Atlantia, Page 24

  “Excellent,” Nevio says.

  I hear them jimmying with the lock on the closet door. Fen and I pull the robes in front of us and make ourselves as small as we can in the back, but I worry it’s not enough. Are we about to be caught?

  “This isn’t a permanent solution,” the other voice warns, and Nevio laughs. He seems a little farther away. I can hear one of the bats shrieking and the cage opening. What is he doing?

  “I know,” he says. “You only have to give me long enough to speak. Then we’ll have someone come back and get rid of him.”

  “Where will you take him?” the other man asks.

  “We can dump him in the ocean,” Nevio says. “That seems appropriate. He seemed to have a fascination with its abominations.”

  The other person laughs. “Everything has gone very smoothly.”

  “Yes,” Nevio agrees. “But I wish we knew what he was doing down near the water.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” the other man says. “It’s as you said. He was fascinated by the ocean. He walked down by the shore all the time, gathering up shells and watching the waves.”

  The key engages in the lock, and the closet door opens.

  I hold my breath. Fen is quiet as can be and I send up a silent prayer to my mother and the gods that he won’t cough right now.

  And then I stop praying and have to try not to scream, because someone is being pushed into the closet, someone slack and heavy and dead, and he lands in front of us, on us, and then the door swings shut, they lock it again, and the body is still on me, and I know exactly who it is. I saw his face in that moment of light.

  Ciro.

  “Might as well dump this in there as well, for now,” Nevio says.

  And then the door opens again, and they throw something else in—another body, this one tiny, but just as lifeless as Ciro’s.

  It’s one of the temple bats.

  It’s so dark, and I scrabble for the closet door as soon as I hear Nevio and the other man leave the storage room. I find the inside lock and twist it, pushing the door open, and the bats all stare at me with wide eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to them, to Ciro. “I’m so sorry.”

  I should have told Ciro what Nevio was. I should have trusted Ciro. But I didn’t, and now he’s dead. After everything he did to help us.

  He’s dead because of me.

  “Rio,” Fen says. “It’s all right.”

  I shake my head. “How can it be all right?” I look at Ciro, his wild hair and his poor, dead face. I put my hand on his chest, but I feel no rise and fall, no heartbeat. I can’t see a wound, but the lack of life in him, the emptiness of his eyes, is grotesque. Is this how it was for my mother? Did Nevio himself administer the poison this time, or did he once again get someone to do the dirty work?

  “It’s all right,” Fen says again, pulling off his mask so he can speak to me face-to-face, “because True and Bay got Below. Did you hear Nevio? He doesn’t know what Ciro was doing at the water. Ciro must have already helped Bay and True leave on the transport. Remember? Nevio didn’t see Bay and True. He saw Ciro, alone. We still have a chance. You still have to speak.”

  Ciro is dead.

  The sirens are dead.

  Maire is dead; my mother is dead.

  We’re all going to die.

  How is Fen staying so clear about all this?

  And then I remember. He is already dying. He’s been dying for months.

  But Bay and True—they have to live. I have to do what I can to make that happen. And I want to live, too.

  Maire said I would know when it was time.

  It’s time.

  I have to go out in the temple. I have to speak.

  I put my hand on Ciro’s eyes to close them. He was willing to help me. But I have to do it alone. I touch the bats’ cage as I stand up.

  “You’re right,” I say to Fen.

  He stands up, too. “I’ll come with you. You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

  “I won’t be alone,” I say. I feel like Bay will be with me. And my mother. And her sister.

  And there is something else I need Fen to do.

  “Please,” I say. “Let them go.”

  His face changes. For the first time, I see him break. “I can’t,” he says.

  I realize that he thinks I mean Bay, and True. And I understand.

  “The bats,” I say, pointing to the cages. “Can you find a way to let them go?”

  Fen nods. Relief washes over me. The bats are not meant to be locked up like this. They need to be free. I will speak better if they are free.

  “Thank you,” I say to Fen. “I’ll see you again.” And then, before I creep out into the hall of the temple, I touch Fen’s shoulder in farewell. Even though I’m not who he wants and he’s not who I want, we understand each other. I will do what I can to save what’s left.

  CHAPTER 29

  Priests and guards line the halls. Many of them; one of me. But I remember Maire at the floodgates, and on the small island.

  You don’t see me, I say to the priests and the guards, as I walk among them down the narrow hall, our robes almost brushing, their faces so near that I know the colors of their eyes.

  And they don’t see me.

  It is a strange feeling to walk among the people of the Above and have them look past me and through me. In a way, however, it is like speaking in the Below without my real voice. In a way, it feels familiar.

  The temple is full, and Nevio stands at the pulpit. Where are the sirens? Ciro said the Council planned to bring their bodies to the temple for a public viewing. Then I see black boxes set up in the side aisles, and a note of foreboding rings in my heart. The boxes weren’t there when I came in last night.

  I count them. Twenty-seven.

  I stay to the side, pulling up the hood of my brown robe. The temple is full of people—they even stand in the aisles, in the nave—and if I keep out of the main aisle, and move slowly, I don’t think anyone will notice me. I don’t want to use my voice again, not yet, but I have to see the sirens’ bodies. I have to know.

  “People of the Above,” Nevio says, “we are glad and grateful to be back among you. We have yearned for this moment for so long.”

  His voice sounds perfect here. His tones seem familiar and comfortable, right, and what he says is a flawless combination of coercion and command. Even now, even knowing what he is, I can’t tell when he speaks the truth. There is often some of it mixed in with his lies.

  I walk until I reach the nearest box. It is raised above the ground but low enough for me to see inside.

  And there is a siren.

  She died screaming.

  It is hard to look.

  Nevio keeps speaking. Has he seen me yet? I don’t think so. I keep walking, my head low. People let me pass without noticing. Was my single command enough to hold them all for this long?

  Or is it Nevio’s voice that has them held?

  “The sirens are gone,” he says. “The day has come at last when the Above need no longer fear anything from the Below.”

  And then, at the end of the nave, there she is. They have tucked her away, and at first I find this strange, because then fewer people can see her, and I thought the point of bringing the bodies here was for people to see the sirens dead. But then I understand why they didn’t put her body near the front.

  Because Maire’s face is at peace.

  She looks beautiful in a way that is something like the sea, something like the sun. It is difficult to turn away, though it hurts so much to see her like this. I touch the edge of her robe and move toward the center aisle of the nave. It is time to be seen. It is time to be heard.

  “We knew this day would come,” Nevio says, his voice rolling over the pulpit, down the aisle. He opens his arms. “It is t
ime for the Above to rid yourselves of the burden of the Below once and for all. It is your time.”

  I step out into the center aisle. Nevio looks up and our eyes meet, with the gods watching all around. And I realize that he has come to believe his own lies. He believes that he shapes the world as he speaks.

  People turn to see what Nevio sees. Does he know who I am? Does he remember now that I came Above?

  “Who is that?” someone asks.

  I push back the hood of my robe. People move out of my way to let me pass. My feet on the marble sound like my mother’s did when she went up in the near silence before a service. The jar of water still sits on the altar, and light shines through the windows Above.

  “I am Rio Conwy,” I say, and for a moment I can say nothing more.

  Lies and truth have been spoken in this temple, and now my name is there with all the rest of it.

  I see hatred and recognition in Nevio’s eyes. He remembers now that I came Above, and he must also realize who made him forget. Maire. She was more powerful than Nevio in that moment, and in many others.

  I am not afraid.

  I know how to do this. Maire showed me, every step, from the first day in the deepmarket to the last day on the island shore. She even showed me what to say.

  I turn my back on Nevio and face the people of the Above. I speak. I ask.

  “Listen.”

  I feel it coming to me, going from me—all my siren power in that single word, everything I have saved, spent.

  I want it to be this way. I want them to listen, but I want to speak to them as a person. Someone like them. Then maybe they will understand.

  I want to be heard.

  I can use my real voice now, stripped-down, still strong. I am as human as each of them, and they will hear that, if they can do what I asked and listen. I won’t command them to do anything. That would be wrong. And that would not hold. They have to want to save us.

  I know what Bay is saying at this moment, Below. What we are saying, together. I know her mind, and she knows my voice. We are water, the same; the river and the bay.

  I hear my voice in the temple, and Bay’s voice in my head, and Maire and Oceana, too. They speak with me, two dead and one living, all wanting the same miracle, for Atlantia to be saved.

  “The people of Atlantia need you,” I say. “And you need us. We need to help each other.”

  The gargoyle gods look down. I have seen their counterparts all my life. I know their sharp teeth and their stone gazes. I can almost see through Bay’s eyes, what she sees now in the temple Below.

  “For those who live Above, the gods look like the creatures of the Below. For the people Below, they are the animals that walked Above. But they are the same gods. Whether we made them or discovered them, they are the same. And we are the same. We are all human, Above and Below. Even the sirens. They are different, but difference does not have to mean death. It can mean life. Ours, and yours.”

  The temple is nearly silent. Even Nevio stays quiet, listening. But he is smiling. He thinks I have made a mistake. He knows I spent it all on that word—Listen. I asked them to listen, and they do, even Nevio. But he thinks that as soon as I am done speaking and the power of that word is broken, he will be able to come in and finish me, make short work of all I’ve said. Because he won’t hesitate to use his voice on them. He won’t balk at telling them what to do.

  Don’t think of him. Think of your mother and your aunt and your sister. Think of the boy Bay loves. Think of the boy you love.

  “It will be the most difficult thing we have ever done,” I say. “We will have to care about those in the other world as much as we care about those who are among us. For me this is easy, because my sister is there. She is not with me.”

  And when I say the words, they become true. I no longer feel Bay with me.

  Is she gone? What has happened Below?

  In that moment I falter, thinking of her, and the power of my voice is spent.

  Nevio makes his move. “This is not the order of things,” he says, leaning over the pulpit. “The Below had their time to be the world of the privileged, to make decisions about who lived and where. Now it is your time. And remember, the Below spawned the sirens. Those abnormal, mutated creatures. This girl is one of them.”

  “The sirens are human,” I say. “No better or worse than any other humans. Nevio knows this. He is a siren, too.”

  Murmurs and cries break out in the crowd.

  I didn’t want to tell them. But they should know.

  Nevio’s face registers a brief moment of shock, and then he smiles again. “She is from the Below,” he says, “and she is wrong. Ignorant. The Below is ignorant. But you, the people of the Above, are not. You are ready to be free. Free of supporting those Below, free of worrying about the past. It is time to move forward, without the fetters of Atlantia encumbering you, holding you back.”

  He is so powerful that it feels like there is a voice inside me responding to him, wanting to obey and believe what he says.

  But it feels foreign. It feels wrong, like he has placed something there and then called to it. Not like it is part of me. When Maire spoke that last time, on the island, it did not feel foreign. It felt like she was singing a song I knew, one that was part of me, not put there by anyone else. She gave voice to something essential, something belonging to everyone alive.

  Some people push for the exit. Where do they think they will go?

  Some people kneel down to pray. Who do they think will hear?

  I see Fen trying to get to me, his mask pulled over his face.

  The peacekeepers of the Above are coming for me now. In the melee someone knocks the jar of water from the altar.

  The glass shatters. For a moment, the silence is absolute.

  Nevio and I draw in our breath at the same time, but before we say anything, someone at the back calls out, his voice desperate and anguished, ringing down along the nave and under the stained glass.

  “The idea that we could do this,” he says. “That we could save everyone. That we could overcome the problems of the past. It seems too good to be true.”

  “It is too good to be true,” Nevio says.

  Until now I felt strong, but my body is losing its battle with the Above. I feel fatigue coming over me, darkness asking me to sink into it and rest.

  Nevio sees the weakness. His eyes are bright with power, and his voice is still strong. How does he manage to avoid the exhaustion?

  I look up to the gods for help and something alive stares down.

  One of the bats from the Below. Fen has let them out. I see them, one by one, flying in to perch on the gods of the Above the way they did in the Below. I feel strength coming back to me, just from looking at them.

  I feel better when the bats are near. They are from the Below. And I calm them, too. We help one another.

  I remember the little body thrown in after Ciro’s, and suddenly I know.

  This is how Nevio plans to survive. He takes the strength from the bats. He uses them up to stay Above.

  I won’t do that.

  But the water on the altar is from the Below. And it can’t be killed. The water can’t be hurt.

  I look back to where Maire’s body rests.

  She was the most powerful siren I’ve ever known.

  And then I swear I hear her.

  No, Maire says. You are.

  I walk up to the place in front of the pulpit where the jar broke and put my hands in the water on the ground. I hear people gasp. Then I show them my wet palms. “We shouldn’t be afraid to touch the Below,” I say. “Haven’t you missed it, deep inside? Don’t you wonder what is down there?”

  Some of them nod—only a few—but hope starts in my heart.

  “Atlantia,” I say, “is a city unlike any other. Your ancestors helped bu
ild it. You have helped keep it alive. Wouldn’t you like to see it?”

  And then I tell them about the city, the temple, the plazas, the wishing pools. I tell them about the trees, about the way the city breathes. I tell them about the songs of the sirens, the sea gardens, the racing lanes, about the gods, the gondolas. I tell them about the deepmarket, the drowning.

  “And then there are the people of Atlantia,” I say, and my voice breaks, thinking of True and Bay, of all the others. “We need to hurry,” I tell the crowd. I feel stronger, but I can tell that it will not last; it cannot hold. The water can’t help for long. “If we don’t save Atlantia, then it will die. The city. The people. Please.”

  “We would have to trust that any sirens left would use their power for good,” someone says.

  “We would have to trust you to do the same,” I say. “We are human. We are no better or worse than you.” I remember that there are people like True now, people who developed traits in response to the sirens. “You shape us; we shape you,” I say. “I believe it is what the gods intended. For us to change and teach each other.”

  And I realize: I know the third miracle. It’s Maire and what she did. And it wasn’t only her grand act of sacrifice, her superb display of power on the island. It was the way she saved voices and sent up shells for years, each one a personal, critical expression of faith and hope and humanity. “You have heard some of us.”

  “Yes,” someone says. “We have.”

  I hear the sound of a hundred tiny wings, the soft cries of small miracles. The bats leave their perches on the gods and fly above us. “Oh,” the people say in unison.

  As the bats pass by the windows, their blue wings outstretched, it is as beautiful as the ocean.

  I am crying and I am strong.

  I see Fen in the crowd. I smile at him. He did what I asked. He let them free.

  Then one of the bats comes down, closer, closer. It settles on my shoulder.

  And then another.

  And another.

  They soar right past Nevio and land on me. Their claws hurt a little, but I know I seem like home to them. I know they recognize Atlantia in me.