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I hear voices in the walls of Atlantia, especially siren voices They’ve been saved up, e, but not everyone hears theift must be connected in some way to my ability to save the voices in the shells

I’m silent for a moment Then I say, "I don’t know if I believe you"

Maire laughs

"Can you tell me what they said?" I ask "Those voices in the walls? What did they tell you about the history of the Below? About the sirens?"

Yes, Maire says And her voice changes, becomes the voice of someone else

In the end there was the Divide

It’s very different froo It sees to a woman who sounds very old, and it is not the voice of a siren

Those of us chosen to live Beloere lucky, but our hearts were also broken We wept for those left Above We wandered the streets of our beautiful city and we felt so cold Though we knew it et back to the Above We didn’t believe that we belonged so far underwater We felt that if our world was dying, we ht as well die with it Our leaders told us to remember how fortunate ere To live so that we made the sacrifice of the others hile Tears streas, so we knew they understood hoe felt

We all tried But nothing tasted the saht or sounded the way it had in the Above There were so hts, you could feel the dark outside Soet Above They stoay in the food transports and suffocated withinbays and drowned

Even some of the children tried

There were so many children sent doithout parents We all did our best to take care of them They had it the hardest of everyone who came Below They tried to be happy, because that’s e all said their parents wanted They cried to the, as they learned and worked and grew They beca, because children are resilient, but I could swear that even after they stopped weeping outwardly, their hearts wept inside But--and I will always believe this hat made the first miracle possible, that in fact itwithout beco hard They steadied their hearts but didn’t let the children of their own, a etting very old, but I lived long enough to hear their voices I a peace to us They rehter sounded like

They were beautiful and joyful Their parents loved them We all loved them We loved the those we’d left Above

When they told us to live, somehoe could They looked into our eyes and asked us to be happy, and we found anted to obey

The bats ca back, I think that the batsbut didn’t show the in the teh the courtyards The bats loved the siren children They flew about and landed on the children’s shoulders and stretched out their wings, as if they wanted to protect the beauty of the sirens’ songs

The sirens were so beautiful and so terrible Beautiful because of their voices Terrible because little children should not have such a great responsibility