The Summer Prince Read online

  I spend the night alone and shivering, my cheek pressed against the window and my body covered in a nest of blankets. I tried sleeping, but all I could think of were the lights of the city and the ruffle of wind on the bay. The worst is this feeling that I’ve lost them both. The Enki of my foolish dreams and Gil, my best friend. He put me down on the glass and never once thought of me after. I’m afraid it will never be the same between us, and I’m furious for being afraid. How can I begrudge Gil that wide-eyed, worshipful happiness? How can I be jealous of him for the dance? But this ache that I know shouldn’t be there slides through every part of me.

  I don’t actually know Enki. I’m not stupid. I’m aware this attachment I feel is the product of emotional investment in the largely stage-managed and manufactured spectacle of the royal election. I know that a thousand wakas are probably crying themselves to sleep tonight, just like me.

  I’m an artist, after all, and I live for spectacle, for the construction of emotional states and the evocation of suppressed feelings. I can appreciate what Enki has done with his election — the way he subverted it while simultaneously triumphing within its rules. I don’t envy Queen Oreste in her efforts to manage him during this year. The summer kings of moon years might not have any political clout, but I think grandes underestimate the power of desire.

  But Enki is also himself. He is the boy who turned a dance before the Queen into a political statement, the boy who came up from the verde to steal our hearts, and is it so silly, so unbelievable that I’d allowed myself to fantasize? To think that he might look at me in the way he looked at Gil tonight, that it might have been my lips he kissed, my cheek he caressed?

  I squeeze my hand into a fist. No. That’s a story a little girl tells herself to fall asleep at night, and I am done with fairy tales. I want art, pure and clean and uncompromising. I want Gil to be happy and I want to be happy for him. I can love Enki as the summer king without dreaming of his kisses.

  On the horizon, I see a pale glow, the barest hint of dawn. The waves get higher and choppier. The wind whistles past the trusses. I know the signs; there’s a storm coming.

  Down in the verde, they will be sealing their windows, huddling in spaces away from the waves. Even so, every year a few unlucky people are washed out. Last sun year, there was a big political debate over what the next Queen should do to help the plight of the catinga, but as far as I can tell, Oreste has done nothing but make a brief visit during her first coronation tour.

  Before I know it, I scramble out from under the covers. I’m practically naked, but I’ve stopped shivering.

  It’s almost dawn. Auntie Yaha and Mother snore in the other room. They won’t notice when I leave. They never do. I pull on my black overalls and high-necked jacket. My shoes and gloves are black too, with special grippy bottoms that are technically illegal without a license, though Gil’s mother didn’t say anything when I asked for them.

  Hunting outfits, Gil calls them, and my smile when I find my grafiteiro spray can is perhaps a little fierce, and very hungry.

  You ask me why I want to die, like you have no idea, like you haven’t known all this time exactly what I want to do. It hurts to know that you don’t understand this part of me, though together we’ve made so much more of it than I could have ever dreamed on my own.

  Samba is dance, it is spirit, it is the space between the world and nothing, between the orixás of my grandmothers and the Jesus of my grandfathers. It is a rhythm so fast you can hardly think it. It is a dance so subtle that when your feet move, you had better let yourself follow them. Samba is life.

  In the pop-rattle-pop of the pandeiro and the whoop-whoo of the cuíca and the strum-pause-strum of the guitar, I am open, I am divine, my entrails are on the floor and anyone can read them.

  Why do I want to die?

  Why do you?

  I jump a ride to the verde in four different pods, going all the way up to Gria Plaza with an Auntie’s secretary in a pale gray suit before I find a night janitor finally on her way back home. I make up some story about how I accidentally dropped my flash in the bay. I don’t sound like I’m from the verde, but I make sure I don’t sound like I’m from Tier Eight either, and anyway, she’s too tired to do much but shrug and let me sit across from her.

  It’s hard to take the public lines this late, and if I used my flash, Auntie Yaha would know where I’ve gone. Gil and I learned this early: Cover your tracks and use the city. Pods will take you anywhere you want to go, but the city knows who calls them. For a moment, I feel as if Gil is beside me, but then I turn and realize his space is empty. Will it always be like that now?

  “Up early for a student,” the woman says. Her skin is light, like mine. Usually that means you’re poor, but sometimes it just means you have a strange papai.

  “I work some nights,” I say.

  “Doing what?”

  “Spiders,” I say. “Basic maintenance, you know.”

  “You’re an engineer,” she says, and I smile because I know she doesn’t believe it.

  “Good with my hands,” I say. She clicks her tongue and shakes her head. I look out the window, through the maze of trusses that extends as far as I can see this deep in the pyramid. Our pod shakes when it passes close to one of the giant spider bots as it ejects nanotubes from its thorax to repair one of the transport megatrusses. Our little pod is barely larger than one of its knee joints. The bots are at least two hundred years old by now, but the city keeps them running because they do their job and I suppose the Aunties don’t want to invite any new tech into the city. Spider bots live in a concrete warehouse at the center of the base, a place so damp and dangerous only the gangs from the verde venture inside, and they never stay for long.

  This one has dents like butterfly wings on its left side, and one of its legs is made of a darker metal than the others. A lot of the spider bots have gone into retirement these days, and only the engineers know for sure which ones still work.

  “Did you catch the feeds tonight?” the woman asks. I turn around, forcing my expression into something neutral and curious.

  “Did something happen?” I say, and my voice cracks on the last syllable. I cough.

  She chuckles a little, and I wonder if that’s a blush I see creeping up her cheeks. “That Enki, crazy boy. He’s already lighting a fire under the Aunties.”

  Gil, kneeling before our beautiful boy. Gil, his seat empty beside me.

  “What … what did he do?”

  “You really didn’t hear? Picked his first consort already, right under Oreste’s nose. Ay, you should have seen that samba, I thought my tabletop would catch fire.” She giggles. To my surprise, I join her, and if my laughter is a little hysterical, at least it’s genuine.

  Oh, if Gil were going to abandon me, he could hardly have done it better.

  “What did Oreste say?” I ask.

  The woman leans back in her seat, relaxing into the gossip in that intimate way I remember from my papai when he was alive. “Oh, the Queen didn’t say anything. She just looked. I tell you, I don’t envy our boy this morning.”

  I like that our boy. It means that she believes I belong in the verde. And maybe in some ways I do.

  “But he’s the summer king now,” I say, watching the glow of the dawn sun behind purple-black thunderclouds. This will be a big one, and I’m heading into the verde. I bite my lip in anticipation.

  “You’re young. I’ve seen, oh, four moon years in my time. Enki is wilder than any of them, and he’s just begun. The Aunties, they like you wakas to have an outlet. Someone they’re not afraid of for you to obsess over. But if he has too much of his own mind?”

  “You can’t think they’ll do anything. Everyone would see.”

  The woman shrugs. “The Aunties have their ways. We could watch the whole time and not see anything at all.”

  I smell the verde before I see it. The pod jerks as it aligns with a different tube and then we’re hurtling toward the green. The waves break hig
her and higher even as I watch.

  The woman sees it too, and her eyebrows pull together. “Get home quick, filha,” she says. “This will be a bad one.”

  “Sure,” I say. I can feel my lights hot against my shirt. Auntie Yaha would faint if she knew what I was about to do. I can barely breathe through my joy.

  The pod lets us out a few terraces beneath Carioca Plaza — the hub of the verde that on good days has the most vibrant street fair in the city, though now it’s mostly deserted.

  The wind starts in earnest as we walk out of the pod, and I grip the woman’s arm to keep her from falling.

  “You have a place to go?” she yells, fighting with the wind.

  I just nod, try to look reassuring. She opens her mouth to say something and then shrugs and hurries off. I watch her until she disappears into the warren of passages within the concrete. The waves aren’t too high yet. I hope she’ll be safe.

  As if in warning, the wind punches past me and I hit the railing hard enough to knock my breath away. I gasp for a frightening moment before my lungs start to work again. I curse and pull on my gloves with shaking hands. The stickiness of the nanohooks steadies me. I don’t activate them in my shoes just yet — you can walk with them on, but it’s exhausting, and I don’t think the weather’s turned bad enough.

  The sun must have risen by now, but you’d hardly know it. It’s so dark I almost wish I’d brought a light. But lights make it easier for other people to see you too. People like the Palmares guards. There aren’t normally many officers or bots down in the verde (battles with local gangs are bad for publicity), but I know that there will be more than usual in anticipation of Enki’s coronation tour. Another thing I know: Cameras like the verde hasn’t seen in a hundred years will be gathering in Carioca Plaza this evening, where the Queen’s own pod will deign to travel, if it can brave the stink. And she and Enki will process to the outside, to the terraces lined with the algae vats and that breathtaking view of the bay. And to get a better picture, the cameras will of course flit over the water to capture the Queen and her new summer king, overlooking the waters of their great city.

  The cameras will expect to capture the startlingly beautiful effect of the setting sun lighting up the algae vats like jewels. After all, you can’t smell the catinga on a holo. They will expect Enki to smile and play nice to make up for his gross breach of etiquette at the coronation party.

  They will not get what they expect.

  Between the waves and the rain, I’m soaked by the time I make it to the northern bayside of the terraces. The wind is stronger here and the sky has lost even a hint of the sun. On balance, I’m glad — no one will be out here this morning. They’d be crazy to brave it.

  I’ve given up and turned on the nanohooks in my shoes. Each step requires a laborious yank in precisely the right direction before they’ll let go, but it’s better than letting a wave carry me into the bay.

  I feel for my spray paint beneath my vest, reassure myself that it’s secure, and then pull on my face mask. In case there are cameras flitting around that haven’t drowned yet, I don’t want them able to identify me. Better to be another masked grafiteiro, probably from one of the gangs, than recognized as June Costa, stepdaughter of an Auntie. I might live for the moments when I can frustrate and annoy Auntie Yaha, but even I don’t know what she would do if I pushed her that far. Better to be anonymous. Given what happened at the coronation party, I’m not in the mood for public performance.

  “Here goes,” I mutter after checking for the fifth time that the nanohooks in my gloves are working. I wait for a lull in the waves, climb to the top of the railing, and launch myself as high as I can jump.

  I swing my knees to my chest so I’m bent double, hanging by my hands and one foot from an algae vat. Inside, the microscopic, living bits of green swish around, releasing a stink I can smell despite the wind. I press my other foot into the side and wait for that reassuring, subtle snap as the nanohooks engage. And then I release my hands and hang, wild and free by my feet while wave after wave chokes me and I have only instinct to guide me higher up the smooth glass curve of the algae vat. I plant my hands, shake the water out of my eyes, and let out a whoop of sheer terror, sheer joy.

  And for the next half hour, that’s my life. Plant my hands, release one foot, then the other. Creep like an inchworm across the deceptively large bulk of the vats. I would be sweating if I weren’t so wet, but at least I’m not cold. I keep moving. This is higher up than I’ve ever gone with Gil. Higher than we’ve ever dared. I’ve long since cleared the terraces. Only repair bots and technicians venture as high along the base pyramids as I’m going. It’s exhilarating and it’s exhausting. I wonder how I’ll get down, but then I put the thought out of my head, think of Enki dancing before the Queen, think of Gil dancing before Enki, and keep going.

  I’m trembling by the time I clear the last row of vats. Up here, I’m protected from the weather a bit by the overhang of the giant bubble of Carioca Plaza. I let myself relax, lean into the grip of the nanohooks, and take a deep breath.

  It isn’t the wind or the waves that get me, but a skittering mushi bot that for some reason hasn’t retreated to its storage hole to wait out the weather. Its six sparkling mechanical legs slice through the fabric on my right arm as it crawls over me, on its way to repair a fissure in the concrete. I shriek and flinch at the sharp sting of salt water in the cut. The mushi bot pauses and turns its metallic head. It concludes that I am a foreign object invading its territory.

  If I were an engineer, I’d have special clothing and a flash that would disarm the bot’s defense mechanisms.

  If I were an engineer, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.

  The mushi bot runs toward me, the sharp fringes in its legs alert and buzzing. I know I’ll get sliced to ribbons if I let it run over me so I start to dash, crab-like, over the concrete slope. But my human hands and nanohooks are no match for the mushi bot’s specially engineered legs, and I yelp as it slices into my hip.

  I curse, and then again, because I don’t know how I’m supposed to get out of this one now. If only Gil were here!

  I look down, back at the smooth glass of the algae vats, and get an idea.

  Quickly, knowing that if I wait much longer the other mushi bots might wake up to see what the fuss is about, I scramble back down, slipping down the concrete in my haste. I don’t land so much as bump onto the hard surface of the first vat, slick with rain. I start to slide down and only at the last minute manage to get one hand to stick.

  The mushi bot doesn’t manage even that much. Its sharp-cutting legs and concrete saliva, perfectly engineered for the top half of the concrete pyramid, are useless just a few feet away, on the glass of the algae vats. It tries to stay upright, but the surface is too slick and the wind is too strong. I watch as it plummets over the side. Suspended in the air, legs flailing uselessly and metallic antennae swatting the air in robotic panic. I wonder how it came so close to beating me. It looks almost comical before a gust of wind pushes it out over the bay and it disappears from view.

  Laboriously, almost numb from exhaustion and the giddy aftermath of terror, I climb back up the vat. There are no more mushi bots on the concrete, but I look around carefully before I reach into my vest and pull out my paint can. There’s usually enough pigment packed into each of these for a mural.

  Which is what I came here for.

  “My name is June,” I say, like I say every time, “and I’m the best artist in Palmares Três.”

  You’re the best artist here, Gil said to me when we were thirteen, the day we first loved each other. The best artist in Palmares Três. Even then, I knew it wasn’t true, but I knew why he said it: because I had to believe that one day it could be.

  His mamãe was the best artist at that show, the disaster that became the yardstick by which I measured all others. Her series of child-sized mannequins depicting the stages of life of a waka in Palmares Três made me bite back tears. She dresse
d a child in a smock made lovely by a border of hand-stitched coffee beans and sugarcane. The older ones wore a shimmering aquamarine dress with a wistful bow gathered like flowers beneath her chin; a soccer jersey for a team that didn’t exist and shockingly orange cleats; and the last mannequin came of age in a simple wide skirt and blouse in blushing pink and a turban the color of dried blood.

  I had known Gil before the show, but he was new to our school and new to our tier — a strange, awkward boy with more angles than sides and eyes as large as oranges. We smiled at each other during lunch and talked a few times, but whispers always seemed to follow the new boy wherever he went. I couldn’t understand what they meant and I didn’t know if I dared let the whispers follow me too.

  But then he attended the art show when I hadn’t expected to see him, and he introduced me to his mamãe. I thought at first that she was his sister. She looked so young beside him, her face fresh in a way that antiaging treatments could never replicate.

  “June, this is my mamãe. She’s also in the show. Entry thirty-seven.”

  No one exhibiting in this contest could be older than thirty — it was a special, unusual opportunity for artists normally overlooked. I wondered about what that meant, and what the gossip I hadn’t understood must have pricked and torn apart. Gil held his angles at a firm hundred and eighty degrees, staring at me with monstrous eyes at once hurt and proud and so watchfully angry.

  And then I remembered. “Entry thirty-seven? The clothes?” The theme of the contest was “Graceful Beginnings,” and I didn’t think anyone had captured its spirit better.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, and grinned at me, less self-conscious than poor Gil. “Did you like it?”

  “It’s amazing!” I said. “My favorite in the whole show. If I could wear that dress with the bow, I’d die happy.”

  His mamãe and I talked for another ten minutes before one of the judges called her away. I started to say something to Gil, because he was staring at me again, and I knew already that I would hate to hurt him. But before I could get a word out, he draped his long arms and scrawny chest over my blossoming one. I hugged him back. In a city that thought wakas were useless, having a baby at sixteen would be as tough for the kid as the mother.