Read Online The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson - Free Book Online
Authors: Alaya Dawn Johnson
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themselves in the still-gusting wind before he steps out. Enki always did love an entrance.
When he steps out, his loose embroidered shirt billows behind him. To his left, Queen Oreste keeps a hand on her crimson turban, which is threatening to blow away. Some angles pull back to capture the breathtaking backdrop of the algae vats reflecting the lingering wisps of storm clouds. Framed by the terraced vats, Enki and the Queen stand like statues.
And then, the first camera notices. The chatter on my feeds gets cacophonous as the vidders and casters try to figure out what they’re seeing. I turn down the volume.
A second later, what had been a strange, unexpected splash of color at the corner of a hundred angles resolves itself into something recognizable.
Into a mural.
“It looks like a picture of Enki kissing someone,” Sebastião says on my main feed. He pauses. “Goodness, he’s kissing that waka from last night. Someone in the verde wants to cause trouble — if Oreste wasn’t happy about Enki’s behavior last night, I can only imagine how she’ll feel now. We’ll hold for Oreste’s reaction.” Sebastião waves his hand a little helplessly. “It’s nice, though, isn’t it?”
I grin and fall back on my bed with stifled joy. Gil was harder for me to draw, though I’ve known him for years. But a painting like this is so necessarily reductive, and I know far too much of Gil to ever capture his essence in paint. In some ways, I feel like that about Enki, though we’ve never even met.
I flip through the other feeds and they’re all discussing my art — who painted it, what it means, how Oreste and the Aunties will react to yet another affront by the wakas against the dignity of the office. They’re sure that it’s wakas, though it seems to me that it could just as easily have been a grande from the verde.
Oreste and Enki can’t see the mural, though it’s clear from their expressions they know something has happened. Enki starts to laugh and dashes to the railing of the terrace. He cranes his neck, but can’t see it from that vantage. So he walks over to some waka at the front of the crowd — a girl so overcome by his presence I wonder if she might faint — and borrows her fono.
He looks at it for a moment and though the feeds are chattering — How will he react? Where is Gil and has he seen this? What will the Aunties do? — I hear them like a buzz in my ears.
“I am June,” I whisper into my sleeve, and hope I won’t vomit.
Enki silently hands the fono to the Queen. It’s an old model, nearly as big as his palm, and it doesn’t project very well, but she can get the gist. In a fit of highly uncharacteristic emotion, Oreste hurls the fono over the railing and into the bay. Enki looks back at the waka, who stands there with her face pale and mouth open. He shakeshis head and turns out to the water, facing the buzzing cloud of cameras.
And he salutes them.
“From one artist to another,” he says, to me, to me , and then I’m muffling my screams with my pillow and Gil finally pings me.
I’m barely in school for ten minutes before Principal Ieyascu pings me to say that she wants me in her office. Being the kind of girl who has attempted to keep illicit pop-art activities on the deep down low, I’m a little worried.
“What could it be?” I ask Gil, who sits beside me though every waka in the school has been falling over him since he walked in. We’re supposed to be studying, but even the teachers don’t bother to keep us quiet.
He looks around and then leans close to my ear. “You were careful, right?”
“Unlike you, I tried to keep my face out of the holos.”
Gil laughs and flashes that superstar smile that hasn’t worked on me since we were fourteen. “Oh, but you’re missing out, June. I have an interview tonight with Sebastião; you want to come along?”
He tosses this out as casually as an invitation to his house for dinner, but even I gasp a little. Sebastião
When he steps out, his loose embroidered shirt billows behind him. To his left, Queen Oreste keeps a hand on her crimson turban, which is threatening to blow away. Some angles pull back to capture the breathtaking backdrop of the algae vats reflecting the lingering wisps of storm clouds. Framed by the terraced vats, Enki and the Queen stand like statues.
And then, the first camera notices. The chatter on my feeds gets cacophonous as the vidders and casters try to figure out what they’re seeing. I turn down the volume.
A second later, what had been a strange, unexpected splash of color at the corner of a hundred angles resolves itself into something recognizable.
Into a mural.
“It looks like a picture of Enki kissing someone,” Sebastião says on my main feed. He pauses. “Goodness, he’s kissing that waka from last night. Someone in the verde wants to cause trouble — if Oreste wasn’t happy about Enki’s behavior last night, I can only imagine how she’ll feel now. We’ll hold for Oreste’s reaction.” Sebastião waves his hand a little helplessly. “It’s nice, though, isn’t it?”
I grin and fall back on my bed with stifled joy. Gil was harder for me to draw, though I’ve known him for years. But a painting like this is so necessarily reductive, and I know far too much of Gil to ever capture his essence in paint. In some ways, I feel like that about Enki, though we’ve never even met.
I flip through the other feeds and they’re all discussing my art — who painted it, what it means, how Oreste and the Aunties will react to yet another affront by the wakas against the dignity of the office. They’re sure that it’s wakas, though it seems to me that it could just as easily have been a grande from the verde.
Oreste and Enki can’t see the mural, though it’s clear from their expressions they know something has happened. Enki starts to laugh and dashes to the railing of the terrace. He cranes his neck, but can’t see it from that vantage. So he walks over to some waka at the front of the crowd — a girl so overcome by his presence I wonder if she might faint — and borrows her fono.
He looks at it for a moment and though the feeds are chattering — How will he react? Where is Gil and has he seen this? What will the Aunties do? — I hear them like a buzz in my ears.
“I am June,” I whisper into my sleeve, and hope I won’t vomit.
Enki silently hands the fono to the Queen. It’s an old model, nearly as big as his palm, and it doesn’t project very well, but she can get the gist. In a fit of highly uncharacteristic emotion, Oreste hurls the fono over the railing and into the bay. Enki looks back at the waka, who stands there with her face pale and mouth open. He shakeshis head and turns out to the water, facing the buzzing cloud of cameras.
And he salutes them.
“From one artist to another,” he says, to me, to me , and then I’m muffling my screams with my pillow and Gil finally pings me.
I’m barely in school for ten minutes before Principal Ieyascu pings me to say that she wants me in her office. Being the kind of girl who has attempted to keep illicit pop-art activities on the deep down low, I’m a little worried.
“What could it be?” I ask Gil, who sits beside me though every waka in the school has been falling over him since he walked in. We’re supposed to be studying, but even the teachers don’t bother to keep us quiet.
He looks around and then leans close to my ear. “You were careful, right?”
“Unlike you, I tried to keep my face out of the holos.”
Gil laughs and flashes that superstar smile that hasn’t worked on me since we were fourteen. “Oh, but you’re missing out, June. I have an interview tonight with Sebastião; you want to come along?”
He tosses this out as casually as an invitation to his house for dinner, but even I gasp a little. Sebastião
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