“I don’t understand,” Ander interrupted. “If I’m not a Seedbearer, how can my breath do the same things the others’ can?”

“The Poet told me this story,” Cat said, “about quirk thieves who sneak into hospital nurseries and study babies’ magic. Maybe the Seedbearers chose you because they knew they could make your quirk blend with the things they wanted you to do.”

While the others speculated, Eureka studied the rest of Solon’s letter. After the first page, the paper stock changed … to parchment—the same parchment in The Book of Love. Here was the same cryptic writing Eureka had hired Madame Blavatsky to translate. Here were the missing pages from The Book of Love.

Enclosed are pages from your book. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner; I’ve had them all along. Years ago, I made a vow to Byblis never to share their contents. They were her deepest shame. But I think she would have wanted you to see them and know the truth.

The gossipwitches can be employed as translators. Use this envelope to find them. Make a deal. You’re smarter than they are.

You may not like what you discover. That’s the nature of discovery. Byblis was never the same after she learned the truth of her history. I can’t guess how you will handle the news, but you deserve to know.

I was never meant to be your guide. A leader is a dealer in hope. This explains my failure, and it explains why you, Eureka, must triumph.

From the other side,

Solon

P.S. The witches hold more than an understanding of your text. There is something else I bartered to them years ago. It is yours. Get it back. And then get going. You have all you need to travel to the Marais. From there, it’s up to you. Atlas will be waiting. Hurry but don’t rush. You know what I mean.

P.P.S. Do not neglect to bring Ovid! You’ll need him more than you can know. If you don’t kill each other, you might become great friends. He possesses unsuspected depths.…

22

MOTHER TONGUE

“No, they don’t hurt,” Ander was saying to Cat when Eureka finished reading.

He had lifted his shirt to reveal his gills. The twins were mesmerized, gathered around him, examining his skin. When Cat leaned down, the bees on the back of her head buzzed and crawled. Every few moments she winced as one stung her.

No one but Eureka saw the envelope in her hands pulse with a light as purple as the gossipwitches’ caftans. Eureka blinked and the light was gone.

“I went to the Glimmering to see what they meant …,” she heard Ander say.

Then the envelope pulsed with light again. This time Eureka saw that the top flap fluttered like a wing. She opened her palm. The envelope fluttered a second time, then rose above her hand in the air. It was not like a wing—the envelope was made of wings. Two large gray moths had embraced to carry Solon’s letter.They’d been still until now, when they slowly separated, as if waking from an enchanted sleep. They pulsed with amethyst light, then swooped toward the entrance of the cave.

Eureka looked to see if the others had noticed. They were still absorbed by Ander’s gills. “Solon thinks Atlas tried to possess me but I fended him off.”

Eureka sensed the moths wanted her to follow them. She tucked the letter and the torn pages of The Book of Love into her pocket next to the lachrymatory. She reached for her purple bag, which hung on a hook-shaped stalagmite near the door. She lifted the eternal torch from another stalagmite where William had rested it and crept silently away, like she had in the old days with Madame Blavatsky’s lovebird Polaris.

“What was it like to have no reflection?” William asked Ander as the moths led Eureka into the skull-lined hall.

“What did Eureka see in the Glimmering?” Cat’s voice trailed down the hallway, and Maya Cayce’s reflection flashed through Eureka’s mind. Somewhere all of this makes sense, Ander had said. She hurried away from the memory of her reflection, from Cat’s question, and from her loved ones.

“Eureka?” Ander’s voice called.

They would try to stop her from going to the witches. But Solon had never been so clear about her needing to do something. She would go to the witches to retrieve what was hers.

She ran after the moths, skulls grinning as she passed them in the dark. Outside, rain blasted her, cold and ferocious, slashing sideways like a wall of whips. The sun was rising, lightening a low section of the dark gray sky.

Something was different. Behind her, the glazeless entrance to Solon’s cave was visible to the outside world. The depression in the rock looked so mundane, so obvious, so bereft of magic unfolding within.

The moths pulsed, calling Eureka with their glowing purple light when she thought she’d lost them in the rain. She followed them up a series of slopes that looked like gargantuan anthills, rounded a corner, and found even higher mountains.

In the distance, on top of the tallest peak balanced an immense rectangular rock. Dark crevices suggested doors and windows. A flat landing marked the entrance to the witches’ home.

“How do I get up there?” Eureka asked the moths.

They hung in the sky, glowing, disappearing into fog, glowing. She touched her thunderstone, her locket, the ribbon, and began to climb.

Mud oozed between her fingers as she picked her way up the rock. When the cliff grew sheer and Eureka didn’t know how she could continue, the guiding moths wove around her hands, gesturing whether the surest route up was a few inches to the left or right. Loose rocks plummeted as Eureka climbed above them. The peak was so treacherous she wondered if it had ever been approached by anything that couldn’t fly.