Someone sits down at the edge of my bench, and I slide a little farther in the other direction. There are plenty of empty pews, and I am annoyed that someone has chosen this one under Efram. Find another god, I whisper in my mind. Try one of the lion gods, like Cale. Ask him to roar your prayer to the heavens. Instead, the person slides closer and reaches out to take a hymnal from the shelf in front of us. Under the clean scent of soap, I detect the faint but unmistakable smell of machinery oil. His hands are work worn and his fingers careful and sure, and I think I know what his trade must be. A machinist, someone who repairs broken things.
“I heard you,” he says. “I thought I should see if you were all right.”
I wipe my sleeve across my face. “There’s no shame in crying,” I say flatly, though it feels like there is.
“Of course not,” he says. Then there’s a moment of quiet, when even the priests seem to have stopped rustling about in the temple and Atlantia does not breathe. Then. “My name is True Beck,” he says. I still don’t look at his face, though his voice sounds kind and deep. He turns the pages of the hymnal, and I wonder if he’s looking at them or at me. “I know your sister left to go Above. My best friend did, too.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t think much of ties that aren’t blood. No bond is the same as that between sisters.
“His name was Fen Cardiff,” True says. That’s the name of the boy who left right before Bay, and in spite of myself I look at True. When I do, my first thought is: brown and blue. Brown hair, brown eyes, blue shirt, blue shadows under his eyes. I’ve seen him before. Atlantia is a small enough place that we see each face in passing at one time or another, but large enough that we don’t know every name.
“I didn’t know he was going,” True says.
He is handsome, the type of boy who looks as though he might once have had sun on his skin, though that’s impossible this far down. He has intelligent eyes and the kind of strength that isn’t bulky and belligerent but streamlined and swift instead. I notice all of this and it means nothing to me. Since Bay left, I haven’t felt anything but loss.
“Are you older or younger than Fen?” I ask. Because if True is younger, then what does he have to complain about? All he has to do is wait, choose to go Above, and find his friend.
He doesn’t answer me. “Listen,” he says. “I think you and I should talk. Maybe not here.”
“About what?”
“Them,” he says. “Bay and Fen.” His voice has a hint of urgency in it, and the way he pairs their names seems significant. As if they go together: Bay and Fen. And a dark cold spill of doubt curls through my heart. Did Bay leave because of that boy? A boy I never even knew was important to her?
“I saw them together,” True says, as if he knows what I’m thinking. “More than once.”
“That can’t be,” I say. “Bay never told me anything about him.”
“I think we can help each other.”
“What do you need my help with?” I ask. “You seem to know everything already.”
“I don’t know anything,” True says, and the despair in his voice sounds something like the sorrow I’ve been holding in my heart, that I haven’t even been able to speak to myself because it would overwhelm me. True leans closer, gripping the hymnal very tightly, bending the thick cover. “I don’t know why he left. You don’t know why she left. You and I have the same question. Maybe we could come to an answer together.”
Justus walks past, his head turned away as if he’s searching the pews for someone, but he’s not, he’s trying to avoid someone he’s already seen. Me. Because he heard my real voice that day when Bay left. He’s a good man and was a friend to my mother, so he doesn’t ask me any questions, he leaves me alone. He hasn’t told anyone, or I wouldn’t be allowed in the temple. His reaction to my voice has been the best one that I could hope for, and yet it still hurts.
“Bay and Fen are gone,” I say to True. “We’re here. There’s nothing to talk about.”
“You don’t know that,” True says. “Someone might know something. I might know something. You can’t decide not to talk to people.”
He’s so urgent, so earnest, and I have to bend my head so that he won’t be able to tell that I’m trying not to laugh. He has no idea what he’s saying. He has no idea that he’s speaking to someone who never could talk to people. To someone who only two people ever really knew. And now those two people are gone.
True draws in his breath. I wonder if I’ve offended him. “If you change your mind,” he says, “I go to the deepmarket most evenings.”
I can’t go back to the deepmarket. That’s where Maire found me.
Up at the altar, candle wax drips. Cale and Efram and all the rest stare down at us. Someone rustles hymnal pages, a priest speaks softly in another pew, and the city breathes. Ever since Bay left, I haven’t been able to stop listening to Atlantia. Sometimes I could swear that the city is a person—breathing easily in some moments, wheezing and laboring in others.
Can’t you hear the way the city is breathing? Maire asked.
And in that moment, I have my answer about what I must do, and I want to laugh because it’s so obvious. I’ve wasted my time in the few days since Bay left trying to find out why she left. But the best way to learn why is to go Above and ask her. There has to be a way, in spite of all the obstacles.
Bay has set me free. All I have to hold me here is gone. Just because no one has ever managed to escape to the Above before doesn’t mean that I can’t be the first. If I die trying to get there, at least I didn’t die locked down here in Atlantia. At least I died trying to get to my sister and the world I’ve always wanted to see.
I stand up and walk to the altar and take one of the candles and light it. Our candles don’t last long so that we can conserve our precious air. I kneel and act like I’m praying for a few minutes, until my candle drips and the wick begins to blacken and fall apart on itself. When it finishes burning, I stand up.
True is gone.
Back in my room, I lie down on my bed and stare up at the ceiling.
I wish more than anything that I could hear Bay laugh. Even before she left, her laughter had gone.
Sometimes, to tease me, Bay would make a list of all the reasons to stay Below as a sort of companion for my list of reasons I wanted to go Above. She wrote down things like: The sea gardens are full of color. The cafés are alive with laughter. The leaves on the metal trees catch the light. The plazas have wishing pools where we can toss our gold coins to send to the needy Above. The water changes as much as the sky. She and I compared notes, whispering so that no one else could hear us.