Downhill, north: the Kingdom is dark, except where yellow licks the darkness. The performance is for that one boy alone, whom the reggaezzi will gather to their number at last, tonight.įrom the roof you can see the world. No one will see this parade pass, few hear it. A boy nicknamed El Supremo is about to join their host-he lies tossing in his bed, way over on that easternmost hill. Dancers up front, players and singers trailing, they’ll process down Mevilla, the witches’ hill, and up and over the great breasts of the Mother, middle hill crowded with shanties of the poor, and onward to the furthest hill of Sea-john, Dolorosa, where rich families live in gardened houses and foreign powers keep grand embassies. The boy she loved, dead these years, not days, reappears as another name among the beautiful lights, and plays guitarra with the same prodigy as before, when he lived. Thus can her body rise again, and she dance tonight with living brethren. But so long as weary flesh lasts, she has the right to choose it over imperishable spirit. What ails this girl, her bones slipping so weirdly in raddled tissues? It’s death: She died three days ago. They have black skin, or brown, or golden hers is gray, waxen, and flyblown. A girl bounces and stretches with the other dancers. “Put some stank on it!” So the music picks up funk and swing. “Make dat shit bump, y’all,” a counter-tenor exhorts.

The soulful melodies these deeper voices come up with are much too cool, and none capture the hot quiddity of their subject. While higher registers wait in silence, contraltos and bassos scat and moan, improvising the tune (the lyrics never change). In beats, without words, the drummers argue a bass line. They will then murmur severally or as one, > Having seen the reggaezzi perform, the righteous of Sea-john shake their heads in wonder. Series: The Tales of Gorlen Vizenfirthe.Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide.People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction!.

A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson