Atlantia

Elinor reaches into her pocket and pulls out something. At first I can’t tell what it is—I think it might be a piece of stone—and then she brings it into the light and I see that it’s a metal figurine, one of the tiger gods, the kind of token they sell in the deepmarket stalls for cheap. This Efram has the same snarling mouth and curved tiny claws as on the totems I’ve seen before, but in one of his paws he holds a trident, which is a symbol of the sea.

Another thrill goes through me. The gods of Above and Below are not supposed to mix. We have tiger and lion gods with fur and claws, the Above has sharp-toothed sharks and bulbous-eyed fish. We have scepters and swords; they have tridents and nets. This little amalgam is another blasphemy.

“I want you to have this,” Elinor says.

“Why?” I ask. “I’m not my mother.” I didn’t preach the sermons that Elinor loved. I didn’t help her sick child.

“Because you’re what’s left of her,” she says.

After I ride the gondola back up into the city proper, I walk right through the door of the temple itself instead of going to my sleeping quarters. I want to light a candle again tonight and sit for a while under the stone gods and stained glass. I feel as though I need to show Nevio I’m not afraid to come back, that I am what is left of my mother and that she will always have a place here.

With one hand, I pick up the candle, a circle of ivory wax that looks like the round cakes of soap we use to clean the gods. That makes me smile for a moment, remembering a time when, dreaming of the Above, I picked up a candle from the storage room instead of soap. I smeared one of the gods’ faces with wax before I realized my mistake. Bay laughed so hard she cried.

The pain comes so soon after the memory that it hurts to breathe. It hurts even to be. But there is nothing else to do. Not if I want to see her again. I have to keep going.

I keep my other hand in my pocket, closed around the figure of Efram that Elinor gave me. The three prongs of the trident poke into my palm and I think, Three ways to get to the Above: The Council transports. Maire. Through the mining bay.

Right now the last one appeals to me the most, in spite of what Josiah said. Maybe it’s because I can picture how it might feel. The dark water. The floating mines. Me, swimming around them, fast and strong.

Someone comes up next to me at the altar.

She wears a head covering and nondescript clothes, to keep the priests from recognizing her immediately. But I know who she is. I don’t even have to hear her speak.

“Sirens are not supposed to be in the temple,” I say.

That makes Maire laugh softly. Her hands are steady as she lights a candle, and they are smooth and fine, the hands of someone who doesn’t have to do hard work. “Oh,” she says, “the way you can say that, with a complete lack of irony in your voice. You’re something, Rio. You really are.”

“I’ll tell everyone you’re here,” I say. “I’ll make a scene.”

“Don’t do that,” Maire says. “I’m not going to stay long. But I need to give you something. Under the middle of the third pew back, on the side of the temple nearest the priests’ door, you’ll find what your sister left for you. And if you ever decide you want to speak with me after all, go and sit under Efram’s tree in the temple plaza. I will find you. I am always here if you need me.”

“I won’t need you,” I say.

She nods her head in either mock reverence or assent and slips away. I’m surprised at how easily I’m rid of her, and I wonder how many times sirens have stolen into the temple. I come here daily, of course, and the Council doesn’t seem to have as much control over Maire as they should.

I’m not sure whether the thought thrills or frightens me.

I tell myself that after the candle burns out, I’ll go right back up the nave and leave the temple, but of course I don’t. I make my way to the third pew and sit down. I bow my head as if in prayer and reach a hand underneath the seat. At first I feel nothing, and then there it is, a thick cloth bag taped to the bottom of the pew. It’s heavy. I think I know what’s inside by the feel of it. Lots of small, solid pieces.

Money.

Bay left me money?

Is there a note inside, too?

I stand up holding the bag—it’s a simple one, the kind that many of us in Atlantia have for shopping or carrying books—and walk out of the temple. I hope no one notices that I’m leaving with more than I had when I came in, but I don’t think anyone has really paid attention to me this entire time. I have the uncanny feeling that Maire may have told them all not to see me, that she whispered some incantation when I first came inside. That would, of course, be illegal, as is the little god of Efram that sits inside my pocket.

When I get to my room, I open up the bag and dump the contents on the table. I was right—Bay’s given me money. And something else wrapped in brown tissue paper.

I count the money first. Disk after disk of golden coin. There are five hundred and seven of them altogether, a small fortune.

If this is from Bay, where did she get all of it? She couldn’t have won so much money in the deepmarket—could she? If so, was she racing when I didn’t know?

Is this enough to buy an air tank that could get me to the surface? I didn’t know they sold such things until Josiah mentioned it earlier. I’ve known about the vials of flavored air, of course, but do those sellers have other, more secret wares?

I take care not to rip the brown tissue paper surrounding the second part of the gift, just in case Bay has sent me a message, but there isn’t any of her neat, careful writing on the paper. Instead the wrapping holds a smooth shell. A seashell, rare and hard to come by, even in the deepmarket, something that belongs to both the Above and the Below. The animals that make and wear these shells walk along our ocean floors and the Above’s sandy shores. The shell’s colors are beautiful—dappled greenish-blue and brown like the colors of the Divide.

“You’re the only person in the world whose favorite color is brown,” Bay used to tease me.

“That can’t be true,” I said. “It’s mathematically impossible.”

“Well, I don’t know a single other person whose favorite color is brown,” Bay said.

“Maybe not in Atlantia,” I said. She understood what I meant.

“Maybe Above,” she said.