Atlantia (27 page)

Y
ou see,
Maire says.
I was right. You are the only one who could do this.

“Because of my voice,” I say.

And because of the work you did that had nothing to do with your voice,
Maire says.
You made yourself strong enough to swim in the lanes, which meant you could get to the shore from the island. You cared for the bats for years, so they would come to you without your having to call. You were brave enough to speak in the temple Above, and when you did, the people felt like they could believe you. They knew that you spoke the truth.

I open my eyes.

I know the voice I heard was Maire's—whether in my mind or saved somehow, I'm not certain.

I know that the face looking down at me is Fen's. I know that the soft sounds around me are the temple bats. And I know almost instantly where I am.

I'm on the transport, going Below. I can tell. I feel the Above vanishing behind us, the place where I spent a single day in all my life. The sun is in the past for me for now; the water feels deeper than it did before.

“We had to get you back down,” Fen says. “You wouldn't do what Nevio did and take the life from the bats. We used all the seawater in the temple to get you here, and then some. People went down to the shore and brought water back for you.”

I can feel that, too. I've been drenched, and the salt is left on my skin. I smile. If I'd chosen the Above that day in the temple, I would have had a sprinkling of the sea and now I am covered in it.

Fen and I are not alone. Priests and Council members of the Above sit and speak in groups, and bats settle on the armrests of chairs and fly about the transport. Their presence indicates to me that we are not being sent down to die.

“It worked,” I say.

“It worked,” Fen agrees. “For now.”

The Above is going to let us live. For now.

I feel my strength coming back the farther down we go.

“You shouldn't be coming Below,” I say to Fen. “Isn't the changing pressure bad for your lungs?”

“Yes,” he says. “But I have to see Bay. I have to find out what happened to her.”

But I think I already know. I think that my sister was able to reach them, to help them understand. I think that those who were hidden might have finally dared to reveal themselves. I think voices from the Below, siren voices and regular voices, cried out to the gods for help and to one another to change. I think the Below might have been calling out in the very moment the bats came to cover me.

One of the bats stretches out its wings. In this light they are the same blue as the sirens' robes.

“They followed us to the transport,” Fen says. “Some settled in the trees and stayed Above, but these ones flew on board. We thought it best to let them go where they wanted.”

One of the priests in his brown robes edges closer. “I don't mean to interrupt,” he says. “But can you—will you—tell us about the Below again?” He is young. His voice sounds eager, like he's thought about this all his life. Maybe he had a brother or a sister who indulged his dreaming of another world, the way Bay always did for me.

“It's beautiful,” I say, “and broken.”

I tell him again what I said in the temple Above, about the city and the people, and as I do, he weeps.

I have brought him to tears, and for a moment that scares me. Did I manipulate him unintentionally? But I have not tried to persuade him. I've tried to tell him the truth.

And I realize something else.

My voice is gone. It is no longer the voice of a siren. But it is powerful, strong, and
mine.

“You think we can learn to live together?” the priest asks.

“I do,” I say.

He nods to me and goes back to his seat. I hear him telling the priest next to him what I have said, and I think,
That's good. Let them convince one another.

“Your siren voice,” Fen says. “What do you think happened?”

“I think,” I say, “that I gave it to the Above.”

“You don't sound sorry,” Fen says.

“I'm not,” I say.

Because I am strong. I was born with a siren voice—it was a gift that I chose to give up to save my city—but I still have all the power I earned for myself.

And I can speak. I will never stop speaking.

I think Maire knew that this would happen. I think she understood, and she didn't tell me because she thought I might not be willing to give up my voice. I believe that in the end she did love me, but she loved the sirens more. She loved the city more. She wanted it all saved. And she was right.

It was worth it, what I lost, if it gained the lives of those who live in Atlantia.

The door of the transport slides open. A mass of people waits for us, and the city breathes.

I wonder if they can smell the sun on our skin or see the stars in our eyes?

This time it is not hard to find her. She's right at the front of the crowd, looking for me.

“Bay,” I say. “I came back.”

T
he sirens' island is quiet.

The salty winter air feels cool, and in this season the sky's colors are softer, pink and blue. When I take off my shoes and walk on the sand with my bare feet, it feels grainy and separate, instead of a smooth warm whole.

Bay waits on the island. She wraps her arms around me and pulls me close. The waves hit the shore over and over. I feel my sister's heart pounding against mine and I close my eyes and listen.

When we pull apart, I sit down on the sand and Bay sits next to me.

Most of the transports now surface at the shore of the main island. But when I come Above, Bay and I like to meet here, even though it is where Maire died.

That may seem strange to some but not to us. The island is beautiful. More than any other place, even more than the temple, it feels like a bridge between the Above and the Below. The bats that stayed Above never went back to the temple. Instead they make their homes in the caves near the sea. Sometimes, at dusk, they come out and roost in the silver-mossed trees, and I see their blue wings.

And the island feels like sacred ground.

Every shell in hand could hold her voice. Every stone under foot could be where she stood. Every whisper of wind or hush of water might be a message, or nothing at all. Nothing more or less than wind and waves and shells and stones.

I love it here. If I could, I'd build a house out of driftwood for Fen and Bay and True and me. I would set the trident god from Elinor over the lintel of the house. The bats might come to rest on him.

I wish I could stay Above.

And Bay wishes she could be Below. But neither of us can live where we'd like, and we can't be together. Bay needs to be with Fen, and Above is best for him now that their doctors will treat him. And for now the Below is better for me. I still can't last up here as long as I want—a matter of days, not weeks or years, thought it gets easier each time I surface.

And of course True lives Below. Together, we work on a crew rebuilding the deepmarket. We piece Atlantia back together with fire and metal. Yesterday, we raced side by side in one of the lanes, and when our bodies touched, I remembered when we came Above. When we climbed out of the water, True kissed me in front of everyone and ignored their cheers and catcalls. “Why me?” he asked.

“I've been listening a long time,” I said. “No one sounds as right as you.”

When I was growing up, I often felt trapped by the constraints of my voice, the concerns of my family, the confines of my city.

Sitting with my sister's arm around me, breathing the air of the Above while the sky of the Below laps at our feet, I know I am no longer trapped.

I am protected, shaped and built by what is outside, what they made of me, but also by what is inside, what I made of myself.

“Bay,” I say, speaking to her for the first time, and I see her face change, grow still but not surprised. The wind touches her hair, blows sand along our skin.

“Rio,” she says. “Your voice.”

I smile. She hears it, too.

My siren voice is coming back.

I thought it was gone, and for weeks that was true. But then I felt it again, on the day some of the hidden siren children gathered in the temple to sing, and it seemed right that my voice would return, the way it felt right when it left. I spent it all and so was given it to share again. It made me think of my mother. Oceana gave what she had to save others, to protect and teach them. And somehow, that never diminished her. Somehow, that made her strong.

I thought I was the last siren in Atlantia, but now I am the first. Someone has to teach the younger sirens, those who have at last revealed themselves. Someone has to tell them the stories once hidden in Atlantia's walls.

“We ended up like Oceana and Maire, after all,” I say to Bay. “Two sisters who have to live apart.”

“I'm proud to be like them,” Bay says.

So am I. They kept faith with each other. Neither of them tried to destroy the other, though they could have, the way the sisters in that siren story did.

It is easy to see my mother and her sister in every small thing, to feel them in the open places in my soul. I think they watch us. I think they love us still.

Bay wraps both arms around me and I feel her tears on my skin. We are not lost mermaids with seaweed hair and coins for eyes, but human girls, alive and found.

We are sisters, and we did not drown.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is a story about family, and I am grateful for mine:

My husband, Scott, and our four wonderful children;

My mother, Arlene Van Dyke Braithwaite, a strong and creative woman;

My aunt, Elaine Braithwaite Jolley, who has none of the dark of Rio's aunt Maire and all of the good;

My father, Robert Todd Braithwaite, my brother, Nic, and my sisters, Hope and Elaine;

My cousins, Elizabeth Jolley, Caitlin Jolley, and Andrea Jolley Hatch;

And my beloved grandmother, Alice Todd Braithwaite, who passed away during the writing of this novel. When I was six, she gave me my very own drawer in her desk and told me, “You can write your stories and keep them here, and I will never read any of them unless you tell me that I can.” I wish she could read this one.

I am also extremely grateful for my professional family:

My agent, Jodi Reamer, who makes me laugh and work until I cry;

My editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, who is tremendously smart and asks the right questions;

My publicist, Shanta Newlin, the best in the business—unflappable, unstoppable, smart, and fun;

Don Weisberg, the godfather of all my books and my career at Penguin Young Readers;

The entire team at Penguin Young Readers, including Eileen Kreit, Anna Jarzab, Theresa Evangelista, Melissa Faulner, Jen Loja, Felicia Frazier, Rosanne Lauer, Lisa Kelly, Emily Romero, Erin Berger, Erin Toller, Carmela Iaria, Venessa Carson, and Nicole White;

Alec Shane and Cecilia de la Campa at Writers House;

And the staff at The King's English, whose love for readers and books and life in general is intoxicating and contagious.

I am also grateful for others I consider family:

Mylee Edwards, Mikayla Kirkby, and Vanessa Kirkby, who have loved and watched over my children with great patience, and who are each amazing women;

The young women in my neighborhood and church congregation, who are strong, smart, good, and beautiful—it is my privilege to work with you;

Wonderful friends—some fellow writers, some not—who make me laugh and lift me up, who truly know me and from whom I learn so much;

And always,
always,
I am grateful for my wonderful readers.

IN THE SOCIETY, OFFICIALS DECIDE.

WHO YOU
LOVE
.

WHERE YOU
WORK
.

WHEN YOU
DIE
.

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