by Yvonne Woon
“You seemed awfully interested in the Nine Sisters today,” Clementine said over my shoulder. “What I’m wondering is why someone who supposedly already defied death is so intrigued by talk of the secret to immortality.”
“What do you want me to say? That I’m just a normal person and all the rumors are a lie?” I said, keeping my chin up as I walked to the condiments section.
Clementine followed me. “No. See, I don’t think you’re normal, either.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I said, and shrugged her off as I walked toward the table in the corner where Anya was sitting.
“I know you have a secret,” Clementine said as I left her behind. “And I’m going to find where you buried it and dig it up.”
When I got back to my room after dinner, it was so quiet I could hear footsteps coming down the hall, and then the sound of Clementine’s door unlocking. I was setting down my bag when a sudden cold breeze blew in from the windows. I ran to the other side of the room, hoping it was Dante, but of course it wasn’t. Clementine’s words crept into my head. If she ever found out about Dante…I didn’t even want to think about what would happen.
Closing the window, I went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. While I was leaning on the sink, waiting for the water to get hot, I heard someone knock on Clementine’s door. I assumed it was some of her girlfriends, so it surprised me when I heard a boy’s voice.
“Noah,” Clementine said. Her voice sounded different. Soft. Sincere.
Noah? I thought. The same Noah who hit me with a bicycle, who had flirted with me? The Noah who had spilled a bouquet of daffodils all over the street. He had bought them for Clementine?
Pressing myself against the wall, I listened to him whispering to her, to her whispering back. To the sound of a bra strap snapping against skin. To Clementine giggling. To the silence when they kissed.
Closing my eyes, I imagined that it was me in there with Dante, but Noah’s voice kept drowning him out. And for reasons I couldn’t explain, I started crying.
I wasn’t jealous of Clementine; it wasn’t that. Or maybe it was. As I stepped into the shower, gripping the tile, I wished, just for a moment, that I could be her, that Dante could be Noah, and that when I went back to my room, he would be there waiting for me. But I knew I could never have that.
The shower curtain billowed as I reached over my shoulder and, with delicate fingers, touched the indentation on my back. The pain was shrill and shaky, like the high note of a soprano, but I held my finger steady until it calmed to a long, low ache. It was all I had left of him. And in five years, when he died, I wouldn’t even have this, unless I did something now to change my fate. As my hand slipped to my side, I hung my head back, letting the hot water cascade over my body until I couldn’t tell if I was crying anymore, and the bathroom was filled with so much steam that it was hard to breathe.
My room was cold when I shut the bathroom door behind me. Clutching my towel, I went to my desk and pulled my history book off the shelf. I flipped through it until I found the section on Les Neuf Soeurs. The painting Madame Goût had showed us in class stared back at me from the page. I studied the shadowy girl with the canary, wondering who she was and what had happened to her. But the text didn’t help. It only mentioned the few facts Madame Goût had already told us, and spent the rest of the chapter talking about their influence on Monitoring culture and society.
Had they really found the secret to immortality? I had to know. And if it existed, I had to find it. But where was I supposed to start? Skipping ahead, I spotted a photograph of a stone carving on the bottom of the page. It was a simple thing—a small bird entwined with what looked like vines —yet still, it was enough to make my chest seize.
My breath grew shallow as I leaned back in my chair, unable to believe what I was seeing: the same bird that had flashed into my mind on the airplane with Dustin. The Canary Crest of the Nine Sisters, the caption read.
My voice cracked. “Impossible.”
Switching on my desk lamp, I looked closer, but I was right: it was the same bird I had seen when I’d blurted out the word canary.
Did this mean that the visions I’d been having, the information I’d suddenly known, all had to do with the Nine Sisters?
A crisp swirl of air blew in, turning the pages of my book. But hadn’t I just closed the window? I stood up. The window was indeed still shut, yet the air was streaming in, coiling around my wrists, my arms, my chest, until I let out his name like a breath. “Dante.”
Acting on an impulse, I ran to the wall and turned off the light. And standing in the middle of the room, I closed my eyes and took a tiny step to the right, and then an even smaller step to the left, until I could feel the stream of air reaching up my legs.
I threw my towel aside and got dressed as quickly as I could, combing my wet hair with my fingers as I ran down the stairs and out the door. At the school gates, a group of boys were joking around with a security guard.
“Renée,” a voice said. It was Brett.
“I—I have to go,” I said, and squeezed through them. I disappeared into the winding streets of Montreal.
I didn’t know where I was going; my only guide was the chilly passage that connected me to Dante. It was hard to follow. I kept getting distracted by death that I sensed nearby: crowded markets, hospitals, and churches with modest graveyards. I made a left, followed by two rights, but then lost my way. I turned around and retraced my steps, holding my breath until I could feel him.
Eventually I found myself at the far end of the old port, at a fisherman’s wharf. The air was raw and cold, like the inside of a freezer, and filled with sounds of the ocean at night: the chug of the water splashing against the dock, the boats swaying in the marina, their lines clinking against their masts like chimes.
By the pier was a wholesale shack filled with beautiful six-foot-long fish hanging from the ceiling, their scales reflecting the fluorescent light in oily shades of red, orange, and purple. I felt their pull on me as if they were the Undead. A weathered man in rubber boots and gloves wheeled a barrel of smaller fish up the dock. Lowering my head, I walked past him, watching the moon’s reflection ripple on the water, when a cold hand grabbed my wrist.
I knew I had found Dante from the way his presence enveloped me, seeped into me, filling my lungs with the scent of the woods clinging to his clothes, the pine so sharp that for the first time in months I could remember what it felt like to walk through a forest at dusk.
“Is it safe here?” I uttered, but Dante put a finger over my lips.
“Nowhere in this city is safe,” he said, and pulled me into the shadows between two oversized boats, his hand on my ribs, his breath soft against the back of my ear, as we waited, hushed, for the last workers to leave.
The dock rocked beneath our feet as Dante led me to the end of the platform, where a small white boat called The Sea Maiden was docked. Its sails were rolled up.
“Whose is it?” I asked as Dante put one foot on the deck.
“Ours tonight,” he said. Before I knew what was happening, he lifted me up as if I were weightless and carried me into the boat, my feet knocking a handle of the steering wheel, making it spin and spin. I clung to his neck, burying my face in his hair, in his shoulder, not wanting him to let me go.
“I miss you,” I said, as if I were imagining all of this. “I miss you,” I repeated, already anticipating when the night would be over and he would be gone.
He carried me to the middle of the deck, where a set of stairs led down into the cabin. I held on to the collar of Dante’s shirt, touching the curves of his neck as he stepped over a pile of life jackets and into the hull of the boat.
He tightened his grip and flipped on the light switch. Strings of tiny lights lit up the perimeters of the windows. A plush red bench lined the room, which was walled with panels of dark wood. Laying me down on the cushions, Dante stood back and looked at me.
I felt myself blush. “What?�
�� I whispered, embarrassed.
He knelt by my side. Picking up my right leg, he gently unlaced my shoe and slid it off. My toes curled as he moved to my left leg, slipping my other shoe off and placing it on the floor.
The boat creaked as he looked up at me, his eyes somehow desperate. His fingers tickled my skin as he ran his hands up my thighs, reaching beneath the pleats of my skirt. Something within me ached. I closed my eyes and felt him grasp the waist of my tights and peel them off, one leg at a time. I let out a shallow breath as he kissed my bare knees, the cool air of the marina making my skin prickle.
“Is this okay?” he asked, his voice soft.
Swallowing, I nodded, his question making me want him even more. “Don’t stop,” I said, my voice cracking as I unbuttoned my cardigan and slipped it off my shoulders.
He kissed my neck. And slowly, he unbuttoned my shirt, his breath dancing across my skin until I was clothed in nothing but a bit of cotton and lace.
Sitting back, he took me in, his eyes roaming across my body, bare and pale in the evening light. Beautiful, he mouthed, as if his lips had acted without him. He lowered himself on top of me and moved his hands across me, tangling his fingers in my hair, feeling the smooth lines of my hips, my rib cage, my collarbone, until everything inside me went limp.
Forgetting myself, I lifted my head and pulled his face toward mine.
He turned away just before our lips met. “Careful,” he whispered into my hair.
And even on that tiny couch, in a cramped cabin in the stomach of a boat, everything seemed to fit together, as if he were the inverse of me. The cavity of his chest, the curve of his waist, the weight of his legs on top of mine—they filled the hollowness within me, and I breathed him in until I could smell the wet air, the dusty cushions beneath us, the salt on his skin as his stubble grazed my neck.
We stayed up into the evening, whispering, touching, as if no time had passed between us, as if the last two weeks had been nothing but a pause in the middle of a long, rolling sentence.
“I think I found an answer,” I breathed over my shoulder, my voice barely audible as I told him about Zinya’s prophecy, the Nine Sisters, and the canary. “If the legend is true, then their secret could still be out there. If we find it, then we can use it to give you life again.”
I waited for Dante to press himself against me and tell me we were saved, but he remained still. “But all of that is just speculation,” he said finally. “How do you know the ninth sister didn’t let it die with her, or that immortality exists at all?”
His voice hit me like a splash of cold water, and I felt myself grow stiff. “Because it has to. A vision of a canary flashed into my mind on the airplane. That has to mean something. Zinya said the visions would lead to the answer to my soul. What if all of my visions are clues leading to the secret of the Nine Sisters?”
“You promised me when we were behind the cathedral that you wouldn’t follow your visions.”
“I never promised,” I said. “And besides, I’m a Monitor. I can take care of myself.”
“Could Miss LaBarge take care of herself? Could your parents?”
Bewildered, I hugged my arms to my chest. “Why are you saying these things? Don’t you even want to try?”
He reached out to me, but I pulled away.
“Of course I do,” he said.
I searched his face, trying to understand why he was acting this way. “Then why aren’t you happy?”
“I am happy,” he said, as if I had hurt him. “I just don’t want to get my hopes up about something that might not even exist.”
“But that’s all I have,” I said. “When you’re gone, it feels like a piece of me is missing. If I lose you, what’s left?”
Dante put a hand to my cheek and guided my face to his. “You won’t lose me,” he said. “I would never let that happen. I promise you.”
He tangled his legs with mine, his fingers stroking my shoulders, his lips pressed against the back of my neck. Outside, the wind was strong, making the boat beneath us tilt and sway, pulling our bodies apart and then pushing us back together until I drifted to sleep in his arms. Sometime around midnight, I stirred, hearing him whispering in my ear. “I love you,” he murmured, thinking I was still asleep. But he didn’t need to say it, because I already knew.
I awoke the next morning alone. Sitting up, I turned to the space beside me where the shape of Dante’s body was still imprinted in the cushions. I touched it even though I knew it would be cold. I shouldn’t have been upset; I knew that he would have to leave by midnight, before the Monitor sweep. But no matter how hard I tried, I knew I would never get used to his absence.
Out the window, it was a dull rainy day. I gathered my things, the boat creaking as I steadied myself and tried to put on my clothes. I was about to leave when I picked up my sweater. Lying on the floor beneath it was a note. It must have fallen when I first got up.
I unfolded it.
I promise.
I smiled and clutched it to my side, feeling that Dante was still with me as I climbed out into the drizzle.
When I got back to the dormitory I went straight to Anya’s room. She opened the door just as I was about to knock, appearing in the doorway in a black jumper and purple tights. Her red hair was pulled into a loose braid.
“Oh good,” she said. “You remembered this time.”
We didn’t have a plan when we set out. I figured we could just follow what I’d done in my vision: buy a bouquet of flowers, go to the reception area, and tell them we were visiting room 151. It wasn’t anything brilliant, but we were going to a hospital. How hard could it be?
We traveled there by foot, Anya holding a wobbly umbrella between us as we traipsed through the puddles. The Royal Victoria Hospital was just as I remembered it: a sprawling lawn leading up to a massive stone building, the flags on the spires waving in the wind. Inside, the building had glossy floors and clean white walls. A line of nurses sat behind the reception area, typing. I walked toward them, Anya’s wet shoes squeaking behind me.
“Hi,” I said to a nurse with big hair. “We’re here for visiting hours.” I placed the bouquet of flowers on the counter for emphasis.
“Who are you visiting?”
“Er—room 151.”
“In which ward?”
“Pediatrics,” I replied, a little too stiffly.
She typed something into her computer, and then frowned. “What’s the name of the patient you’re visiting?”
I gave Anya a panicked look. This wasn’t supposed to happen. “Um—”
“Pierre,” Anya said, cutting in. “He’s my cousin.”
I nodded. “Her cousin.”
“Last name?” the nurse asked, giving us a suspicious look.
“LaGuerre,” I blurted out.
After typing something else into her computer, she leaned back in her chair. “Pierre LaGuerre?”
It sounded so silly when she said it out loud. “There is no patient here with that name, and there never has been, according to our records.”
I could feel myself start to sweat. “Oh, um—”
“What are your names?” The nurse’s voice was stern as she picked up a pencil.
Anya kicked me just as I was about to answer. “Our mistake,” she said. “We must have gotten the wrong hospital.”
The nurse stood up, but before she could respond, Anya grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the exit.
“Now what?” I asked, once we were outside.
“We go through the tunnels.”
She led me to a mall, where we took an escalator down, down, down, until we emerged in the underground level. The halls were tiled in gray and lit with bright fluorescent lights that made me shield my eyes. People bustled around us, shopping, drinking coffee, heading toward the food court, which stank of hot oil.
I followed Anya as she wove through the tunnel system, taking a left and then right, past a metro entrance, a perfume shop, and a huge grocery store, u
ntil we made it to a tunnel that had been almost completely blocked off by cement slabs.
“I think this is it,” she said, stepping past a shallow puddle of orange water.
“How do you know about this?” I asked, sucking in a breath as I pressed myself against the side of the tunnel and followed her.
“All of the Russians here know about them,” she said, leading me through a dank corridor lined with rust. “We were the ones who built them. Well, not me, but, you know, Russian immigrants. When I was little, my father used to take me through all the barricaded tunnels.”
At the end was a narrow stairway that led to a single door. Anya pushed it open with her shoulder. It opened into a long storage closet in the hospital. Kicking away a box, I stepped over a mess of supplies—gauze, syringes, boxes of latex gloves—until I made it to the far door, lined with light.
“Let’s use these,” Anya said, and picked up a sheet of visitor stickers. Writing the name Tanya on one sticker, she peeled it off and stuck it on her shirt. She then wrote Dasha on another sticker and stuck it on my chest. Together, we crouched by the door, listening to the footsteps outside, and when there was a lull, we snuck out.
We found ourselves in the geriatrics ward—a drab place, its overhead lights buzzing in silence. It felt vacant and cold, as if it were inhabited by death. Trying to act inconspicuous, Anya and I walked toward the elevators. A bell dinged and we stepped inside.
It was crowded with two nurses standing by a patient on a stretcher. He was an old but robust man, his bare arms still muscular, his beard a deep gray. He wasn’t dead, but sleeping; I knew because I couldn’t sense him. Anya stared at him as I pressed the button for the third floor, which was labeled Pediatrics.
“You know, he was kind of good-looking,” she said, when we got off.
I groaned. “He could be your grandfather,” I said. “Your great-grandfather.”
“I think older men are sexy,” she continued. “Their chest hair. I love it.”