Atlantia

CHAPTER 28

Fen and I risk a moment outside to watch them go. The enclosed back courtyard of the temple opens out onto a busy street, and once they are gone—Bay and True and Ciro, three figures swallowed up quickly in the massive city of the Above—Fen and I linger in the courtyard for a moment. Once we’re back inside, we will have to hide and wait, and neither of us is made for that. Even though illness has taken its toll on Fen, he still has a restlessness, an aliveness about him. I would have liked to see him race when he was well. I think he would have been fast and reckless and good.

I wonder what he would have thought of me.

I can’t keep from glancing up at the sun—hot and round and white at this hour of the day, hard to look at but wonderful to feel. It’s not lost on me how strange and marvelous this is—my seeing the sun, feeling it on my face.

“What are you thinking?” Fen asks.

“That I’m lucky to see the sun,” I say.

“Don’t look directly at it,” Fen says. “It can burn your eyes.”

And right then I feel something, some pressure on my heart and mind, and it’s not just sorrow. Fen’s face is the last thing I see before the world goes black inside my head.

I can’t see, but I’m still here, and the sun is still hot.

“Hold on,” Fen says. I feel his hands on my wrists, gentle, steadying me. Fen smells like sweat and dirt. I want True. “Can you walk?” Fen asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“Hold on,” Fen says again. His voice sounds far away. I feel him guiding me, and then the heat of the sun is gone, and my feet hit the familiar-feeling surface of the temple floor. We are back inside.

“Keep walking,” Fen says. “I’ll help you.”

I hear the surface change to the wooden floor of the room where we were hiding before, and I hear a door close, and then it gets dark all the way through me.

“Rio,” Fen says, but his voice is not one that can call me back.

Light appears in the corner of my vision. Soon the rest of the interior of the storage room comes into view—the closet, the dusty books on shelves.

“How long was I down?” I ask Fen, who sits near me, holding one of my hands.

“A while,” he says. “It’s afternoon now.” He lets go of my hand. “The Above isn’t good for you.”

“Not for you, either,” I say.

Fen starts to cough. It’s my turn to put a steadying hand on him.

“I wish you were Bay,” he says to me, between coughs.

“I wish you were True,” I say, and that makes Fen laugh and cough harder.

“Can you convince the people Above?” Fen asks, his voice raspy. “Can you do this?”

I remember what Maire told me, just before she saved me. The only chance of success is to trust in your own power.

“Yes,” I say. “I can.”

We hear someone at the door to the storage room. Could it be Ciro? Already?

I glance at the door and see that Fen locked it, the way Ciro told us to before he left. The handle is moving. It’s someone with a key. It could be Ciro, but if it’s him, why hasn’t he said anything?

Without a word Fen and I both head for the closet at the back of the room. I go inside first. Fen pulls it shut and locks it from the inside, and we hide behind the heavy robes. Even if they find a way to open the closet door, it’s deep enough and dark enough that they might not see us.

“I don’t have a key to the closet in here,” someone says, the cultured tone of his accent reminding me of Ciro, though it is certainly not him. The door to the storage room opens, and I hold my breath. “But perhaps this room itself will work for what you need?”

“Yes,” another man says, and I stiffen.

It’s Nevio.

Fen puts his hand on my arm. He thinks I’m going to pass out again, but I’m not. In fact I feel perfectly clear, the best I’ve felt since I was in the water coming to shore. Because I hear other noises. Gentle rustlings. Plaintive cries.

The temple bats are here.

Nevio must have brought them up with him when he came. But why? Is he kinder than I thought? Even though he killed all the sirens, did he have mercy for Atlantia’s second miracle?

“This will be enough space until we have more permanent quarters for them,” Nevio says, his voice rich and gorgeous, even more sonorous than it was Below. “I appreciate your allowing them to come live here. The temple will feel the most like home to them. Their caretaker is coming up on the next transport, and he will see to their upkeep and feeding. But for now this room will be sufficient.”

“Do they have trouble living away from Atlantia?” the other person asks. I wonder if he’s a member of the Council of the Above. “I know the sirens couldn’t last for long up here.”

“No,” Nevio says pleasantly. “The bats did not originate Below, as the sirens did. The bats are creatures of the Above that managed to stow away and survive the trip to Atlantia long ago.”

“So they’re not miracles?” the Council member asks.

“Of course not,” says Nevio. “The bats are simply creatures that were meant to be Above and were trapped somewhere else, much like myself and the rest of the Council of the Below.”

One of the bats cries out.

“In fact,” Nevio says, “the bats do very well up here. Before we made you the gift of the sirens, we sent up some of the bats for your scientists to study. They determined that these little animals can survive—even thrive—up here, though they apparently have a bit of a penchant for flying over the water at night.”

“But we must not let them do that,” the Council member says, trying to assert his authority. “We have to keep them caged. We can’t have creatures that once lived Below flying around freely in the Above.”

“I agree completely,” Nevio says. Is there an edge to his voice, or do I imagine it? But I am heartened to hear that the Council Above intends to oversee Nevio and the others.

Of course, Nevio may have other plans.

As soon as we hear them leave, I lunge for the closet door, pushing it open. Fen hisses at me to come back, but I have to see the bats. They tremble in their cages, but Nevio’s right. They seem healthy enough—bright eyes and clear breathing. It’s the cages that make them afraid.

“They’re not supposed to be locked up like this,” I say. “Especially not when night comes. That’s when they’re meant to fly free.”

“Why do you think he saved them?” Fen asks.

“I have no idea,” I say. I lean toward the cage, and some of the bats chatter their way closer to me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they remember me. “But I know it’s for some selfish reason of his own. Not because he actually cares about them.”

“Nevio is rotten, all right,” Fen agrees.

Should I trust Fen? Should I tell him that Nevio is a siren?

True would tell Fen. True would trust him.

So I do.

Fen’s eyes widen in surprise but not for long. “I should have known,” he says. “It explains everything.”

“I know,” I say. “I can’t believe it took me so long to realize what he is.”

“But if he’s a siren, how does he plan to survive up here?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “He’s a different kind of siren than we’ve ever seen before. Maybe the Above doesn’t affect him.”

“He’s the people of the Above’s worst nightmare,” Fen says. “When you speak tonight, you have to tell them what he is.”

“But if I do that,” I say, “they’ll think they were right about the sirens. That the sirens can’t be trusted, that they should all die. I’ll never convince the people of the Above to let Atlantia live that way.”

“You’re right,” Fen says. “I didn’t think of that.” He bends down to look more closely at the bats, and they eye him balefully, which makes him laugh. “They like you,” he says, pointing to my hand, which I’ve rested on the cage. They don’t seem to mind, and they are calming down.

“I think I might be familiar to them,” I say. “I used to clean the temple trees, where they loved to roost. But the temple trees have no leaves anymore. They’ve all fallen.”

“They have?” Fen asks. “What else has changed?” I hear homesickness in his voice, and longing.

“Atlantia is breaking,” I say. And then I realize we didn’t even have time to tell Fen and Bay about the deepmarket. “The deepmarket drowned,” I say. “There was a breach.”

“No,” Fen says, sounding horrified. “How many died?”

“Hundreds of people,” I say. “And the bats were starting to die, too.” I take a deep breath. I think the bats are calming me.

“So what are you going to do tonight?” Fen asks. “How are you going to get around Nevio? What are you going to say?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have to think of something,” Fen says, growing agitated. “This is Bay’s life you’re asking for. And True’s.”

“Did Bay tell you? What I am?”

“She said that you had a secret,” Fen says, “and that it was yours to tell. But I think I’ve figured it out.”

He’s smart. I can see why he caught her eye, why he has a hold on her heart.

“You’re a siren,” he says very quietly.

“Yes,” I say.

And then Fen leans forward, coughing again, this time sounding even worse than before. Someone is going to hear us. He has to stop. I take my hand away from where I’ve been resting it on the bats’ cage and put it on Fen’s back. Soon he’s quiet and his breathing settles.

“I’ll wear the mask from now on,” he says. “I promise. It’s just—I hate it. I feel like I’m drowning when I have it on.”

“I understand perfectly,” I say.

He looks at me. “I guess you do.”

He pulls the mask over his face and we settle back inside the closet to wait, closing the door.

“I heard there was another civilization that lasted as long as we have,” Fen says after a while, softly. “They separated their people, too, around the same time we had the Divide. Some stayed on land, and the others went into the sky. Maybe those people are up there, watching us now. Maybe they’re waiting for this to all play out, and then they’ll come down and take what’s left.”

“People up in the sky? That sounds like the gods.”

“I don’t believe in the gods.”

“Bay does.”

“I know,” he says. “Do you?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

Then we hear someone open the door to the storage room.

“Do you have the key to the closet?” a voice asks, and Fen and I both stiffen in recognition.

It’s Nevio again.

“Yes,” someone says. He’s not the same person who came with Nevio before, but I can tell from this man’s accent that he is also from the Above. “I think it’s this one. It was in his pocket.”

“Excellent,” Nevio says.

I hear them jimmying with the lock on the closet door. Fen and I pull the robes in front of us and make ourselves as small as we can in the back, but I worry it’s not enough. Are we about to be caught?

“This isn’t a permanent solution,” the other voice warns, and Nevio laughs. He seems a little farther away. I can hear one of the bats shrieking and the cage opening. What is he doing?

“I know,” he says. “You only have to give me long enough to speak. Then we’ll have someone come back and get rid of him.”

“Where will you take him?” the other man asks.

“We can dump him in the ocean,” Nevio says. “That seems appropriate. He seemed to have a fascination with its abominations.”

The other person laughs. “Everything has gone very smoothly.”

“Yes,” Nevio agrees. “But I wish we knew what he was doing down near the water.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the other man says. “It’s as you said. He was fascinated by the ocean. He walked down by the shore all the time, gathering up shells and watching the waves.”

The key engages in the lock, and the closet door opens.

I hold my breath. Fen is quiet as can be and I send up a silent prayer to my mother and the gods that he won’t cough right now.

And then I stop praying and have to try not to scream, because someone is being pushed into the closet, someone slack and heavy and dead, and he lands in front of us, on us, and then the door swings shut, they lock it again, and the body is still on me, and I know exactly who it is. I saw his face in that moment of light.

Ciro.

“Might as well dump this in there as well, for now,” Nevio says.

And then the door opens again, and they throw something else in—another body, this one tiny, but just as lifeless as Ciro’s.

It’s one of the temple bats.

It’s so dark, and I scrabble for the closet door as soon as I hear Nevio and the other man leave the storage room. I find the inside lock and twist it, pushing the door open, and the bats all stare at me with wide eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I say to them, to Ciro. “I’m so sorry.”

I should have told Ciro what Nevio was. I should have trusted Ciro. But I didn’t, and now he’s dead. After everything he did to help us.

He’s dead because of me.

“Rio,” Fen says. “It’s all right.”

I shake my head. “How can it be all right?” I look at Ciro, his wild hair and his poor, dead face. I put my hand on his chest, but I feel no rise and fall, no heartbeat. I can’t see a wound, but the lack of life in him, the emptiness of his eyes, is grotesque. Is this how it was for my mother? Did Nevio himself administer the poison this time, or did he once again get someone to do the dirty work?

“It’s all right,” Fen says again, pulling off his mask so he can speak to me face-to-face, “because True and Bay got Below. Did you hear Nevio? He doesn’t know what Ciro was doing at the water. Ciro must have already helped Bay and True leave on the transport. Remember? Nevio didn’t see Bay and True. He saw Ciro, alone. We still have a chance. You still have to speak.”

Ciro is dead.

The sirens are dead.

Maire is dead; my mother is dead.

We’re all going to die.

How is Fen staying so clear about all this?

And then I remember. He is already dying. He’s been dying for months.

But Bay and True—they have to live. I have to do what I can to make that happen. And I want to live, too.

Maire said I would know when it was time.

It’s time.

I have to go out in the temple. I have to speak.

I put my hand on Ciro’s eyes to close them. He was willing to help me. But I have to do it alone. I touch the bats’ cage as I stand up.

“You’re right,” I say to Fen.

He stands up, too. “I’ll come with you. You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

“I won’t be alone,” I say. I feel like Bay will be with me. And my mother. And her sister.

And there is something else I need Fen to do.

“Please,” I say. “Let them go.”

His face changes. For the first time, I see him break. “I can’t,” he says.

I realize that he thinks I mean Bay, and True. And I understand.

“The bats,” I say, pointing to the cages. “Can you find a way to let them go?”

Fen nods. Relief washes over me. The bats are not meant to be locked up like this. They need to be free. I will speak better if they are free.

“Thank you,” I say to Fen. “I’ll see you again.” And then, before I creep out into the hall of the temple, I touch Fen’s shoulder in farewell. Even though I’m not who he wants and he’s not who I want, we understand each other. I will do what I can to save what’s left.