CHAPTER 13
It feels like I might be the last person alive in Atlantia. The deepmarket stalls are shuttered and locked against thieves, and it’s dark and quiet. But then I hear sounds, hiding sounds, hurrying sounds, and I move fast and keep my eyes straight ahead and make sure I stand tall and walk with my shoulders squared.
Without Bay singing, it was too hard to sleep, and I decided to do what she did when she couldn’t rest.
I decided to go to the night races.
When I get to the racing lanes, I climb up into the stands. The water doesn’t look blue in the dim lighting. It’s no color at all. People talk in murmurs as they make high-stakes bets. They don’t laugh and joke the way they do during the day. When a bettor comes up and asks what I want to wager, I shake my head. I don’t have money for this.
“Then why are you here?” he asks.
“I came to watch,” I say. In the dark my flat voice sounds different—inarguable and unapproachable instead of stupid. It matches the gray light. He mutters but leaves me alone.
How often did Bay come here? I wonder. I have her shell in my pocket, for comfort, but I won’t get it out. In the dark, crowded stands, it would take one bump or jostle and I could lose hold of the shell, and then it would clatter and shatter on the hard ground below.
Even thinking about it makes me feel sick.
Maybe her voice will come back. Maybe I need to give it time.
I brought Maire’s shell with me, too. I couldn’t bring myself to leave it behind. And then there’s the air mask, slung over my back, as if I’m trying to pretend like tonight is just a normal outing to the deepmarket, no different from any other. As if by obeying the rule about carrying the mask, I won’t get in trouble for breaking curfew.
The announcer doesn’t shout out the names of the racers. Instead he holds up a sign and someone shines a spotlight on it so we can see who’s up next. Everything is more discreet, more serious. If the peacekeepers decide to make a raid, everyone caught out after curfew could go to prison. But I’ve heard that some Council members like to come betting, too, and so the races aren’t ever shut down permanently.
I feel sad that Bay came here without me. And I wonder how she felt all those years before my mother died, knowing that I planned to leave. I didn’t mean to be unkind. I just knew I couldn’t stay. I always felt close to Bay, because she was the one who knew my secret about the Above. But I wonder if knowing that secret made her feel far away from me. She always knew I had to leave her.
And I didn’t know that being apart would feel like this. If I’d known, would I still have gone?
Did Bay ever race at night? She always came home cold but dry, but she could have worn a cap, covered her hair. The thought of her being in that water makes me shiver. But watching the swimmers, who are constantly, quietly moving to keep themselves from getting too cold, who have gray faces in the grainy light, I realize that I should probably try this, too.
Swimming in the cold and the dark is what it will be like when I try to go up. Even if the sun shines Above, it won’t reach me for a long, long time.
But I don’t want to race here. I’ve heard what people say about the racers, and I watch how they swim. These are the races for people who no longer hope. These people want something singular and unattainable, something no one else can understand.
These are the people who are not happy in Atlantia, who have things they cannot forget or who feel wrong in some way, as though they do not belong.
I understand them, and it frightens me.
I wish I knew a siren who would soothe me, tell me it was all right, that I can be happy, that I belong here Below.
But the siren I know does not soothe.
I lift the other shell to my ear.
“Where do you live?” I ask.
It’s late. It’s dark. She could be sleeping.
But she answers.
Maire lives in an apartment in a neighborhood not far from the deepmarket. It looks completely unremarkable from the outside, one door among many all lined up in a row. The sky is low here, so the narrow building is only two stories high. It appears that there are only two small rooms per apartment, one room set on top of another. I have to squint in the dim light of the streetlamps to make sure I have the right number.
Even though I knew my mother died on Maire’s doorstep, I’ve never known where Maire lived. I assumed she would live up in the Council blocks with the other sirens. I pictured my mother dying there, in one of their clean-swept, candy-colored entryways. The steps at Maire’s apartment are gray, like everything else in this kind of light.
I’ve seen everything now. My mother’s dead body in the morgue, her insignia worn around another Minister’s neck, her office cluttered with someone else’s books, and now this, the place where she died.
I’ve seen everything and I still feel like I know nothing.
Before I can knock on the door, Maire opens it. Compared to the dimness outside, the hallway behind her is a flood of light, like she’s cracked open the sun. “Come in,” she says.
“I thought you would live up near the Council,” I say.
“I prefer to live down here,” she says. “Up there they’re always listening. Down here Atlantia is too loud for them to hear much.”
“I’m surprised they allow it.”
The lower room is a kitchen area with a bathroom at the back. Maire leads me through it and up the stairs to the apartment’s other room, a sitting room with a couch, where I assume she must sleep. The shades on the windows are dark and thick—blackout shades, to keep in the light. I couldn’t even see a sliver of it from outside. Though the neighborhood is not one of the nicer ones in Atlantia and the apartment is small, it appears that Maire lives here alone—a very grand luxury in a city where space is at a premium.
“I told you I was selfish,” Maire says, as if she knows what I’m thinking. “This is part of what I’ve bargained for, all these years. There are times when they need a siren who is not an empty, vacant puppet. Sometimes they require someone who has actual power. I do what they say, and they let me live where I want.” She gestures for me to sit down on a red chair, upholstered in thick, fine velvet.
The room looks nothing like I expected. I thought there would be shelves crowded with jars full of mysterious things, shadows everywhere, not this place of order and light. I expected more of a deepmarket jumble, but the few things here are well-made, cared for—two chairs and a couch; a table; a delicate, green glass vase; a shelf of books; a jar of dirt. I wonder if it’s real.
On the table between us sits a large, golden bowl full of different-colored shells. It’s odd to see so many in one place. “How did you get all of these?”
Maire shrugs. “How does one get a collection of anything?” she asks. “I kept an eye out in the deepmarket. When I saw one I liked, I bought it. I’ve been gathering them for years.”
“Is that how you hear me?” I ask Maire, gesturing to the shells. “Do you pick up one and listen?”
“No,” Maire says. “Those shells are all empty.”
“That’s what you said about the sirens,” I say. “You said they were empty. Vacant.”
“Yes,” Maire says. “That’s how the Council wants them to be. And over the years, the Council has become very good at breaking sirens down.”
“What happened?” I ask. “You told me about the time when the sirens were worshipped. When did they come to be hated?”
“It’s a terrible story,” Maire says. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”
I am, but I’m not sure I want to hear her tell it. It’s one thing to hear of the past from a distance, in the shell, removed from the power of Maire’s voice. It’s another to sit in her home, to look her in the eye as she speaks.
“Did my mother ever come inside this room?” I ask.
“Not on the day she died,” Maire says.
She doesn’t have to answer me directly, because we’re speaking with each other in person. For a moment I want to ask her questions in the shell, see her dance. But that feels wrong. She is not a puppet. Neither am I. She gave me the shell as a gift for when we are apart, so I can keep learning.
But right now we are together.
What does Maire know? I still feel that she hasn’t told me everything about my mother’s death. And is Maire aware that Nevio is a siren? Even though the thought of Nevio fills me with revulsion, I have a strange feeling that the three of us—Nevio, Maire, and me—are connected in some way. We are all sirens who have secrets.
In the full light, Maire looks old and young, as if she has always been and as if she is very new. The light dances on her hair and in her eyes. She waits for me to decide whether or not I will listen as if she has all the time in the world. At the same time, her very stillness lets me know that we do not, because in that stillness I hear Atlantia breathe. And then I hear something more. Voices.
I draw in my breath.
“Yes,” Maire says. “It’s like I told you at the wishing pool. The voices are all there. Waiting for someone to hear. I’ve listened to many of them over the years, but I’m finished with that now. I’ve heard enough. Now it’s my time to tell.”
“And it’s still my time to listen.” I keep the bitterness from my voice, but my heart is full of it.
“Yes,” Maire says. “But not for much longer, Rio. Not for much longer at all.”
She’s going to tell me the story, and I’m going to listen. And I am afraid. I wonder if this is how my mother felt, when she went into the floodgate chamber for her trial to be Minister and the doors opened and her sister came inside.
“After several generations,” Maire begins, “some of the sirens began to use their power to control the people. And to control one another.”
Her words are simple, no embellishments. Her voice is soft, no force or threat behind it. No anger. No judgment. Only: This is what was, and I am telling it to you.
“When this happened, the majority of the sirens agreed that they should no longer be able to serve as Ministers. They didn’t want the leader of Atlantia to have too much opportunity for unfair persuasion.
“Then, several years later, there was an awful day in the temple when two of the sirens stood up and argued right before the Minister’s sermon.
“One siren stood up and screamed; the other sang.
The one singing said she had to tell the people the truth about our world. The one screaming said the people weren’t ready to hear it, that the truth could ruin them.
“After that no one could make out any of their words, only the sounds, and the sounds were terrible.
“So terrible that some of the worshippers in the temple that day died.
“They fell with blood streaming from their ears and terror in their eyes.
“They died under the statues of the gods and in full view of the congregation, and after they fell, the two sirens stopped screaming and singing. One knelt by the bodies and begged them to come back to life, but of course that didn’t work. Even a siren can’t command such a thing. The other began to weep and could not stop. The peacekeepers broke through at last and took away the sirens and, later, the bodies. No one could believe such a terrible thing had happened in the temple, where everyone is supposed to be safe.
“After that disastrous day, the Council decreed that the sirens should be under their protection and governance. The sirens were so distraught over what had happened that they agreed. They thought it was better for everyone.”
When Maire finishes, Atlantia is quiet. “And so,” Maire says, “began the long domestication and decline of the sirens.”
“Those two sirens,” I ask, “what became of them?”
“One of them agreed to abide by the new rules,” Maire says. “The other committed suicide.”
“How?”
“She drowned herself in the wishing pool,” Maire says. “The one where I met you the other day. She used locks to chain her hands and feet together, and then she threw herself into the water, at night, when she knew no one would come along to save her. Hers was the first voice I was able to hear clearly, years ago. It’s gone now. She’s gone now.”
I don’t know about that. I can picture her in my mind, seaweed-haired, blue-limbed after all these years, lurking at the bottom of the pool, two flat coins settled in the sockets where her eyes used to be. The thought makes me shiver.
“Your mother did love you,” Maire says. “But it made her afraid. You can’t let love make you afraid.”
How can she say that? And how could she leave my mother out on the doorstep that day? If Bay died like that, I would bring her inside, away from prying eyes. I would use my real voice and pray to have her back. Even though it wouldn’t work, I’d have to try.
I stand up to leave. Maire follows me downstairs, turning off the lights as she goes, darkening down the house for the last of the night.
“You know what they were, don’t you?” Maire says as I open the door. “The two sirens in the temple.”
She’s right. I do. Though I don’t know their names, and though Maire didn’t tell me this straight-out, I heard it in her voice. I knew it from the story. “They were sisters,” I say.
“Yes,” Maire says. “No one else knows this anymore but you and I. There had never been two sirens in a family before. There have never been two since.”
Until the two of us.
Until now.