Shadowplay

CELL 22

The streetsinger looked carefully around, set out her silverbowls, adjusted the patch over her empty eyesocked and shoved a fragment of wood against the forward wheel of the skateboard she used to get around since she had her legs crushed under a Na-priest's ground car a few years back. She settled the kitskew (a stringed instrument like a lute) on her stumps and began playing a lively air, one meant to draw attention to her. She knew better than to stay long in any one spot, so she'd developed her act to make her impact fast.

"Miowee, Miowee, It's Miowee." The urchin she'd paid was doing a grand job, he'd got his friends to help, they were dancing and clapping and laughing; they probably would have done it without pay because they liked her, but she never took advantage of that-which was why their enthusiasm lasted. "Miowee," they cried, pulling In the crowd to hear her. She increased tempo for a moment, then slid into her favorite complainsong:

Eh, Oppalatin, it's Miowee speaking. You

Haven't been round here lately and we

Have built ourselves some misery.

What, God? You been busy stringing

Cloud to cloud, sick of seeing

Ayawit's fat ass raised In prayer?

Oppalatin, I Miowee do respectfully

Suggest you straighten out a thing or two:

Childs who dine on dreams and drink cold air

Who sell their bodies till their souls

Are no longer there.

Us who fry for saying things that's true,

Who drip our fat on Ay-No-Wit's

Designer spits and dip our tippy

Tosies in his hot and holy coals.

Us who're beat and booted out when all we do

Is ask the bloody bosses for our due

And proper wages. Do you hear me,

God? Is your ear free? Listen!

Eh, Oppalatin, it's Miowee asking.

Do you have a nose, oh God? You

Haven't poked it out in ages. Oh?

Can't stand the smell of blood? Then do

Something 'bout the dogs that make it flow.

Eh, Oppalatin, if you don't know

Them, here they come, I gotta go.

The crowd melted away from around her. The children scooped up her silverbowls and gave them to her, then they ran before and behind her as she dug her sticks into the paving and sent her skateboard racing down the bolthole she'd laid out for herself before she began her song. Behind her she heard a child cry out, she sobbed with rage but she didn't turn back, there was nothing she could do. Nothing but keep singing out her fury and her condemnation of the way things were. Maybe, someday, kipaos wouldn't beat children in the streets.