Atlantia (15 page)

“You know what they were, don't you?” Maire says as I open the door. “The two sirens in the temple.”

She's right. I do. Though I don't know their names, and though Maire didn't tell me this straight-out, I heard it in her voice. I knew it from the story. “They were sisters,” I say.

“Yes,” Maire says. “No one else knows this anymore but you and I. There had never been two sirens in a family before. There have never been two since.”

Until the two of us.

Until now.

B
y 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.