresses, telepathists, changelings, alchemists. I flitted through their workshops, apprentice to all but the gossipwitches—whose powers rarely transcended petty human jealousies, which they never tired of saying were what really made the world go round. I was filled with the stories of my numinous ancestors. My favorite tale was of an uncle who could project his mind across the ocean and inhabit the bodies of Minoan men and women. His escapades sounded delicious. In those days I relished the taste of scandal.
I was sixteen when the rumors wafted from the palace to the mountains. Birds sang that the king had fallen ill with a strange sickness. They sang of the rich bounty Prince Atlas promised anyone who could cure his father.
I had never dreamed of crossing the threshold of the palace, but I had once cured my father’s fever with a powerful local herb. And so, under a waning moon, I traveled the twenty-six miles down to the palace, a poultice of artemisia in a pouch hanging from my belt.
Would-be healers formed a line three miles long outside the castle. I took my place at the back. One by one, magicians entered; one by one, they left, indignant or ashamed. When I was just ten deep in the line, the palace doors were closed. Black smoke twisted from the chimneys, signaling that the king was dead.
Wails rose from the city as I made my sad way home. When I was halfway there, alone in a wooded glen, I came across a boy about my age kneeling over a sparkling river. He was knee-deep in a patch of white narcissus, so immersed in his thoughts he seemed in another realm. When I saw that he was crying, I touched his shoulder.
“Are you hurt, sir?”
When he turned to me, the sorrow in his eyes was overwhelming. I understood it like I knew the language of the birds: he had lost the dearest thing he had.
I held out the poultice in my hand. “I wish I could have saved your father.”
He fell upon me, weeping. “You can still save me.”
The rest is yet to come, Eureka. Stand by.
SWAK
Madame B, Gilda, and Brunhilda
14
THE SHADOW
Tuesday meant another session with Dr. Landry. The therapist’s New Iberia office was hardly the first place Eureka wanted to drive to in her newly repaired Jeep, but in the cold standoff at breakfast that morning, Rhoda had ended all discussion with her usual soul-chilling line:
As long as you live in my house, you follow my rules.
She’d given Eureka a list of phone numbers for her three assistants at the university, in case Eureka got into trouble while Rhoda was in a meeting. They weren’t taking any more chances, Rhoda said when she handed Eureka back her keys. Dad’s wife could probably make I love you sound menacing—not that Eureka had ever received that particular threat from Rhoda.
Eureka was nervous about getting back behind the wheel. She’d transformed into a hyperdefensive driver—counting three seconds of space between cars, putting on her blinker half a mile before she turned. Her shoulder muscles were knotted by the time she got to Dr. Landry’s office. She sat in Magda under the beech tree, trying to breathe the tension out.
At 3:03 she slumped onto the therapist’s couch. She wore her weekly scowl.
Dr. Landry wore another pair of slip-on shoes. She kicked her feet out of the clunky orange flats, which had never been in style.
“Catch me up.” Dr. Landry tucked her bare feet under her on the chair. “What’s happened since we talked?”
Eureka’s uniform itched. She wished she’d peed before the session started. At least there was no issue of having to race back to school for the cross-country meet today. Even Coach would have given up on her by now. She could drive home slowly, on different dirt roads, paths not frequented by phantom boys.
She wouldn’t see him, so he couldn’t sort of make her cry. Or brush the corner of her eye with his finger. Or smell like an undiscovered ocean she wanted to swim in. Or be the only one around who didn’t know a single catastrophic thing about her.
Eureka’s cheeks were hot. Landry tilted her head, as if noting each shade of scarlet Eureka turned. No way. Eureka was keeping Ander’s appearance—and disappearance—to herself. She reached for one of the hard candies on the coffee table and threw up a screen of noise with the wrapper.