Atlantia (18 page)

I realize the answer a moment before the whistle stops and a siren's voice—not Maire's—comes over the loudspeaker.

“This,” the siren says, her voice pleasant and urgent, “is not a drill. Please follow instructions exactly. If you haven't done so already, go to your designated gathering location and then remain where you are, with your mask on, breathing regularly and normally. The situation will be remedied as soon as possible.”

And now everyone in the room stares at me.

“Perhaps she could share one. . . .” Elinor begins, making a move to take off her mask.

“No,” Josiah says. “That compromises the survival of both. It's against the rules.”

His voice sounds flat, but his eyes look sorry.

Everyone is still watching.

What do they think I'll do? Run? Cry? Scream? The first option doesn't make any sense, because I don't know where Atlantia is leaking. For all I know, I could run right into the breach. And crying and screaming are going to use up what air I do have. If it's a breach in the air system, the oxygen in the room will be gone soon enough.

My heart pounds so hard that I swear I can feel it in my palms as well as in my chest. It strikes me that I'm providing a good diversion for the others—the smaller drama of
Will Rio die?
is, for now, overshadowing the larger issue of
Are we
all
going to die?

Should I risk everything and command them to let me leave? Then I can go hunt for a mask.

But the voices in the walls of Atlantia start up again, and this time they are screaming at
me.
Telling me to
stay. Stay.

Who are they? The sirens? Maire heard them speak to her from the walls of the city. Am I hearing them, too? But that can't be right. Maire said they were gone.

Elinor moves to put her hand on my arm, but I'm crawling inside and outside with all these voices and I edge away.

It's growing dark in our workroom, though it isn't the dimming time, and that feels ominous. Why lower the lights? Has the breach affected the power in some way?

I have no memory of this ever happening before.

And what about True? Where is he? Is he safe?

It's cold.

I do
not
want to die like this—drowned or suffocated in the Below without ever having seen the Above. For a moment I'm tempted to ask doors to open and mines to move, to get out right now.

But I'll die for certain that way.
Wait a little longer,
I tell myself.
If the water starts coming in, you can do that. You can die out in the ocean instead of trapped in here. And if you survive, then don't wait any longer to leave. Get the air tank. Get out. Don't wait until there's a body you can trade places with in the morgue. Go to the floodgates and go up.

Eventually the sirens' screams die down. People are no longer talking, and I feel weak. Most of us shiver.

There isn't much air left in the room.

We all wait to see if the water will come rushing in or the air out or both.

Just when you think you don't have anything else to lose.

You die.

I don't cry at all while we watch the minutes pass on the clock and I breathe in and hope it won't be for the last time.

I don't cry when some of the people start looking at me less and some more. I can tell they think I'm going to die soon, that the air is almost gone. Some would rather not see it happen. Some want to watch. They want to see what it's like.

We hope to observe, not inhabit, the moment of our own deaths.

My mother wrote that. Nevio didn't intend for me to read those words, but I remember every one of them.

I don't cry when the siren comes over the loudspeaker to tell us all that the breach has been sealed off, that we are not in danger anymore, that we can take off our masks now. I feel the air rushing back into the room, and I draw it into my lungs.

I don't cry when the siren tells us that we will soon be able to return to our homes, to be patient for a little longer.

When my mother died, there were times when I wept like Bay did, like I would never stop. But of course I stopped eventually. You have to stop crying if you plan to survive.

“Where was the breach?” someone asks.

“We don't know yet,” Josiah says.

“How bad was it?”

“We don't know that, either,” Josiah says. “They'll tell us when they can.”

“You were so brave,” someone says to me. Now everyone smiles at me, seems pleased with how well I handled myself.

“It turned out all right,” I say.

“You didn't know that would be the case,” Elinor says. “We should have shared with you. Even though it's against the rules.” She looks ashen, shocked at herself. “But we didn't.”

“It doesn't matter,” I say. “I would have done the same.” I wouldn't have shared my air with any of these people. Not even with Elinor. Bay and my mother and True—they are the people I'd risk my life to save. “There's no need to apologize.”

“I never knew I was so coldhearted,” Elinor says.

“Rio's not surprised,” Bien says. “She knows what people are capable of.”

Right then the siren speaks from the walls. “We regret to say that the breach was in the deepmarket,” she says. “We have had to seal it off to preserve the safety of the rest of the city.”

What does that mean?
I want to ask, but I know and I am so cold.

“They sealed it off,” a man says, sounding stunned. “That means there will be no survivors.”

The people of the deepmarket, gone. Aldo. The bettors. Cara and the man who worked with her.

I will never swim in the deepmarket again.

And
True.

Did he go back there today? To sell the fish in his cart?

Maire is safe, locked away in the holding cells up closer to the surface.

But
True.

Elinor sinks to her knees. Bien has forgotten me. There is a look of terror in her eyes.

Everyone whispers and cries out their questions. What kind of a breach was it? Too much water or not enough air? Did they drown or suffocate? Which would have been worse?

“The gondolas are not working,” the siren says, “but you may walk back to your homes. None of the neighborhoods were destroyed. We will give you more information as soon as we can.”

And then there is singing over the speaker. Siren singing. They are comforting us, telling us to wait and see, to go home, go home, go home. But these voices are tame, not like the ones screaming from the walls. These sirens are telling us what the Council wants us to hear.

I hurry for the door, but once I'm outside I stop in my tracks.

It's foggy.

And we don't have weather here.

Elinor catches up with me. She draws in her breath at the sight.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?”
I whisper.

“Once,” she says. “When your mother died. It's one of the reasons some people think she might be a god.”

“I didn't go out that night,” I say. I was inside, with Bay, promising her over and over again that I wouldn't leave. “I didn't see anything like this.”

Elinor and I both start to run. We pass the wishing pool and then we are caught up in masses of people, all hurrying, and I can't see Elinor anymore.

My feet carry me in the direction of the temple, because that is where I first saw True, and no one stops me because I am also going home. Home through the fog, the siren voices singing overhead, loosed at last.

I pray silently, and it's not to Efram or any of the tiger gods, or any of the gods at all. It's not their faces I picture; it's hers. My mother's.

I hear other people around me saying her name. They are remembering that other night when the fog came. They are remembering
her
.

I've joined my blasphemy with those in the deep-market who worshipped her. Did they pray to my mother when the water came in or the air went out? Did she help them? Can she help me? I'm going to the temple, and I need a miracle.

Please let True be there.

Please let True be there.

Please let True be.

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.