Atlantia, Page 21

  I know you’ve done what you had to do to survive, and so have I.

  But now we have to do something more.

  Together.

  It will take both of us to save the sirens.

  It will take both of us to save Atlantia.

  My mother always protected me.

  And Maire was right. My mother always underestimated me.

  She underestimated Bay, too.

  I press the shell tight against my ear. I listen and listen and listen, but my mother is gone.

  How can I tell True all of this?

  He can see I’m finished. He takes his hand away from mine and wraps his arms around me. Without saying a word, he pulls me close.

  His body feels warm against mine, and his breathing is as steady as the ocean. I match my breathing to his, and my body, too.

  The world is coming apart around us—water through the rivets in Atlantia, sirens dying on the shore. I should feel numb, should feel nothing in the presence of too much—learning the truth about my world, learning that I can’t survive for long here Above. But what I feel right now, in this moment, is True—and alive.

  And he’s right. I have to do what Maire said. I trust her.

  “I think it’s time to swim again,” I say. “To the shore this time.”

  True bends his head so that it rests against mine. He will come with me.

  I wonder what waits for us there, if we’ll ever be together like this again. True’s lips skim my cheekbone and then he finds my mouth and I kiss him back, reaching to touch the beautiful planes of his face. And I am filled with melancholy and triumph. We might die here, but we made it here, together.

  Everyone dies. They don’t all have the chance to see what they wanted most. At least I’ve seen the Above. At least I’ve known True.

  CHAPTER 25

  The swim to the shore is longer than our quick foray into the cove, and the water feels more wild and dark now, the waves buffeting me on all sides, slapping their way into my mouth and stinging my eyes, but I feel like I recognize the swim in some way. Somehow I know how to push through it all.

  That time spent in the tanks wasn’t wasted.

  I come ashore. True isn’t far behind me.

  I feel a million tiny grains of sand under my bare feet. We left our shoes in the cave because they were too heavy; they might have weighed us down. A crust of shells on the sand marks the place where the water must come highest. Neither of us says anything, but True takes my hand again as we climb the rise. In my other hand I carry the empty shell that held my mother’s voice. I can’t let go of it.

  Grasses grow sharp in the sand, and so do small, scrubby bushes with flat, green leaves. Insects hum loudly, the sound heavy in the warm air.

  Once we’re over the rise, we see the city.

  An outdoor city, bursting and sparkling with lights, and the temple spire points tall above all the other buildings.

  We’re barefoot, and dripping-damp. But there’s nothing we can do about that. We have to hope that the near dark will be enough to cover us. “We need to hurry,” I say.

  Night falls fast, but it isn’t as absolute as night in Atlantia. Now and then, through the miasma of ruined air, I think I can pick out a star.

  I can’t help but stare at everything as we come closer—people, streets, shops—even though I don’t want my gaze to invite any attention. I’m glad the swimming has removed all the siren makeup from my face, but I still feel that anyone could tell that I came from someplace else.

  What did Bay think when she saw all this? What does True think now? I glance over at him, but in this light his eyes are as dark as the earth.

  The Above has no gondolas, but it has other, faster, uglier ways of transport—wheeled carts spinning and racing so quickly that it’s hard for me to know where I can walk and where I can’t. Some of the carts are enormous. There are also many, many people walking and running everywhere, and they all seem to be in a hurry. The air is so thick and hot and moist that it has made everyone’s hair bedraggled and their clothes cling with sweat, and others look as dirty and damp as we do. Still, I can’t relax. We have to get to the temple. That is where the road ends, where Maire’s instructions lead.

  The voices of the people around us sound so strange, so flat after all the sirens calling, that I have a hard time understanding the words, though our language is the same. The cadence of their speaking sounds as choppy as the waves under the wind, and they have an accent I’ve never heard before.

  Of course I’ve never heard it before. I’ve never been Above before.

  The buildings are scarred and dirt- and dusk-colored, not the bright hues of Atlantia. Someone brushes against me accidentally and nods in apology but doesn’t stop. I have never seen so many people moving so quickly. The Above teems with inhabitants.

  I hear laughter coming from what smells like a restaurant, and shop doors stand open even though it is so late.

  Atlantia is nothing compared to this. I am nothing compared to this.

  And I feel light, knowing that I am nothing and that there is nothing above me but air. No water pressing down, no walls holding everything in and pushing everything back.

  It is strange and unfamiliar, and I know that I can’t survive here for long, but I love it. And I want to stay.

  True and I become lost and found several times in the darkening streets. To get our bearings again, we find a place where the buildings aren’t so close and look up to see the spire of the temple. I hurry, always conscious of the strange feeling of earth underfoot, sand between my toes, dust beneath my heels, and now and then the smooth roundness of a stone. True and I don’t talk, afraid that someone will hear our accents and realize we don’t belong Above, but we touch. His hand on my shoulder, me reaching back for him.

  And then, without speaking, we stop at the same time.

  Maire said I would know the temple, and I do, even though it’s different from the one Below.

  It’s made of metal instead of stone, and it appears to be formed from chunks of other buildings welded together. I want to run my fingers along the rivets and see how well it all meets. And the whole building is covered in an oxidation of green, like it grew up out of the ground. I’ve heard of this before—pollution so bad that it can corrupt even metal, but in the moment it’s beautiful.

  True and I stand together, Above, in front of the temple, our clothes damp and our feet dirty. The door is not open, perhaps to keep out the air, but when I turn the handle, it moves easily. It’s unlocked. It must be accessible at all hours, open to the people who need to pray, the way our temple is in the Below.

  But I am afraid to enter.

  Someone mutters and pushes past me. There are others who want to go inside, and I should move.

  “Rio?” True asks.

  “Bay,” I say, remembering why I’m here, and I take a step inside.

  The temple is fairly crowded, and no one seems to notice us come in.

  I take a few more steps. It is so different and so much the same. The pews, the quietness, the softened voices and prayers. True and I walk past a woman crying and a priest comforting.

  The gargoyle gods watch us. They don’t adorn only the walls but also sit welded into place, like permanent worshippers, on some of the pews. Why, I wonder, and then in a moment I know, when I see their eaten faces, their pockmarked bodies, the way the air turned them green like they have been long underwater. The air. I had to weld our gods back into the trees for upkeep; the priests here brought their gods inside for shelter when the air was at its worst and have not yet taken them back out.

  I stop in my tracks, utterly fascinated. High up, a seahorse curls its tail on a plinth, its head seemingly bowed in prayer while it supports the weight above. A whale with a bulbous head and startled eyes pushes out from the wall, and on the pew nearest me, a spiky-tai
led shark shows its teeth. They are supposedly the same gods we have Below, with different forms, and they seem at once foreign and familiar. They would have had to make these after the advent of the sirens.

  What would it be like, to make a religion? To fashion your own gods?

  The pulpit is inlaid with shells from the Below, with a design similar to our waves that become trees. On their pulpit the trees turn and roll into clouds. It’s beautiful. And I can’t help but wonder if there are any voices trapped inside those shells. I close my hand around the one in my pocket.

  As we approach the altar, I notice a large jar of water in the place where the jar of dirt sits in the temple in Atlantia.

  And for a moment, I allow myself to imagine that this is another version of home, one where I find my twin and perhaps my mother, too, that she will come in to stand behind the pulpit to speak saving words to all of us, and she’ll notice me and rush to take me in her arms and say, All along we were here, Rio. We were waiting for you to come to the right place.

  I’m crying now without a sound. For the loss of my mother, and for Maire. I know she’s gone, too. Somehow I can tell that her voice will never again be heard under the water or over the wind.

  She is nowhere Above and nowhere Below.

  And neither is my mother.

  But my sister might be.

  “Bay?” a man’s voice says, close behind me, and my heart pounds with familiarity and fear. This used to happen all the time Below—someone has mistaken me for Bay. What can I say that won’t give me away?

  “Bay?” the man asks again, sounding puzzled.

  I turn around. But he isn’t talking to me. He’s speaking to the real Bay, who has stopped in the middle of the aisle leading to the altar, staring at me as if she can’t believe what she sees.

  And I don’t believe my eyes, either, though this is where I hoped I’d find her, though this is what I wanted more than anything else for so long, though almost everything I’ve done has been because I knew I had to see my sister again.

  I see my sister again.

  CHAPTER 26

  I want to say something and I can’t.

  I’m afraid she’ll leave the way she did the last time I saw her. Turn her back on me and walk away, again.

  That she’ll be angry with me for coming, because it isn’t safe for me here.

  But Bay throws her arms around me, and she’s crying. I hold on so tight. She whispers into my ear, “You’re here. How?”

  It’s such a long story. I don’t even know where to begin. Priests stare at us and the gods sit among the people in the pews and my mother and Maire are dead. And the Above is not what I’ve been told it was all my life and I don’t care, I love it anyway, and I can’t live here. I’m a siren and no one wants me to live anywhere.

  “Rio,” Bay says, and I feel her smoothing down my hair, holding me close. I’m a mermaid girl, tears in my hair, salt on my skin, barely able to breathe under the heavy weight of what’s happened and light with the relief of seeing my sister at last.

  Bay leads True and me to a storage room at the back of the temple, a place full of boxes and books and odds and ends. She goes to a closet at the back of the room and pulls out some old robes for us to wear over our still-damp clothes from the Below. All the time I can’t stop staring at my sister. It hasn’t been long, but I can’t believe how imperfectly I remembered her. I thought I remembered everything, but I didn’t. I forgot how she moves when she wants to be quiet, how that looks. I forgot her profile when she’s turned three-quarters away from me, how her ear from that angle is small and fine, like a shell. I realize that I didn’t hold on to the exact color of her eyes.

  She’s cut her hair shorter, and her skin is tanned from the sun. Her arms look strong—I can see the muscles in them, even more defined than when she practiced in the lanes every day. There are dark shadows under her eyes, the kind that speak of weeks without enough sleep, rather than one single harrowed night.

  Her voice still sounds gentle but also huskier—perhaps a result of breathing the air Above—and she’s taken on their accent. Even so, I remembered the tone of it perfectly. It is the one thing I have remembered exactly right, I realize. Maire told the truth. I do know how to listen.

  And then I finally say something.

  “Maire,” I say. I have to tell Bay what happened to Maire.

  Bay flinches slightly at the sound of my flat voice. Did she forget already how ugly it sounds?

  “It’s not that,” she whispers to me, as if she can read my mind. “It’s just that when I imagine you speaking, you’re always using your real voice.”

  “The sirens all came up,” I say to Bay, “and the people Above killed them.”

  “No,” Bay says, gripping my arm so hard that it hurts. “No. Are you sure?”

  “I saw it happen,” I say. “So did True.” At that moment I realize that I haven’t introduced True and Bay to each other, but before I can say anything else, someone opens the door.

  It’s a priest, wearing one of the sober brown robes, the same man who said Bay’s name earlier out by the altar. He’s a round little middle-aged man, unremarkable except for his kind expression and shock of unruly gray hair. And he’s followed by Fen, the boy from the Below. Fen looks terrible—his eyes wild and tired, his hair a mess. He can’t stop coughing. I take a step back in alarm.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Fen says. “It’s not contagious.” He claps a mask over his face and breathes deeply. And then his eyes widen. “True,” he says.

  True grins, and the two of them embrace. Before True can draw back, Fen starts coughing again.

  Bay glances over at Fen but then looks back at me. “Who was killing the sirens?”

  Should I talk about this in front of Fen and the priest? Can they be trusted? Bay seems to think that they can.

  “The people in the boats killed the sirens.” It sounds stupid, and I shake my head in frustration. So much needs to be said, and quickly. “We all came up together on the transport. And when we arrived, people were waiting for us in boats. They never came ashore, but they started killing the sirens. True and I were the only ones who escaped, as far as I know. Maire helped us.”

  “Where is she?” Bay asked.

  I can’t answer.

  “They killed Maire?” Bay asks, stunned, as if such a thing could never be true. I understand her. It seems impossible that Maire could have survived, but it also seems impossible that she could die.

  “I think so,” I tell Bay. “I didn’t see.”

  “So you left them,” Fen says.

  It is exactly the wrong thing to say.

  “You left us,” I say to him. To Bay.

  You left us.

  “I’m sorry, Rio,” Bay says. “We did. I did. I left.” Her voice breaks.

  Bay knows the question I’m going to ask. I can’t help it. Even though I know the reason from the letter, I want to hear Bay tell me in person. Bay, who has dirt under her fingernails and short-cut hair and a patch of skin peeling on her nose, who has been living the life I intended for myself Above while I’ve been living out her time Below.

  “Why did you leave?”

  “I thought it was the best way to keep you safe,” Bay says. There are tears in her eyes. “I made a mess of everything. I didn’t know that the Above was going to kill the sirens and cut off Atlantia. Our mother didn’t tell me.”

  “She didn’t tell me, either,” I say.

  “We must go back to the island and see if there is anyone left to save,” says the priest. He moves, and an emblem around his neck glints in the light. It’s oxidized to a green color, not shiny like the one my mother wore, but the insignia is similar. It mirrors the image on the pulpit here in the temple Above—trees turning into clouds.

  This is no priest. This is their Minister.

  “It’s
all right, Rio,” Bay says. “This is Ciro, the Minister.” She leans closer and whispers to me. “Don’t worry. He’s nothing like Nevio.”

  How can she be sure? We knew Nevio for most of our lives and would never have believed him capable of murder. Bay has known this Minister for a few weeks. How can she be sure that we can trust him?

  As far as I’m concerned, there is one Minister I trust and she is dead.

  “Let me see what I can find out,” Ciro says to Bay. “Stay here. Keep them hidden.” He reaches up and touches the insignia around his neck. “May the gods be with us all,” he says, and he moves quickly through the door.

  “What does he mean, keep us hidden?” I ask Bay.

  “The temple is the only place you might be safe,” she says. “And even here, not for long. It’s dangerous Above.”

  I know that. It’s dangerous for me everywhere.

  “You trust Ciro,” I say. “Why?”

  “Because he is the leader of the movement to save the Below,” Bay says. “He believes that the Above should not let Atlantia die.”

  “Why would he care about any of us?” I ask.

  “Because of the shells,” Bay says.

  Because of the shells. What does she mean?

  “I didn’t know anything about them until I came Above,” Bay says. “But Ciro told me. And others, too. There have been shells coming up with the bodies for years—in the pockets of the dead, or tied around their necks like amulets. At first the cullers—the ones who take any valuables they can find from the corpses that make it through the mines—threw away the shells on the beach. You can find them everywhere up here—they’re not worth much. But then, one day, someone picked one up. And heard a voice. A voice from the Below. Not a siren voice, commanding. Just a human voice, talking.

  “The voice disappeared after it had been heard once,” Bay says. “People thought that the first person was making things up. But then others started walking along the shore and picking up shells and listening, and sometimes they heard people speaking, too. The cullers began to realize that the shells with the voices in them must be the shells they found on the bodies from the Below. They started bringing those shells to Ciro instead of discarding them. The sounds of the voices broke his heart.