Without Bay singing, it was too hard to sleep, and I decided to do what she did when she couldn’t rest.
I decided to go to the night races.
When I get to the racing lanes, I climb up into the stands. The water doesn’t look blue in the dim lighting. It’s no color at all. People talk in murmurs as they make high-stakes bets. They don’t laugh and joke the way they do during the day. When a bettor comes up and asks what I want to wager, I shake my head. I don’t have money for this.
“Then why are you here?” he asks.
“I came to watch,” I say. In the dark my flat voice sounds different—inarguable and unapproachable instead of stupid. It matches the gray light. He mutters but leaves me alone.
How often did Bay come here? I wonder. I have her shell in my pocket, for comfort, but I won’t get it out. In the dark, crowded stands, it would take one bump or jostle and I could lose hold of the shell, and then it would clatter and shatter on the hard ground below.
Even thinking about it makes me feel sick.
Maybe her voice will come back. Maybe I need to give it time.
I brought Maire’s shell with me, too. I couldn’t bring myself to leave it behind. And then there’s the air mask, slung over my back, as if I’m trying to pretend like tonight is just a normal outing to the deepmarket, no different from any other. As if by obeying the rule about carrying the mask, I won’t get in trouble for breaking curfew.
The announcer doesn’t shout out the names of the racers. Instead he holds up a sign and someone shines a spotlight on it so we can see who’s up next. Everything is more discreet, more serious. If the peacekeepers decide to make a raid, everyone caught out after curfew could go to prison. But I’ve heard that some Council members like to come betting, too, and so the races aren’t ever shut down permanently.
I feel sad that Bay came here without me. And I wonder how she felt all those years before my mother died, knowing that I planned to leave. I didn’t mean to be unkind. I just knew I couldn’t stay. I always felt close to Bay, because she was the one who knew my secret about the Above. But I wonder if knowing that secret made her feel far away from me. She always knew I had to leave her.
And I didn’t know that being apart would feel like this. If I’d known, would I still have gone?
Did Bay ever race at night? She always came home cold but dry, but she could have worn a cap, covered her hair. The thought of her being in that water makes me shiver. But watching the swimmers, who are constantly, quietly moving to keep themselves from getting too cold, who have gray faces in the grainy light, I realize that I should probably try this, too.
Swimming in the cold and the dark is what it will be like when I try to go up. Even if the sun shines Above, it won’t reach me for a long, long time.
But I don’t want to race here. I’ve heard what people say about the racers, and I watch how they swim. These are the races for people who no longer hope. These people want something singular and unattainable, something no one else can understand.
These are the people who are not happy in Atlantia, who have things they cannot forget or who feel wrong in some way, as though they do not belong.
I understand them, and it frightens me.
I wish I knew a siren who would soothe me, tell me it was all right, that I can be happy, that I belong here Below.
But the siren I know does not soothe.
I lift the other shell to my ear.
“Where do you live?” I ask.
It’s late. It’s dark. She could be sleeping.
But she answers.
Maire lives in an apartment in a neighborhood not far from the deepmarket. It looks completely unremarkable from the outside, one door among many all lined up in a row. The sky is low here, so the narrow building is only two stories high. It appears that there are only two small rooms per apartment, one room set on top of another. I have to squint in the dim light of the streetlamps to make sure I have the right number.
Even though I knew my mother died on Maire’s doorstep, I’ve never known where Maire lived. I assumed she would live up in the Council blocks with the other sirens. I pictured my mother dying there, in one of their clean-swept, candy-colored entryways. The steps at Maire’s apartment are gray, like everything else in this kind of light.
I’ve seen everything now. My mother’s dead body in the morgue, her insignia worn around another Minister’s neck, her office cluttered with someone else’s books, and now this, the place where she died.
I’ve seen everything and I still feel like I know nothing.
Before I can knock on the door, Maire opens it. Compared to the dimness outside, the hallway behind her is a flood of light, like she’s cracked open the sun. “Come in,” she says.
“I thought you would live up near the Council,” I say.
“I prefer to live down here,” she says. “Up there they’re always listening. Down here Atlantia is too loud for them to hear much.”
“I’m surprised they allow it.”
The lower room is a kitchen area with a bathroom at the back. Maire leads me through it and up the stairs to the apartment’s other room, a sitting room with a couch, where I assume she must sleep. The shades on the windows are dark and thick—blackout shades, to keep in the light. I couldn’t even see a sliver of it from outside. Though the neighborhood is not one of the nicer ones in Atlantia and the apartment is small, it appears that Maire lives here alone—a very grand luxury in a city where space is at a premium.
“I told you I was selfish,” Maire says, as if she knows what I’m thinking. “This is part of what I’ve bargained for, all these years. There are times when they need a siren who is not an empty, vacant puppet. Sometimes they require someone who has actual power. I do what they say, and they let me live where I want.” She gestures for me to sit down on a red chair, upholstered in thick, fine velvet.
The room looks nothing like I expected. I thought there would be shelves crowded with jars full of mysterious things, shadows everywhere, not this place of order and light. I expected more of a deepmarket jumble, but the few things here are well-made, cared for—two chairs and a couch; a table; a delicate, green glass vase; a shelf of books; a jar of dirt. I wonder if it’s real.
On the table between us sits a large, golden bowl full of different-colored shells. It’s odd to see so many in one place. “How did you get all of these?”