Its so the stories go that the Ginen tell. If you find a beautiful fairmaid swimming in the river, her fish tail flashing; if you follow her down into her water home with her, she will make the water like air so you can breathe. But then shell ask you, playful, You eat salt, or you eat fresh? And if you say salt, she will let you go back home, but if you say fresh Its my business, he said. Pouted. Looked at the ground.If you only eat unsalted food, fresh food, we believe you make Lasirn vexed, for salt is the creatures of the sea, and good for the Ginen to eat, but freshfresh is the flesh of Lasirn, and if you eat that, its pride. Youre trying to make yourself as one of the lwas. Makandal never eats salt. He, a living man, giving himself powers like a lwa. Thats why he couldnt hear the voice of the lwas.
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About Nalo Hopkinson
Nalo Hopkinson was a contemporary Canadian canadian writer. Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican-born Canadian speculative fiction writer and editor. Her novels – Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), Midnight Robber (2000), The Salt Roads (2003), The New Moon's Arms (2007) – and short stories such as those in her collection Skin Folk (2001) often draw on Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling. Read more on Wikipedia →