Atlantia

CHAPTER 17

I have eyes for him, and so I see.

True walks through the temple, pushing past people, looking around. Looking for me. He’s at the other end of the nave, too far ahead, and there are many bodies in between us and I don’t trust my voice to call out his name.

But part of me wants to call it out, because if he hears me say it now, he will know. I would like for him to know.

And then, as if I’ve spoken after all, True stops and turns back toward the entrance. Across all the people mourning and seeking, under all the gods watching, unmoving, he sees me.

“Rio,” he calls out. He starts toward me so fast that he knocks someone off balance and reaches out to steady them, but his eyes never leave my face. He pushes the wrong way through the crowd, and I push, too, against people and the pews and anything else that gets in my way.

I think he will stop when he reaches me, but he keeps moving, pulling me right into his arms. “You’re safe,” he says, his lips in my hair.

Then I notice light and stained-glass windows and candles and people, because I’m looking away from True, trying to keep the tears from falling, tears of relief that he is alive. True is alive.

There are too many people in the temple and more coming every minute. The sirens told us to go home, and, for many of the people, that means the temple, in a spiritual sense at least. My mother always said that. This is the home of their belief.

I take True’s hand and lead him outside and into the fog.

When he sees how thick it has become, his eyes widen and he looks at me as if this might be my doing, as if I am powerful instead of plain.

And I remember how, earlier, seeing him kneel by the bucket of coin in the deepmarket, I knew that there was something he wanted to tell me.

I pull him under one of the trees. In the patchiness of the fog, I can make out glimpses of him—the back of his hand marked with scars from cutting metal; his face closer to me; his body lean and dark in the dim light. “Tell me,” I whisper, my voice the only sound besides the leaves moving above us, almost invisible in the fog.

This time he does.

“I heard you,” he says. “That day at the temple.”

Somewhere near us a leaf falls to the ground, making a small silver sound.

“You thought I meant that I heard you crying,” True says. “But that’s not what I was trying to say.”

And I understand.

He heard me.

Not when I was crying at the temple.

Before.

When Bay left.

He knows I’m a siren.

True’s hands come to either side of my face, and his fingers brush my lips. “You’re whispering something,” he says softly. “What are you saying?”

I didn’t know I was whispering, but I realize he’s right. When did I start?

I’m saying please, and I’m not sure why.

“All I could hear during the breach was your voice,” True says. “I could hear you calling out with the same agony that I heard when Bay left. But you weren’t calling for her. You were calling for me, and there was nothing I could do to help you.”

He shifts his body so he can see me better, but I don’t say anything. I look at him. He has the same shadows underneath his eyes that I noticed the first time we met. He’s been worried. About me.

“You’re all right,” he says. “You’re here.”

“True,” I say, giving him a double answer. Saying his name and saying that yes I am here.

He kisses me.

Right here under the trees, right here on my lips, and then on my neck, his fingers strong on my back, pulling me hard and close to him. We are nearly the same height, and we fit together right.

He is good at this. I am good at this. We are good at this.

I close my eyes, and I listen. To his breathing, mine.

“Let’s go to the deepmarket,” True says. “Let’s see if there is anything we can do.”

The sirens still call out for the people in Atlantia to go home, go home, but True is immune to them, and I find that they are not so hard to resist anymore. I have grown stronger.

Perhaps it’s because I don’t hear Maire’s voice among the others.

True and I walk through the trees toward the nearest gondola stop, where one of the boats sits, still and dry. The fog grows thicker, and the lights dim. But we are close, and I can see his face, his kind eyes, his lips.

“Now,” True whispers, and he pulls me, the two of us running blind through the white. He stops suddenly, and we’re next to the canal. True lets go of my hand and leaps over the side and into the canal right in front of the boat. I follow.

When I crouch down beside him, True has already found a way to open a panel in the boat. It’s strange to see the metal inner workings of the gondola. “I can make it go,” he says. “It might not take us all the way down to the deepmarket, but we’ll get there faster this way.”

“The peacekeepers will see the gondola,” I say. “Or hear it.”

“Of course,” he says. “But if the fog is like this all through Atlantia—like it was after your mother died—they might not catch us.”

The engine takes, starts whirring. “Get in,” True says. “Get low. I’ll be right there.”

I climb over the side and sink down between two benches. After a moment True appears beside me, landing lightly, and as he does the gondola moves.

We slip through the fog, whisper-white.

Neither True nor I say anything.

When we kissed under the trees, anyone could have found us and still there we stood, touching each other, clinging on. Now that we’re alone, we don’t do anything but look. Even when the wisps of clouds come between us, I feel his gaze on mine, as certain and deep as the way he kissed.

No one stops us on the gondola. It’s eerie how empty this part of Atlantia is. But then, as we get closer to the deepmarket, I hear shouting. A few dozen people have gathered near a barricade. They are either immune to the sirens’ song or so worried about someone in the deepmarket that they are able to resist, for now. One woman holds her hands over her ears and weeps, shaking her head back and forth against the song, her body trembling.

Peacekeepers call out to us to leave. “There’s nothing you can do here,” they say. “There are no survivors. Go home or you risk arrest.”

“Tell us,” a man calls out. “Was it water or air?”

“Did they suffer?”

“It was water,” someone says, and everyone turns to see who’s spoken.

Maire.

She comes from behind the barricade, and she’s wearing dry clothes, but her hair is braided back and wet.

I thought she was in prison. What is she doing down here?

“And it was air,” Maire says. “It was water that drowned them, but they may have been unconscious if there was a loss of air pressure first, which we believe was the case.”

Everyone listens to her, even the peacekeepers, although she’s not using her voice in the way she usually does. She’s simply speaking and telling us something, matter-of-fact. Not manipulating.

At least that’s what I think.

“They are recovering what they can,” she says, “and they hope to have bodies to be identified soon.”

Someone shouts out in anger and agony.

Maire closes her eyes. She’s about to use her voice. She always gives some kind of signal, I realize. She always lets you know.

“More peacekeepers are coming,” she says, the tones of her speaking rich with warning, “and some of the Council and Nevio the Minister. If you are still here, they will take you to the holding cells in the prison to preserve the peace. I can promise you that prison is not a pleasant place to grieve.”

A few people turn away, still weeping. But others stand their ground.

Maire begins to sing, joining with the other sirens whose voices come over the speakers around us, telling us to go home.

How long has she been out of holding? The Council let her out before to help them. Did they free her this time so that she could help in the deepmarket? Or was she released before that?

Did the Council ask her to do something else?

A terrible, dark thought crosses my mind.

The Council killed my mother. They are capable of killing when it suits their purposes.

Is Maire?

Her eyes light on me, and an expression of surprise crosses her face. She didn’t see me until now. Still singing, she moves in our direction. She pushes past True and leans to hiss something into my ear.

“Save your voice,” Maire whispers. “Whatever you do now, do not speak.”

Then she turns her back on me and walks toward the woman who is still trying to resist, who shivers with the effort. Maire leans down and sings right near her, and though it’s terrible what she’s doing—trying to make someone do something against their will—there is a gentleness in my aunt’s eyes, an anguish in her expression that hurts me to see.

She couldn’t have caused the breach in the deepmarket. She’s strange, but she isn’t evil. She can’t be. I can’t be.

True touches my arm. “We should go,” he says. “I don’t think either of us would do well in prison.”

He’s right. We’re both hiding too much.

We find the gondola where we left it sitting silent in the fog. True brings the boat to life, and we slide back toward the temple. The fog hides us, and so do the screams of the people as the Council members and Nevio reach them.

“The last time the fog came,” True says, “some people called it the breath of Oceana. They wondered if it was the third miracle.”

“I don’t think that it is,” I say.

“Neither do I,” True says. And then, “I’m sorry about the ring.”

“The ring?” Then I remember. My mother’s ring, the one True thought that I was trying to buy.

“It’s all right,” I say. “Much more than that was lost today.” All those people—Aldo, Cara, the bettors.

And I truly am a terrible person, because tears come to my eyes, and they’re for the people who died, but they are also because I will never perform for them again, I will never see how fast and good I could have been in the lanes today. I will never stand up in my Oceana robe and show them that even though they didn’t want me to race, I found a way to get what I needed, and I never even had to use my voice.

My mother was right when she said that thinking of the greater good doesn’t come naturally to me. So this is why I really wanted to swim in the lanes. It wasn’t to prepare. It was to perform.

“I’m sorry,” True says, “that I won’t get to see you swim again.”

“You said you weren’t coming,” I remind him.

“I wouldn’t have been able to keep away.” I feel True’s hand on mine. “You’re not planning to stay Below,” he says.

“I want to find my sister,” I say. “I want to be with her.”

“Finding out why she left won’t be good enough?”

“No,” I say, and I’m sorry to have to tell him this, but it’s true and it’s time. “It will never be good enough. I have to see her again.”

“Why?” True asks. He heard my meaning the day Bay left, when I said that single word in the temple, and I hear his now. He cares about me. He might even love me. So why can’t I stay?

I have to tell him so that he understands when he finds me gone.

“I miss her,” I say, “so much that it feels like I’m alone in an ocean that covers all the world. I miss her so much that I think I’m not really a person anymore, only pain. And then sometimes I think it’s the opposite. I do have a body. It’s a mess of organs and muscle and bones lying on a shore, and the salty seawater comes over me in waves that never end and it hurts. All the time.”

“This is how you feel without her,” True says.

“Yes,” I say.

The moment I spoke in the temple, True knew that I was a siren. And, knowing who my mother was and who my aunt is, he must have realized that I had another siren in my family. That I am not just a siren but a strange one at that. But he didn’t say anything to anyone. He’s been keeping secrets for me all along.

What would it be like to stay here in the gondola, the fog around us, the sound of the bats winging their way across the skies, Atlantia breathing, lulling us to sleep?

True’s lips brush against mine and I kiss him back. We hold each other tight. Earlier, under the trees, we were hungry and relieved to touch each other.

We are still hungry.

The gondola stops. We need to get out and get home before the peacekeepers find us.

“I’ll walk with you to the temple,” True says.

As we come closer to the temple, the fog lifts. It is lighter here. And so we can see that the trees have lost their leaves, all of them, in silver drifts on the ground. The gods are naked in the branches, their broken arms and shining teeth there for all to see, and as I watch a temple bat drifts down to land on Efram’s shoulder.

I have never seen Atlantia like this, unleaved, unloosed. The breach, the fog, the trees undone.

The city is decaying before our eyes, and I realize that it has always been this way. It is such work to keep Atlantia alive, to keep any of us alive. But the work is what draws us in, what gives us purpose. This city is our ship, sealed tight to keep us safe, and it is breaking.

“How could this happen so fast?” True asks. “We haven’t been gone for long. The trees were fine an hour ago.”

“Maire was right,” I say. “We need to go home.”

“We will,” True says, and I wonder how his voice is so deep and so clear. How his hands can be both strong and gentle. How he can know what I am and still be unafraid to kiss me like this.

I can’t see True again after tonight.

My mother was right. She told me that one word could undo the work of years; could be overheard by many.

First Justus, then Maire, now True. Who is the most dangerous of the three?

I know the answer to that. I’ve known for some time.