Atlantia

  “Rio,” a voice says behind me.

  And in one heartbeat my thoughts go from blue to black.

  I know that voice, though I haven’t heard it in a long time, not since my mother’s funeral.

  She’s here.

  Maire.

  My mother’s sister.

  The siren woman some people call a witch.

  The one I think might have killed my mother.

  How else to explain her crumpled figure on Maire’s doorstep? Or why Maire never said anything, never offered a single word of explanation as to why my mother might have come to her?

  “Maire wouldn’t have killed her,” Bay said, when I told her about my suspicions. “A sister couldn’t do that.”

  I turn around and look back at the throngs in the deepmarket, but I can’t find Maire among the moving cloaks and banners and faces. Still, I feel her watching me, even if I can’t see exactly where she is. Does she expect me to answer her?

  Maire doesn’t know about my voice. My mother took great care to keep that part of me hidden from everyone, even her own sister.

  “But if Maire has a voice like mine, won’t people expect me to have one, too?” I asked once, when I was small.

  “No,” my mother said. “There have never been two sirens in the same family line. We’ve always believed that the siren voices are a gift from the gods, not simple genetics.”

  “Then why don’t you treat it like a gift?”

  Her eyes softened. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish we could. But it is a gift, just not one you can use right now.”

  “When?” I asked.

  She had no answer for me, but I had one for myself. After I went Above. My mother was always so pleased with my self-control. She didn’t know that the reason I could manage it was because I never planned to do it forever. I thought I would go Above and speak at last.

  “Maire is your greatest protection,” my mother said. “Because she has a siren voice, people aren’t looking for any of us to have one as well.”

  Rio. I hear my name again now, a single, clear word meant for me.

  I start walking, fast, away from the rows of sellers and stalls and back up toward the lower reaches of Atlantia’s neighborhoods.

  I think I feel Maire following me, and I think I hear her, too. It’s almost as though she’s whispering to me, sentences I can’t quite make out, hiding an undercurrent of words in the sound of the air channeling through the walls of the city. And I can’t help myself. I wonder, Could I do that, too?

  If I use my voice, I’ll be like Maire. I’ll be marked as a siren and people will fear me.

  Every time I see Justus, the priest, he won’t meet my gaze. Even though he heard me speak only a single word in my real voice, it was enough to make him keep his distance. That’s the safest response for me, and I should be glad. But I’m sad about it. He was my mother’s best friend, the gentlest priest, the one Bay and I hoped the others would choose as Minister after she died.

  But they didn’t. They chose Nevio.

  A group of teenagers push past, laughing and talking together. They glance over at me and then look away. For a minute I’m tempted to call to them in my real voice. I could play upon the boys; I could make the girls feel jealous, wish they’d never ignored me.

  “Hello,” a voice says, persuasive, delicious, and for a moment I think I’ve done it, I’ve spoken. But I haven’t.

  Maire stands in front of me in her black robes, with her disheveled hair. Her face is at once too sharp to be anything like my mother’s and yet too intelligent to be dissimilar. I have never seen her so close before.

  “I need to speak to you,” Maire says. “About your mother. And your sister.”

  You do not, I almost say, in my true voice, but I have been so long silent that it seems a pity to speak now. To ruin anything for an aunt who cares nothing for me.

  I walk past her. She follows. I hear her boots on the street behind me. I feel the dark of my losses in those words mother and sister, in the way she said them so they would echo in my mind, cold as a cathedral with no candles.

  I have always known that if I stayed Below I would be made small, and I feel it happening.

  “Rio?” Maire says. “I was there at the temple the day Bay left. And I heard you speak.”

  I stop.

  It wasn’t only Justus who heard me.

  “I always wondered if you were a siren, too,” Maire says, a ring of happiness in her voice, and I flinch in spite of myself.

  “If,” Maire says, “there is ever anything you want, or need, I can help you. I helped your mother, you know. Even Oceana the Minister needed me.”

  That’s a lie. And my mother would be proud of how my voice comes out even and flat, although I want to scream. “My mother didn’t need you,” I say. “She had us. Her daughters.”

  “There are some things you only tell a sister,” Maire says. “And some things you only ask of a sister.” Now her voice sounds soft and sad, faraway, even though she stands close to me. It’s unnerving. “You think that I am the evil sister, and that your mother was good,” she says. “But Oceana did need me. And Bay needed me, too.”

  Bay didn’t need Maire. Bay had me.

  “She left something for you,” Maire says. “Come along and I’ll give it to you.”

  I’m caught between two things I know to be true.

  Bay wouldn’t have gone Above without leaving me some kind of message or explanation.

  She also would never have left that message or explanation with Maire.

  Would she?

  Maire’s voice is tangling things, confusing me.

  A gondola comes behind us, slipping along in its cement canal. I want to get away from Maire and back to the temple. I break into a run.

  “We need to talk, you and I.” Maire’s voice follows me. “I can help you get what you want, your deepest desire.”

  Does she even know my deepest desire? To go Above?

  I have the terrible feeling that she might. That she might know my whole heart and mind.

  “I can help you get Above,” Maire says, her voice fading, haunting. “But it has to be soon. We are running out of time. Can’t you hear the way the city is breathing?”

  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 t
he 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.