CHAPTER 25
The swim to the shore is longer than our quick foray into the cove, and the water feels more wild and dark now, the waves buffeting me on all sides, slapping their way into my mouth and stinging my eyes, but I feel like I recognize the swim in some way. Somehow I know how to push through it all.
That time spent in the tanks wasn’t wasted.
I come ashore. True isn’t far behind me.
I feel a million tiny grains of sand under my bare feet. We left our shoes in the cave because they were too heavy; they might have weighed us down. A crust of shells on the sand marks the place where the water must come highest. Neither of us says anything, but True takes my hand again as we climb the rise. In my other hand I carry the empty shell that held my mother’s voice. I can’t let go of it.
Grasses grow sharp in the sand, and so do small, scrubby bushes with flat, green leaves. Insects hum loudly, the sound heavy in the warm air.
Once we’re over the rise, we see the city.
An outdoor city, bursting and sparkling with lights, and the temple spire points tall above all the other buildings.
We’re barefoot, and dripping-damp. But there’s nothing we can do about that. We have to hope that the near dark will be enough to cover us. “We need to hurry,” I say.
Night falls fast, but it isn’t as absolute as night in Atlantia. Now and then, through the miasma of ruined air, I think I can pick out a star.
I can’t help but stare at everything as we come closer—people, streets, shops—even though I don’t want my gaze to invite any attention. I’m glad the swimming has removed all the siren makeup from my face, but I still feel that anyone could tell that I came from someplace else.
What did Bay think when she saw all this? What does True think now? I glance over at him, but in this light his eyes are as dark as the earth.
The Above has no gondolas, but it has other, faster, uglier ways of transport—wheeled carts spinning and racing so quickly that it’s hard for me to know where I can walk and where I can’t. Some of the carts are enormous. There are also many, many people walking and running everywhere, and they all seem to be in a hurry. The air is so thick and hot and moist that it has made everyone’s hair bedraggled and their clothes cling with sweat, and others look as dirty and damp as we do. Still, I can’t relax. We have to get to the temple. That is where the road ends, where Maire’s instructions lead.
The voices of the people around us sound so strange, so flat after all the sirens calling, that I have a hard time understanding the words, though our language is the same. The cadence of their speaking sounds as choppy as the waves under the wind, and they have an accent I’ve never heard before.
Of course I’ve never heard it before. I’ve never been Above before.
The buildings are scarred and dirt- and dusk-colored, not the bright hues of Atlantia. Someone brushes against me accidentally and nods in apology but doesn’t stop. I have never seen so many people moving so quickly. The Above teems with inhabitants.
I hear laughter coming from what smells like a restaurant, and shop doors stand open even though it is so late.
Atlantia is nothing compared to this. I am nothing compared to this.
And I feel light, knowing that I am nothing and that there is nothing above me but air. No water pressing down, no walls holding everything in and pushing everything back.
It is strange and unfamiliar, and I know that I can’t survive here for long, but I love it. And I want to stay.
True and I become lost and found several times in the darkening streets. To get our bearings again, we find a place where the buildings aren’t so close and look up to see the spire of the temple. I hurry, always conscious of the strange feeling of earth underfoot, sand between my toes, dust beneath my heels, and now and then the smooth roundness of a stone. True and I don’t talk, afraid that someone will hear our accents and realize we don’t belong Above, but we touch. His hand on my shoulder, me reaching back for him.
And then, without speaking, we stop at the same time.
Maire said I would know the temple, and I do, even though it’s different from the one Below.
It’s made of metal instead of stone, and it appears to be formed from chunks of other buildings welded together. I want to run my fingers along the rivets and see how well it all meets. And the whole building is covered in an oxidation of green, like it grew up out of the ground. I’ve heard of this before—pollution so bad that it can corrupt even metal, but in the moment it’s beautiful.
True and I stand together, Above, in front of the temple, our clothes damp and our feet dirty. The door is not open, perhaps to keep out the air, but when I turn the handle, it moves easily. It’s unlocked. It must be accessible at all hours, open to the people who need to pray, the way our temple is in the Below.
But I am afraid to enter.
Someone mutters and pushes past me. There are others who want to go inside, and I should move.
“Rio?” True asks.
“Bay,” I say, remembering why I’m here, and I take a step inside.
The temple is fairly crowded, and no one seems to notice us come in.
I take a few more steps. It is so different and so much the same. The pews, the quietness, the softened voices and prayers. True and I walk past a woman crying and a priest comforting.
The gargoyle gods watch us. They don’t adorn only the walls but also sit welded into place, like permanent worshippers, on some of the pews. Why, I wonder, and then in a moment I know, when I see their eaten faces, their pockmarked bodies, the way the air turned them green like they have been long underwater. The air. I had to weld our gods back into the trees for upkeep; the priests here brought their gods inside for shelter when the air was at its worst and have not yet taken them back out.
I stop in my tracks, utterly fascinated. High up, a seahorse curls its tail on a plinth, its head seemingly bowed in prayer while it supports the weight above. A whale with a bulbous head and startled eyes pushes out from the wall, and on the pew nearest me, a spiky-tailed shark shows its teeth. They are supposedly the same gods we have Below, with different forms, and they seem at once foreign and familiar. They would have had to make these after the advent of the sirens.
What would it be like, to make a religion? To fashion your own gods?
The pulpit is inlaid with shells from the Below, with a design similar to our waves that become trees. On their pulpit the trees turn and roll into clouds. It’s beautiful. And I can’t help but wonder if there are any voices trapped inside those shells. I close my hand around the one in my pocket.
As we approach the altar, I notice a large jar of water in the place where the jar of dirt sits in the temple in Atlantia.
And for a moment, I allow myself to imagine that this is another version of home, one where I find my twin and perhaps my mother, too, that she will come in to stand behind the pulpit to speak saving words to all of us, and she’ll notice me and rush to take me in her arms and say, All along we were here, Rio. We were waiting for you to come to the right place.
I’m crying now without a sound. For the loss of my mother, and for Maire. I know she’s gone, too. Somehow I can tell that her voice will never again be heard under the water or over the wind.
She is nowhere Above and nowhere Below.
And neither is my mother.
But my sister might be.
“Bay?” a man’s voice says, close behind me, and my heart pounds with familiarity and fear. This used to happen all the time Below—someone has mistaken me for Bay. What can I say that won’t give me away?
“Bay?” the man asks again, sounding puzzled.
I turn around. But he isn’t talking to me. He’s speaking to the real Bay, who has stopped in the middle of the aisle leading to the altar, staring at me as if she can’t believe what she sees.
And I don’t believe my eyes, either, though this is where I hoped I’d find her, though this is what I wanted more than anything else for so long, though almost everything I’ve done has been because I knew I had to see my sister again.
I see my sister again.