For the first few strides, her muscles were cold and tight, but soon she felt the loosening, the lightening. She inhaled deeply, drawing the strange, steamy air into her lungs, holding her breath until she felt immersed in the atmosphere. Her shoes stopped squishing. Her rib cage lifted. Her mind traveled to the highest branch on the moon. She didn’t look down when the floor dropped out from under her. She pivoted in the air, arched her back, drew her hands up, and dove backward into the waterfall.

Cold water roared around her. She screamed as her body dropped twenty feet and was consumed by the fall. Then the thunderstone shield bloomed around her, an answered prayer bouncing her upward. She was weightless, protected. But the force of the waterfall was dragging her down.

She was going to have to swim up it.

Her body straightened. She did one br**ststroke, then another.

It was hard work. Every burning stroke of her arms raised her only a half-inch higher. When she didn’t strain against it, the water pushed her down. After a long, exhausting stretch, Eureka sensed that she was only now level with the cave’s floor. She still had far to go.

Her arms thrust forward. She groaned as she strained to draw them back. She kicked her legs fiercely. She struggled up the waterfall, half-inches becoming inches, and then, impossibly, feet.

She was trembling from exhaustion when she saw the thin roots of the orchid tracing the side of the stone. Beyond the waterfall were wobbling broad green leaves, shimmering fuchsia blossoms. She was so excited that she lunged toward the orchid.

She moved too quickly. Her body passed through the waterfall before she realized her mistake: the instant the shield was exposed to air, it popped like a balloon.

Eureka’s hand had been just inches from the flower, but now she lost propulsion. Her arms spun. Her legs bicycled in the air. She screamed, and her body dropped—

Then something brushed against her back. A force buffeted her in midair as she rose along the face of the waterfall. The orchid came within reach again.

The Zephyr. The sensation of Ander’s breath surrounding her body was wonderful and intimate. It embraced her and pushed her higher in the sky. They were thirty feet apart, but Eureka felt as close as when they’d kissed.

She reached out and grasped the orchid. Her fingers closed around its reedy stem. She pulled it loose from the rock.

Below her, Ander whooped. The twins clapped and jumped. Cat catcalled. When Eureka turned to wave the flower triumphantly, she saw Solon frowning at Ander.

The wind changed directions, and the force that had been holding her up was ripped out from underneath her. Gravity returned. Eureka plunged down the face of the waterfall into distant darkness.

9

DIVER DOWN

Eureka plummeted through cold mist. She heard the twins scream. She reached out for the blur of their bodies as she hurtled downward, through the space in the floor of the cave and into a wide, shadowy chute.

Darkness swallowed her. She crossed her arms over her chest, clutching the orchidwith one hand, her thunderstone with the other. The yellow ribbon slapped her chin to remind her she had failed that girl. She braced herself for whatever she would soon be crashing into. Every waterfall had an end.

She worried about plunging into water too shallow for her shield. She thought back to the rainy night her grandmother Sugar had died, the soles of her feet slowly turning blue, and the old woman’s hoarse last word: “Pray!” For some reason, the memory was calming. She whispered, “I’m coming, Sugar,” then, “I’m coming, Mom.”

She fell faster. Then she did a somersault. If these were her final living moments, she wouldn’t spend them like a mannequin.

She thought of a million things at once—a poem she’d read in the psych ward called “Falling,” by James Dickey, a movie about people who committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, her first taste of whipped cream on pancakes, the aching baroque sweetness of the world, the luxury of letting yourself feel lonesome and sad.

Suddenly the chute opened into a vast dim chamber and Eureka saw water below. From the movie about the Golden Gate suicides, she knew to assume a sitting position before she broke the water’s surface.

She rocketed underwater as if strapped to an invisible chair. The shield sprang up around her. She gasped and whooped and looked beneath her. It had saved her from being impaled on a dense metropolis of stalagmites. Their spires had come within inches of her skin.

She collapsed against the surface of the shield. She tried to breathe, to slow her sprinting heart. She tried to recover what she’d been thinking as she fell, but those thoughts were flying up wherever dreams lived.

She heard shouting, her name being called. A great splash blew the shield backward. Ander swam toward her. He arrived in front of her shield and pressed his hands against its surface. He looked desperate to hold her.

Eureka released the orchid. She pressed her hands against the shield, her palms against Ander’s. Then, slowly, she pressed her forehead and her shoulders against it. Ander lifted his chin, rapt, as she pressed her lips to the shield.

She gazed at him. His lips were slightly parted. He hesitated for a moment, then took his finger and traced her lips lightly through the shield. She could feel the subtle pressure of his touch but not the softness of his skin.

Heat coursed through Eureka. They were tantalizingly close—

They could swim to the surface and the shield would fall away, but Eureka suddenly sensed that a powerful force might always lie between them, teasing her, torturing her.

Ander had been underwater a long time without air. Within her shield, Eureka could breathe, but Ander’s lungs must have ached. She pulled back from the edge of the shield and pointed toward the surface. When Ander nodded, she picked up the orchid and they kicked themselves higher, higher, until Eureka’s head broke the surface and the shield shattered again.