“Where would you like to go?” Nevio asks.
I want to go Above so much that I think, for one short moment, about telling him. But even if Nevio could bend the rules, even if he could get the Council to agree, I don’t trust him.
A flicker of annoyance and impatience crosses Nevio’s face. I’m taking too much of his time. “Let’s try another question,” he says. “What do you like to do?”
“I like to fix things,” I say, in a voice as stupid as he expects.
“Yes,” he says. “Justus tells me that you are the one who has kept the temple trees in such good repair.”
I open my mouth to thank him, because I assume that’s what he wants, but before I can say anything he speaks again.
“Still, I’m sure we can teach another acolyte to perform your tasks here,” Nevio says. “And I know they’re always in need of good workers down in the mining bays where they repair the drones. That seems like a perfect fit for you.”
The mining bays are down in the deepest reaches of the city, as far away from the temple as possible. It’s the lowest you can physically go in Atlantia, as close as you can get to the seafloor, where the drones mine for magnesium and copper, cobalt and gold.
Is Nevio doing this on purpose? Has he sensed, in some way, how much I want to be Above so he’s sinking me deeper?
It’s clear that he wants me gone.
“When my mother died,” I say, “I was assured that the temple would always be my home.”
“Of course,” Nevio says. “It will always be your spiritual home. And for now you can keep the room you shared with your sister. The machinists’ quarters are full, I’m told.”
At least I won’t have to move out of the room where Bay and I lived. But I still can’t believe Nevio is making me leave the temple. Can he do this? I suppose he can, since he’s the Minister, but it feels wrong. Should I talk to some of the priests? Then I remember Justus’s expression when he told me Nevio needed to see me. Justus knows, and even he isn’t going to help me.
“I saved one of the pages your mother wrote,” Nevio says. “I thought you would like to see it.” He holds out the paper and I snatch it away. I can’t help myself. He shouldn’t have the things she’s touched.
Rio is not intended for a life as a priest, my mother wrote, and I stop, a sudden sharp ache pinpointing the center of my chest, as if I’ve experienced a physical injury. My mother didn’t write that. She couldn’t have. But there it is, right in front of me, her handwriting as neat and measured as always. Rio doesn’t often think of the collective good, which comes innately to Bay. I’m not sure that’s something that can be taught. I don’t think that Rio is cold or strange—few people can care about the group as a whole the way a Minister or a priest must. But sometimes I reproach myself. I worry that it is my fault, that I’ve stunted her growth. But I cannot see her suffer, and in that I am a hypocrite. For that feeling has nothing to do with the collective good, and everything to do with one specific child. My child.
“This must hurt you to read,” Nevio says.
Yes. It does.
“You’ve gone through her journal?” I ask.
“Every page,” he says smoothly.
“These were her personal papers,” I say. “They should have been given to me and my sister, not kept here.”
“We have the right to any of Oceana’s papers that relate to her work as the Minister,” Nevio says. “As you can see, the rest of the page consists of notes for a sermon she delivered, so this belongs to the temple’s archives.”
I turn over the paper. The other side is filled with notes, the kind of jottings-down she made as she planned out what she would say. I’d seen her do it hundreds of times, in this very office. There were so many occasions that required her to address the citizens of Atlantia—sermons for the congregation on Sundays, and speeches for the monthly Wednesday broadcasts, when she spoke about matters the Council wanted her to address.
One of our greatest fears is to be gone, she wrote.
We hope to observe, not inhabit, the moment of our own deaths.
The song of the sirens used to help us forget. And now we cannot remember.
And then the last two words on the page.
Ask Maire.
She wrote her sister’s name.
That’s as far as I get before Nevio takes the paper from me. “The notes on that side of the paper aren’t relevant to your situation,” he says. “The other side, the part that is specifically about you, is what matters. Having read it, you must understand why we can’t keep you as an acolyte in the temple. Even your own mother would have advised against it, were she strong enough to recommend the truth instead of trying to keep you with her.”
Nevio stands up and walks to the door. He opens it. Our interview is over. “Don’t worry, Rio,” he says. “I don’t think it will take very long for you to see that this is a better fit for you.”
I might not have believed as fiercely as Bay and my mother, but the temple has been my home for years. I know the smell of the candles late at night and the sound of the bats’ wings coming home in the early morning. I sat in pools of colored light coming in through this office window and watched my mother write in the journal that Nevio has taken for his own. I used to belong here.
After losing my mother and my sister, I didn’t think I had anything left to lose, but I do. You always have something left to lose. Until, of course, you die.
CHAPTER 5
I always thought the temple robes were heavy, but they’re much lighter than the protective suits that machinists wear. One similarity between my old uniform and my new one is that the visor reminds me of the one I wore to fix the leaves and the gods in the temple trees. I resist the urge to pull it down and hide my face. The room is filled with workers; many of them sneak glances at me.
The supervisor, a middle-aged man named Josiah, shows me around the large room where the machinists work. It’s very easy to hear Atlantia breathe down here. Bay would love that. And to my surprise, the workroom is extremely beautiful. The workstations are well-lit and the smell of oil and salt water is strong and pleasant. The low ceilings have been hung with little chips and bits of metal, probably scraps left over from repairs, and they catch the light in a way that reminds me of Atlantia’s trees. “We call this the sky room because of the stars on the ceiling,” Josiah says, pointing to the scraps as they glint above us.