CHAPTER 3
I sit down in a pew in the temple and let the familiar scents of candle wax, stone and water, and old cloth settle over me. I take a deep breath and wait for my racing heart to slow down. It’s been pounding since my encounter with Maire.
The priests move through the nave, their robes brushing the ground and making hushing sounds. I keep my head bowed in order to avoid eye contact. I don’t want any more condolences about Bay leaving.
I should be safe from my aunt here. Those known to be sirens are not allowed in the temple. They have their own place of worship, somewhere among the tight restricted maze of Council buildings. But it wasn’t always that way. In fact, in the beginning, many sirens were priests, using their voices to cry out warnings about pride and sin and to call people to sacrifice. But then some became intoxicated with their own power, and started using their voices to hurt or manipulate, and the Council began taking the siren children to raise so that they couldn’t use their voices for ill, only for the good of Atlantia.
A woman at the front of the nave lights a candle. People sit in almost every pew. I wonder if anyone else is mourning someone who left for the Above. I’m certainly not alone in seeking solace here tonight. The temple never closes. It is the one place you are always allowed to stay once the curfew call has sounded.
My mother sometimes worked late at night, hearing the prayers and pleas of those who came with their crises of faith, their screamings of doubt, their whimpers and roars of sin. She believed it was important to listen to people, so much so that she kept working the occasional late shift even after she became the Minister.
She also believed that sirens should be allowed inside the temple, but she could never get enough priests to vote in favor of changing the rule. She saw the temple as the house of the gods and the people, the place where they could come together, and she thought it wrong that some were excluded from that opportunity. “They say that the sirens are miracles, not people,” she told Bay and me once, in a rare moment of frustration with her work. “Can you imagine believing such a thing? People can be miracles.”
I look up at the stone carvings above me, the buttresses and the gallery and the grim gargoyle gods watching us.
The gods are shown as different animals of the Above. On the pillar nearest me is the god Efram, who, because he is fierce and cunning, is represented by a tiger carving. There are many tiger gods, but if you know what you are looking for, it is easy to tell them apart. Efram, for example, has the largest eyes. He sees the most.
“The gods know everything,” my mother used to say when I had a hard time hiding my voice. “They know how difficult this is. And they are pleased with you, Rio.”
Are they pleased with me for being a siren—or for hiding it? I wanted to ask. But I never did.
When I was small, I realized I could make Bay do what I wanted with the way I said something. But I could never control my mother. Even when I cried my hardest or pleaded fervently, she could resist me. It wasn’t always easy. When I wept or begged or tried to manipulate her, she closed her eyes, and I knew she prayed for strength to overcome me. The gods always granted it to her. It was a sign of their favor. Ministers cannot be swayed by sirens. They are chosen, in part, for their ability to resist.
I remember the day when we were five and I made Bay cry so hard she could barely breathe. I did it on purpose. I liked it when I was doing it—I felt hot and cruel and clever and powerful—but afterward, I broke down in remorse. My mother held me tight. She was crying, too. “You are a good girl, Rio,” she said. She sounded relieved.
“I hurt Bay,” I said. “And I wanted to.”
“But you were sorry after,” my mother said, “and you don’t want to do it again.”
I nodded. She was right.
“That is the difference,” my mother said, almost as if she were no longer speaking to me. “That is the difference.”
She put her hands on either side of my face and looked at me with love. “Rio,” she said, “everyone wants to hurt someone else at some time in his or her life. It is part of being human. But you were born with more power to do it than most. That is why you have to keep your voice under control.” And, of course, there was the other, equally important reason. We didn’t want the Council to take me away.
My mother knew I was a siren very early on, from when I began to babble as a baby. She had to take leave from her work—she couldn’t allow anyone else to take care of Bay and me until I was old enough to learn how to mask my voice. She gave the excuse that I was sickly.
Some of my earliest memories are of my mother coaching me, telling me how to speak safely, and of Bay helping me practice. I tried to make my voice like hers, soft and quiet, but it never sounded quite the same. Still, the voice I use now is one I learned from trying to be like Bay.
In my dreams, I always speak in my real voice, and so I looked forward to going to sleep. After my mother died, I often found Bay next to me when I awoke, burrowed close for warmth, her hands cold and the smell of salt water on her. I never knew when she climbed in with me, but I was glad she came to me for comfort.
I don’t sleep well now. I don’t care about hearing my voice any longer. I want to hear Bay’s.
I’m weeping now, and I try to hide that fact. I know the priests are concerned about how profoundly I mourn my sister. At some point they will tell me to accept her choice and return to work full-time instead of keeping these irregular hours. But for now, they extend me grace. They loved her, too.
I run my hand along the varnished wood of the pew in front of me. The pews are carved out of old trees, like the pulpit, and they are extremely valuable, since there are not many wooden seats in Atlantia. But anyone and everyone can sit on the pews, can touch them. When my mother was Minister, she let me touch the pulpit, too, feel the curls of the waves and the leaves of the trees with my fingers, and I knew my religion better in those moments than I have before or since. I felt a reverence mixed with resignation and righteousness that I thought must be faith, must be the way Bay and my mother felt all of the time.
Someone sits down at the edge of my bench, and I slide a little farther in the other direction. There are plenty of empty pews, and I am annoyed that someone has chosen this one under Efram. Find another god, I whisper in my mind. Try one of the lion gods, like Cale. Ask him to roar your prayer to the heavens. Instead, the person slides closer and reaches out to take a hymnal from the shelf in front of us. Under the clean scent of soap, I detect the faint but unmistakable smell of machinery oil. His hands are work worn and his fingers careful and sure, and I think I know what his trade must be. A machinist, someone who repairs broken things.
“I heard you,” he says. “I thought I should see if you were all right.”
I wipe my sleeve across my face. “There’s no shame in crying,” I say flatly, though it feels like there is.
“Of course not,” he says. Then there’s a moment of quiet, when even the priests seem to have stopped rustling about in the temple and Atlantia does not breathe. Then. “My name is True Beck,” he says. I still don’t look at his face, though his voice sounds kind and deep. He turns the pages of the hymnal, and I wonder if he’s looking at them or at me. “I know your sister left to go Above. My best friend did, too.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t think much of ties that aren’t blood. No bond is the same as that between sisters.
“His name was Fen Cardiff,” True says. That’s the name of the boy who left right before Bay, and in spite of myself I look at True. When I do, my first thought is: brown and blue. Brown hair, brown eyes, blue shirt, blue shadows under his eyes. I’ve seen him before. Atlantia is a small enough place that we see each face in passing at one time or another, but large enough that we don’t know every name.
“I didn’t know he was going,” True says.
He is handsome, the type of boy who looks as though he might once have had sun on his skin, though that’s impossible this far down. He has intelligent eyes and the kind of strength that isn’t bulky and belligerent but streamlined and swift instead. I notice all of this and it means nothing to me. Since Bay left, I haven’t felt anything but loss.
“Are you older or younger than Fen?” I ask. Because if True is younger, then what does he have to complain about? All he has to do is wait, choose to go Above, and find his friend.
He doesn’t answer me. “Listen,” he says. “I think you and I should talk. Maybe not here.”
“About what?”
“Them,” he says. “Bay and Fen.” His voice has a hint of urgency in it, and the way he pairs their names seems significant. As if they go together: Bay and Fen. And a dark cold spill of doubt curls through my heart. Did Bay leave because of that boy? A boy I never even knew was important to her?
“I saw them together,” True says, as if he knows what I’m thinking. “More than once.”
“That can’t be,” I say. “Bay never told me anything about him.”
“I think we can help each other.”
“What do you need my help with?” I ask. “You seem to know everything already.”
“I don’t know anything,” True says, and the despair in his voice sounds something like the sorrow I’ve been holding in my heart, that I haven’t even been able to speak to myself because it would overwhelm me. True leans closer, gripping the hymnal very tightly, bending the thick cover. “I don’t know why he left. You don’t know why she left. You and I have the same question. Maybe we could come to an answer together.”
Justus walks past, his head turned away as if he’s searching the pews for someone, but he’s not, he’s trying to avoid someone he’s already seen. Me. Because he heard my real voice that day when Bay left. He’s a good man and was a friend to my mother, so he doesn’t ask me any questions, he leaves me alone. He hasn’t told anyone, or I wouldn’t be allowed in the temple. His reaction to my voice has been the best one that I could hope for, and yet it still hurts.
“Bay and Fen are gone,” I say to True. “We’re here. There’s nothing to talk about.”
“You don’t know that,” True says. “Someone might know something. I might know something. You can’t decide not to talk to people.”
He’s so urgent, so earnest, and I have to bend my head so that he won’t be able to tell that I’m trying not to laugh. He has no idea what he’s saying. He has no idea that he’s speaking to someone who never could talk to people. To someone who only two people ever really knew. And now those two people are gone.
True draws in his breath. I wonder if I’ve offended him. “If you change your mind,” he says, “I go to the deepmarket most evenings.”
I can’t go back to the deepmarket. That’s where Maire found me.
Up at the altar, candle wax drips. Cale and Efram and all the rest stare down at us. Someone rustles hymnal pages, a priest speaks softly in another pew, and the city breathes. Ever since Bay left, I haven’t been able to stop listening to Atlantia. Sometimes I could swear that the city is a person—breathing easily in some moments, wheezing and laboring in others.
Can’t you hear the way the city is breathing? Maire asked.
And in that moment, I have my answer about what I must do, and I want to laugh because it’s so obvious. I’ve wasted my time in the few days since Bay left trying to find out why she left. But the best way to learn why is to go Above and ask her. There has to be a way, in spite of all the obstacles.
Bay has set me free. All I have to hold me here is gone. Just because no one has ever managed to escape to the Above before doesn’t mean that I can’t be the first. If I die trying to get there, at least I didn’t die locked down here in Atlantia. At least I died trying to get to my sister and the world I’ve always wanted to see.
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.