And then there is singing over the speaker. Siren singing. They are comforting us, telling us to wait and see, to go home, go home, go home. But these voices are tame, not like the ones screaming from the walls. These sirens are telling us what the Council wants us to hear.
I hurry for the door, but once I’m outside I stop in my tracks.
It’s foggy.
And we don’t have weather here.
Elinor catches up with me. She draws in her breath at the sight.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” I whisper.
“Once,” she says. “When your mother died. It’s one of the reasons some people think she might be a god.”
“I didn’t go out that night,” I say. I was inside, with Bay, promising her over and over again that I wouldn’t leave. “I didn’t see anything like this.”
Elinor and I both start to run. We pass the wishing pool and then we are caught up in masses of people, all hurrying, and I can’t see Elinor anymore.
My feet carry me in the direction of the temple, because that is where I first saw True, and no one stops me because I am also going home. Home through the fog, the siren voices singing overhead, loosed at last.
I pray silently, and it’s not to Efram or any of the tiger gods, or any of the gods at all. It’s not their faces I picture; it’s hers. My mother’s.
I hear other people around me saying her name. They are remembering that other night when the fog came. They are remembering her.
I’ve joined my blasphemy with those in the deep-market who worshipped her. Did they pray to my mother when the water came in or the air went out? Did she help them? Can she help me? I’m going to the temple, and I need a miracle.
Please let True be there.
Please let True be there.
Please let True be.
CHAPTER 17
I have eyes for him, and so I see.
True walks through the temple, pushing past people, looking around. Looking for me. He’s at the other end of the nave, too far ahead, and there are many bodies in between us and I don’t trust my voice to call out his name.
But part of me wants to call it out, because if he hears me say it now, he will know. I would like for him to know.
And then, as if I’ve spoken after all, True stops and turns back toward the entrance. Across all the people mourning and seeking, under all the gods watching, unmoving, he sees me.
“Rio,” he calls out. He starts toward me so fast that he knocks someone off balance and reaches out to steady them, but his eyes never leave my face. He pushes the wrong way through the crowd, and I push, too, against people and the pews and anything else that gets in my way.
I think he will stop when he reaches me, but he keeps moving, pulling me right into his arms. “You’re safe,” he says, his lips in my hair.
Then I notice light and stained-glass windows and candles and people, because I’m looking away from True, trying to keep the tears from falling, tears of relief that he is alive. True is alive.
There are too many people in the temple and more coming every minute. The sirens told us to go home, and, for many of the people, that means the temple, in a spiritual sense at least. My mother always said that. This is the home of their belief.
I take True’s hand and lead him outside and into the fog.
When he sees how thick it has become, his eyes widen and he looks at me as if this might be my doing, as if I am powerful instead of plain.
And I remember how, earlier, seeing him kneel by the bucket of coin in the deepmarket, I knew that there was something he wanted to tell me.
I pull him under one of the trees. In the patchiness of the fog, I can make out glimpses of him—the back of his hand marked with scars from cutting metal; his face closer to me; his body lean and dark in the dim light. “Tell me,” I whisper, my voice the only sound besides the leaves moving above us, almost invisible in the fog.
This time he does.
“I heard you,” he says. “That day at the temple.”
Somewhere near us a leaf falls to the ground, making a small silver sound.
“You thought I meant that I heard you crying,” True says. “But that’s not what I was trying to say.”
And I understand.
He heard me.
Not when I was crying at the temple.
Before.
When Bay left.
He knows I’m a siren.
True’s hands come to either side of my face, and his fingers brush my lips. “You’re whispering something,” he says softly. “What are you saying?”
I didn’t know I was whispering, but I realize he’s right. When did I start?
I’m saying please, and I’m not sure why.
“All I could hear during the breach was your voice,” True says. “I could hear you calling out with the same agony that I heard when Bay left. But you weren’t calling for her. You were calling for me, and there was nothing I could do to help you.”
He shifts his body so he can see me better, but I don’t say anything. I look at him. He has the same shadows underneath his eyes that I noticed the first time we met. He’s been worried. About me.
“You’re all right,” he says. “You’re here.”
“True,” I say, giving him a double answer. Saying his name and saying that yes I am here.
He kisses me.
Right here under the trees, right here on my lips, and then on my neck, his fingers strong on my back, pulling me hard and close to him. We are nearly the same height, and we fit together right.
He is good at this. I am good at this. We are good at this.
I close my eyes, and I listen. To his breathing, mine.
“Let’s go to the deepmarket,” True says. “Let’s see if there is anything we can do.”
The sirens still call out for the people in Atlantia to go home, go home, but True is immune to them, and I find that they are not so hard to resist anymore. I have grown stronger.
Perhaps it’s because I don’t hear Maire’s voice among the others.
True and I walk through the trees toward the nearest gondola stop, where one of the boats sits, still and dry. The fog grows thicker, and the lights dim. But we are close, and I can see his face, his kind eyes, his lips.
“Now,” True whispers, and he pulls me, the two of us running blind through the white. He stops suddenly, and we’re next to the canal. True lets go of my hand and leaps over the side and into the canal right in front of the boat. I follow.