CHAPTER 6
When my shift at work ends the next day, I find myself caught up in a group with the rest of the workers, all walking together to the nearby plaza. When I try to slip away on my own, Bien notices.
“I’ve been promoted to the ocean room,” she says. “Don’t you want to throw a coin into the wishing pool for me?”
“Of course,” I say. I don’t want to waste a coin on someone I don’t even know, but it seems ungracious not to participate. Apparently this is some kind of tradition among the workers, and I want to fit in.
“Do you think coins can really bring people luck?” Bien asks as she watches me toss the circle of gold into the dark pool. There’s a hard glint in her eyes, like she’s waiting or wanting for something to happen
I’m not sure what she expects me to say, but I tell her, “You’re talented and you work hard, and those things are even better than luck.”
“That sounds like something your mother would say,” Elinor tells me, patting my arm.
“So we’re allowed to talk about Rio’s mother now?” Bien asks.
“Bien,” Elinor says, a warning note in her voice.
“I don’t see why not,” Bien says. “If Rio doesn’t mind . . .” She waits for me.
I say nothing. I have been bullied before, especially in the years before I moved to the temple school. The students at my first school laughed openly at my dull voice and unusual height. I’ve learned that sometimes answering the questions satiates the person bullying. Sometimes it doesn’t.
“I just want to know what it was like living with someone so famous,” Bien says, and now I hear a definite tone of malice in her voice.
“Bien, stop,” Elinor says. “This is not kind.”
“We didn’t live with her after she became the Minister,” I say, though Bien already knows all of this. Everyone does. “The Minister has to have his or her own quarters in the temple.”
“Did that make you feel bad?” Bien asks. “That your mother chose her work over you?”
I’m not sure why Bien doesn’t like me, unless it’s the usual reason, the one that made those children tease me: I’m different.
“We never saw it like that,” I say.
“Of course you didn’t,” Elinor says, finally getting a word in edgewise. She seems furious with Bien.
“I don’t know why I’m asking questions about your mother’s life,” Bien says, “when the most interesting thing about her is how she died. Do you know who killed her?”
Though I hate Bien for doing this, and my hands are tight in fists that could hurt her, push her down, pin her there and tell her to take it back—I know I could, I am that strong and stronger—there is a strange relief in hearing it said out loud. In knowing that it’s not only Bay and I who have thought of the possibility of murder.
Still, I have to wait a moment before I have the control to speak. Next to me, Elinor sputters in outrage, tells Bien that she is cruel, sacrilegious.
“I don’t know,” I say at last. “I don’t know who killed her or how she died. Her heart just stopped.”
“Do you want to know who I think did it?” Bien asks.
I will not give her the pleasure of nodding. But, actually, I do want to know. I want to know what people are saying. And of course Bien wants to tell me.
“Maire,” Bien says. She has an expression of perverse pleasure on her face. She enjoys making me miserable. Does she do this to other people? I haven’t seen it, but I haven’t known her long. I can’t tell if it is me in particular she wants to torment, or if she is a narrow-minded person who rejoices in broad, cutting strokes of cruelty that encompass as many people as possible. “Most of us think that Oceana was killed by her own sister.”
“Not everyone thinks that,” Elinor says.
Someone calls to Bien, and Bien, her work done, gives us a wave and sets off to join another group. I hear a burst of laughter as she joins them.
“I’m so sorry,” Elinor says. “Bien is a troublemaker. She shouldn’t have said such a thing about your aunt. I’ve heard people say that Bien’s own brother was a siren and made her do terrible things before the Council took him away to raise, so she is especially poisonous where sirens are concerned. She thinks they should all be eliminated.”
“Do you believe that, too?”
“No,” Elinor says. “Of course not.”
But do you think we should be locked up and contained? I want to ask her this, but of course I don’t.
“That explains why Bien hates my aunt,” I say, “but why does she hate me? And my mother?”
“I don’t know,” Elinor says.
“Who do you think killed my mother?”
Elinor shakes her head. “I don’t think anyone did kill her. Her grand, generous heart simply stopped. Perhaps she was taken up by the gods. If so, it would be the third miracle.”
But though I love my mother and am glad to hear that others do, too, I can’t believe her a miracle. Just a human, one gone too soon.
“At least that money gets sent to the people Above,” Elinor says, her voice almost fierce. “Still, I hate to think that you wasted a wish on Bien.”
But I didn’t. When I threw the gold coin into the pool, I made the same selfish, wonderful wish I’ve made ever since I was a child. I wish that I could see the Above.
Perhaps I should have wished for something else. Perhaps I should have wished to know the truth.
Could Maire have killed my mother?
I don’t believe a sister could do such a thing.
But I also never would have believed that Bay could leave me, and she did. I saw her go.
It is agony to cry when you can’t make a sound, when you have to stuff your pillow into your mouth, almost choking yourself so that no one will hear the timbre of your real voice. No one knows how much that hurts, not even the loved ones who want to keep you safe.
I miss Bay so much, and I am so angry with her. If she were here, I would cry out at her. I wouldn’t care who heard. How could you leave me? My throat aches as if I’ve already screamed myself hoarse.
When was the last time Bay and I fought? I wonder. Before our mother’s death, we used to fight all the time, because we were sisters in a shared, small world—room, temple, city—and because we were different and the same.
But I could never really fight because of my voice. I couldn’t ever tell her how angry I was at her.
And so now I wonder if she also never knew how much I love her. Because I do.
There are two things that I’ve always known for certain: that I have to see the Above and that I love my sister.
Do I honestly believe I’m going to be able to do this? That I can swim through the mines? And buy an air tank to get Above? It’s a ridiculous plan. I know it. There are countless things that could go wrong.
The impossibility of everything overcomes me.
In desperation I look around for something, anything to help. And I see the shell again. I seize it and hold it up against my ear. My own breathing is the only sound.
Then I hear something else.
My sister, singing a lullaby from our childhood, one that our mother used to sing to us when we were small.
Under star-dark seas and skies of gold
Live those Above, and those Below
They sing and weep, both high and deep
While over and under the ocean rolls
She sings it again, and again. The song is calming, lulling, sad and gentle, true. I close my eyes and listen.