Could Maire have killed my mother?

I don’t believe a sister could do such a thing.

But I also never would have believed that Bay could leave me, and she did. I saw her go.

It is agony to cry when you can’t make a sound, when you have to stuff your pillow into your mouth, almost choking yourself so that no one will hear the timbre of your real voice. No one knows how much that hurts, not even the loved ones who want to keep you safe.

I miss Bay so much, and I am so angry with her. If she were here, I would cry out at her. I wouldn’t care who heard. How could you leave me? My throat aches as if I’ve already screamed myself hoarse.

When was the last time Bay and I fought? I wonder. Before our mother’s death, we used to fight all the time, because we were sisters in a shared, small world—room, temple, city—and because we were different and the same.

But I could never really fight because of my voice. I couldn’t ever tell her how angry I was at her.

And so now I wonder if she also never knew how much I love her. Because I do.

There are two things that I’ve always known for certain: that I have to see the Above and that I love my sister.

Do I honestly believe I’m going to be able to do this? That I can swim through the mines? And buy an air tank to get Above? It’s a ridiculous plan. I know it. There are countless things that could go wrong.

The impossibility of everything overcomes me.

In desperation I look around for something, anything to help. And I see the shell again. I seize it and hold it up against my ear. My own breathing is the only sound.

Then I hear something else.

My sister, singing a lullaby from our childhood, one that our mother used to sing to us when we were small.

Under star-dark seas and skies of gold

Live those Above, and those Below

They sing and weep, both high and deep

While over and under the ocean rolls

She sings it again, and again. The song is calming, lulling, sad and gentle, true. I close my eyes and listen.

CHAPTER 7

I sit down under Efram’s tree, the one I repaired not long ago. I miss working here, with the shivering leaves and the sullen gods. I wonder why Maire picked this as a meeting place and how long it will take before she comes. I wonder why I’m here. Is it because my mother wrote Maire’s name in her notes? Ask Maire. Or because it seems that Bay did trust Maire to give me the money and the shell?

Or am I here because I want to talk to another siren? The conversations I’ve had with Maire have been the only times I’ve spoken with someone who has the same power that I do.

She’s all the family I have left.

Silver leaves scatter over the ground. I lean down to pick one up and tsk to myself when I see the heavy-handedness of the soldering work. Despite what Nevio said, they haven’t found someone to take my place repairing the trees. Not someone as skilled as I am, anyway.

And then I see a splay of blue wing and brown fur on the ground.

One of the temple bats.

The bat’s tiny body looks fine, nothing broken, but it’s certainly dead. Its eye stares back up at me with nothing there. Against the ground, its wings are dark as the deep instead of blue as glass and sea. I hear people gathering near me.

“It’s like seeing Efram himself fallen and broken,” a man says, but he is quickly quieted. What he’s said sounds too much like sacrilege. We are not supposed to believe that Efram, or any of the gods, could fall or break.

At least the gods are easy to fix. This animal is beyond any help we can give. “Find Justus at the temple,” I say, and someone goes running.

It takes Justus only moments to arrive, but there’s nothing he can do. He tells the others to move along. I stay behind.

“What do you think killed it?” I ask.

Justus shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “I suppose it could be a natural death. There are a few tests I can conduct back at the temple to try and find out more.” He lifts the bat carefully in his hands. There’s a clean linen cloth in the bottom of the container and he places the bat gently inside, as if it weren’t past all feeling.

“What was it doing out in the day?” I ask.

“It might have died in the night,” Justus says. “It’s not the first. They’re not immortal.”

Of course not. I know that. But it’s very odd to see one of the bats dead.

Justus straightens up, careful not to step on the hem of his robe, and holds the box in his hands. “They’re dying more quickly, though,” he says, “since we lost your mother.”

He leaves me there alone, and as soon as he has gone back inside the temple, I hear her.

Maire.

She walks softly. She doesn’t step on any of the leaves or say a single word, but I still know she’s here, just as I did that day in the temple.

“The trees sing,” Maire says. “They told me you were here. And I’ve been listening and hoping that you would come.”

It’s unsettling to hear her say that about the trees. They’re mine, not hers.

I say, flatly, not giving her even a hint of my real voice: “What do you want?”

“It’s not about what I want,” Maire says. “You know that. It’s about what you want. To go Above and find your sister.”

“And you think you can help me.”

“Yes,” she says. “I can. I helped your sister and your mother, and I can help you.”

As if we’ve agreed to do so beforehand, the two of us start walking together. Across the courtyard, people wave to one another and call out to friends passing by in gondolas. A peacekeeper blows his whistle to warn a group of youth gathered too near the canal and they move away. I feel a sudden fierce love for my city.

“I can help you,” Maire says, after we’ve walked in silence for a time, “if you let me. I won’t make you do anything.”

“You don’t know that you could make me do anything,” I say.

“That’s true,” she agrees, in a flat tone that sounds exactly like mine. I hate her for mimicking me.

She stops, and I realize that we’ve come to the back entrance of the temple compound, the part that leads to the floodgates and the morgue.

I haven’t been here since my mother died. Bay and I had to go down through this entrance to prepare our mother’s body. When we finished, we had to leave her there and climb the stairs to the floodgates’ viewing area, where we sat in our reserved seats to witness her body going up. We were daughters of the Minister that day, one last time.