The Summer Prince (2 page)

The first thing you should know about Enki is that he’s dark. Darker than the coffee my mother and Auntie Yaha drink every morning, darker than the sky on a moonless night, not so dark as my pupils gone wide with pleasure, not so dark as ink. I have never seen anyone half so dark as him, though Auntie Yaha says she has. She travels to the flat cities sometimes, since she’s an ambassador of Palmares Três. She’s even been to Salvador — what’s left of it. Most people don’t have the tech to maintain appearance standards, she says.

“Though they wouldn’t, even if they could,” she always says, and flicks her wrist in her way that always means contemptuous dismissal. “We don’t wallow in our differences the way flatlanders do.”

I never understood what that meant until Enki. His mother lived in Salvador, they say, though I can’t believe it, because I’ve seen the pictures and I don’t understand how
anyone
could live there. She was six months pregnant with him when the Aunties granted her a rare amnesty pass. She was too late for all but the most basic gene mods. There was no time to conform to our appearance regulations, and all the better for him. Enki was born dark as molasses, not so dark as tar. Enki was born beautiful, and when he smiles, you can see he knows it. Perhaps he isn’t so sure of its importance, but how he delights in our admiration.

The second thing you should know about Enki is that he grew up in the verde. At the top of our pyramid a great white light shines above the bay. The Queen lives there, way up on the hallowed Tier Ten, with a few of the highest-ranking Aunties. Tiers Eight and Nine are for less important Aunties and their functionaries. And so on until you reach the bottom. Until you find the verde.

Algae vats line the fortified concrete of the pyramid base like a string of giant fake emeralds — glass baubles filled with hints of brown and roiling green. When the waves hit them, they shake and bob. I’ve been out in the bay a few times, just to see what we look like from the outside (it’s so easy to forget, sometimes, that there
is
an outside, and we should never forget). Tour boats are popular in the evening, so
everyone can goggle at the flaming red sunset as it sparks off the metal and glass trusses. They say if you catch it at the right moment, the sun looks like a ruby placed by an orixá in the top of the pyramid.

I didn’t think so. Mother took me out in celebration when she married Auntie Yaha. I didn’t see a crown jewel, though. I saw blood. It drenched the great hollow pyramid of our city in the bay, spilling down the sides, over the megatrusses and transport pods and round plazas. I didn’t look at the sun — even the protective glasses they gave us lay forgotten in my hand. I looked at the base, where the waves crash and the algae vats bobble. On the terraces between the vats, a few dozen people, comically tiny at such a distance, stared at us. None waved.

We call it the catinga, the stink, but they call it the verde. Green.

I’d never thought to ask why, before that moment.
How can they stand the smell?
is the standard question. The kind of idle discussion second only to the weather. But the base of our pyramid is beautiful. Amid all that blood of the dying sun, the verde was still alive.

The blue of the bay, the green of the verde. A rich girl on a boat, wary of a new mother and still grieving for her lost father.

And a boy? Is he among the inscrutable figures watching me watch them? Darker than the rest, but with the bright white of his smile, the light brown of his eyes and the skin of his palms? Does he laugh at us with his friends, or does he stare and wonder who I am?

Enki is from the verde, which means he grew up poor. It means he grew up with the ever-present stink of hydrogen-producing algae. It means that in the winter, when the cyclones roll in off the coast, he’s stayed up nights listening to the thunderous crashing. It means that if he came up from the verde, unless he was very careful, he would carry its smell with him, its look and its poverty, and he would be judged for it.

The third thing you should know about Enki is that he wants to die.

He doesn’t seem like that kind of boy, I know. They almost never do. But he wants to be a summer king, and so he wants to die.

Gil and I don’t talk about it much. What’s the point? That’s what it means to be summer king. Their choice of the Queen wouldn’t matter if they didn’t die to make it.

But I can’t help but think about that day on the boat, and the silent, almost motionless figures suspended in the lurid green.

What is it like, to grow up beautiful in the verde?

Three finalists, and one will be king. They’re seated on three chairs, facing the crowd like degree candidates at university. Pasqual to the left, his eyes lowered, perhaps out of humility, but more likely because he knows how the wakas swoon over his lashes. Pasqual is tall; he looks like a dandelion — a weed with a wild thatch of unusually red-tinged hair that seems to draw the cameras to him like flies to a picnic. He arranges angelic orchestrations of classical music and could solve quadratic equations when he was three. When he smiles, even I have to catch my breath.

Octavio sits to Pasqual’s left, and he stares straight out at the anonymous mass of us. He’s the least affected of the three, as though he’s indifferent to his presence on the stage. I’m surprised he’s advanced this far, but then, the summer king contest is never predictable. Octavio is smaller, but not small. He rarely smiles and speaks only when the contest demands it. He isn’t particularly beautiful, though I wouldn’t call him plain. He writes, which is an unusual skill for a moon prince. Normally, they do something flash, like rivet surfing or capoeira or even just singing. He writes love poems to someone who even now remains anonymous, despite the efforts of a hundred thousand desperate girls and boys. Octavio’s poems make my heart feel small in my chest. They make me want to cry and rage at the same time.

These two are brilliant; they are the sort of boys any waka would die to spend an evening with.

I hate them both.

Gil and I don’t care that it’s a moon year and none of these boys will have any real power. Let the king five years from now, the next sun year, pick a new Queen. We just want our beautiful boy, our true moon prince. We want Enki more than we’ve wanted anything before.

Enki leans back in his chair with a bright smile, like he’s almost as giddy as the rest of us to see him onstage. Auntie Isa orates about the historic nature of our city and our unique system of king elections. Gil and I don’t pay much attention. He’s pulled out his holo projector and mine is on my lap. I’ve decided to turn them on close to the end of the event, when Enki is speaking. That way my stunt should get the most attention.

But then Auntie Isa says a name far more interesting than the endless nattering about first King Alonso and his original selection of first Queen Odete. “The distinguished ambassador from Tokyo 10, Ueda-sama, will have the honor of asking our three finalists the first question.”

This prompts a strange mixture of nervous laughter and frenetic clapping. I remember Auntie Yaha talking about how some people see the ambassador’s visit to the city as a sign that the Aunties might ease our restrictions on new tech. Tokyo 10 is famous for their nanotech and a new breakthrough for turning living humans into immortal data streams. I’ve read the reports, but the descriptions of Tokyo 10 might as well be a pre-dislocation fantasy for all I understand them. I flirt with our regulations for the sake of my projects, but I’ve never seen anything even approaching the technology that must seem normal to the ambassador.

But the man who shakes Auntie Isa’s hand with a deferential smile looks strangely normal. No body-mod appendages like wings or webbed hands or antennae or the dozens of other things I’ve seen in pictures. His face has the smooth agelessness of Auntie Isa’s, which makes me think he must be very old. His voice is soft but steady, with barely a trace of an accent.

“My thanks, Auntie Isa. It is an honor to be allowed to celebrate such an important cultural moment with all of you. My question for these three young men is simple. What plans do you have if you don’t win?”

Gil and I glance at each other, surprised and intrigued. No one has ever asked a question like that before, not even Sebastião, our top gossip caster. It’s rude in a way I can’t quite articulate — only an outsider like Ueda-sama could get away with asking it.

Pasqual answers first. “I want to be king,” he says. “This city is my city, and you are my people. I can think of no greater honor than to be your sacrifice.”

Gil claps; I roll my eyes. Pasqual is such a grandstander, with this booming, theatrical voice that would make a statue shiver. He wields his charisma like a bludgeon, so it doesn’t even matter that he didn’t answer the ambassador’s real question.

Octavio stays seated, a line between his eyebrows while he answers slowly and with great care.

“I have thought about it, of course I have, though my chief desire is the same as Pasqual’s. But were I to lose, I certainly wouldn’t regret living out my life — though with far fewer people watching on, I’m sure.” His small, self-deprecating smile makes me warm to him despite myself. I don’t want Octavio to be king, but I imagine he would be a good friend.

Enki stands for his response. He opens his mouth, but then closes it without speaking and walks with abrupt grace over to where Ueda-sama waits on the side of the stage.

“We haven’t met formally,” Enki says, extending his hand. Ueda-sama accepts the gesture smoothly, which reminds me of Auntie Yaha. The skills of career diplomats. “It’s a good question,” Enki says, his eyes dancing, “but didn’t anyone tell you not to take us seriously?”

I giggle — high and tight and brief, more to release tension than express mirth. As usual, Enki walks so close to the edge of acceptable behavior that his feet bleed. Sometimes I wonder if he could make the Aunties angry enough to disqualify him from the contest. It hasn’t
happened yet, but flirting with the ambassador of the most preeminent tech city in the world might just cross that line.

But Ueda-sama answers him before Auntie Isa can intervene. “I think,” says the ambassador from a city of immortals, “that a man proposing to die deserves the respect of that choice.”

Enki nods. “By reminding us of the lives we will abandon?”

Even Ueda-sama winces at the heart of his question, stripped raw beneath the bemused lash of Enki’s tongue. “You need a reminder?” he says.

Gil squeezes my hand hard enough to hurt, and I squeeze back.

The smile leaves Enki’s eyes, but it finds his mouth. He buries the long fingers of his left hand deep into dreadlocked hair. “No,” he says. “Sometimes I think about it. I would play peteca, because I’m not very good right now. I’d dance, of course.” He flashes a smile at the mostly bewildered wakas in the audience, which provokes relieved laughter. “Nothing special.”

“So you’ve decided it doesn’t matter if you lose that life?”

“Saying good-bye to it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Enki says. They are standing very close together. “But I still chose this city,” he says, addressing the darkened mass of us, instead of the ambassador. “And I hope she will choose me.”

The cheers and stomping feet shake the floor of the stadium. Gil turns to me. I can’t hear him over the din, but I can read his lips. “Now?” he asks.

It’s earlier than I planned, but I nod impulsively. “Three, two, one,” I say, tapping his arm to the count. On
one
, we both switch on our projectors and hold them high above our heads.

I had to use two projectors to program the image because one wouldn’t have been enough to attract attention in such a large space. But the split image means Gil and I need to hold them at exactly the right height and distance from each other. From below I can’t tell if we’ve managed it. My shoulders ache; sweat traces an itchy line down my temple, but it seems that no one has noticed us at all.

Enki basks in the rapture of his chosen audience. My grimace turns half smile. But as the noise subsides, Auntie Isa thanks the ambassador for his question with the barest hint of annoyance. Enki bows slightly from his hips and walks back to the other finalists.

I bite my lip to distract myself from the fierce burn in my biceps and shoulder blades.

“Damn it!” I say, loud enough in the quieting stadium for my neighbors to glare at me. I imagined turning on the holo-sign to shocked attention and general approbation. I hadn’t prepared for this — what good is public art if no one even
notices
? Gil glances at me, probably waiting for a sign that I’ve had enough.

But then Enki pauses, turns his head, and squints. “Is that …” he says, peering out at us like he’s caught sight of Venus on a clear night.

He’s seen it. The familiar floating hologram of our pyramid city, but with a ghostly, dark handprint at its heart — a clear echo of Fidel, our last moon year king, who marked Serafina with his bloody hand. At the top rotate the words
The wakas of Palmares Três want Enki
. The bottom of the pyramid glows green with miniature algae vats. Beneath that, the words
This year, our light comes up from the verde
.