“I’ll do my best to avoid them,” Bay says. “I’ll try to slip out of the transport and go straight to the temple, as fast as I can. There are people there who will help me.”
“What about the peacekeepers?” Fen asks. “And the other citizens of Atlantia? No one has ever come back who chose the Above. You don’t know what they’ll do. They might be angry or afraid when they realize you’ve returned.”
“Maybe if they see me,” Bay says, “they’ll think of her. Of our mother.”
“I’m coming, too,” Fen says.
“No,” Bay says. “You know what the change in pressure did to your lungs on the way up. You can’t risk that again.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“No,” Bay says. “You won’t.”
Something passes across True’s face, his kind, laughing face that has always known the sun before he even set foot on the sands of the Above.
True should go back, too.
He knows it and I know it.
If he goes, he’ll tell the people what he can do. Perhaps he’ll find out that there are more like him. It’s possible. The citizens of Atlantia have been hiding our real selves from one another. If there could be more people like me, there could be others like True.
Would those Below be more willing to let the sirens live among them if they knew there were some who could tell when the sirens spoke lies or truth?
And True has always known that he loved the Below. He has always known that he belonged there.
He and I rode in that gondola together through the fog, but we have always had our own journeys, and I have known that from the beginning. I’ve felt it somehow.
Perhaps that is why I was so afraid to love him.
“It’s the best way for you to help save us,” I say.
True’s jaw is clenched and I see tears in his eyes.
“We made it Above, together,” I say, and though I don’t use my real voice, I know he hears it, as he always has. In front of everyone, he lifts my hand to his lips and kisses my palm.
“I’ll go with you,” he says to Bay.
“What?” Fen asks, surprised.
“We have to go now,” Ciro says. “There isn’t much time before they’ll send the transport down.”
Bay looks at me, and for a moment the question passes between us—should I go, too? We don’t know how long I can last up here. And if she and True both go back, then everyone I love will be Below.
I see the realization on Bay’s face the minute I feel it in my own heart. I feel us coming closer, the time and space of our separation dwindling the more minutes we spend together. We have been apart, but we are one again now, the same thoughts, the same purpose.
And we both know that I have to stay here.
Maire sacrificed everything to bring me Above. It was so I could do something here, not so I could go back Below. Not yet. I haven’t yet done what I came to do.
I came to speak.
“Tonight,” I say to Ciro the Minister. “In the temple. When Nevio speaks. I need to try to say something to the people.”
Ciro nods. “I will help you,” he says. “I will make sure that we get you to the pulpit.” And I wonder if he has guessed what I am, though none of us have said it out loud.
“No,” Bay says. “Then Nevio will know you’re here. It’s too dangerous.”
“It’s dangerous for you, too,” I say. “But we will be speaking at the same time, or close to it.” Maire said I would know when it was time, and I can tell that it’s coming. Can Bay feel it, too?
She puts her hand to her mouth, and her eyes well with tears. She does.
She knows I could die up here, and I know she could die down there.
And I know I will mean it more, I will ask for Atlantia with all my heart and voice, when the lives of everyone I love depend on what I say. That way, the people Above can hear my love for True and Bay—my missing them—in my voice. And hopefully, though she’s not a siren, the people Below will be able to hear Bay’s love for Fen and me.
To save our city, we have to leave the ones we love.
To save our city, we have to love each other more than ourselves.
Which is how much, I now know, Maire loved my mother. And it’s how much Bay loves me.
She came up here to try to save me. Now we are both going to have to try to finish what our mother and our aunt began—the saving of the sirens, of Atlantia itself.
I pull my sister close and she wraps her arms around me tight. “At least you know why I’m going this time,” she says, and I smile but I’m very close to tears. I do know why, but as it turns out, that does not make it easier.
CHAPTER 28
Fen and I risk a moment outside to watch them go. The enclosed back courtyard of the temple opens out onto a busy street, and once they are gone—Bay and True and Ciro, three figures swallowed up quickly in the massive city of the Above—Fen and I linger in the courtyard for a moment. Once we’re back inside, we will have to hide and wait, and neither of us is made for that. Even though illness has taken its toll on Fen, he still has a restlessness, an aliveness about him. I would have liked to see him race when he was well. I think he would have been fast and reckless and good.
I wonder what he would have thought of me.
I can’t keep from glancing up at the sun—hot and round and white at this hour of the day, hard to look at but wonderful to feel. It’s not lost on me how strange and marvelous this is—my seeing the sun, feeling it on my face.
“What are you thinking?” Fen asks.
“That I’m lucky to see the sun,” I say.
“Don’t look directly at it,” Fen says. “It can burn your eyes.”
And right then I feel something, some pressure on my heart and mind, and it’s not just sorrow. Fen’s face is the last thing I see before the world goes black inside my head.
I can’t see, but I’m still here, and the sun is still hot.
“Hold on,” Fen says. I feel his hands on my wrists, gentle, steadying me. Fen smells like sweat and dirt. I want True. “Can you walk?” Fen asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“Hold on,” Fen says again. His voice sounds far away. I feel him guiding me, and then the heat of the sun is gone, and my feet hit the familiar-feeling surface of the temple floor. We are back inside.