Atlantia
Page 66I hear my voice in the temple, and Bay’s voice in my head, and Maire and Oceana, too. They speak with me, two dead and one living, all wanting the same miracle, for Atlantia to be saved.
“The people of Atlantia need you,” I say. “And you need us. We need to help each other.”
The gargoyle gods look down. I have seen their counterparts all my life. I know their sharp teeth and their stone gazes. I can almost see through Bay’s eyes, what she sees now in the temple Below.
“For those who live Above, the gods look like the creatures of the Below. For the people Below, they are the animals that walked Above. But they are the same gods. Whether we made them or discovered them, they are the same. And we are the same. We are all human, Above and Below. Even the sirens. They are different, but difference does not have to mean death. It can mean life. Ours, and yours.”
The temple is nearly silent. Even Nevio stays quiet, listening. But he is smiling. He thinks I have made a mistake. He knows I spent it all on that word—Listen. I asked them to listen, and they do, even Nevio. But he thinks that as soon as I am done speaking and the power of that word is broken, he will be able to come in and finish me, make short work of all I’ve said. Because he won’t hesitate to use his voice on them. He won’t balk at telling them what to do.
Don’t think of him. Think of your mother and your aunt and your sister. Think of the boy Bay loves. Think of the boy you love.
“It will be the most difficult thing we have ever done,” I say. “We will have to care about those in the other world as much as we care about those who are among us. For me this is easy, because my sister is there. She is not with me.”
And when I say the words, they become true. I no longer feel Bay with me.
Is she gone? What has happened Below?
In that moment I falter, thinking of her, and the power of my voice is spent.
Nevio makes his move. “This is not the order of things,” he says, leaning over the pulpit. “The Below had their time to be the world of the privileged, to make decisions about who lived and where. Now it is your time. And remember, the Below spawned the sirens. Those abnormal, mutated creatures. This girl is one of them.”
Murmurs and cries break out in the crowd.
I didn’t want to tell them. But they should know.
Nevio’s face registers a brief moment of shock, and then he smiles again. “She is from the Below,” he says, “and she is wrong. Ignorant. The Below is ignorant. But you, the people of the Above, are not. You are ready to be free. Free of supporting those Below, free of worrying about the past. It is time to move forward, without the fetters of Atlantia encumbering you, holding you back.”
He is so powerful that it feels like there is a voice inside me responding to him, wanting to obey and believe what he says.
But it feels foreign. It feels wrong, like he has placed something there and then called to it. Not like it is part of me. When Maire spoke that last time, on the island, it did not feel foreign. It felt like she was singing a song I knew, one that was part of me, not put there by anyone else. She gave voice to something essential, something belonging to everyone alive.
Some people push for the exit. Where do they think they will go?
Some people kneel down to pray. Who do they think will hear?
I see Fen trying to get to me, his mask pulled over his face.
The peacekeepers of the Above are coming for me now. In the melee someone knocks the jar of water from the altar.
The glass shatters. For a moment, the silence is absolute.
“The idea that we could do this,” he says. “That we could save everyone. That we could overcome the problems of the past. It seems too good to be true.”
“It is too good to be true,” Nevio says.
Until now I felt strong, but my body is losing its battle with the Above. I feel fatigue coming over me, darkness asking me to sink into it and rest.
Nevio sees the weakness. His eyes are bright with power, and his voice is still strong. How does he manage to avoid the exhaustion?
I look up to the gods for help and something alive stares down.
One of the bats from the Below. Fen has let them out. I see them, one by one, flying in to perch on the gods of the Above the way they did in the Below. I feel strength coming back to me, just from looking at them.
I feel better when the bats are near. They are from the Below. And I calm them, too. We help one another.
I remember the little body thrown in after Ciro’s, and suddenly I know.
This is how Nevio plans to survive. He takes the strength from the bats. He uses them up to stay Above.
I won’t do that.
I look back to where Maire’s body rests.
She was the most powerful siren I’ve ever known.
And then I swear I hear her.
No, Maire says. You are.
I walk up to the place in front of the pulpit where the jar broke and put my hands in the water on the ground. I hear people gasp. Then I show them my wet palms. “We shouldn’t be afraid to touch the Below,” I say. “Haven’t you missed it, deep inside? Don’t you wonder what is down there?”
Some of them nod—only a few—but hope starts in my heart.
“Atlantia,” I say, “is a city unlike any other. Your ancestors helped build it. You have helped keep it alive. Wouldn’t you like to see it?”
And then I tell them about the city, the temple, the plazas, the wishing pools. I tell them about the trees, about the way the city breathes. I tell them about the songs of the sirens, the sea gardens, the racing lanes, about the gods, the gondolas. I tell them about the deepmarket, the drowning.
“And then there are the people of Atlantia,” I say, and my voice breaks, thinking of True and Bay, of all the others. “We need to hurry,” I tell the crowd. I feel stronger, but I can tell that it will not last; it cannot hold. The water can’t help for long. “If we don’t save Atlantia, then it will die. The city. The people. Please.”
“We would have to trust that any sirens left would use their power for good,” someone says.