by Ally Condie
“Why not?” I ask. “Didn’t you tell them that I could keep up with her in training?”
“Yes,” Aldo says, “and they know it anyway from seeing the two of you swim together. But you didn’t earn her place. Bay did, and she’s gone.”
I suppose I can understand this. Although I’ve seen Bay and myself as two halves of the same whole for years, everyone else might not feel that way. “All right,” I say. “I’ll start at the bottom. In the low brackets.”
Aldo shakes his head. “You can’t race. At all.”
“Why not?” I clench my hands into fists. “They raced Bay. Why am I any different?”
“You just are,” Aldo says. “There’s something wrong about you.”
If they only knew. Everything is wrong about me.
How am I supposed to get faster—and stronger—without anyone to race?
There’s nothing I can do about it.
Except, there is.
I could speak to Aldo, putting barely any sound behind the word; it could be made mostly of air, my breath against his neck as I leaned in. I would hardly have to use any of my real voice. But he’d hear a hint of it, close to him and only for him. “Please,” I’d whisper, and in spite of himself he’d close his eyes. He’d do whatever I said. I know he would.
But I don’t do it.
In that moment I remember the money I brought with me.
“Then I’ll rent a lane,” I say. “Right now.”
“For what?” he asks. “You’ll waste your coin. No one’s going to race you.”
A few of the bettors and other racers have gathered around to listen, to see what I’ll do. I don’t look at any of them. I keep my eyes on Aldo.
“I’ll swim against myself,” I say.
Aldo laughs. “No one will watch that,” he says. “No one will bet on it.”
“That’s fine,” I say. “I’m not doing it for them.” My mind buzzes with ways to make swimming harder, to push myself. Should I use some of my money to buy one of the fancier training suits, the kind with resistance to make you stronger? And then I realize I’m already wearing the perfect suit. My machinist’s gear from work will weigh me down. It will be hard to swim in this, and I can let it dry overnight so I can wear it again tomorrow.
I step down into the lane. The water drags on me and it’s hard to walk. I hear people laughing, someone saying that I’d do better to take everything off, someone else saying that there’s always been something odd about the other Conwy girl. I duck my head under the water and I no longer hear anything they say.
I can barely swim the first few strokes after I push away from the wall. The weight of my clothing pulls me down. But then I remind myself. It’s going to be harder than this to get to the surface. And you don’t know how far you’ll have to swim once you get up there. This is nothing. This is the very beginning of what you’ll have to do.
I look down at the black line along the center of the lane, the one that keeps you away from the sides if you follow it. I keep to that line, with all the drag and pull from my suit weighing on me, and I don’t stop until I’ve made it all the way down and back, over and over again, until I’m afraid that I will actually drown.
I climb back out. My clothes are soaked, and my muscles tremble from the effort.
People are watching. Some of them laugh. Some of them cheer. But they’re all paying attention, and I fight down a smile. They have reminded me of something I have always known, something that my mother knew how to play upon. People love a spectacle, an event. Give them something to watch and you will make them happy. “So much of life is in the smallness of moments,” my mother said. “But they are harder to mark. So we need the grander celebrations and occasions. People like to feel significant.”
Maybe if I give them something good enough to watch when I swim alone, they’ll pay me for it. What if I made it so interesting that I could draw a crowd? The thought terrifies me, but then my time in the lanes would serve two purposes: I could train for the swim to the Above, and I could make money to buy the air tank I need.
“I’ll rent a lane again, same time tomorrow,” I tell Aldo. “Tell anyone who’s interested. And I’ll do something new next time.”
“You think they’re going to care?” he asks.
“They already do,” I say, pointing at the crowd. They think I’m odd. No one wants to swim against me. But they don’t mind watching me take risks myself.
I don’t have extra clothes with me, so I have to drip my way home. I pass one of the stalls that sells pastries cut into wedges, with flaky crusts and nuts and raisins and brown sugar inside. My stomach rolls with hunger. But I need to save my coin. Every bit of it. I worry already about how much I’ve spent. I need to make all the money back, and much more besides.
I pause for a moment near a stall where a vendor sells tiny bottles of dirt (marked as REAL AND FROM ABOVE). In spite of the labels, I feel certain that the dirt must be counterfeit, and I want to say something to the woman who counts out coin with shaking hands to buy a bottle from the smarmy-looking vendor. I’ve seen the real thing up close, I want to tell her, and this isn’t it.
I know what dirt looks like because my mother let us look at the large jar of earth that sits on top of the altar. She even let us open the jar. We couldn’t touch the dirt, but we could certainly see how dark and rich it was, and sometimes I felt that the smell of it was the smell of home.
But not everyone is as lucky as I was, and if this woman wants to think she has a tiny jar of real soil, perhaps it’s worth it. After all, I liked believing that my sister and I told each other everything, and that turned out not to be true.
Was it ever true?
I know it was.
When did it change?
I have no idea.
I don’t realize that I’ve stopped walking until someone bumps into me and tsks at my waterlogged clothes. A few children point and laugh at me.
Everything is heavy.
I want this pain off my back. I want to stop thinking about why Bay left and whether or not I can believe Maire. The swimming has worn me out, which is good, because I didn’t have to think of Bay while I was doing it, but it’s also when I’m exhausted that the dark loneliness breaks in.
And I realize that in order to go up through the floodgates, I have to trade places with someone else. I have to slip into the morgue and arrange myself like a body. I have to hide the real corpse, whoever it is they mean to send up. And, of course, in hoping for the floodgates to open, I am hoping for someone to die. I am hoping for someone to die so that I can leave.
I pass the vendors who sell jewelry—ornate silver; round, carved beads; puddles of stone and glass held together with wire and metal—and then I see something that stops me in my tracks.
It’s a ring, arranged on black velvet in a glass-lidded case, and even though I don’t care anything about jewelry, I know that ring.
It’s the one that belonged to my mother. The one Bay forgot to bring to the morgue that day.
The ring is made of platinum and inlaid with brown and blue. My father gave it to my mother on their wedding day. It is extremely precious, because the blue is a gem called turquoise and the brown is wood, both rare materials from Above. My father had my mother’s name engraved inside the band, and then, when Bay and I were born, he had our names engraved there, too.
After my mother went up through the floodgates, Bay wore this ring every day.
Was she wearing it the day she went Above?
I can’t remember.
You’re not allowed to take anything valuable with you when you choose the Above. Only the clothes on your back. So did someone take this from Bay after she chose the Divide? And bring it to the deepmarket to sell?
Or was it gone before then?
Could Bay have sold it?
I shiver and st
are, trying to make sense of what I see. Could this ring be a counterfeit, like the dirt sold in bottles? If so, it’s a perfect replica, and the closer I look, the more I recognize that silver band inlaid with wood and blue stone, smooth, circling.
“It’s not for sale,” says the older woman tending the stall, and the large, burly man next to her—her son?—folds his arms and glares at me.
“That ring is mine,” I say. “It was my mother’s.”
“What makes you think that?” she asks.
“It has the name Oceana carved inside the band,” I say. “And my name. Rio. And my sister’s name. Bay. No one else would know that. You couldn’t see the engravings while she was wearing it.”
“This ring did indeed belong to Oceana the Minister,” the woman says. She speaks my mother’s name with a touch of reverence, the way Elinor did earlier. “You’re right about that.”
“And it should be mine,” I say. “You could come with me right now to the temple, and every priest there would vouch for me. They’d tell you that I’m her daughter.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman says. “But I paid for it. If the boy who sold it to me stole it from you, then you need to take it up with him.”
“Boy?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “A young man brought me this ring. If he was a thief, that’s not my fault, but I will sell it back to you if you can come up with the money. I won’t even raise the price.” She seems pleased with herself for being so fair.
“But who was the boy?” I ask.
“He didn’t give a name,” she says. “But he had blond hair. He was young. Handsome. He looked well-off.”
The description could be any of dozens of people in Atlantia, but it also matches Fen Cardiff.
“When did he bring it to you?”
“Two days before the anniversary of the Divide,” she says. “I remember it well. I’ve been glad to have it. It’s a beautiful piece and serves its purpose nicely.”
I’m about to ask the woman what she means—what purpose can a ring have, except to be worn?—when a man comes up holding a tiny jar of water, much like the ones in the other stall that contain the fake dirt. “It’s five coin,” the woman says, and the man nods. He gives her the money and holds out the jar, and the woman takes it from him. She picks up my mother’s ring and drops it into the jar of water.
It’s a struggle to keep my voice level. “What are you doing?”
“You’re not the only one who recognizes this ring,” the woman says, holding up the jar to the faint deepmarket light. The ring clinks against the glass. “Everyone knows Oceana the Minister wore it on her blessing hand.”
The man watching is rapt. “Thank you,” he says.
“You’re pretending the ring has power to bless the water,” I say.
“No pretense about it,” the woman says, carefully fishing out the ring with a long, thin metal skewer. “You said yourself this was your mother’s ring.”
The man gapes at me. “Oceana’s daughter?” he asks.
“Never mind that,” the woman says. “It’s Oceana’s ring, and now your water is blessed. Off you go.”
After he takes the jar and leaves, the woman sighs. “I shouldn’t have said that about Oceana being your mother,” she says. “I’m sorry. You can’t have everyone following you around the deepmarket hoping that some of your mother’s magic has rubbed off on you.”
“My mother wasn’t magic.”
“I meant that figuratively,” the woman says. “But you do sound like a girl who takes things literally.” She polishes the ring and then puts it back in its case. “Of course, I suppose everyone knows who you are anyway, but it’s better not to draw attention to that fact. Although you’re doing your best to get noticed, standing there in those dripping clothes.”
“Why would everyone know who I am?” I ask. Atlantia is a large city. And my mother may have been a public figure, but Bay and I kept to ourselves. We always did a good job of blending in, or so I thought.
“There are thousands of us, but one Minister,” the woman says. “Anyone who ever bothered to enter the doors of the temple for a service probably had you pointed out to them at some point.”
This is not what I want to hear. I knew people paid attention to my mother, of course, but I always imagined myself slipping unnoticed through the streets and the deepmarket. It is true that Josiah and Elinor and Bien all knew who I was, though I assumed that was because they’d been told before I came down from the temple. “You didn’t recognize me right away,” I point out.
“My eyesight isn’t what it used to be,” the woman says. “And I didn’t expect the Minister’s daughter to be wandering around the deepmarket soaked to the bone.” Then she holds out her hand. “My name is Cara.”
I don’t care what her name is, and I don’t shake her hand. “You’re ruining the ring,” I say. “It’s not meant to be put into water—you’re going to make it rust, or damage the wood, or wear off the inscriptions.”
“Not everyone wants blessed water,” Cara says. “Some people only want to touch the ring. We’re careful about that, of course. Can’t have them stealing it. Some people want the ring to bless a scrap of fabric or an object from their home. And don’t worry. I’ve got a special oil to restore the moisture to the wood.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “Why are people paying good money for it?”
“Some people down here worship Oceana, you know,” Cara says quietly. “I’ve seen them lighting candles to her the way they do to the other gods. And I’ve heard people whispering that she died early because she was actually one of the gods and it was time for her to go back home.”
“Blasphemy,” I say. Again. I never knew there was so much of it. But it’s everywhere. At the workplace, here in the deepmarket.
“Or piety,” Cara says. She takes out a vial of oil and drops some onto the wood of the ring, rubbing it carefully with a soft cloth.
It hurts me physically to see my mother’s ring in someone else’s hands. Would Bay give the ring to a boy to pawn instead of giving it to me? Perhaps there’s another explanation. Maybe Fen stole it from her, and she didn’t want to tell me.
I could tell Cara, “Give me the ring,” and she would have to do it.
It’s getting harder to hold back.
“I know you want this,” Cara says, “but I’m sorry. I paid too much for it to let it go. I will give the ring back to you if you can bring me five hundred and seven coin. That’s how much I paid for it.”
The words I was about to say catch in my throat. I stare at Cara.
Five hundred and seven coin.
The money is from Bay. She did sell the ring.
And I used some of the coin to purchase time in the swimming lanes. If I hadn’t done that, I could go right home and come back with the rest of the money to buy the ring today.
But Bay wouldn’t sell the ring just so I could buy it back. She must have wanted me to use the money for something else, something so important that she was willing to sell our mother’s most prized possession. What could it be?
Did Bay want to help me buy an air tank so I could try to swim for the surface? Or did she intend me to use the money to get there in another way? Should I be trying to bribe some Council member to get me on a transport? Or did Bay give the money to Maire to indicate that I could trust my aunt, that I should follow her Above?
I wonder if True knows anything about the ring. Did Fen talk to him about it?
“Do you know anyone named True?” I ask Cara. “A boy, about my age? Brown hair, brown eyes? He says he comes to the deepmarket most evenings.”
“Yes,” she says. “He’s often around, pushing that cart of his, selling those fish he makes.”
Fish?
I don’t think I’ve heard her right.
Someone else brushes past me to
buy a blessing from my mother’s ring, and I take a step back. So True works as a vendor in the evenings. Unlike the stalls, the carts are always on the move. How am I supposed to find him?
As I start scanning the crowd, he comes into view, pushing a cart very carefully. He’s not calling out for customers; he’s looking down to make sure he doesn’t lose any of his wares.
Seeing him right now feels like I offered up a prayer and the gods answered it immediately. Like I threw a coin in the wishing pools and what I wanted appeared before my eyes. I’m not sure I like it. It seems suspicious. Things like that don’t happen, and they especially don’t happen to me.
I leave behind Cara and my mother’s ring and walk toward True. As I come closer, he glances up and his eyes meet mine. He looks surprised as he takes in my wild, wet hair, my still-dripping clothes, but he doesn’t say anything. He seems to think I should be the one to speak.
“There’s a question I need to ask you,” I say. “About Bay and Fen.”
True glances around at the busy deepmarket. “Can you ask it here?”
“Maybe not,” I say.
True nods and starts pushing his cart again. “Come with me,” he says. I follow him around the corner of a row of stalls. The plastic-and-wire slats keep out much of the light and it’s a bit dim and deserted. “There,” he says. “It’s quieter here.”
I mean to ask him about Fen and the ring, but I’m distracted by the wares in True’s cart. They’re moving.
Small metal fish swim in glass bowls filled with turquoise-colored water.
The fish are simple and beautiful, a few pieces of scrap metal put together, and even though there is very little detail on them, somehow you know exactly what they are.
“How do you do it?” I bend down to examine them more closely. “What kind of join did you use so they can move like that?”
True’s face lights up and he takes a fish out of the bowl to show me. “I call it a fishtail solder,” he says. “You attach it at the front and the back with a smaller rod. It’s actually three pieces instead of two.”
