The Dark Shore (Atlanteans) (28 page)

She half smiled. “You have to act like a typical guy
sometimes
.”

“Yeah . . .” I smiled back, but suddenly it felt forced. Here we were, connecting like I’d been hoping we would, and yet now, a part of me was thinking about doing those death rites with Seven, how she’d held my arm, and how we were connected by the Atlantean visions. . . . I tried to push the thoughts of Seven away, to focus on Lilly. “I’m glad you’re doing better,” I said. “Last time I saw you, you were out of it, talking about hearing pretty music.”

“It’s been a strange couple of days,” said Lilly. “I don’t remember much after making the thermal balloon. Leech filled me in on what I missed. Sounds like it’s been crazy.” She looked at me seriously. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m okay.” I felt a hum inside as our eyes met, and I felt like—no, forget Seven, this right here was what mattered. And I remembered those thoughts I’d had while we’d been flying through the night, and now they were rushing back, stampeding over the last twenty-four hours. Lilly. Sure, we didn’t have a god-goddess connection, but maybe we had something more—

“I thought you’d stop by sooner than now.”

The comment caught me off guard. My thoughts crashed to a halt. Lilly had looked away. “Oh . . .” I said. “Well, I was here last night, but you were asleep. I was gonna come by earlier this morning but Seven and I were—”

“Seven,” said Lilly. “Ah.”

“Well, yeah, we had to go to Tactical,” I said. “There was this massacre, Nomads, and so we were doing death rites. It’s a little ritual. It . . .” I hesitated, a little worried how what I was about to say would come across, but still said it: “It was actually pretty powerful. We mean a lot to these people . . . it’s big.”

“You mean you guys,” said Lilly quietly. “The Three.”

“I guess so, yeah.”

“Leech said that she’s a handful,” said Lilly, “to put it mildly.”

“I don’t know about that,” I replied. “She puts up a tough act, but I think there’s more to her. She’s had a hard life, just like the rest of us.” I knew it sounded like I was defending Seven. Maybe I was.

Lilly’s gaze was blank now, distant. “Sounds like you know her pretty well already.”

“I feel like I do,” I said. “I mean, that’s one of the weird things. . . . We’ve had the same skull visions. I can relate to what she’s been going through.” I felt almost guilty saying it.

“That’s some connection.” This was the Lilly at a distance again, from the dry lake, from after my gills were gone.

“It’s just—”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

Lilly’s brow wrinkled. “Are you sure Seven’s the Medium? Or is that part of the act, too?”

“Wow, whatever happened to a fair trial?”

Seven stood in the doorway.

“Oh, hey,” I said, getting up off Lilly’s bed but then wondering what signal that sent to Lilly, or what Seven thought of me being on the bed, and basically hating all this confusion.

Seven didn’t seem fazed. “How you feeling there, Owen’s Special Traveling Companion?” She stepped in. “Just kidding, no seriously, we haven’t officially met. I’m Seven, daughter of the sun and third Atlantean. Owen’s told me all about you: the hot chick from summer camp. How are you feeling, for real?”

Lilly gave Seven a look, not quite a glare but cold. “I know who you are.”

Seven made a show of looking away awkwardly. “Okay then . . . Anyhoo, did flyboy tell you we’re going swimming?”

Lilly raised an eyebrow at me. “Flyboy?”

“We’re gonna go to the well,” said Seven before I could reply. “It’s really cool. Docs say it will be good for your gills, too. You’ll heal up nice. No liberation required. Just kidding.”

“Cute,” said Lilly. She looked Seven up and down slowly. Then she looked at me. “I think I’ll pass. I don’t want to intrude on the bonding of the Three.”

“Suit yourself,” said Seven easily. “I’ll be in Leech’s room.” She walked out.

“Come on,” I said to Lilly. “You should come with us.”

Lilly just sat there biting her lip. She closed her eyes and cocked her head toward the window, like something had distracted her.

“Hey . . . ,” I said.

Her eyes opened. “Sorry.” She looked at me strangely. “Did you . . . hear that just now?”

“Hear what?”

“Music,” she said, staring into space.

“Um, I didn’t hear anything except you saying you’re not coming swimming.”

Lilly shook her head, like she was returning from somewhere distant. “Yeah, no . . . I meant it—go have fun playing with the gods. I . . . I should rest and see about some things. Maybe I’ll join you later.” She gazed back out the window.

“What’s going on with you?” I asked.

“Too soon to tell,” she said.

I wondered what to say. This distance between us felt worse than ever. I tried, “Seven will be better once you get to know her.”

Lilly laughed. “Owen, just go. I’m feeling tired.”

“I—” I didn’t believe her, hated hearing the excuses, and yet I knew Lilly well enough to know that there was no changing her mind. “Fine. See you later.”

Lilly didn’t respond. I left the room not knowing what to feel. One part frustrated, one part confused, and yet it seemed like this weirdness just kept building slowly between us, like layers of sediment, and there was no way to undo it.

“Trouble in paradise?” Seven asked as I walked into Leech’s room.

“Where’s Lilly?” Leech asked, emerging from the bathroom. His left eye was still bandaged, but his right was looking better. Still circles of black and red, but the swelling had gone down and you could actually see his eyeball. He was holding the sextant, and now placed it on the bedside table. It rattled as he put it down, a tremor running up his arm.

“She said she had stuff to do.”

Leech frowned. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything, or . . . I don’t even know! Just whatever. How’s it going for you?”

“Better, worse, both,” said Leech. “I can see now, at least a little. Getting out of here sounds good.”

We headed back outside.

“Come on, boys,” Seven said to the two guards standing by the doors, the ones who’d been shadowing us before.

We crossed the plaza. The midday heat was gaining intensity, radiating back off the stones of the streets and walls.

Seven led us toward the outskirts of the city, through narrowing streets. The buildings became less frequent, patches of thick trees in between. I noticed that people were walking in both directions with towels, many in bathing suits. So much skin exposed in the daylight. And yet while there were many different skin tones and shades, along with discolorations and a few burns, nobody looked too bad. I wondered if that was because those who looked bad were already dead. Still, there was lots of laughing, smiles, relaxed expressions. People were at ease. Despite the sun and death . . . or maybe because of it. Either way, these were faces you rarely saw at Hub. Or even in EdenWest.

The air was muggy, cloth-like, even more than it had been the day before. We passed through a shadowy grove of tropical trees, their thick trunks knotted with vines, wide leaves bent this way and that. We reached a curve in the path, and found ourselves walking along the edge of a hole maybe thirty meters across, where the earth looked like it had sunk in on itself in a perfect circle, forming a deep hole. The soil and plants overhung the edges, thickening rings of large leaves, a kaleidoscope of triangles and shades of green. Beneath this rim, the hole was even bigger, partly covered by a lip of rock.

The hole dropped at least fifty meters. The rock sides were colored in rings of brown and pale white, with small alcoves and smoothed outcroppings. Some areas of the walls were black with molds, some brilliant emerald with tufts of moss. At the bottom was a pool of water, a chocolate-and-blue color. The sun angled in and lit half the wall and half the water. Thin vines hung like wet brown hair down the length of the chasm from the trees and bushes at the top. Cool air floated up from the water, bringing with it a clean wet smell and the echoing voices of swimmers. Some had scaled the inner wall to various ledges. They dived in impossible arcs, disappearing into the water in bursts of bubbles, as if they’d pierced this reality and traveled into another.

“It’s called a cenote,” said Seven. “The Mayans used to toss people and babies into these things as offerings to the gods.”

“Is that what everyone thinks the liberations are?” I asked. “Sacrifices to keep Chaac or whoever happy?”

“Nah,” said Seven. “Everybody gets that cutting a heart out is not going to actually influence the weather or whatever. The Mayans were pretty crazy like that.”

“Not crazy,” said Leech. “I think just desperate, right? Nature messed with them all the time, and so they were doing what they felt like they had to do, to cope with what probably seemed like a brutal world that didn’t care about them.”

“Kinda like now,” I said. Leech nodded in agreement.

“I try my best to just think happy thoughts about swimming,” said Seven, “and not about the dead baby bones that might be at the bottom of this well.”

She pointed to the waterfall. “Everything’s real here except that. The Good Mother installed pipes. And she renamed it the Well of Terra. Where the earth provides, is what she was getting at. There’s some whole thing about how if the water here ever dried up, it would signify that the Terra had left us and there would be eternal darkness and . . . yawn, yawn, yawn! Like I said, I just like the part about swimming.”

We reached a staircase that tunneled down into the rock. People were coming and going. The steps were made with brown tiles and covered in a collage of wet footprints. We started down, the soft-seeming rock making a low and uneven arch over our heads, like someone had dug it out with a spoon. Occasional windows had been carved from the staircase tunnel to the cavern, to let in light.

The tunnel ended on a tiled platform built out from the side of the wall. Swimmers used three wide ladders made of thick wooden logs to climb in and out of the water. Others just jumped in, their splashes making big hollow thunks.

There was a group of older bathers in the corner who were being assisted by younger people, and they looked to be in pain, using the water to soothe the burning of their ruined skin, but they were quiet, and easy not to notice amid the laughter and children’s shrieks scampering around the walls.

“So, shall we?” said Seven. She stepped to the edge, took off her hat, and started undoing her hair. Everyone else on the platform shuffled slightly, to give us space, the gods among them. Our bodyguards had taken up positions against the wall.

I moved to the edge and looked down. Shadows flicked beneath the surface, and I realized they were actually little fish. They reminded me of that idea I’d had in Eden, of finding an archipelago of clean water, with—but what good was that? Lilly wasn’t here . . . again. I wondered if it might be time to start getting used to that.

“You coming, or what?” Seven asked. I looked over and was not prepared for the size, or, lack of size, of the bikini that she was wearing. She stood, hands on her hips, and the jade-green bathing suit looked more like tiny triangles stuck into place than an actual garment. The whole picture slammed into my brain and I reeled in my gaze as fast as I could.

“That’s okay,” said Seven. “You can look, as long as you come swimming!” She turned and made a show of raising her arms and arching her back as she stepped to the edge of the platform, clearly aware that she was the star of the show. I let my eyes follow her long, curving form, her extralong legs and her everything else as she proceeded to launch a graceful dive into the water.

A few people around us spontaneously burst into applause, as if anything Seven did was worthy of adoration.

“I hate your two working eyes,” said Leech, taking off his shirt. He stepped to the ladder and carefully lowered himself in.

I pulled off my shirt, felt the tingle of sun cooking my shoulders and stepped up to the edge of the platform.

“Come on already, flyboy!” Seven was out in the center of the pool.

I thought about the sun, thought about my cramp, thought about Lilly . . . and I dove in anyway.

The water was a shocking glove of cold. I felt confused for a moment, had an urge to blow out my lungs and let my gills work, then remembered that would be bad. I pushed up to the surface and swam out to where Leech was treading water by some vines, thick cords that fell down into the water and then spread little starbursts of delicate tan hair beneath the surface.

“Where’s Seven?” I asked.

“Somewhere under us,” said Leech.

“How’s your eye?”

“Fine. The bandages are solid. I think I’m going to try that. Live bright and all.”

Leech paddled off toward the wall, where a group of kids a couple years younger than us were climbing up to dive off a high ledge. They shuffled their toes in an uneven groove in the limestone, grabbing little round hollows for handholds. The route led over a thick woven cord of gray roots that crawled down the wall. One of the boys slipped and fell off, crashing into the water to the chiding laughter of his mates.

I tilted and floated on my back, watching the white spray of the water falling down, and tracing the hanging roots all the way up to the green at the top of the well. Above that, a giant tree with smooth muscular limbs spread itself over most of the sky view. I wondered how long it took those roots to reach the water. And what made them know there was water down here? Why spend months or years on this impossibly long journey? Was it just faith? Or did something in its genes compel it to do so? Could the tree sense the water in a way that humans could never understand?