Maybe even to say good-bye to me?
I left his doll on the ground in his mother’s house. The one thing he had been so desperate to find, and I dropped it like a worthless toy, like it wasn’t the last piece of him I would ever have. I cry thinking of his happiness when he pulled it from the ground. I cry so I don’t have to scream.
Eight meals and three sleeps into my confinement, I get my first visitor.
Oreste carries my food tray herself. I let her put it on the desk, though courtesy demands I take it from her. If this petty rudeness annoys her, she doesn’t let it show.
“How have you been, June?” she asks.
“What day is it?”
“September fourteenth.”
Two more days. My teeth start to chatter. “Can’t I at least get a fono?”
Oreste’s regretful smile holds just a hint of triumph. “We don’t think that would be very wise, June, given the circumstances.”
“What the hell could I do with just a fono?”
Oreste gives a delicate, regal shrug. “You’ve proven yourself very adaptable with technology. And very resistant to the natural sacrifice of this particular summer king. Consider it a compliment.”
I stare up at her. She has refused to sit in my presence and I don’t trust myself to stand. “You won’t even let me watch.”
Now the triumph is unmistakable. “You caused us quite a bit of difficulty, June. You actually kidnapped the summer king. The government of the next five years was being called into question. We nearly had a revolution on our hands. Did you really think I’d reward that by letting you witness the sacred ceremony?”
“Is it really the fourteenth?” My voice is barely a whisper. I cough.
“Of course,” says the Queen. “When the boy dies, you’ll know.”
“Tell me, who’s his second? Who did he pick?”
Oreste snorts. “Gil, of course. The whole city can’t get enough of their epic love story. I could hardly refuse.”
I try not to let my relief show. At least he’ll have Gil with him at the end. I ache for them both, but at least he won’t be alone.
“Could I see Gil? And my mamãe?”
She goes very still for a moment, then turns just her head, like a hawk stalking prey. “Why on earth should I let you?”
I remember the last conversation I had with this formidable, terrifying woman. I remember my shock at the dirtiness of her politics and the scope of her ambitions.
I think of how to play her game.
“You remember the message we left with the city?”
Oreste frowns, which tells me she hasn’t found a way to disable our insurance policy. “I recall your note telling me of its existence, yes. But you aren’t in much of a position to trigger it, now are you?”
I understand the rigid technological isolation a little better now. It makes me feel stronger. I’m finally a threat. “I can’t,” I say. “But Enki can.”
Her eyes widen almost imperceptibly. She waves her hand in swift negation. “Ridiculous. He’s in seclusion more rigorous than yours. He can’t access anything but his own brain at this point.”
“You don’t seem very sure,” I say. I think I’m lying, but then I realize it’s true. “You don’t know what kind of mods he has anymore. You don’t know what he can do. Do you want to risk everything? Gil wants to see me, and Gil has access to Enki even you can’t cut off.”
“And you don’t think he’ll be afraid of who else we can hurt?”
“Is it fear that makes you vicious?”
“Is it stupidity that makes you so stubborn?”
We stare at each other, blades drawn in our eyes. Her breath is labored. Finally she lets out a shaky laugh. “Easier to let them come. Take care, June. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but you’re still very much in my power.”
She sweeps out of the room. I wait for the door to shut before I curl on the bed and cry.
Gil comes the next day; he brings Bebel.
“She begged me,” he says after we’ve hugged for at least five minutes. I had thought he might hate me — I cry a little with relief when I realize that he doesn’t.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I should have told you.”
“Do you know what I felt when I found out what you’d done? Joy. I asked you to save him, and you did.”
“But I failed, Gil.”
He shakes his head and pushes me back so I can look at his face. “At least you tried.”
Bebel sits quietly beside the door, tactfully averting her gaze. I can’t imagine why she came, but it’s strangely good to see her.
“Still in the lead for the Queen’s Award?” I ask.
She smiles, but only for a moment. “So they say. I’m going to do something.”
Gil and I exchange a glance. “Do something? Like try to win it?”
“No. Maybe. Do something you would do. Like —”
I take a step toward her and shake my head softly. She stops. I can’t be so obvious as to look around the room, but the Aunties are almost certainly listening in. Bebel can be so trusting.
“Like sing,” she says after a moment.
“Well, that’s a good idea.”
“Would … would you like to hear it? The song I’m going to try?”
I nod. She clears her throat, stands up. Like anyone growing up in Palmares Três — like anyone growing up in old-Brazil, probably — I’ve heard “Manhã de Carnaval” at least ten thousand times. Those classic notes might as well be the beeping of transport pod doors for all the attention I pay to them. But Bebel sings them like a knife to the gut, like a knockout punch before you’ve even registered the blow. Am I crying? Gil is too. That lingering saudade, that swelling of bittersweet, how had I never noticed before? How had I never felt that sadness at the start of carnival, especially in those years when it’s ushered in with blood?
It might be our municipal anthem, but in Bebel’s voice, it sounds faintly blasphemous.
And then I start to understand what she might be planning.
“Jesus,” I say very loudly. “I’m so sick of that song.”
Bebel opens her mouth in protest — she always knows when she’s been good — but then closes it. “Yeah,” she says after a moment. “I thought it might be boring. Anyway, thanks for letting me try it out on you. It’s not the same without you in school, June. Good luck with everything.”
She lets herself out. Gil and I share a small smile. I think, If Bebel can contemplate rebellion, anything can happen.
“How is he?” I ask.
Gil shrugs. “Quiet. Last night, we danced for five or six hours. I’ve never felt anything like it before. I swear, June, he was burning up.”
“He wants to do it,” I say.
“I know.”
This doesn’t seem to comfort him any more than it does me.
“He told me to give this to you.” I hope for a letter, some piece of art. Instead Gil pulls out a white cloth.
No, I see, when he unfolds it: a simple shift.
“He wants me to take vows?” I ask, though this is even simpler than the white outfits used by initiates in the orthodox Candomblé terreiros.
“How would I know?” He sounds bitter, which frightens me more than almost anything in the last two weeks. Gil has always understood.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Not your fault.”
He gives me one last hug and stands up. “I should go.”
And now it’s my turn to understand. Enki will be dead in less than twenty-four hours. I should let them have their last day together.
“Gil, do you ever wish we didn’t go to that party? That we didn’t dance above the city?”
“Sometimes,” he says.
When he leaves, I realize that I never have.
My fourth visitor comes late that night — at least, I’m almost sure, because it’s hours after the security bot brought me dinner and I’m yawning with exhaustion I won’t let myself feel. She knocks
on the door politely, and I tell her to come in.
When I see my mamãe, I nearly fall off the bed. I have spent three years entombed in resentment, but now I can’t believe how much I’ve missed her.
“I asked to see you as soon as they brought you in,” she says. “Yaha has tried for days, but no one listened.”
“I threatened Oreste,” I say. I almost want to stick out my tongue, in case she’s watching.
Mamãe just stares at me and then decides, very prudently, to leave well enough alone.
“We’re trying to get you out of here,” she says. “At least to get you a trial or a charge for something.”
I look around the stark room and then back at my mother. She seems older than I remember, with gray in her hair and lines around her eyes that she hasn’t bothered to treat. She looks like she’s been up for days.
“I’m guilty of a hundred crimes, Mamãe. I kidnapped the summer king. I don’t think the Queen will be letting me out anytime soon.”
“Yaha mentioned a possibility.”
“What?”
“Would you recant? Maybe work publicly for the government? She thinks she could convince them to cut a deal. You’ve become a bit of an icon since you left.”
I consider this, taking into account my mother’s penchant for understatement. It occurs to me, for the first time, that my own notoriety might have gone far past stencils of me and Enki as technophiles.
“Oreste said there was almost a revolution?”
Mamãe laughs. “I don’t think it went that far, though the Aunties certainly reacted to it that way. I don’t know, June. It’s been very unsettled lately. Yaha thinks that if you help smooth things over, you might be able to get out.”
“And if I don’t?”
The question hangs in the air between us. I might never see the sun again. I might never see the verde or the light on the bay or anything except this one bed in a technologically dead room.
“I’ll think about it, Mamãe,” I say, just to make her feel better.
She smiles. “Oh, June, I’m so glad. Auntie Yaha will talk to you soon. After …”
“After.”
When she’s almost at the door, I call her back. “Mamãe,” I say. “Three years ago, when we all said good-bye to Papai, he whispered something in your ear. I’ve always wondered what.”
Her eyes go wide with shock. Her throat quivers, but she gets the words out. “He asked me to believe in you, June. He said your art was the most important thing in the world to you, and I should trust it. But I didn’t, did I?”
“Papai said that?” My skin burns with the ghost of lights. “Papai never liked my art.”
“Oh, June. He loved you. And music isn’t the only kind of art. He understood that, eventually. Didn’t he say you’d be great?”
He did. But I’d never allowed myself to believe that’s what he meant. He left us alone, and so I had failed.
But I was always going to fail. No art could have saved him. Just like Enki.
“Thank you, Mamãe.”
I meet her eyes from across the room, her straight-ahead April eyes. She nods. “I’ll see you soon.”
“What time is it?” I ask.
“About midnight.”
Seven in the morning. That’s when our summer kings die.
Ten years ago, my papai woke me at dawn to watch Fidel choose Serafina. Now, I can only count the hours in circuits around the room, in marks scraped into the walls with my fingernails. They’ve turned bloody and cracked, but I don’t care.
At what I think might be six thirty, I bang on the door. “Please, someone, just let me watch. I’ll do anything, please!”
Not even a security bot. Not even an Auntie come to gloat.
A half hour later, I fall to my knees. I clasp my hands. It feels like prayer, but I can’t bear to pray.
“At least Gil is with him,” I say, just to ease the tension in my head. I wonder if it’s happened yet. Shouldn’t I feel something? Some jolt through my body, some recoil of the severed connection? When we carved that tree in Salvador I felt as though he were part of my body. Now I don’t even know if he’s still breathing.
I remember what else he said in Salvador: I’ll be dead, but wait for me.
“What the hell did you mean, Enki?” I ask, but he can’t answer.
The white shift Gil brought me lies on the bed. When I look at it now, I feel a resonance, a memory of the Enki of a year ago, dancing barefoot before the Queen in slave clothes. I strip my pants and shirt in a second and unfold the simple dress. It’s heavier than I expected. My hands linger on a strange, stiff fabric that’s been sewn around the middle. Shiny and thick, it reflects the light, refracting a rainbow if I bend it. I feel a tickle of familiarity, but desperation and terror have emptied my thoughts. I lift the shift over my head and everything else slips away. After a moment, I remove my shoes.
Naked but for a scratchy, barely tailored sack of cloth, I feel armored. Like whatever the Aunties might try can’t get past the simplicity of this gesture.
Love is its own power, Enki says, a voice close in my ear.
I close my eyes. Is he trying to speak to me? Is he dead?
Of course I am, bem-querer. Haven’t I already told you?
I knuckle my eyes, but tears escape them anyway.
He’s dead.
I know it like I knew my tree, like I knew his lips, like I knew my papai. It is minutes past seven, and his soul has greeted the dawn.
My door opens.
I freeze, but no one comes through. “Hello?” I say.
There’s no one in the hall. The door opened on its own. I step outside. I think to get my shoes but something makes me stop. Maybe it’s the voice I hear, getting stronger as I walk down the hall. Every door is closed but one abutting a staircase. I go up.
“Manhã tão bonita manhã,” sings a voice like a knife-edge.
I thought I would cry. I thought I would break down and give up, but instead that strength bunches inside me. It vibrates. My bare feet slap the metal stairs as Bebel’s voice gets louder. I have never been more alone in my life, and I have never been less afraid. The stairs go up and up until I reach another open door, and a rooftop. The building overlooks a smaller plaza on Tier Two that I’ve seen maybe a handful of times in my life. It’s filled with thousands of people, all so unnaturally quiet that I can hear my feet crunching on bird droppings. He is dead, say my feet. Your lover is dead, says the strength inside me. I look down. The people stare at me.
No, they stare at a holo on the roof. I have walked inside it like a ghost. The wood of the altar steps goes through my feet. Flies buzz in my ears — but no, those are camera bots.
Oreste stands beside the altar. She is glowing with sweat; her face is savage and confused. There is blood on her dress and a knife on the floor and Enki, so close I could touch his insubstantial projection — Enki is dead.
He is twisting away from her, as far as the ropes will allow. He has died with his outstretched hand covered in his own blood. He reaches toward me. Toward where the path to the roof has led.
From where I stand, it looks as though he is touching me.
Something vibrates on my stomach. The strange cloth heats and hums with its own energy. I look down. For a second, for a flash, I think I see words there, upside down so I can read them. I love you. But they disappear before I can focus and I look up, half blinded by words half seen.
Oreste stares at me. At me, though I’m on a prison roof on Tier Two and she’s in the sacred shrine on Tier Ten. I recall the buzzing of camera bots above: My image must be projecting into the shrine.
“You!” she says.
A whisper has started in the crowd below. I don’t understand it at first, but then I do: “In blood.” An echo of the words from the sacrificial ceremony: You will mark your choice of the woman to be Queen, in gesture or blood.
“You’re not a legitimate choice,” Oreste says.
It occurs to me to look dow
n. If the words were there, they have vanished forever. In their place, a mark more indelible — a bloody handprint across my belly. In a decade, no one has forgotten how Fidel marked Serafina. No one can mistake this for anything else.
I finally recognize the cloth. It’s old tech, more than a century, nothing the Aunties would have worried about. But Gil’s mamãe sometimes uses it in her designs because of its uniquely changeable surface. It’s not really cloth, but a kind of array. A flexible, programmable screen.
It shows the red bright enough, fresh enough that I feel as if he has punched me. I imagine I can smell his blood.
Like Oreste can.
How did it feel to cut his throat? I want to ask. To watch him die on the altar once he’d made you Queen?
But did he?
“In blood!” the whisper grows bolder now.
“He picked me,” I say.
“This violates a dozen rules. The courts won’t support it. You should give up while you can.”
“He picked me.”
My voice is pure, flat, and uninflected. But perhaps people other than Oreste can hear me, because the crowd below has gotten boisterous.
“Our summer king picked June,” they shout.
I stand there, barefoot and alone above a sea of people. Oreste glares at me. I turn from her and the body of my beloved. I walk away.
“I’ll fight this, June!” Oreste shouts behind me.
“You’ve already lost,” I say, not turning around. “Don’t you know it?”
“I will —”
“No,” I say, sharp enough to cut her off. “His blood sanctifies his choice, Oreste.”
The crowd roars.
I don’t want to be Queen any more than she wants me to, but Enki is dead, and Enki has chosen.
You know this doesn’t end, right? You’ll die one day — kiri like your father, or claw your way into your third century by the skin of your reconstructed teeth, your story won’t last forever. But for now, it’s yours, a lot longer than mine, and if you think I could use my life as a canvas?
The Summer Prince Page 28