And someone else.
Maire sits down next to me on the rim of the pool. She reaches into her pocket and takes something out. I can’t see what it is.
“I thought you were in prison,” I say.
“The Council had something they needed me to do,” Maire says, her voice dry. “They let me out.” She’s unescorted—no peacekeepers, no Council members in sight. So they trust her enough—or need her badly enough—to let her free, even after the incident at the floodgates.
“What was it they wanted from you?” I ask.
She smiles. “Don’t you want to save these questions for the shell?”
“No,” I say.
“That’s good,” she says. “Some things are better discussed face-to-face.” She opens her hand and there’s a coin sitting in the middle of her palm. “Take it,” she says. “Make a wish for yourself.”
“No,” I say. “Thank you.”
Maire shrugs and tosses the coin into the water. Fifty-four. She gives no outward sign that she wishes for anything.
“I want to know more about the sirens,” I say. “Is it safe to ask you about them here?”
Maire doesn’t even look around to see how many people are near us. But she tilts her head, and I realize she is listening. “Yes,” she says. “For now.”
I keep my voice low. “How did the sirens go from being loved to hated?”
“There was a step in between,” Maire says. “They were worshipped.”
“What do you mean? Like the gods?”
Maire smiles. “No,” she says. “I mean they were the gods.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “The gods have existed since long before the Divide.”
“People worshipped gods for thousands of years,” Maire says. “So yes, gods have existed long before the Divide. But our gods—the ones you see in the temple—were only sculptures in the beginning, brought down from the Above. They were salvaged from the ancient cathedrals on the surface and used as decorations. Embellishments. People didn’t believe in gods at the time of the Divide. It had been years since anyone believed in anything.” Maire puts her hand in the water, trails her fingers through it. “Then the sirens came and changed all of that.
“There was no scientific or logical explanation for them. So the people began to turn elsewhere for an answer. And when they looked up, they saw those statues in the temple looking down, and they began to wonder. They wondered if there were gods after all, and if they had sent the sirens. Some people even believed that the sirens were gods. That’s when the miracles and our religion all came about. Did you know that the first Minister was a siren?”
“No,” I say. “They don’t teach us any of this.”
“The Council changed the history long ago,” Maire says. “Even most of our own Council now doesn’t know what happened. They believe as you did, as most people do, the version that you’ve been taught.”
Could this be true? I think back to that voice Maire saved, that long-ago woman who came Below and who witnessed the siren children. The only even remotely religious word she used was miracle. That might have been the beginning of their belief.
Who else knows this? Did my mother know? Did Bay? I can’t bring myself to ask. I don’t want to know how many more things they kept from me.
“Did that first siren Minister invent our religion?” I ask. “And then force everyone to believe it?” That could be a reason for people to come to hate the sirens—if they felt manipulated in their belief.
Maire shakes her head. “The religion was agreed upon by the sirens and the people together. They studied old histories. They learned about the gods. And then they shaped it all to fit the way their lives were. The Council took our religion to the Above, and the Above began to believe as well.”
“Did the Above hate the sirens and the people Below for that?” I ask. “Because we told them what to believe?”
“No,” Maire says. “At first both the Above and the Below believed the religion was right, that it made the most sense. In fact, they came to believe that they had not created their faith and belief system. Rather, they felt that they had been led to the truth by the miracle of the sirens. But the religion became warped and twisted as both the Councils Above and Below used it for their purposes. As I said, a very few people in Atlantia know the truth. Now you are one of them.”
“What evidence do you have of all this?”
“The siren voices,” Maire says. “This is what they told me. And I believe them.”
“Do you have any of them that I can hear?” I ask. “Like the voice of that other woman in the shell?” If I could hear the sirens say all of this, I would know that it’s true.
“No,” Maire says. “The siren voices were too strong to save. I heard them once, and then they were gone. They had been waiting a long time.”
So I can’t hear them myself. That’s convenient, I think. Do I believe Maire?
“The siren voices are gone,” Maire says, “but you can still hear some of the others. Like the one I caught in the shell. I was listening, and when I found one that I knew would be good for you to hear, I saved as much of it as I could before it was gone. They can all only speak once, you know. But they have things worth saying, too. Haven’t you heard any of the voices before?”
“Not speaking,” I say. “I’ve heard breathing. Screaming. I thought it was Atlantia.”
“It is,” Maire says.
I’m not sure I understand what she means, but there is something else I want desperately to know.
“How do you do it?” I ask her. “With the shells?”
“I tell them what I want,” Maire says. “I tell them to hold the voices, and they do.”
She makes it sound so simple.
“Could I do it?” I ask. “Control things that aren’t living?” I wait for Maire to laugh at me. I wait for her to tell me that I can’t. That I’m not powerful enough. Or that I shouldn’t try. Or that it’s not safe. That’s what my mother would say. She cared so much about keeping me safe.
But Maire doesn’t say any of those things.
“You can’t be afraid,” she says. “I failed in my first attempts at saving the voices because I was afraid.”