SIX

MY CITY IS DARK AND MUTED, PAINTED IN BLACK AND GRAY. But the city I’m looking at is bright white—the cobblestone, the houses, and even the cathedral. It’s dazzling. It’s foreign. It’s unnatural.

White is the color of death. Everyone knows that.

I’m kneeling in an alley between two unfamiliar manors. I tentatively get to my feet and inch forward. The only thing in front of me that I recognize is the veil. It’s still high above, stretched over everything. It’s a bright, vivid red, like it always is during the middle of the day.

Behind me, a door slams. I whip around to see Ale. His face is as white as the scenery, and he’s very, very still, his back pressed against the entrance to the catacombs like he expects something to come bursting out.

He looks around slowly, and I wait for him to tell me I’m imagining things. I wait to hear that we’re back in our city, but I’ve simply lost my senses from hunger, and that’s the reason everything looks inexplicably not-Occhian.

“We’re dead,” he says. “That was a ghost. And we’re dead.”

I open my mouth. I shut it.

“We—we were in the bottom of the catacombs,” he says. “And a ghost killed us. And now we’re inside the veil. And this is what the afterlife looks like.”

“No,” I say automatically.

“Well,” he says, like he’s bracing himself, “the dying part actually wasn’t so awful. Yes, it was terrifying, but it didn’t hurt like I thought it would, so there’s that. What are we supposed to do now that we’re in the afterlife? Oh—we have to go atone for all our sins. Right. This is all fine. This is—”

“Ale,” I say. “We’re not—”

I try to say the word dead, but it gets stuck in my throat.

“That wasn’t a ghost,” I say instead.

“What?” he says. “Then what was it?”

“It was a person,” I say.

“It looked like a ghost,” he says.

“It was a person,” I insist. “I saw its eyes. They were… person-like.”

“I didn’t see any eyes,” he says.

“I was closer to them than you were,” I say.

“Well, it could have been a ghost with person-like eyes,” he says. “Remember that awful story your nursemaid used to tell us about the ghost that wore the face of its last victim—”

“It wasn’t a ghost,” I say with vicious certainty.

If the ghosts of Occhian lore were real, and one had come after me, I would know. If I were dead, I would know. I would feel it.

Ale is quiet. I wait for him to admit that he’s being hysterical and I’m being logical.

“So that means a person lurking in the catacombs killed us?” he says. “Is that better or worse?”

I whirl around and march to the mouth of the alley.

We’re not dead, because I refuse to be dead. I’m sure that once I take a proper look around, this will all make sense.

“Emanuela, wait—”

Ale scampers after me. I duck around the corner and, before he can catch up, I pull aside my pants to look at my hip.

I still have the same omen on my skin. Just one.

They haven’t spread. I’m alive.

I knew that. I was just making sure.

Ale joins me, and we both survey the street. The manors around us are towering and pristine—and absolutely smothered in plants. There are columns wrapped in vines and windowsills overflowing with white roses and flowerbeds of every color. The house just across the way has an entire wall covered in yellow blossoms. They’ve been meticulously placed to form an elaborate, spiraling design.

My mamma’s family, the House of Rosa, has a garden of heirloom roses in our courtyard. It’s our pride and joy. It’s small enough to cross in three steps. We can’t afford to make it any larger.

I cross the street to the house with the yellow blossoms. I rip off one of the petals.

“Emanuela,” Ale says, “don’t touch anything—”

It’s real. I drop it and look around again. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’m just waiting for this place to make sense.

But there’s no explanation leaping out at me. All I see are a lot of beautiful manors, sitting in an unnerving quiet.

I start slowly down the street, peering in the windows we pass. The houses are empty, but they don’t look abandoned. I see a parlor with tiny sandwiches sitting out on a silver platter, waiting for teatime. I see laundry hanging in alleys. I see a manor that’s been terrorized by its children, who have left toys scattered all over the floor of every room.

The people of Occhia all leave their manors at the same time every day to gather for worship. For some people, worship is about the religion, and for some people, it’s the place to see and be seen, but for everyone, it’s an event.

I glance up at the spires of the cathedral.

This is a city. A city that looks like Occhia, but doesn’t. A city that’s like Occhia, but isn’t.

I can think the words, but when I try to wrap my mind all the way around them, it rebels. The idea that I got lost in the catacombs and wandered into another city doesn’t make any sense. Because that would mean everything I know about Occhia is wrong. My city is supposed to be all alone in the middle of the veil. My city is supposed to be everything that’s ever existed.

“Emanuela.” Ale whispers it directly onto the back of my neck.

I startle away. “Must you? The point of you being twice my height is that you stay out of my breathing space.”

“Look.” He follows me. He grabs my head and delicately turns it to direct my gaze down the street.

At the intersection of several winding lanes, there’s a statue made of white marble. It has three tiers, stacked like a cake, and on top is a figure of a woman. Her arms are outstretched benevolently.

“What is it?” Ale says.

“A ghost,” I say, just to be insufferable.

He stiffens. “You don’t think… you don’t think it followed us—”

“It’s clearly a statue, Ale,” I say. “A statue of a saint, probably. That’s what we make statues of in Occhia, isn’t it?”

“But…” he says. “We’re not in Occhia.”

I hesitate.

“I know,” I say.

We approach the statue cautiously. Like everything else on this street, it’s polished and pretty and unfamiliar. The woman’s white skirts are expertly carved to billow around her, as if she’s in the middle of a twirl. She has a white rose behind one ear and long, curly hair. She looks so real. I feel like if I climbed up and touched her, I’d find her skin warm and soft.

But I’m not going to do that. I don’t want to get any closer.

At the end of the next street, we find another statue. It’s the exact same woman, on top of the exact same tiers.

“Who is she?” Ale whispers.

He’s asking like he thinks I’ve somehow come up with an answer. I keep walking, hoping that maybe I will. With one eye on the spires in the distance, Ale and I wind our way up staircases and across walkways and past more identical statues. It quickly becomes apparent that there’s a statue at every single intersection.

Whoever this woman is, she’s all over the city.

All too soon, we’re at the end of a street that faces the cathedral. Just like in Occhia, it’s never far away. Its looming towers are white and striking against the red veil. The enormous double doors are shut. I strain my ears for organ music, the familiar sound of worship, but I hear nothing.

“Where’s…” Ale says. “Where’s the—”

He cuts himself off with an uneasy look at me.

The watercrea’s tower. In Occhia, it’s right behind the cathedral, peeking over its shoulder, always visible. But here, I don’t see anything.

I start walking again. Faster.

“Wait—” Ale runs after me.

I reach the edge of the cathedral square. Off to one side are white, columned buildings that look very much like Occhia’s Parliament buildings. On the other side is a public garden, lusher and greener than any I’ve ever seen. There’s still no sign of anyone.

There’s something very unusual about this city, and I know what it is, but I’m afraid to name it, even inside my own head.

I lead Ale across the square. I try to look like I visit this cathedral every day. I try to look like I know exactly what I’m going to find inside.

I’m just past the halfway point when I feel it. Someone is watching me approach. I’m certain of it.

I stop. I survey the cathedral’s closed doors and intricate white face and narrow windows. There’s no sign of life.

I turn to Ale. “Did you feel…?”

“What?” he says, instantly on alert.

“Nothing,” I say, and keep going.

I’m not dead, I remind myself. As long as I’m not dead, I can handle anything.

I climb the steps to reach the cathedral doors. And finally, I can hear something beyond the thick walls. It’s the steady, muffled hum of voices. Of people.

I stare at the intricate wood paneling and will myself to just reach out and push my way inside. I think about the last time I was in a cathedral that looked almost, but not quite, like this one. I think about my papá’s arm in mine and Ale waiting at the altar and the woman in the red gown who took one look at me and knew about my omen.

I think about the thing I saw in the catacombs, and the moment when its eyes met mine.

I think about my nursemaid, stuck in a city with no water, braving the guards so that I could slip away. I think about my people panicking in the streets. I think about all those prisoners in the watercrea’s tower. No one else is going to help them.

I reach out and slowly, slowly push on the door.

Someone on the other side wrenches it open and ushers me inside, and all at once, Ale and I are propelled through the foyer and surrounded by people. The inner chamber is full of them. They’re milling around under the enormous arched ceilings, their chatter loud as it echoes off the walls. There are no pews. There’s no altar. There’s a shiny floor of black-and-white tile and, in the very center, an enormous, three-tiered dais.

It looks like the statues we saw in the street. But there’s no marble woman standing on top. It’s empty.

For a moment, I’m frozen at the edge of the crowd. I’m waiting, instinctively, to be recognized. I’ve never gone anywhere in Occhia and not been recognized. I’ve never been so surrounded by people I don’t know. I’ve never walked into an event and not known, more or less, everything that was going to happen.

“She’s late,” the man next to me says, shifting impatiently. His eyes are on the dais.

“She’ll be here soon,” his friend says.

They’re not speaking in Occhian, but rather an oddly accented version of Culaire. In my city, Culaire is mostly confined to a neighborhood that we call the Lily. I speak it well, of course, because I’m very educated. And I like the art market in the Lily. They have the fanciest desserts.

But I’m not in the Lily. I’m in… this place.

Someone elbows me in the back as they push past, and I whip around in surprise. People in Occhia know better than to jostle me.

It’s a tall girl in a maid’s dress. She has a red smudge on her cheek. It’s so unexpected—so very blatant—that, for a moment, I can’t even comprehend what it is.

It’s an omen.

No. It’s not just one omen. She has two omens on her cheek.

She doesn’t seem to notice. It feels like I’m the only one who can see them. And for a moment, I’m convinced that none of this is real.

Then the dais in the center of the room goes up in smoke. Huge columns of it shoot out of the center, dissolving into the high ceiling.

I grab Ale’s wrist, fully prepared to run away from whatever horrifying thing is about to happen. But then I realize that nobody around me seems concerned. Instead, they’re starting to sing.

At first, it’s more of a murmur. But as the smoke starts to clear, it builds. The words sound like a language I’ve never heard, which is unnerving. I thought I was at least passably familiar with every language spoken in my city. But then, this isn’t my city.

The shadow of a person appears on top of the dais, and the singing grows. People put their arms in the air, like they’re reaching for the mysterious figure.

Ale and I exchange a sideways look. We’re the only people in this entire room who don’t know the song. He sinks down a little, trying to make himself less tall.

The smoke dissipates to reveal a woman in a white gown. A girl, maybe. I’m very far away and she’s very far above, but she looks young and slender, with brown skin and long, curly hair. There’s a white rose tucked behind one of her ears. She’s smiling. And even though I can barely see her face, I can tell that she’s glowing, like there’s nowhere else she’d ever want to be.

I know instantly who she is. She’s the statue.

The singing is tremendous now. The people are beaming and jostling me in their excitement.

The girl lifts her white-gloved hands.

The singing cuts off. The crowd around me vibrates in anticipation.

And then, water.

It pours down from the platform under the girl’s feet, falling from tier to tier to gather in a basin below. Two streams form an archway over her head, framing her. All around the statue, streams are coming to life, leaping from place to place to form an elaborate lattice below her.

I’ve never seen anything like it. Like the rest of this city, it’s beautiful.

And then, it’s shooting out from the fountain into the crowd.

And then, it’s everywhere.

It’s hitting me in the face. I think it came out of the ceiling. I’m not sure. All I know is that I’m reeling and sputtering, and it won’t stop coming. No one else seems concerned. As far as I can tell, they’ve still got their arms up, soaking it in.

Abruptly, the deluge stops. When I’ve blinked it all out of my eyes, I turn to find Ale, his hair plastered to his forehead. He’s staring at the drops of water running off his fingers like he’s trying to figure out if they’re real.

I look back at the dais, only to find that the girl in the white gown has disappeared. The soaked crowd pushes us back out the cathedral doors, like the show is over, and I’m too baffled to resist.

At the top of the steps, I catch a brief glimpse of the city laid out below—the red veil over the shining white manors, and the branching cobblestone streets cutting it all up.

Ale grabs my arm, which is how I know he sees it, too.

The statues we saw earlier—the smaller versions of the dais inside—are all alive with water. Every statue I can see in the distance is glistening as it pours down the tiers. And it shows no signs of stopping.

I’ve never seen so much water in my life. I can’t comprehend it. I don’t even know how to start.

When we hit the cathedral square, the people splinter off, returning down the streets to their teatime, and their laundry, and their children. They pass by the water-filled statues without a second glance. Ale and I stand there, soaking wet and watching it all, until we’re some of the only people left. A cluster of gossiping nobles lingers near the gardens, wringing out their fine clothes.

No one is surprised by what just happened. It’s like it happens every day.

I turn back to the cathedral just in time to see the doors swing shut. It’s quickly followed by the heavy sound of a deadbolt sliding into place.

The cathedral in Occhia was never locked.

“What is this place?” Ale says.

It’s not like Occhia at all.

“Emanuela?” Ale presses.

“What?” I say.

“What should we do?” he says.

I don’t know. I don’t know how we got here. I don’t know what to make of the things we just saw. I don’t know the name of a single person or a single place around me, and I feel the prickling sense of not belonging in a way I’ve never felt it before. I’m stranded and hopelessly out of context, like a child dropped into a dinner party where the adults will never think to explain anything, because it’s all so obvious to them.

There’s only one thing I’m certain about. Somewhere in the veil, my city is out of water. And I’ve come upon a city absolutely drenched in it.

Surely I can persuade them to share.