Maire strides right up to the guards at the floodgate entrance. “We’d like to go inside,” she says.
“That’s not allowed,” one says. “You don’t have Council and temple permission.”
“I understand,” Maire says, and the resignation in her voice convinces even me for a second. I’m turning away when she speaks again.
“Now,” she says, just a single word.
It’s cold and hot, a slice, a knife through one’s brain and body. I step forward involuntarily.
The guards have already started to open the doors, as if they began to obey her before she finished speaking. Is that possible? Is her power so strong?
“Stay,” Maire tells them.
And then, to me, she says, “Come.”
I follow. I’m not sure whether I’m following her voice or my own strong, strange desire to go inside.
“I think,” Maire says, “that we should go down.”
Down. Into the floodgate chamber itself, not up to the viewing area. This is strictly forbidden unless you’re a priest or have come with one to prepare a body, but Maire acts as if she has every right to be here.
We go through narrow, dank hallways, the ones that eventually lead to the morgue farther down. The guards don’t follow us. They’re likely calling for reinforcements, who will arrive in a matter of moments. But will it matter? How many people can Maire command?
“Not an army,” she says, as if she’s heard my question, “so our time is limited. They’ll send guards who are immune to the sound of my voice, and they’ll take me away. The Council will find it necessary to reprimand me and lock me up for a few days, so you and I should accomplish as much as we can at this meeting.”
I can’t get over the sound of that Now. My heart pounds. And I realize how silly my thoughts were earlier, about being a match for Maire in some way. Her voice has been honed and cultivated for years. It is a weapon, a beautiful one.
“Ah,” Maire says. “Here we are.”
She puts her hand on the door in front of us. It is metal and heavy, pressurized for when the water comes in. Somehow Maire opens it easily.
“Come along,” Maire says, stepping across the threshold. There’s no command in her voice, but I’m not sure I trust the invitation. I pause for a moment before I follow her inside.
The floodgate chamber is tall, many stories high. Along the carved buttresses supporting the ceiling sit ancient stone figures representing the gods. Like the ones in the temple, they were taken from churches Above long ago. I look up at the screaming tiger and dragon and lion mouths and at the glaring eyes. The floor is damp in places.
It took the engineers years to perfect the technology of the floodgates, to make walls strong enough that they could let the water in to this chamber alone without the pressure breaking the city wide open. It’s a little terrifying to watch a body go up—it feels as though, at any moment, the water will break through into the viewing area. But of course that has never happened.
The water of the sea pushes against the top of the gates, presses down all around us. I think I hear the metal sigh and the stone moan.
Bay and I were together here at the floodgates, and we were together before that when the priests and representatives of the Council asked us their many questions after they found our mother’s body: Had she been unwell? Did she tell you of any chronic illnesses in your family, ones we don’t have here in our medical records? Bay and I sat side by side, saying no over and over again.
“What do you think happens when the dead reach the surface?” Maire asks. “Do you believe that their bodies become foam and their souls fly free?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“I don’t know about the souls part of it,” Maire says. “But if a body makes it through the mines in the water and washes to the shore, the people Above take what they want from it. Clothing. Jewelry.”
With that word it all comes back, the whole memory of that day, the one I’ve tried to keep locked away, pushed down in my mind.
“I forgot to bring her ring,” Bay said. “She always wanted to wear her ring when she went to the surface. How could I forget?”
“It’s all right,” I told Bay, but I didn’t look at her, because they were bringing our mother’s body into the floodgate chamber. We sat high up in the viewing area. Our mother looked small in their arms.
They set our mother down on the floor and chanted the prayers. I willed myself not to cry. I didn’t look at Bay. And then, when the priests were finished with the prayers, they left the room, sealed it shut, and left our mother alone. Hundreds of us were watching—some of us in the viewing area, some on screens set up in the plazas throughout Atlantia—but she was alone.
I heard a creaking sound in the walls. It was the sound of water coming in.
The open mouths of the gods began to stream. The water cascaded to the floor, and soon our mother was wet, her clothes clinging to her legs, her hair swirling around her.
Far, far above was the exit of the floodgates, an enormous opening modeled after the rose window in the temple.
The water filled the chamber, and the body lifted up. The speed of the water increased, filling the chamber faster and faster.
The water rose above the level of the viewing area, and I gasped in air. It seemed as if we were going to drown as the water went past our windows. But of course, we were safe.
Our mother’s body went up, up, up, toward the exit of the floodgates, and I thought I could see the sun for a moment, that it was shining all the way down on Atlantia.
When the chamber was nearly full, and I could barely see my mother anymore, the window began to spin. It looked like a flower opening.
And then she was gone.
When we came home that night, I found the ring and pressed it into Bay’s hand. “I think she would have changed her mind anyway,” I said. “I think she would have wanted you to keep this.”
“Once they’ve taken what they need Above,” Maire says to me now, “they dump the body in a pit. They don’t want it any more than we do Below.”
Maire is saying a body, but I think of her body. My mother’s. I can picture it all exactly: her clothes in a tangle, her limp form slumped against the shore, pushed again and again by the waves. Someone from the Above coming down to find her. Taking what they can.