I close my eyes with the pleasure of that thought. If I say yes to Maire, maybe I could taste real air. I could walk across a sandy beach to a town with real trees and talk to my sister. Even if we were tasked with burying garbage while breathing in pollution for the rest of our lives, we would be together and Above, a circumstance I never thought possible.

“You can’t get Above on your own,” Maire says. “The transports they use to move goods between the Above and the Below aren’t pressurized for human survival. The transports they use for taking people to the surface are guarded too closely by the Council. Even if you used your voice to get past those who guard them, the Council would know the minute you tried to ascend. They’d cut off your air and bring the transport back. You’d be dead in minutes. I’ve seen it happen.”

I open my eyes.

“Even if you somehow scrape together the money to buy an air tank and attempt an escape through the mining bay,” Maire says, “you’ll be blown to bits by the mines before you exhale the last of the air you breathed in Atlantia. This is the best way. I’m your safest chance for the Above.”

I hear something outside. The guards are at the door. It won’t hold for long.

“You think you don’t know me,” Maire says, “but you do. I sang you some of your first lullabies.”

And I don’t know if it’s her voice or the truth or both, but I think I do remember her singing a song long ago.

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

“You see,” Maire says, her voice sad. “You remember.”

“I’m not sure that I do.”

“Your mother cut me off from you when you were very small,” Maire says. “And I always thought I knew why. When I heard you speak in the temple the day Bay left, I knew for certain.”

“She wanted to protect me from you.”

“She was right,” Maire says. “She knew I’d want to talk to you, to teach you about your gift. I wouldn’t have been able to resist. But I would never have hurt you intentionally.” She looks up at the floodgates. “I wonder if that was what she was coming to tell me, the day she died. I wonder if she meant to tell me about you. Or if it was something else entirely.”

My mother’s last act was to go to her sister’s house. What was she trying to do? Was she trying to tell Maire something? Give her a warning? Ask her a question? And did she die before her message was given, as Maire asserts? Or was she able to deliver it and then struck down? By whose hand? My aunt’s?

My mother and my sister trusted Maire, but I’m not certain she repaid their trust.

The clamor outside is growing. They’re about to break open the doors.

“I won’t be able to control them for long once they get inside,” Maire says. “There will be too many. You should go. Slip out the door as they come in, and I will make sure they don’t see you. But take this.” She presses another shell into my hand. It is ridged in black and white, mostly black, and rough to the touch. “This one holds my voice. This is how I will teach you about what you can do, since it will be difficult for us to be together in person very often. All you have to do is ask a question into that shell and then listen for the answer to come back to you.”

“How can that work?” I ask. “How will you hear me?” If this is real, and not some kind of trick, then Maire’s is a terrific, terrible power, and she can do things I’ve never heard of or imagined. I always thought my mother was the most powerful woman in Atlantia, but now I am not so sure.

“It’s part of my magic,” Maire says. “Your mother and I discovered it by accident. We used to do that child’s trick of holding a shell to your ear to listen for the wind in the trees, and one day I whispered something into the shell for Oceana, and when she held it to her ear, she could hear my voice saying the words again. When Bay decided to leave, I saved some of her voice in the other shell so that you could have it later.”

Does this mean that if I whispered questions into the other shell, Bay would answer them?

“No,” Maire says. Once again she knows what I’m thinking without my saying it. “With other voices, I can just capture their sound. Mine is the only one that can communicate and change. The rest are echoes of what was already said.”

My heart sinks with disappointment. “Can any other sirens do this?” I ask.

“None that I know of,” Maire says. “And this isn’t perfect. I can answer a few questions at a time before I’ve expended all my strength carrying my voice so far. And it will only work when you ask. I can’t say anything unless it is an answer to your spoken question. I ordered it this way to help you feel that you can trust me, so that you will have a measure of control over our conversations.”

Then her voice becomes brisk, and she sounds almost like one of my teachers back at school, except there is an edge of danger and urgency to Maire’s voice. “Being a siren is more than simply using your voice,” she says. “It’s practicing how to control it, how and when to save it, when to let your voice soar. And all of that is scarcely the half of it.”

She sounds sad again. Are the emotions real or is she manipulating me? It’s not the sorrow in her voice that pulls on me—it’s the sorrow in my own heart, that I can never fully speak. I’ve always wondered if I could, Above.

I’m wavering. And weak. Maire knows it.

What other hope do I have? Maire could help me get Above.

“The things you told my mother were not true,” I say to Maire. “My father did love her. She wanted to be Minister for reasons that were pure.” My mother loved helping people.

“I know,” Maire said. “But I could make them sound true. It was a gift to her. I wanted to help her become the Minister.” And I can’t tell if it is reflected light or tears that I see in Maire’s eyes. “I hoped she would love me for it. I think she did. And of course she hated me for it, too. Even she couldn’t help that.”

I swallow. “How do I know you’re not lying to me now about helping me get to the Above? How do I know that you won’t lie to me in the shell?”

“You don’t,” Maire says.