Does she even know my deepest desire? To go Above?
I have the terrible feeling that she might. That she might know my whole heart and mind.
“I can help you get Above,” Maire says, her voice fading, haunting. “But it has to be soon. We are running out of time. Can’t you hear the way the city is breathing?”
CHAPTER 3
I sit down in a pew in the temple and let the familiar scents of candle wax, stone and water, and old cloth settle over me. I take a deep breath and wait for my racing heart to slow down. It’s been pounding since my encounter with Maire.
The priests move through the nave, their robes brushing the ground and making hushing sounds. I keep my head bowed in order to avoid eye contact. I don’t want any more condolences about Bay leaving.
I should be safe from my aunt here. Those known to be sirens are not allowed in the temple. They have their own place of worship, somewhere among the tight restricted maze of Council buildings. But it wasn’t always that way. In fact, in the beginning, many sirens were priests, using their voices to cry out warnings about pride and sin and to call people to sacrifice. But then some became intoxicated with their own power, and started using their voices to hurt or manipulate, and the Council began taking the siren children to raise so that they couldn’t use their voices for ill, only for the good of Atlantia.
A woman at the front of the nave lights a candle. People sit in almost every pew. I wonder if anyone else is mourning someone who left for the Above. I’m certainly not alone in seeking solace here tonight. The temple never closes. It is the one place you are always allowed to stay once the curfew call has sounded.
My mother sometimes worked late at night, hearing the prayers and pleas of those who came with their crises of faith, their screamings of doubt, their whimpers and roars of sin. She believed it was important to listen to people, so much so that she kept working the occasional late shift even after she became the Minister.
She also believed that sirens should be allowed inside the temple, but she could never get enough priests to vote in favor of changing the rule. She saw the temple as the house of the gods and the people, the place where they could come together, and she thought it wrong that some were excluded from that opportunity. “They say that the sirens are miracles, not people,” she told Bay and me once, in a rare moment of frustration with her work. “Can you imagine believing such a thing? People can be miracles.”
I look up at the stone carvings above me, the buttresses and the gallery and the grim gargoyle gods watching us.
The gods are shown as different animals of the Above. On the pillar nearest me is the god Efram, who, because he is fierce and cunning, is represented by a tiger carving. There are many tiger gods, but if you know what you are looking for, it is easy to tell them apart. Efram, for example, has the largest eyes. He sees the most.
“The gods know everything,” my mother used to say when I had a hard time hiding my voice. “They know how difficult this is. And they are pleased with you, Rio.”
Are they pleased with me for being a siren—or for hiding it? I wanted to ask. But I never did.
When I was small, I realized I could make Bay do what I wanted with the way I said something. But I could never control my mother. Even when I cried my hardest or pleaded fervently, she could resist me. It wasn’t always easy. When I wept or begged or tried to manipulate her, she closed her eyes, and I knew she prayed for strength to overcome me. The gods always granted it to her. It was a sign of their favor. Ministers cannot be swayed by sirens. They are chosen, in part, for their ability to resist.
I remember the day when we were five and I made Bay cry so hard she could barely breathe. I did it on purpose. I liked it when I was doing it—I felt hot and cruel and clever and powerful—but afterward, I broke down in remorse. My mother held me tight. She was crying, too. “You are a good girl, Rio,” she said. She sounded relieved.
“I hurt Bay,” I said. “And I wanted to.”
“But you were sorry after,” my mother said, “and you don’t want to do it again.”
I nodded. She was right.
“That is the difference,” my mother said, almost as if she were no longer speaking to me. “That is the difference.”
She put her hands on either side of my face and looked at me with love. “Rio,” she said, “everyone wants to hurt someone else at some time in his or her life. It is part of being human. But you were born with more power to do it than most. That is why you have to keep your voice under control.” And, of course, there was the other, equally important reason. We didn’t want the Council to take me away.
My mother knew I was a siren very early on, from when I began to babble as a baby. She had to take leave from her work—she couldn’t allow anyone else to take care of Bay and me until I was old enough to learn how to mask my voice. She gave the excuse that I was sickly.
Some of my earliest memories are of my mother coaching me, telling me how to speak safely, and of Bay helping me practice. I tried to make my voice like hers, soft and quiet, but it never sounded quite the same. Still, the voice I use now is one I learned from trying to be like Bay.
In my dreams, I always speak in my real voice, and so I looked forward to going to sleep. After my mother died, I often found Bay next to me when I awoke, burrowed close for warmth, her hands cold and the smell of salt water on her. I never knew when she climbed in with me, but I was glad she came to me for comfort.
I don’t sleep well now. I don’t care about hearing my voice any longer. I want to hear Bay’s.
I’m weeping now, and I try to hide that fact. I know the priests are concerned about how profoundly I mourn my sister. At some point they will tell me to accept her choice and return to work full-time instead of keeping these irregular hours. But for now, they extend me grace. They loved her, too.
I run my hand along the varnished wood of the pew in front of me. The pews are carved out of old trees, like the pulpit, and they are extremely valuable, since there are not many wooden seats in Atlantia. But anyone and everyone can sit on the pews, can touch them. When my mother was Minister, she let me touch the pulpit, too, feel the curls of the waves and the leaves of the trees with my fingers, and I knew my religion better in those moments than I have before or since. I felt a reverence mixed with resignation and righteousness that I thought must be faith, must be the way Bay and my mother felt all of the time.