“Pretty.” William touched the anchor’s sparkling flukes, which were forked at the edges and had a scalelike hammered texture that made them look like little mermaid tails.
“It is made of orichalcum,” Ander said, “an ancient substance mined in Atlantis, stronger than anything in the Waking World. When my ancestor Leander left Atlantis, he had five pieces of orichalcum with him. My family has held on to them for millennia.” He patted his backpack and managed a mysterious, sexy smile. “Until now.”
“What are the other toys?” Claire stood on her toes and stuffed a hand into Ander’s backpack.
He hoisted her in his arms and smiled as he zipped his bag up. He placed the anchor in her hands. “This is very precious. Once the anchor grips the rock, you must hold on to the chain as tightly as you can.”
The links of orichalcum jangled in Claire’s hands. “I’ll hold tight.”
“Claire—” Eureka’s fingers brushed her sister’s hair, needing to convey that this wasn’t a game. She thought about what Diana would have said. “I think you’re very brave.”
Claire smiled. “Brave and magic?”
Eureka willed away the strange new urge to cry. “Brave and magic.”
Ander lifted Claire over his head. She planted her feet on his shoulders and plunged one fist up, then another, just as he’d instructed. Her fingers passed through the thunderstone shield and she flung the anchor toward the rock. Eureka watched it sail upward and disappear. Then the chain grew taut and the shield shook like a cobweb hit by a sprinkler. But it did not let in water, and it did not break.
Ander tugged the chain. “Perfect.”
He pulled, drawing more chain inside the shield, lifting them closer to the surface. When they were only inches below the crashing waves, Ander shouted, “Go!”
Eureka grabbed the chain’s smooth, cold links. She reached past Claire and began to climb.
Her agility surprised her. Adrenaline flowed through her arms like a river. When she crossed the shield’s border, the surface of the ocean was just above her. Eureka entered her storm.
It was deafening. It was everything. It was a voyage into her broken heart. Every sadness, every ounce of anger she had ever felt manifested in that rain. It stung her body like bullets from a thousand futile wars. She gritted her teeth and tasted salt.
Wind slashed from the east. Eureka’s fingers slipped, then clung to the cold chain as she reached for the rock.
“Hold on, Claire!” she tried to shout to her sister, but her mouth filled with salt water. She buried her chin against her chest and pressed upward, onward, urgent with a determination she’d never known before.
“Is this all you can do?” she shouted, gurgling through her torrential pain.
The air smelled like it had been electrocuted. Eureka couldn’t see beyond the deluge, but she sensed that there was only flood to see. How could Claire hold on in all this thrashing water? Eureka envisioned the dispersal of the last people she loved across the ocean, fish nibbling their eyes. Her throat constricted. She slipped essential inches down the chain. She was up to her chest in ocean.
Somehow, her fingers found the top of the stone and gripped. She thought of Brooks, her best friend since the womb, her childhood next-door neighbor, the boy who’d challenged her to be a more interesting person for the past seventeen years. Where was he? The last she’d seen of him was a splash into the ocean. He’d dove in after the twins had fallen from his boat. He hadn’t been himself. He’d been … Eureka couldn’t stomach what he’d been. She missed him, the old Brooks. She could almost hear his bayou drawl in her good ear, lifting her up: Just like climbing a pecan tree, Cuttlefish.
Eureka imagined the cold, slick rock was a welcoming twilit branch. She spat salt. She screamed and climbed.