Atlantia

CHAPTER 14

By the time I walk all the way from Maire’s apartment back up to the main part of Atlantia, it’s almost morning. The lights will come up soon. I have to hurry. I crouch under the temple trees, and carefully gather the metal leaves into the bag that holds my air mask. I hear the rustling of something, and at first I feel afraid, but then I realize how high the sound is.

It must be one of the temple bats.

It settles in a tree above me and I smile to myself. “Knock down all you want this time,” I say, and as if to oblige, the bat moves and a silver leaf comes shaking to the ground. I gather that leaf, too.

The light begins to rise in our false sky.

I hear the bat lift off out of the tree above me, and I look up hoping for a glimpse of it, but all I catch is a slip shadow flitting in the faint light. This is the time when Bay would be climbing back into bed, when she would have stolen an hour or two of sleep before we put on our robes and began another day of work in the temple.

I stand up and pull the bag over my shoulder. It’s heavy, full of leaves. I hope no one looks at it too closely.

The story of the two sirens in the temple has given me an idea, and I need to talk to True. There are several gondola stations large enough to have sheds where the gondolas can be taken for repair, but I’ve seen True’s work and I think he must be one of the best machinists. So I hazard a guess and go to the biggest station in Atlantia, the one near the Council blocks. I hope I’m right about where he works. I hope his shift hasn’t ended yet.

Workers spill out of the station, laughing, talking. I listen for True’s voice among them and, to my relief, I hear it.

I’ll have to follow him until he separates from the others. They’ll wonder what I’m doing out so early. The only people allowed out now are those leaving work.

It doesn’t take long, thankfully. True calls a good-bye to the group and then starts off down a road on his own. It’s lighter every moment. I follow him for a few steps, gathering my thoughts, preparing to flatten out my voice.

I haven’t yet called to him, but his back stiffens. He knows someone’s following. Is this what it feels like to be Maire? Spying, waiting, hiding?

“True,” I say, and he turns.

“Rio,” he says, relief and concern in his voice. “Is everything all right?”

“I’ve had an idea,” I say. “Can I talk to you?”

“Of course,” he says. “In here.” He guides me the short distance back to the gondola shed, keying in a number on the door and then pulling it closed behind us.

The shed is well-lit, and I blink, taking in True. His fingernails are black with dirt and he smells like oil, and yet there’s that cleanness about him, and I think, He is exactly the kind of person that Atlantia was designed to save.

“What is it?” he asks. “What can I do?”

“I’m wondering if you could make me some locks.”

“Locks?” he asks. “Like for a door?”

“For me,” I say. “To wear on my hands and feet when I swim.”

“I don’t understand,” True says.

“Remember how I said that the best way to get the coin fast is to do one big event? So that I can get the money and be finished?” I wait for him to nod. “Imagine that I’m at one end of the lane, hands and feet locked together, and that there are dozens of eels and fish coming for me from the other end of the lane, and the crowd knows that the eels and fish are electrically charged. And they know that I have to break free of the locks before I can even move.”

Can True picture it? I can.

I’ve had a long walk up to think about everything that I learned in my aunt’s house, in the place where my mother died. And I’ve decided I want to follow my mother to the surface—not take my chances with Maire.

From now on, my focus is on the floodgates. On getting through them alive. Not on listening to voices from the past or to Maire. I don’t trust her.

I’ve decided that when I create this moment, I will be Oceana, alive against all odds. I will find a robe to wear that looks like hers. I will fetter myself with locks and chains, symbols of death. The fish with their sharp currents and winding ways will represent Nevio and others like him, and then, as Oceana, I will break away and swim past it all. I will come to the surface and breathe again.

“This will draw a crowd,” I say. “I think people will want to bet on it. We can advertise. Aldo will tell everyone. If you can get the locks made fast enough, we could do it soon. Like next week.”

But True shakes his head. “Too dangerous,” he says. “If you didn’t get out of the locks in time, and if enough of the fish and the eels got to you, you could go into shock and drown. You could actually die, even though I’ve tried to make them as safe as I can. They’re still charged.”

“That’s the point,” I say. “People want to see something dangerous.”

“Then let them go to the night races,” True says. “Take it more slowly. The crowd hasn’t lost interest in you. They like what we’ve done so far.”

He’s right, of course. And, if I take more time to earn the money, that gives me more time to train.

But I don’t know how much longer I can last here. How much longer I can go without saying something in my real voice. It’s getting worse than it’s ever been—as I miss my sister more each day, as I learn more about my power and about the sirens who came before. Listening to Bay’s shell each night helped me have enough strength to keep myself in control, but now her voice is gone.

“I don’t think I can wait,” I say. That’s all I tell him. But as always, True seems to know that there is more I can’t say. He seems to understand.

I don’t know how or why.

“So how will you get out of the locks?” True asks.

“That’s the hard part,” I say. “We want the audience to feel like they’ve seen a miracle, but not like they’ve been tricked, once we tell them how it was done. Which we’ll have to do, at the end. And we’ll probably have to let someone else put the locks on me so that they know that part is fair. Aldo, maybe. Someone the bettors trust.”

True nods. He looks interested. In the problem, or in me?

It doesn’t matter. But it does.

“And look what I have,” I say, opening my bag. “All these leaves. All this metal. It has to be good for something. If not for this, you can use it for your fish.” I reach for one of the buckets among the work gear on the shelves and dump the leaves inside. “There,” I say. “For you.”

True looks shocked. “Where did you get those?”

I flush. Does he think I’m a thief? I suppose I am. “From the trees by the temple,” I say.

For some reason that answer seems to satisfy True. “I’ll help you,” he says, “but you have to promise me that you won’t try this before it’s safe. You can’t do what you did with the eels and jump right in.”

“I promise. I’ll wait until it’s safe.”

“I can’t tell if you’re lying.” He sounds as if this surprises him.

“I’m not lying,” I say. I’m not, but I don’t know how to get him to believe me. And I have lied to him before.

True smiles. “Good,” he says. “Now, how can we get you a key for the locks without it looking like a trick?” His face lights up. “Maybe we could rig one of the fish to bring it to you in the water.”

I like this idea. “Yes,” I say. “I’ll have to hold my breath and get myself unlocked, and then I’ll swim.”

“The unlocking is just the beginning,” True says. “You still have to make it through all of the metal creatures to the other end of the lane.”

“I’m getting better at avoiding them,” I say. True doesn’t know that I can move the fish and eels. That, if I have to, I can tell the fish with the key to glide right into my palm. “I can do it.”

“I know you can,” True says.

“So you’ll help me?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you, True.” Relief and exhaustion settle over me. “We’ll earn enough money to get what I need and to buy a stall for you, too. This is the beginning, for both of us.”

True nods. “I’ll get to work on it,” he says. “Right now.”

“Thank you,” I say again. I wish I could stay and help him, but I have to get to the mining bays to report for work.

I’m almost at the door when True says my name.

“Rio.”

I look back. “You could buy the locks, and we could alter them,” True says. “That would save time.”

I shake my head. “No,” I say. “It has to be you who makes them.”

“Why?”

“Because I trust you,” I say. “If you make the locks, I know they’ll work.” I’ve been afraid of many things, but I feel no fear about this. I know that both True and his creations are good, and I’m not afraid of what I’m asking the locks to do—to come undone so that I can live. I trust my voice.

It takes True a few days to come up with locks and keys. We schedule an extra practice session in the lane, and we pay Aldo more than the usual rate to make sure that no one will be in the stands or practicing near us.

Bay’s shell stays silent. I don’t ask Maire any more questions, and she doesn’t try to contact me. I’m sure Maire has her own plans, her own work to do, and I’m focused on swimming, getting stronger, using my voice to make things come to me. All small things, so far.

But I feel my voice growing.

True helps me snap the locks into place around my wrists and ankles. On the day of the real event, Aldo will check to make sure that they’re secure. For now it’s enough that I know they are.

“If I think it’s been too long,” True says, “I’m going to come in and get you out.”

“I might drown you,” I say. “Pull you under. Can you even swim?”

He laughs. “Of course I can.”

“I’ve never seen you.”

“I learned when I was young,” he says. “But you don’t forget.”

He’s right. And as I watch True walk down to the other lane, pushing the cart full of eels and fish, I know I won’t forget this—what he’s done for me, and how he did it.

When True raises his arm a few minutes later, I know he’s ready, and I duck under the water. That’s his sign to begin. He’ll put in the fish with the key first and then everything else.

Here they come. I see the swirl of bubbles around each of them as they make their way for me. They are fast, beautiful, precise, and one of them reaches me just as my lungs start to burn from holding my breath. An eel stings me.

“Unlock,” I say, and I feel the locks loosen around my ankles and wrists.

It works.

I let the fish with the key come to me, so that True won’t know that I don’t even need it at all, that I unlocked everything with a word underwater. Once the fish brushes against me, I catch it in my hand, slip the key from under its belly, and tell the locks to fall. They do, and I swim.

An eel shocks me.

Another.

Move away from me, I think, but of course nothing happens. My power is in my voice.

I almost open my mouth to say something to them, let water in and words out, but instead I keep swimming. I go around and through their darting, small bodies with my long, strong one. We are dancing, almost, the whole turquoise length of the lane.

My mind is sometimes a hard place to be, but I have always liked having a body. I like the feeling of having fingers to flex and use, a back to stretch, hair to swing in a braid, eyes to see. Does my mother have a body somewhere or is she only soul now? I can’t imagine such a thing.

My body is strong, and my voice is, too. As I get closer to the end of the lane, I can’t resist any more.

I’ve never tried to control so many things at once.

The words come out of my mouth and the water comes in as I tell the metal sea creatures to move away from me, and they do like a pulse, a compulsion.

My power is growing, changing. I can feel it. Was it speaking in the temple that began it? Letting out that single word when Bay left? Or has it been from learning from Maire or wanting even more desperately to go Above?

When I surface at the end of the lane, True studies me. He knows something’s different. He knows that all is not quite as it should be.

“What happened?” he asks. “In there? In the water?”

I shake my head as if I don’t know what he means. “It’s working exactly the way we wanted.”

I am beginning to know what I can do, and this makes me smile.

“You did it,” True says, reaching to help me out of the lane. There is a brief, charged moment when we touch. My happiness makes him glad, but his eyes still look worried. Does he know? Was he close enough to see me speaking underwater? But why would that tell him anything? He doesn’t know I’m a siren, and even if he did, most sirens can only control other humans.

“Anyone who sees you swim,” True says, “will remember it forever.”

What he says echoes what I thought earlier, that I will not forget what True has done for me. And he speaks with sincerity, with that warmth that radiates all through him, and I wish it were all around me. I wish he would put his hands on my face and warm me all the way through.

It’s a wild thought, but I’m cold and crazy with relief and exhaustion. It’s hard to wait for a moment to let it all settle before I speak again.

“Anyone who sees what you can make will do the same,” I say. “This is going to work. Perfectly. I’ll tell Aldo to set the date. Three days from now.” It will be a spectacle. No. It will be more than that.

It will be a celebration.

True starts laughing. It’s the kind of laughing people do when they’re children, the kind I’ve always been envious of, where you can’t seem to stop, something is that bright and funny. The sound is beautiful and his eyes crinkle almost shut.

“What is it?” I ask. “What did I say?”

“In that bucket of leaves that you gave me,” True says, “there was a tiger head. From one of the gods. Did you put it in there on purpose?”

“No,” I say, shocked. I’m surprised I didn’t notice such a thing, even in the dark. But it makes sense, the way the gods were always coming apart. “Where is it? What did you do with it?”

“I melted it down with the rest,” True says. “It’s one of the fish now. The one with the key.”

And now I cover my mouth with both hands, whether in horror or mirth, I’m not certain. The word I manage to say is “Blasphemy,” in a whisper, and True puts his arm around me like we’re old friends, which in some ways we are. In some ways, he is the oldest friend I have. I feel his body, still shaking with laughter, against mine.

“Don’t you believe in the gods?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says. “I believe in them so much that I don’t think they need statues everywhere to be powerful. None of that makes any difference.”

He waits for me outside the changing room, and as I put on my other clothes I find myself laughing, too, without a sound. I feel almost happy. And I feel terrible, because I have learned many things—about sirens, and the nature of them, and the ancient past of Atlantia, and about myself—and I can’t tell True any of it. He has been a good friend the past few weeks, and I have kept so much from him.

There is one discovery, however, that I have to share with True. I can’t go to the Above without letting him know the truth about Nevio. “I have a secret,” I say, when I come back outside.

“What is it?” True asks. He doesn’t seem surprised but interested and eager. His expression almost seems to say I know and At last! which gives me pause for a second. What does he think I’m about to tell him?

I’m about to tell True that our Minister is a siren. This is not something that’s easy to say without any emotion or accusation in your voice. I’ve got to hold back.

This also isn’t something anyone else should hear.

So I lean in closer to True.

He moves in, too, and ducks his head a bit so I can whisper in his ear. To an outsider we might look normal, a girl and a boy sharing secrets in the deepmarket.

“Nevio the Minister,” I whisper, “is a siren.”

True doesn’t pull away, but when he whispers back, he sounds stunned. Whatever he thought I was going to say, it wasn’t this. “How do you know?”

Does he believe me? “Nevio lied,” I say. “And I knew it because I’d seen the truth. Otherwise I might have gone on believing him. But once he lied, I knew, and then I could feel it when he was speaking. He is a siren. I’m sure.”

“This means he’s been hiding his ability,” True says. “He must be extremely powerful to manage that.”

“I know,” I say. This is the most frightening part of all. Nevio knows how to sound like everyone else, and he can put just the right amount of power into his voice to give effective sermons and exhortations without the people suspecting anything more. It must take an uncanny amount of self-control.

Nevio is very, very strong.

“Do you think your mother knew that Nevio is a siren?” True asks.

I’ve wondered the same thing. I don’t think she did. My mother didn’t tell me everything—she kept her own counsel. I’m painfully aware of this. But so much of what she did was to protect me. I can’t imagine her bringing me to live at the temple school or urging me to take up a temple vocation if she thought Nevio was dangerous or knew that he was a siren. And if she’d discovered such a thing, she would have removed Bay and me immediately.

Was that what she was coming to tell Maire the night she died? Had my mother found out Nevio’s secret?

If she knew his secret, it would be a very good reason for him to kill her.

The expression on True’s face makes me think that his thoughts are similar to mine.

“I don’t know if she found out,” I say. “I can’t be certain. If she did, she didn’t have time to tell me.”

“Do you think any of the priests know what he is?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, “at least, not if they believe as my mother did, that the church and temple can best help if the people come to them without being persuaded. A siren changes that dynamic automatically.” But there could be priests who don’t believe as my mother did, or ones who feel loyal to Nevio. “Do you think the Council knows?” I ask True. “Should we tell them?”

“I’m not sure,” True says. “Maybe they do know. Maybe that’s why they wanted Nevio to be the Minister.” He shakes his head. “The more we find out, the more confusing it all becomes.”

“But you believe me?”

“Yes,” True says. “I do.” His eyes narrow; his lips press together. For the first time since I’ve known him, I have to look hard to see the kindness in his face. For a moment his expression is different—closed-down, cool, and still.

We’re both quiet as we walk out into the deepmarket. I listen to the people laugh and talk, and I try to catch the sound of Atlantia breathing in the gaps.

The two of us pass Cara’s stall. A new cluster of people has gathered around my mother’s ring.

“We’ll get it back,” True says. “Don’t worry.”

I feel another needle of guilt. He doesn’t even know that I’m not trying to buy the ring, that I’m saving for an air tank instead.

He doesn’t even know that I’m going to leave him.

A woman has bought the chance for her child to touch my mother’s ring. This makes me nervous. What if the child drops it? What if the mother is a crook and has another ring like it to palm and trade back?

But then I see the girl touch the ring, reverence in her expression.

“Maybe it’s not so bad that the ring is here for now,” I say to True. “It’s a way for the people to remember her.”

As I say this to True, I realize that this might have been exactly what Bay intended.

Maybe she had Fen sell the ring to keep my mother’s memory alive in a way that our having the ring could never do.

Or was she trying to help me by leaving me the money?

Or both?

Tears of relief rush to my eyes. I still know Bay. Not perfectly, but in some ways.

“While we’re telling secrets,” True says, “I have one, too.”

“You do?”

“I’m immune to sirens,” he says. “And not many people know it. My father and Fen. And now, you.”

I should have realized. There is something unmovable about True, in spite of all the laughter on his face and the gentleness in his eyes. Something at his core that can’t be taken away or changed.

I have a very strange and interesting thought—could True resist me, if I used my real voice?

“So you could be the Minister someday,” I say. My attempts at humor usually fall as flat as my voice, but True smiles.

“There’s more to being the Minister than that,” he says. “Isn’t there?”

“Of course,” I say. “But that’s an important step.”

“If you’re immune, you’re supposed to declare it to the Council, but I never have.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“My mother thought we should keep it to ourselves,” he said. “My father went along with her wishes because he loved her. And after she died, it was too late to tell anyone. They’d wonder why we’d been keeping it secret for so long.”

There are so many secrets in Atlantia. And maybe this is part of why I’m drawn to True. He’s been keeping a secret, too. Not one as dangerous as mine. But he knows what it’s like to hide at least some of what you are.

“My father doesn’t care anyway,” True says. “I don’t live with him anymore—not since I started working full-time on the gondolas.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I wish I could say it better.

“It’s hard,” True says. “He hasn’t taken much interest in anything except his work since my mother died.” Before I can ask how—though I don’t know if I would have dared—True tells me.

“Water-lung,” he says. “I know not many people get it, but she did.”

“My father died of it, too,” I say.

“The Council would never let you and I marry,” True says thoughtfully. “Because the illness was so recent in both of our families.”

I must look surprised, because he hurries to clarify. “I was thinking out loud,” he says. “I was thinking that might be a reason for Bay and Fen to go up, if they both had the illness in their lines. But there’s no water-lung in Fen’s recent family history. I’m sure of it. His parents and grandparents are all still alive, and his brother is fine.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” I ask True.

“No.”

“I see,” I say, and I feel sorry for him, not only because he doesn’t have a sibling, although it’s always seemed to me like a terrible thing to grow up alone. He can never go Above. He would never have had the choice.

“So you’ve always known you couldn’t go,” I say.

He nods. “And you always dreamed you would.”

I look at him in surprise. How did he know?

“I can just tell,” he says simply.

There are many things I could like about him if I weren’t so ruined.

“Well,” I say. “We don’t always get what we want.”

“No,” True says. “We don’t.”