Atlantia, Page 4

  I stand up and walk to the altar and take one of the candles and light it. Our candles don’t last long so that we can conserve our precious air. I kneel and act like I’m praying for a few minutes, until my candle drips and the wick begins to blacken and fall apart on itself. When it finishes burning, I stand up.

  True is gone.

  Back in my room, I lie down on my bed and stare up at the ceiling.

  I wish more than anything that I could hear Bay laugh. Even before she left, her laughter had gone.

  Sometimes, to tease me, Bay would make a list of all the reasons to stay Below as a sort of companion for my list of reasons I wanted to go Above. She wrote down things like: The sea gardens are full of color. The cafés are alive with laughter. The leaves on the metal trees catch the light. The plazas have wishing pools where we can toss our gold coins to send to the needy Above. The water changes as much as the sky. She and I compared notes, whispering so that no one else could hear us.

  I roll over onto my side, feeling my braid underneath my head as I do. I haven’t undone it since Bay left. It’s wound with those blue ribbons, a complicated, beautiful style, and though I know I look rough and that pieces are coming out, flyaway bits escaping, I don’t want to undo it. I braided her hair this way that morning, but it’s much easier to do on someone else than it is to do for yourself. Once I take it out, I won’t be able to put it back.

  Is Bay having the same trouble Above? Did she throw away the blue ribbons? Do they prefer to wear other colors where she is now?

  Maybe if I talked to Maire, she could help me. She could teach me how to use and manipulate my voice to get what I need. And she said she knew what I wanted.

  But has using her voice really worked for my aunt, the sea witch? There are stories about her, and people are afraid of her, but has she ever gotten what she wanted? What good has it done her, in the end?

  Look what happened when I said one little word, no. Now Justus can’t look at me and Maire won’t leave me alone. What if someone else, a stranger, had heard me?

  I hear Maire in my mind again. You think I’m the evil sister, and that your mother was good.

  Must there always be one of each? That’s what I’ve always secretly wondered. If so, I know which sister I am. Bay is not perfect, but she is good. She believes in the gods. She loves our city and our people. She meant to stay Below and serve them all her life.

  So if everything is reversed, if she’s gone Above and I’m trapped Below, then perhaps I am the good sister after all.

  I don’t feel it. And if I use my voice on purpose, I will have crossed a line, and there will be no coming back.

  Maire is not the answer.

  I know I need to go Above. I don’t yet know how. The wave of hope I felt in the temple has spent itself on the shore of exhaustion and loss.

  The pillow is wet from my tears. Perhaps I should try to catch them in a bowl and give them to the priests to use for those who decide to spend their lives down here in the dark Below. We’ll all weep and bless one another, those of us too scared or stupid or late to try a life Above.

  CHAPTER 4

  I cried so long that I slept in, and I’m tardy for work. I dress in my robes and snatch up my air mask by the strap and sling it over my shoulder. When I glance in the mirror, I see that my hair looks unkempt like Maire’s and that I have the same blue smudges under my eyes that I saw under True’s last night.

  I know his pain was real. But I can’t care about anyone’s pain but my own. I am an aching, raw, walking nerve. Summoning enough restraint to keep my voice back is the most I can manage.

  My classmate Hali notices the shadows. She and Bay were friends, and in the days since my sister left, Hali has been protective, providing a buffer between the rest of the temple acolytes and me at prayers and in the dining hall. I’m grateful to her, especially at mealtime, when we give thanks for those Above who sacrificed to provide our food and I can’t help but think of Bay.

  I wonder if we are always with the people who live Above the way they are always with us Below. We think of them when we eat the food they provide, knowing that each sweet or savory bite cost them some of their limited time on earth to produce. Do they resent us? I would.

  “Maybe you should rest,” Hali says. “You seem more and more tired every day since . . .” Hali trails off, as if waiting for permission to say Bay’s name. I can’t seem to find it in myself to give, so I stand there, unhelpful and unbending.

  “It’s good for me to work,” I say. “We lose ourselves in service.” It’s a parroted, pet phrase of the priests in the temple. “Bay would have wanted it this way.”

  Now I’ve said my sister’s name, and it hangs over us, pressing down. She weighs on us the way the water weighs on the city. She is everywhere and all around.

  “Oh,” Hali says, “of course.” She holds out a pack for me. “I brought you your work kit.”

  “Thank you,” I say. She’s saved me a trip down into the workroom with all the other acolytes so I don’t have to face more questions.

  Hali nods, and before I can overthink it, I ask her something. “Were you surprised when she left?”

  Hali holds her work kit on her hip, the way I’ve seen her balance her baby brothers and sisters when they come during visiting hours. “Yes,” Hali says. “Bay loved Atlantia. She loved the temple. I never thought she’d leave. Some of us thought that she might be Minister someday.”

  I nod. I knew that people whispered about Bay following in my mother’s footsteps. Bay knew it, too. But she never wanted to be the Minister. “Too much pressure, too many eyes watching,” she always said. “I’d rather be a priest and serve the people and the gods that way.” Bay always thought she’d like to teach in the temple school or administer at the floodgates. “I want to help people when they have to let their loved ones go,” she said. That was before we had to prepare our own mother’s body to go up through the floodgates. The memory washes around the edges of my mind, but I refuse to look at that dark place.

  “But I can also understand Bay wanting to live a life of sacrifice,” Hali says. “And the best way to do that is to go Above.”

  “So that’s why you think she left?”

  “Of course,” Hali says. “Bay is one of the few people I know who could live a life of sacrifice.”

  Hali’s argument isn’t without logic. But why wouldn’t Bay tell me that she wanted to serve in the Above? Why did she ask me to promise to stay, and then leave?

  Why trick me?

  Was she afraid I’d be angry?

  “She didn’t tell you she was going, did she?” Hali asks.

  “No.”

  “She must not have wanted to hurt you,” Hali says gently.

  But Bay knew her leaving would hurt me. I move suddenly with the pain of that, and Hali takes a step back. “I’d better get to work now,” I say.

  “I’ll see you later,” Hali says.

  I go down the hall from our living quarters and through the temple school. I know these rooms and hallways as well as I know the temple itself. I know who lives behind each door in the students’ living quarters. I know the smells of the classrooms and workrooms, the scuff marks on the floors, the way the chairs cut into your back so that you are uncomfortable unless you sit with perfect posture. The walls are tiled in green and blue and white, sea colors, but the grout in between them is dirty brown from so many years of wear, even though the acolytes clean it constantly. That’s what we spend most of our time doing, when we’re not learning about the gods and the Divide. Later we get promoted to cleaning the temple itself, but that’s not much easier. It’s hard work balancing on the ladders while carrying soap and water. And the gods do not seem alive when you clean them. You have to take extra care as you wash their claws and paws, their hooked little hands, because those are the most delicate parts of the sculptures.

>   I bite my lip, trying to keep that other memory at bay, but pieces keep coming back—the way my mother’s hands and feet were cold and still when we washed them as we prepared her for burial, how dry her hair felt when we braided it. How I kept trying not to look at her eyes.

  Outside at last, I walk under the trees in the temple plaza. The leaves make a sound like chimes in the movement of the city’s air currents. When the morning light comes in through the glittering metal of the trees, it is one of the most beautiful sights in Atlantia. This much loveliness requires constant maintenance—cleaning and repairing the thousands of leaves.

  And the temple trees are different from the other trees in Atlantia—there are statues of the gods up there, high in the branches, looking down and watching us, as if each tree is a small temple. These gods are made of metal, not stone, but they are still sacred. Because of them the maintenance crews that take care of the other trees in Atlantia can’t take care of the ones at the temple. The priests and acolytes have to do it. Or, rather, one acolyte has to do it. I’ve proven so efficient that now the task is entirely up to me. I can’t say that I’m sorry, because I would much rather work out here.

  I shrug the air-mask equipment off my back, which is against the rules. Most people seem to be accustomed to the mask’s constant presence, but I take it off every chance I can. I hate the way it catches on the leaves—I already have to carry my repair equipment up with me, so bringing the mask as well makes everything unnecessarily bulky. I climb up into one of the trees and find Efram sitting in his spot at the top, his sharp metal teeth bared as he squats on his haunches. Sure enough, one of his paws has come loose, a common problem. “Efram,” I say, talking to him as if he’s alive. “What have you been grabbing at? What could be out of the reach of a god?”

  Efram glares at me as I pull down my visor and fire up the torch from my kit to weld him back together. It seems as if he’s saying You know as well as I do that this isn’t my fault.

  The problem is the temple bats. During the day, they sleep in their roosts inside the temple’s bell tower. At night, when they’re free to fly, they like to come settle in these trees, and they are especially fond of sitting on the gods and leaving guano like offerings.

  But no one is allowed to harm the bats. They are the second of the three miracles that we were told would happen after the Divide if the gods were pleased with us. As miracles, they have our protection.

  At the time of the Divide, no one brought any animals Below. The leaders thought that the animals would use up too much precious air. They also believed that the creatures of the Above and the Below should remain where they were. To keep us mindful of one another’s worlds, they assigned land-animal faces and bodies to the gods for those of us who worship Below, and sea forms for those Above. It’s strange to me to think that Efram looks entirely different to worshippers outside Atlantia.

  When the bats were first seen, they were brown. It took years to catch the animals as they darted around Atlantia’s skies, but finally our ancestors succeeded.

  And they were shocked at what they found. Over time, faster than should be scientifically possible, the bats’ wings had changed from pinkish in color to a beautiful translucent blue, as if to mirror the sea that had become their sky. Someone remarked upon how much they resembled certain gargoyles of the temple, and the priests saw that it was true. It became clear that the bats were not a nuisance but were, in fact, the second miracle. The sirens had been the first.

  We are still waiting for the third.

  Justus is the one in charge of taking care of the bats and the roosts where they come home to sleep during the day. It is one of the most sacred offices a priest can hold. Bay and I used to love it when our singing in the temple would wake some of the bats and they would fly in front of the rose window. The wings of blue were every bit as beautiful and maybe more so than the stained glass.

  The bats aren’t as common here as they once were Above, perhaps in response to their new environment. We rarely see them. But it is nice to know that we are not alone down in this city, that they skim around after the dimming time. And I know they are here because I see the evidence in the trees.

  After I get Efram’s leg back on, I climb down to the bottom of the tree and pick up a scatter of silver leaves that came off during the night. With small spurts of fire from my torch, I carefully weld them back on the way Justus taught me, attaching them to the branches by their ends so that they have full range of motion when the wind comes through.

  “These repetitive tasks are symbols,” Justus told me, “of the vigilance we must keep in order to remain righteous and content with the lot we’ve been given.”

  I have tried to be righteous all my life. Yet I have never been content.

  When I get back to the temple, Justus waits for me. “The Minister would like to see you,” he says.

  “Me?” I ask. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Justus says. He reaches out to take my work kit from me and I hand it to him. He looks sad. He does know what Nevio wants. Before, I would have asked Justus to tell me. But now I don’t dare push him.

  “When?”

  “Now,” Justus says.

  Nevio’s office used to be my mother’s. I spent many hours in here watching her work. The room has a small stained-glass window. I know its colors as well as I know the claws and the teeth of the gods in the trees. Some of the reference books on the shelves are ones my mother used. The desk, made from solid mahogany, is carved with the Minister’s insignia. That is also the same.

  But the rest is different.

  I sit down across from him on a chair made of glass and steel and I fold my hands.

  “You have suffered two great losses in the past year,” Nevio says. “First your mother, and now your sister.”

  I nod.

  “Your profound grief is understandable,” Nevio says, “and it also helps us face some of the realities of your situation.” He sounds almost kind, and he leans forward across the desk to look into my eyes. “Rio,” he says, “the temple has never been the right fit for you. Your mother and Bay belonged here, but this is never where you imagined yourself. Is it?”

  I don’t like Nevio, but he’s right. I never had the faith that Bay and my mother did. A life alone in the temple was never what I imagined for myself. I thought I would go Above, and then when I promised Bay that I would stay, I thought I would be living and working in the temple with her.

  “Where would you like to go?” Nevio asks.

  I want to go Above so much that I think, for one short moment, about telling him. But even if Nevio could bend the rules, even if he could get the Council to agree, I don’t trust him.

  A flicker of annoyance and impatience crosses Nevio’s face. I’m taking too much of his time. “Let’s try another question,” he says. “What do you like to do?”

  “I like to fix things,” I say, in a voice as stupid as he expects.

  “Yes,” he says. “Justus tells me that you are the one who has kept the temple trees in such good repair.”

  I open my mouth to thank him, because I assume that’s what he wants, but before I can say anything he speaks again.

  “Still, I’m sure we can teach another acolyte to perform your tasks here,” Nevio says. “And I know they’re always in need of good workers down in the mining bays where they repair the drones. That seems like a perfect fit for you.”

  The mining bays are down in the deepest reaches of the city, as far away from the temple as possible. It’s the lowest you can physically go in Atlantia, as close as you can get to the seafloor, where the drones mine for magnesium and copper, cobalt and gold.

  Is Nevio doing this on purpose? Has he sensed, in some way, how much I want to be Above so he’s sinking me deeper?

  It’s clear that he wants me gone.

  “When my mother died,” I say, “I was
assured that the temple would always be my home.”

  “Of course,” Nevio says. “It will always be your spiritual home. And for now you can keep the room you shared with your sister. The machinists’ quarters are full, I’m told.”

  At least I won’t have to move out of the room where Bay and I lived. But I still can’t believe Nevio is making me leave the temple. Can he do this? I suppose he can, since he’s the Minister, but it feels wrong. Should I talk to some of the priests? Then I remember Justus’s expression when he told me Nevio needed to see me. Justus knows, and even he isn’t going to help me.

  “I saved one of the pages your mother wrote,” Nevio says. “I thought you would like to see it.” He holds out the paper and I snatch it away. I can’t help myself. He shouldn’t have the things she’s touched.

  Rio is not intended for a life as a priest, my mother wrote, and I stop, a sudden sharp ache pinpointing the center of my chest, as if I’ve experienced a physical injury. My mother didn’t write that. She couldn’t have. But there it is, right in front of me, her handwriting as neat and measured as always. Rio doesn’t often think of the collective good, which comes innately to Bay. I’m not sure that’s something that can be taught. I don’t think that Rio is cold or strange—few people can care about the group as a whole the way a Minister or a priest must. But sometimes I reproach myself. I worry that it is my fault, that I’ve stunted her growth. But I cannot see her suffer, and in that I am a hypocrite. For that feeling has nothing to do with the collective good, and everything to do with one specific child. My child.

  “This must hurt you to read,” Nevio says.

  Yes. It does.

  “You’ve gone through her journal?” I ask.

  “Every page,” he says smoothly.