Above (3 page)

He went far.

It started raining after a bit, and Jack thought
they really did yell up a storm
, shivering wet in his T-shirt along the roadside that nobody drove on ’cause the town was so far from everything. It thundered like tractor engines over and over and he got scared, thought about finding somewhere to hide ’til the storm got done. He never thought about turning back, though — he’s careful to say that every time:
I never once thought to turn myself back.

But he hesitated, stopped for a minute on the flat roadway in the flat land, where he was the tallest thing for a little ways.

And the lightning kissed him bone to bone and he wasn’t there for a while.

He woke up in the hospital three towns away, hurting bad from lying stiff (stiff like a body, he showed me, arms and legs all straight and locked and a weird blank smile on his face). His ma and pa had noticed him missing and come looking, but it was too late for that. A man and woman in uniforms (
Whitecoats?
I asked the first time, thrilled with terror, but he shook his head
no
) had come too, and they interviewed his parents and then him for a long time, and found out that his parents drank. When they let him out of the hospital the man and woman said he would go to the city with them instead of home with his ma and pa.

Once he was in the city, in a house full of rowdy boys and girls who didn’t have parents no more either, the sparks came.

They had televisions in the city, and he couldn’t turn them on for breaking them. They had microwaves, and he couldn’t warm up food ’cause they’d spark and smoke and the firemen would have to spray down the house. They had stoplights, and the stoplights flickered and died dead when he touched the buttons to make them change. The man and woman took him to the city hospital for testing. They ran tests. They prodded him and took his blood away.

They couldn’t keep him in the hospital. He broke all their machines: Tubes and wires leaned out to brush his fingers, a spark and then dials going wild everywhere, flashing lights, alarms. They took him out of the Normal-people hospital and to their Whitecoat place, a building by a park with big barred windows and different machines, ones that clipped on to his arms and legs and chest with little sucking sounds and measured the spark under Jack’s skin. The sucker-clips left marks like bruises.

Nobody cared, he puts in at this part, that the Whitecoats did things that hurt him. He didn’t have a ma and pa anymore to fight for him (
like yours would have for you, Matthew
, he said with a little twisted smile), and he was from a town back in the rocky brush that nobody’d ever heard of. It’s not just Beasts that are scared of the city Above; not just us who live under.

Young Jack was clever though, like he is now old. The lock on his door only opened from the outside, but it was a lock with numbers instead of a metal key kept hid away. He touched his fingers to the back of the door late one night and hunted deep bone to bone for his sparks.

He set his jaw and leaned into the door, and when it hurt he pushed the hurt farther, out from the pit of his belly where he kept his oaths safe.

Dragged light to his fingers, and cried as they burned.

They sparked and sparked, and when the door swung open he crept out into the hallway and then into the street and ran as fast as he could. Ran far.

And how did he find Safe?
I asked him the first time, because my job is to tell the story about Safe.

Jack smiled his crooked smile at me and told me Safe is the farthest far of all.

Ariel sleeps ’til Sanctuary Night, and that’s fine by me.

Sanctuary Night’s exactly what it says. Everyone lines up before Atticus and he reconfirms their Sanctuary: their right to live in Safe. Nobody’s ever turned away, except for Corner eight years back when it all came out about Jonah and the killing, and after that it couldn’t have stayed and shared our plates and homes and duties no matter
what
Atticus said ’bout it.

There are stories that they loved each other once, that the Whitecoats took them as much for their loving as Atticus’s eyes and arms and Corner’s bloodtouch hands. But nobody ever told those loud enough to make a carving, and Jack once said it’s better that way. “Keeping histories,” he said actually, his voice all popping with sparks, “is as much about knowing what needs forgetting as what ought to be remembered.”

That’s something that sneaks up on me when it’s darker than the normal dark. I almost asked him to explain once what he meant, but his face was too serious, too hot with lightning when he said it, to ever bring it up again.

When the clocks strike night, I finally wake her up.

She’s muzzy but her eyes open right away, big and scared like they always are if anything touches her sudden in sleep. “It’s me,” I whisper careful, not moving fast or talking loud. She relaxes, muscle by muscle outlined under our thin blue blanket, ’til I can stand up without towering over her. You learn a lot about how not to make people vulnerable when you live with Ariel. You learn a lot about making Safe.

You learn a lot about what makes a person vulnerable too. I remember those things, each little bit that makes her flinch. I’m saving them up in case one day I meet whoever made my Ariel hurt.

She sits up and stretches out, looking for the clock through the layers and layers of wings hung from the rafters. She hated that I hung them at first. Ariel likes things Normal. “Sanctuary Night,” I tell her, and she shakes her head a little, like the thought needs settling.

“Gotta wash my face,” she half-asks, quiet, and brushes through the wings to the basin when I don’t reply. They rustle after her, dry and unbending, catching what bit of light comes off the bulb in the ceiling and spreading it soft: white on white on white getting gentler through every shed wing. In the morning, when Jack lights the lamps, the house glows like your mama’s arms: sourceless light and iridescence.

I read that word in one of Atticus’s thick old books once. When I went to Jack to ask what it meant, he held his hands out and they glowed so gentle I thought they might kiss the air, and since that day I wanted a place that was
iridescent
, that lit without burning. Being in love is sort of like that, when it’s real. When it’s true.

It’s like that to watch Ariel smile.

And when she burns, it’s not her fault. She’s Sick, and if I’m soft, soft and unsharp and patient, it’ll all turn out right.

She splashes in the corner. The sound's compact and quiet under the chatter outside the door: people carrying their offerings into the great empty circle between the houses and the kitchen to exchange them for Sanctuary from Atticus. Not Atticus the man, but him as the founder — one of the founders — of Safe. He takes it in for the whole of us, whatever token we have to show what’s ours to offer, and then he touches you on the head with his heavy old claw and you can stay.

My offering doesn’t get carried. What I give back to Safe is my arms for lifting, my hand for carving, my ears for listening sharp and careful, and my face, my Passable face. What I do is listen, and at the end of the night I Tell before everyone who went first and second, what they offered, and what it meant. I Tell them the Tale of themselves, and that’s how I prove I’m a good Teller. And then Atticus puts his claw on my head and we go to the kitchen to feast.

Ariel comes back wet-haired, smelling strong like the flower perfume I found, tossed away half-empty in a curb-side box, for her birthday. “You have something?” I ask. There’s no hanging back on Sanctuary Night, not if you’re able. She wasn’t when she came down, so they let me take responsibility for her once, just that once. But it’s been eight months, and that won’t stand on Sanctuary Night.

She holds out her hand. There’s a little stinger balanced on her palm, shiny-black with chitin and whatever bees sweat when they’re caught up with insect rage. “S’what I’m offering,” she says shy, like she never yelled or said she hated me in the sewers while she cried, and I lean down close to look, breath held so I don’t blow it away.

Under her other arm is her big black writing book, and I know what that means. It’s all that stubborn inside her, hiding, wrapped tight under her fear and Sick. The tough I’ve always known was there; a spark of light caught in her eye. Her Curse, her secrets. Her Tale.

It doesn’t matter anymore if Atticus said
last time
. Sanctuary’s a promise to keep Safe.

It’s her promise not to go.

“It’s good. A good offering,” I tell her, and smile; I can hardly breathe from the falling-down relief of it. But she don’t smile back; she looks away from me as we brush aside the long wing-curtains and open the door of the house.

The path out to the center of Safe takes us through the middle houses, all cut-up concrete and salvaged metal and boards, the oldest houses in the whole cavern; far enough back to be private and not so far as to hit the cavern walls. Back when Safe was founded there were even less people than now, and nobody wanted to stray too far from the fire that burned all night in what turned into the kitchen and common and stores.

It’s not like that anymore. Word got ’round, even Above; more people came down. Things got bigger. Now there’s electrics and a skinny pipe for clean water and no fires built inside for years, and the newest houses slope like subway tunnels against the rocky ceiling where it curves gentle down.

The oldest of them all is Atticus’s, cemented-tight pieces of shattered slab that he took down with his own hard claws. The concrete’s snipped like fingernails, ragged-edged where he cut and then moved his claw and cut again. You can see the glow of his eyes through the cracks arcing slab to slab, and you know when to stay away. We come out past it to where all of Safe is fetched up waiting, gathered half-circle across the spiraled, soft-swept common.

We’re late, near the last: Hide is already shuffling back-forth back-forth on his little patch of ground, and Heather’s fingers are tapping ’gainst the arm of her wheelchair, the one that used to belong to Reynard before he died and we put him in the ground. Seed’s hand’s caught her other, fingers tangled together, talking broad-smile low to Jiélì’s ma, Kimmie, while the little girl squirms and fidgets and makes her singing noises in her mama’s arms. I count heads: near the full forty-three people who shelter in Safe. Forty-three Tales in the back of my head; forty-three offerings to make a Tale of tonight.

For now everything’s all chatter, the kind you get on special days; bits of bright new clothes first worn and washed-up hair. The tins of pears and sweets are lined up on the kitchen cabinet-top for the meal we’ll make together after, and the little refrigerator we use only a few days yearly ’cause it’s so much noise and strain for Jack is humming with cool cream inside. Everything’s ready, set for Atticus to begin.

Except Atticus ain’t here yet.

I look around for Whisper and she’s all the way to the back, cradling the old Polaroid camera she hoards in her velvet-and-redbrick house that’s more a museum than somewhere people live. There’s one picture of every Sanctuary Night, dim and slick-papered, on the inside back of her door: all the people of Safe growing older and bigger and more plentiful year to year.

It’s for Violet’s sake they’re back there, back where the light don’t half reach. Violet’s behind her where it’s dim enough for her to bear, holding tight to Whisper’s free hand. Violet used to mend clothes, dust tabletops, separate the cans and packets that each supply duty brought down to make fair-share meals for the rest of us, but it’s been more than six full years since she could open a jar without dropping it or not stick herself with sewing needles from her twitch. Now Whisper speaks for her, and Whisper makes guarantee of her Sanctuary.

“Teller,” she says formal when we make our way over. Not from any sort of trouble; tonight I’m Teller, calling back the Tales once Sanctuary’s given. She don’t give greeting to Ariel. People stopped after the first month, when she wouldn’t speak to them back.

“Where’s Atticus?” I ask, giving them the greeting back: a nod of the head to fuzzy white-haired Whisper in her beads and layers, to greyer, faded Violet with her crooked jaw.

“N-n-n-not,” Violet manages, and pulls a rueful face between the lip-smacks and twitches and tangles. Today it’s bad. Whisper will have to give her Tale too. “Not-out,” she rushes in one breath, and sighs.

Under the sounds that are nighttime in Safe is always the ticking, steady and strong, of seventy-one hanging clocks. The nearest one says ten to the hour, and Atticus is never, never late. “Should be out,” I say, silly and obvious.

Whisper’s hand catches at her skirts and skirts and skirts, showing green and red and tatter-brown even in Jack’s dimmer nighttime light. “He should,” she says. There’s a scrap of frown, pulling down her face just so. “Matthew,” — and not
Teller
— “go fetch him out?”

Me, and not Whisper. Not ’cause Whisper’s scared of Atticus, like some. She’s more than useful; she’s a founder of Safe too and has the ghost-talk and knows halfway all of Above, and she’s the one Atticus talks to besides when something’s tough or tricky. But I’m the Teller and lived foster to Atticus for six long years, and I can interrupt him in the middle of something important without causing a giant public row that’d spill out and blight our Sanctuary Night.

“Ma’am,” I say, proper like you talk to Whisper, and turn for Atticus’s great stone doorway. Even though Whisper didn’t say nothing ’bout Ariel she trails along behind me, book balanced ’gainst her waist and her right hand careful closed, walking in my footsteps so’s to leave no mark. We round the corner, onto the path, and shuffle-walk to the door.

There’s red light spilling through the doorframe on the dirt. There’s red light and voices, and I can’t help it, even though I got taught by the first year I could talk that eavesdropping’s a grave wrong. I can’t help softening my footsteps, looking back warning at Ariel, leaning down low where the door hangs bad and you can see right in if you crouch just right. To listen.

And: “What do you want?” Atticus says, eyes on fire, brighter red than any paint I could get and hot enough to give off sparks. But he’s not looking at me; he’s looking at someone long and too-skinny, long and pale and tattered. Someone I can’t number in the forty-three Tales of Safe I carry ’bout in my head.

“Sanctuary,” whispers a dry boy-girl voice, and my gut chills like the worst winter night in the history of Above, because I remember that voice.
What color were Atticus’s eyes when he exiled the first Beast from Safe?
it whispered in my ear with a finger over my eye, sharp and poised for scratching.

Ariel remembers it too, because she freezes. But not before she pulls me
down
. I stuff my hand in my mouth so I don’t shout — it tastes like stone and old soap and wood shavings — and go down quiet as I can. The ground outside the doorway presses nubbly against my belly. Ariel’s face is cold and her eyes are cold and she’s leaning forward ’gainst the ground, she’s listening so hard. Listening with every inch.

“Denied,” Atticus says, and steps back, claws ready to snap and slice.

“I’m Beast,” says the darkness, and it follows him. It’s nothing but a silhouette against the bright of Atticus’s eyes: a hand, a sleeve, a bony worn-thin hip. Atticus turns to the corner, back again, tracking it with one claw. “Beasts get Sanctuary.”

“We should get fire,” I whisper. We should get fire, Jack, Whisper, everyone. I don’t dare look away for a reply.

“You were exiled. Killers don’t get Sanctuary.” Atticus’s eyes are changing colors so fast I can’t keep track: anger-fear-rage-grief-pain-memory, orange-red-yellow-cooldown brown.

“Never Killer,” it says, rough and odd, and Atticus bares his teeth.

“Don’t lie,” he answers poison-hard. “Don’t lie to
me
.”

The quiet between them is terrifying.

“What’s
you
anymore?” it backtalks right in front of us, and that thin, starve-jointed hand reaches out, hesitates. And though it don’t move, Atticus yanks his arm back, claw flailing high, and for a second I swear his eyes are golden. “What’s
me
?”

“I won’t have Killers in Safe,” Atticus’s voice stutters. His claw draws in, hugs to his chest; scrapes soft against the armor of his other arm.

Corner.
I bite my lip to keep from yelling that dirty name across the cavern into the cheerful, chatty crowd. I grope for Ari’s hand —
get fire
— but she doesn’t know what I mean or ignores me, doesn’t care.

“That’s how you tell my name, then. Killer?” The voice sharpens, deepens down, and the muscles down in my back get thick with true, real scared. “No more founder? No more lover —”

“Out,” growls Atticus, and all the murmuring on the common dies dead.

“You can’t do that,” it says, dangerous and shattered. The hand flicks up, and Atticus squirms back, chest and then shoulders and neck. He clacks his claws when it reaches his throat. “You lock one thing out and then it’ll be another, and another, and you won’t be any better than they were.”

“I stopped,” Atticus rasps, stone on stone. “It’s not me who doesn’t know when to stop.”

“Oh, Atticus,” it says soft, and the softness is scarier than the rest in its sorrow. “I’d have done anything you asked. I’d have been your sea and sky.”

Ariel’s shaking. She’s shaking and her jaw is closed tight, fists hard like I’ve never seen them before. The back of her shirt bulges and I squeeze her arm tighter, whisper “No, Ari, no,” as clear as I dare, as clear as I can be without letting Corner know we’re out here.