CHAPTER 23
The door slides open, and for the first time in my life I see both sky and land, and they are blue and gray and green and brown and so much lighter than the deep of the ocean that I feel dizzy.
I am Above.
Whatever else happens, I am Above.
It is all glinting light and moving air, light coming down from the sky and reflecting on the water, on the metal bridge that leads from the transport to the shore, air touching every inch of my skin, warm. The sun is a hot, orange circle, like a single piece of coin burning as it dips toward the ocean. I grab on to the rail of the bridge that leads to the land, unsteady on my feet. And then I think I’m going to be sick. It is disconcerting in the extreme to be standing over the water, to see the top of the ocean. It might be how people who live Above would feel if they could stand over the sky.
“It’s all right,” Maire says, and she holds my arm and helps me cross the bridge.
I take my first step ever on real land—on sand, fine and white and brown and mixed through with grass and shells, so much texture, more than even the woodwork in the temple, more than I’ve seen in all my life.
I suck in deep lungfuls of the air, rich and warm and oxygenated, even though I know it’s also thick with pollution and the particulate matter that will eat my lungs away with cancer. My hands still have salt on them from the sea, from my attempt to surface hours ago.
“Rio,” True says. “Trees.”
He’s right. There are silver-gray trees with ash-colored moss hanging from them growing right up out of the sand a few feet in front of us. The color is similar to the trees I know, but they are not the trees I know—these trees are alive, and when their leaves fall off, no one bothers to put them back on because new ones grow. And you could never reattach these fallen leaves—soft, brittle as paper, crumbling in my hands as I bend down to pick them up. I can’t help myself.
And then Maire’s voice is in my ear, and she’s pulling me back up to my feet and away from the leaves. When I turn around, I am stunned to see that the transport has already disappeared Below.
I didn’t even hear it go.
Maire speaks to me quickly as we cross the sand to join the other sirens, who ascend a low, wooden platform. It appears as if it were made from trees like the ones growing on the island. “I have a plan,” Maire says, “for you and True to escape.”
I listen.
“Behind those rocks on your left,” Maire says, “there is a little inlet. Climb in and swim and follow the curve of the inlet. You’ll find a cave, farther back along this shore. Hide there. Wait until it’s nearly dark, if you can. And then swim from this island to the main isle and go to the temple. You’ll see it as soon as you come over that rise.” She points across the water to the shore of the main island.
“How do you know all this?” I ask.
“One of the voices told me,” Maire says. She sounds sad. “This way is best. You would never have survived the floodgates. Your lungs would have burst in the ascent. That’s why I told Nevio what you were doing. We were just in time.”
So she was the one who betrayed me. But how did she know?
“It was another way up,” Maire says, “and you hadn’t chosen mine. At least you have a chance this way.”
“She’s telling the truth,” True says to me softly. “But I think you know that.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t.”
We’ve reached the other sirens. They stand in a line on the platform, their robes of blue undulating in the wind.
People sit in boats near the shore, waiting. People from the Above. “What are they carrying?” I ask, loud enough that the other sirens can hear. “Are those weapons?”
“It doesn’t matter if they are,” one of the sirens says, her tone so confident that I almost believe her.
The sirens have no weapons except for their voices. This is a fool’s errand, one of Nevio’s devising, one that will end in destruction and silence. Why is he doing this? Does he want to be the last siren in the Below? Does he even want to save Atlantia at all?
Nevio himself is nowhere in sight. The other sirens look around for him, too. “It’s all right,” one of them says. “He must be here somewhere.”
The people in the boats wait. The boats are gray, like the trees.
The deepmarket siren raises her arms. The rest look up at her, eager to respond.
“What are the gifts given to we who live Below?” she asks, exactly as my mother used to do on the anniversary of the Divide, as Nevio did this year on the day Bay left and again on the transport.
Where is Nevio now?
And why did he cause the breach in the deepmarket? So that the sirens would come up to try to save the city, thinking that the breach had been an attack from the Above? Will he tell the people Below that the sirens offered themselves as sacrifices to save Atlantia, or will he tell the citizens that the Council purged the Below of our dangerous, evil presence?
Either way, he thinks we are all going to die.
Are we?
“Save your voice,” Maire whispers to me. “But move your lips. So that you don’t draw attention from the others. Don’t try to escape until I tell you.”
After a beat of silence, the sirens all begin calling in response, their voices as textured as this land Above. And it is true that their voices are even more powerful here. I feel the air shivering with sound.
“Long life, health, strength, and happiness.”
“What is the curse of those who live Above?” the deepmarket siren asks.
“Short life, illness, weakness, and misery.”
“Is this fair?”
“It is fair. It is as the gods decreed at the time of the Divide. Some have to stay Above so that humanity might survive Below.”
“Then give thanks.”
I don’t join my voices with the sirens.
I do not speak for the gods. All I ever wanted was to speak for me.
The siren begins asking the questions again. And this time Maire joins her voice with the others.
It is the most sorrowful, singing sound I have ever heard. Through the frightening, layered unison of the other voices, there is Maire’s, apart though she speaks at the same time and with the same words. Her voice is the sound of blue and brown, of trees with no leaves and flooded marketplaces and candles lit in memory of people now gone and gods who never were, a begging, pleading, asking the people of the Above to let us live in our place Below. She is not telling like the others, she is asking.
But even Maire’s voice is not working. I don’t know how I know; I just do. I can’t see the faces of the people on the boats. The boats move up and down on the waves, each moment closer to us. The people watch the sirens. They wait for something. Their faces are terribly blank. I have an impression of unmoving lips, staring eyes. I realize that they wear masks. To protect them from the air? To hide their faces?
The sirens’ voices swell, like a wave of the sea. They rise and fall, the commanding, the cajoling, the sweetness of some voices, the poison of others.
The deepmarket siren has been calling over the water and now she turns back to us to continue the litany.
She opens her mouth and lifts her hands. But she doesn’t speak. She falls.
I don’t understand at first. Neither do the others. One voice less, they keep speaking.
“And have mercy on us.
“And on those who live Above.”
The fallen siren does not move.
The people of Atlantia always thought we had the upper hand over the people of the Above, that we had the power.
But we were wrong.
Somehow, the sirens’ miraculous voices have lost their effect on the people of the Above.
The sirens begin calling for the people of the Above to go back, go back. Leave. Leave.
“Why aren’t our voices working?” one siren asks another in panic.
Another siren starts to run. Before she’s taken more than a few steps, the people in the boats shoot her down, too. True cries out and goes to kneel beside her, to see if there is something he can do, but of course there is nothing. She doesn’t even breathe, only bleeds.
I stare in horror at her crumpled body, her robe pooled blue around her. I think, Like the bat.
The miracles are dying. The sirens no longer have power to dictate what happens Above.
I open my mouth to beg for True. Perhaps I could tell the people in the boats that True’s not a siren, convince them to spare his life.
But then Maire is beside me, speaking into my ear low and urgent. “Save your voice,” she says. “You will need it later.” She smiles at me. “I have enough power to distract them now while you run. I can make them forget there were two more people on the island today.”
“But what about you?” I ask.
Another siren falls, but we three are safe.
Maire takes my hand and presses something hard and fragile into it. I don’t even have to look to know that she has given me another shell. “She will tell you everything,” she says. “You will believe it, if you hear it from her. But I had to save it for a long time. She will speak just once. Be sure you listen.”
“Who?” I ask, hardly daring to hope.
“Your mother,” Maire says. She closes her eyes. “My sister.” Her voice is so full of pride and love that it brings tears to my eyes. It is how I want to speak of Bay. It is how I hope Bay speaks of me.
“You loved her,” I say.
“Always,” Maire says. “I love her still.”
With her eyes closed and her voice soft like this, she looks the smallest bit like my mother, her sister.
“She loved you,” I say.
“Of course she did,” Maire says. “And I care enough about myself to want redemption for the things I’ve done.” Before I can ask what she means, what she’s done, whether she believes in the gods after all, she opens her eyes and looks right at me.
“You didn’t care about me until you heard my voice,” I say.
“Your voice is part of you,” Maire says. “So when I say that I love your voice, which I do, I am also saying that I love you.”
“But you didn’t love me without it.”
“No,” she says. “I didn’t. Not as much. But that is the kind of person I am.” She pauses. “Would you love me without my voice?”
I have a strange thought. Perhaps I could love her more without her voice.
She sees what I am thinking.
“Yes,” she says. “That is how it has always been for me.”
My cheeks are wet.
“Maire,” I say, “how do you know you can do this? How do you know I can do this?”
“My dear,” Maire says, “the only chance of success is to trust in your own power.”
And then she gestures for us to run, and she moves away from me, calling out to the people in the boats.
“Listen,” she says. In a voice full of power but also hope, and kindness, no curses, no fear. It’s golden, beautiful, pure. When I hear it, I believe in her as absolutely as I used to believe in my mother. I know Maire has the power to save us.
But we have to go now.
I reach out and try to touch the sleeve of her robe in farewell, but she doesn’t turn. True grabs my hand, and we run across the sand, our feet sinking in, our breath coming hard. I glance back once but I can’t see Maire.
What has happened to her? Has she disappeared? Is she dead?
True and I pull off our robes and leave them on the shore. I slip into the water, the shell Maire gave me clutched tight in my hand, her perfect voice ringing in my ears. And then, for the first time in my life, I swim in the sea Above.