Fen wrote those words for his brother, but I want to pretend that Bay wrote them for me.
“Caleb also told me,” True says, “that Fen went out at night and came home with his hair wet. Caleb used to see Fen come in but Caleb would pretend to go back to sleep.”
“The night races,” I say. Those contests, which take place after the deepmarket closes, are the most dangerous. You risk hypothermia if you swim at night, and also time in the holding cells if the peacekeepers catch you. But the stakes are high, and you can make money fast if you don’t get sick and don’t get caught. It’s a completely different kind of racing than what Bay used to do. It’s for the truly reckless.
“I’ve never been to the night races,” True says. “I had no idea Fen was in them. But I should have realized. He always liked a risk. That’s why I came down to the lanes today. I was asking around to see if anyone here knew Fen. They did, but none of them had any idea he was planning to go Above.”
“Do you think that’s how they met?” I ask. “Bay must have gone to watch the night races. Or to swim in them.” It makes sense now—how I’d find her next to me when I woke up, her body burrowed close for warmth. Did all of this begin because my sister couldn’t sleep and I was greedy for my dreams?
“I think so,” True says. “And I think they started looking for something together. Maybe something that had to do with your mother, and with how she died.” He stops. He’s finding it hard to say the words, so I do it for him.
“You think,” I say, “that my mother was killed. Murdered.”
“Yes,” True says. “I’m sorry.”
This is all conjecture, but in spite of myself, I feel truth in it. Bay and I both thought there was something wrong about our mother’s death. I never thought Bay would leave me, but I know she loved our mother. Did Bay learn something that meant she had to go Above? What about our mother’s death could possibly lead Bay there?
“You’re not the first one who’s suggested it,” I say.
“But why would someone do it?” True asks. “How could anyone want to hurt Oceana the Minister?”
It’s too much. I can’t think about it anymore, not now.
I start trying to grab the fish left swimming in the lanes, but my fingers have gotten cold and I miss.
“I’ll help you,” True says, folding up the note and putting it away.
“You’ll get wet,” I say.
“That doesn’t matter,” True says.
The fish are fast and True and I are clumsy, which makes him laugh, and that sets me free for a moment because I like the way he sounds. I can’t laugh, because a little of my real voice always comes through when I do, but I let myself smile. We are like children, splashing as we catch at the fish, children who used to do this in pools and streams Above. That word is what sobers me.
Above. I have to go Above.
“How can you be so happy when they’re gone?” I ask. “Don’t you miss him?”
True stops smiling. I feel sorry. “Of course I do,” he says. “He was my best friend. I miss him all the time.” He bends down, catches another fish, and I watch the muscles in his back move smooth as water underneath his shirt. Then he straightens up and says, “But I can’t help being happy. I’m alive.”
I have nothing to say to that.
I’m alive, he said, and he is.
I don’t know that I am.
But if I make it Above, I think I could be.
CHAPTER 10
I’ve just changed out of my racing suit when I hear the bells chiming, the ones that signify closing time for the deepmarket. “It’s too early,” I say out loud, and someone in the dressing stall next to me says, “Not for the third Wednesday.”
Of course. I’d forgotten, lost track of the days. The Minister always gives a broadcast on the third Wednesday of each month. I wonder what the Council wants us to hear tonight.
The broadcast goes out to schools and churches throughout Atlantia, but I’ve always listened at the temple. So I ride the crowded gondola up there, hoping I can find a seat somewhere now that I no longer have a reserved spot at the front with the other acolytes.
The temple is jam-packed, as is always the case for these sermons, and there is a strange buzz in the air, an excitement that feels heightened. I see a spot at the back, high up in the gallery, and as I make my way toward it I hear Nevio begin talking at the pulpit, his voice magnified by speakers set up throughout the building.
“I speak for both the Ministry and the temple,” Nevio says, “for we are in perfect agreement about how to address this situation.” His voice sounds fulsome and rich, with something underneath it, some steel sound that I’ve never liked. I reach the top of the steps, and someone slides over on the highest wooden bench to make room for me. I barely fit. This place is full.
“The situation,” Nevio says, “is the sirens.”
My heart jumps in my chest. What is he planning to say? Does this have something to do with Maire breaking into the floodgate chamber?
Does Nevio know that I was with her?
“As some of you are aware,” Nevio says, “the sirens’ time is ending. The last known siren was born twenty years ago.”
Can this be true? If it is, then I am the youngest siren. The last one. My mother never told me that.
“The sirens are a miracle,” Nevio says, “but they are our miracle, to be contained and controlled for our good. They belong to Atlantia. Just as the bats cannot be allowed to fly about unchecked and need a place of their own and people to feed them, the sirens also need keepers and a safe haven for their protection and ours.”
He speaks to Atlantia, but I have the strangest feeling that he also speaks to me specifically. That he’s telling any sirens out there—Could there be others like me?—that they need to come to him to be safe. That we are capable of terrible things. We might hurt the ones we love. We might turn evil and wrong.
Maybe I should listen to him.
But then I look back at the pulpit and picture my mother there instead of Nevio and I know that was the very thing she tried to protect me from—a life under the control of people who didn’t love or understand me.
“And as the time of the sirens ends,” Nevio says, “we may look for a new miracle. For the third miracle.”