Gods of Jade and Shadow

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “Oh, what foolishness,” she whispered, standing up.

  Blacker than black her luck. The daykeepers would have laughed predicting her life, yet as she rose, the chest…it groaned, a low, powerful sound. But surely not. Surely the noise had come from outside.

  Casiopea turned her head, ready to look out the window.

  With a furious clacking the bones jumped in the air and began assembling themselves into a human skeleton. Casiopea did not move. The pain in her hand and the wave of fear that struck her held the girl tight to her spot.

  In the blink of an eye all the bones clicked into place, like pieces in a puzzle. In another instant the bones became muscle, grew sinews. In a third blink of the eye they were covered in smooth skin. Faster than Casiopea could take a breath or a step back, there stood a tall, naked man before her. His hair was the blue-black of a sleek bird, reaching his shoulders, his skin bronzed, the nose prominent, the face proud. He seemed a warrior-king, the sort of man who could exist only in myth.

  Unnaturally beautiful the stranger was—this was beauty sketched from smoke and dreams, translated into fallible flesh—but his dark gaze was made of flint. It sliced her to the core, sliced with such force she pressed a hand against her chest, fearing he’d cut through bone and marrow, to the very center of her heart. There was a song the girls of her town sometimes sang; it went “Now there, mother, I’ve found a man, now there, mother, I’ll dance along the road with him, now there I’ll kiss his lips.” Casiopea did not sing it because, unlike the girls who smiled knowingly, who smiled thinking of a specific young man they’d like to kiss or whom they’d kissed already, Casiopea knew few names of boys. She thought of that song then, like a pious person might have thought of a prayer when caught in a moment of turmoil.

  Casiopea stared at the man.

  “You stand before the Supreme Lord of Xibalba,” the stranger said. His voice had the chill of the night. “Long have I been kept a prisoner, and you are responsible for my freedom.”

  Casiopea could not string words together. He had said he was a Lord of Xibalba. A god of death in the room. Impossible and yet, undeniably, true. She did not pause to question her sanity, to think she might be hallucinating. She accepted him as real and solid. She could see him, and she knew she was not mad or prone to flights of fancy, so she trusted her eyes. Her preoccupation was, then, very simple. She had no idea how to address a divine creature and bowed her head clumsily. Should she speak a greeting? But how to make her tongue produce the right sounds, to pull a breath of air into her lungs?

  “It was my treacherous brother, Vucub-Kamé, who tricked and imprisoned me,” he said, and she was grateful for his voice, since she’d lost her own. “From me he took my left eye, ear, and index finger, as well as my jade necklace.”

  As he spoke and raised his hand, she realized he was indeed missing the body parts he had mentioned. His appearance was so striking one could not notice the absence at first. Only when it was highlighted did it become obvious.

  “The owner of this abode assisted my brother, enabling his plan,” he said.

  “My grandfather? I doubt—”

  He stared at her. Casiopea did not utter another word. It appeared she was meant to listen. So much for thinking of proper greetings or feeling poorly about her clumsy silence. Her teeth clacked together as she closed her mouth.

  “I find it fitting that you have opened the chest, then. A proper circle. Fetch me clothes; we will journey to the White City,” he said. It was a tone she was accustomed to, the tone of a man directing his servant. The familiarity of such a command managed to rouse her from her confusion, and this time she delivered a whole sentence, however stilted.

  “Mérida? We, meaning the two of us…you want both of us to go to Mérida.”

  “I dislike repeating myself.”

  “Pardon me, I do not see why I should go,” she said.

  The retort came unbidden. This was how she got in trouble with Martín or her grandfather. A scowl here, an angry gesture there. She could control herself most of the time, but after a while dissatisfaction would boil in her belly and escape, like steam from a kettle. It never failed. However, she had not talked back to a god. She wondered if she might be struck by lightning, devoured by maggots, turned to dust.

  The god approached her and caught her wrist with his hand, raising it and making her hold her palm up, outstretched.

  “I shall explain something to you,” he said as he touched her thumb. She winced when he did, a nerve plucked. “Here lodges a shard of bone, a tiny part of me. Your blood awoke and reconstituted me. Even now it provides nourishment. Every moment that passes, that nourishment, that life, flows out of you and into me. You will be drained entirely, it shall kill you, unless I pull the bone out.”

  “Then you should remove it,” she said, immediately alarmed, and forgot to add a proper “please” to the sentence. This was probably the minimum expected of a mortal.

  The god shook his head majestically. You’d have thought he was decked in malachite and gold, not naked in the middle of the room. “I cannot, for I am not whole. My left eye, ear, and index finger, and the jade necklace. These I must have in order to be myself again. Until then, this shard remains in you, and you must remain at my side, or perish.”

  He released her hand. Casiopea looked at the hand, rubbing the thumb, then back up at him.

  “Fetch me clothes,” he said. “Be swift about it.”

  She could have complained, wailed, resisted, but this would have merely been a waste of time. Besides, there was the bone shard in her hand, and who knew if her fear of death by maggots might have some truth to it. Assist him she must. Casiopea tightened her jaw. She threw the doors of her grandfather’s armoire open and scooped out trousers, a jacket, a striped shirt. Not the latest fashion, though the shirt’s detachable white collar was brand new. Death, thin and lanky, went the refrain, and the god was indeed slim and tall, meaning the clothes would not fit him properly, but it was not as if she could ask a tailor to stop by the house.

  She fetched a hat, shoes, underwear, and a handkerchief to complete the ensemble. She’d performed such tasks before, and the familiarity of handing out clothes won over any misgivings.

  The god knew how to dress himself, thankfully. She’d had no idea if he had any experience with such garments. It would have been even more mortifying to have to button up the shirt of a god than it already was to watch him get dressed. She’d seen naked men in mythology books, but even Greek heroes had the sense to wear a scrap of cloth upon their private parts.

  I shall now go to hell, she thought, because that was what happened when you looked at a naked man who was not your husband and this one was handsome. She’d probably burn for all eternity. However, she amended her thought when she recalled that she was in the presence of a god who had spoken about yet another god, which would imply that the priest had been wrong about the Almighty One in heaven. There was no one god in heaven, bearded and watching her, but multiple ones. This might mean hell did not exist at all. A sacrilegious notion, which she must no doubt explore later on.

  “Indicate to me the quickest way to reach the city,” the god told her as he adjusted his tie.

  “The tram. It is almost eleven,” Casiopea said, glancing at the clock by the bed and holding up the suit jacket so that he might put it on. “It stops in town twice a week at eleven. We must catch it.”

  He agreed with her, and they rushed across the house’s courtyard and out into the street. To reach the tram station they had to cut through the center of the town, which meant parading in front of everyone. Casiopea knew exactly how bad it looked to be marching next to a stranger, but even though the pharmacist’s son turned his head in her direction and several children who were chasing a stray dog paused to giggle at them, she did not slow down.

  When they arrived at the pitiful tram station—there
was a single bench where people could sit and wait under the unforgiving sun for their transport—she recalled an important point. “I have no money for the fare,” she said.

  Maybe their trip would not be. That might be a relief, since she did not understand what they were supposed to do in the city, and oh dear, she wasn’t ready for any of this.

  The god, now dressed in her grandfather’s good clothes and looking very much the part of a gentleman, said nothing. He knelt down and grabbed a couple of stones. Under his touch these became coins. Just in time, as the mule came clopping down the narrow track, pulling the old railcar.

  They paid the fare and sat on a bench. The railcar had a roof, somewhat of a luxury, since the vehicles that made the rounds of the rural areas could be very basic. There were three others traveling with them that day, and they were uninterested in Casiopea and her companion. This was a good thing, as she would not have been able to make conversation.

  Once the railcar left the station, she realized the townspeople would say she had run off with a man, like her mother did, and speak bad things about her. Not that a god who had jumped out of a chest would care about her reputation.

  “You’ll give me your name,” he said as the station and the town and everything she’d ever known grew smaller and smaller.

  She adjusted her shawl. “Casiopea Tun.”

  “I am Hun-Kamé, Lord of Shadows and rightful ruler of Xibalba,” he told her. “I thank you for liberating me and for the gift of your blood. Serve me well, maiden, and I shall see fit to reward you.”

  For a fleeting moment she thought she might escape, that it was entirely possible to jump off the tram and run back into town. Maybe he’d turn her into dust, but that might be better than whatever horrid fate awaited her. A horrid fate awaited her, didn’t it? Hadn’t the Lords of Xibalba delighted in tricking and disposing of mortals? But there was the question of the bone shard and the nagging voice in the back of her head that whispered “adventure.”

  For surely she would not get another chance to leave this village, and the sights he would show her must be strange and dazzling. The pull of the familiar was strong, but stronger was curiosity and the blind optimism of youth that demanded go now, go quickly. Every child dreams of running away from home at some point, and now she had this impossible opportunity. Greedily she latched on to it.

  “Very well,” she said, and with those two words she accepted her fate, horrid or wonderful as it might be.

  He said nothing else during their journey to Mérida, and although she was confused and scared, she was also glad to see the town receding in the distance. Casiopea Tun was off into the world, not in the way she had imagined, but off nevertheless.

  Martín Leyva. Twenty and good-looking, in a blunt sort of way, with honeyed eyes and a sharp tongue. The only son of Cirilo Leyva’s only son—although the old man had daughters aplenty—was, due to this accident of birth, heir to the Leyva fortune, his sex allowing him to prance around town like a rooster. With his fine boots and silver belt buckles and his monogrammed cigarette case, he struck such a picture that no one doubted his position in society or his magnificence.

  No one, that is, except for his cousin Casiopea. Her skeptical gaze was like a splash of acid in the young man’s face. “Why couldn’t you be a boy?” Grandfather had told Casiopea one time, and Martín had never been able to forget that moment, doubt sewn into his soul.

  Martín Leyva, the magnificent and contemptuous Martín Leyva, stomped into the sitting room like a child, and like a child he sulked, sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs. His mother, his aunts, and two of his sisters were there that day, busy with their embroidery.

  “Mother, do you have any cigarettes left?” he asked with an irritated sigh.

  Although the newspapers carried advertisements advising women to substitute cigarettes for sweets, Martín’s mother, Lucinda, doled them out with caution, partly because she was old-fashioned and partly because she was miserly.

  “You smoke too much; it’s bad for your breath. And what happened to your cigarettes?” she asked. “Did you go through a pack already?”

  “It’s been days since I smoked anything, and I wouldn’t ask if Casiopea ran errands like she’s supposed to,” he replied, angry that he was being questioned.

  “Has she been skimping on her chores again?”

  “She’s taking forever to run to the store, and she’s simply rude,” he said. If his mother could find fault in Casiopea, then she wouldn’t find fault in him, and his overconsumption of tobacco would be ignored.

  “I see.”

  Lucinda had hair of a reddish tint and a neck so divine a poet had composed a sonnet in her honor. She had married Cirilo Leyva’s only son, a soft, quiet young man whom she didn’t much like, because poets can seldom pay the rent. She enjoyed the luxuries of the house at Uukumil, the status that being a Leyva conferred on her around these parts, and most of all she enjoyed fawning upon her only son. After Casiopea hit him with a stick, she had regarded the girl with narrowed eyes, convinced the child was foul.

  Lucinda reached for the velvet purse she carried with her at all times and took out a cigarette, handing it to her son.

  “I’ll have to mention this to your grandfather,” Lucinda said.

  “If you wish,” Martín said. He had not meant to get Casiopea in trouble, but if this was to be the final outcome, he did not care. He reasoned that if she’d hurried back home he wouldn’t have been forced to beg his mother for the cigarette; therefore the girl had been the one in the wrong. He used such reasoning often. Seldom was he the cause of his own misfortune.

  He went to smoke in the interior patio, watching the parrot in its cage as it ate, and then, bored, slipped back to his room for a nap. He engaged in an indolent existence punctuated by the most expensive treats and drinks he could find in town. When Martín awoke, he pawed around his bed for his pack of cigarettes and remembered Casiopea was supposed to bring them back. He cursed under his breath, because she had not bothered to hand them to him yet.

  He waited for her in front of Grandfather’s room until she came out, newspaper tucked under her arm. She saw him as soon as she stepped into the hallway and looked at him with very dark, very dismissive eyes.

  “Wherever have you been? I told you to fetch me cigarettes and you never came back.”

  “I was doing my chores, Martín. Bringing the beef to the cook.”

  “What about me?” he asked.

  “I thought the most important thing was to get the meat for Grandfather’s supper.”

  “Oh, and what, I’m not important?”

  “Martín,” she said and reached into her skirt’s pocket and held out the cigarettes for him. “Here.”

  This, like many of her gestures, was dismissive. Not that she had said anything particularly bad. It was her tone of voice, the movement of her head, even the way she breathed. Quiet and defiant at the same time, driving him to irritation. He thought she plotted against him, or she would if she could.

  Martín snatched the pack of cigarettes. The girl walked away, and once she was out of sight he forgot he’d been angry at her, although she quickly got on his bad side again with her impertinence about the boots. Was it so difficult to simply do as he asked without a complaint or curt look?

  Of course he tattled on her, told Grandfather Casiopea was being disrespectful again, and after that was accomplished he went in search of entertainment, as if to reward himself. There was a single, lackluster cantina in town. He did not frequent it because it was unseemly for the grandson of the most important man in Uukumil to show his face there. Instead, he socialized with what passed as the cream of the crop of their town. The pharmacist and the notary public, who also served as the haberdasher, organized games of dominoes at their homes on certain nights of the week, but Martín was often bored when he attended these gatherings. Cas
iopea could play both chess and checkers, but she was better than him at these pursuits, and since he did not like to be beaten by anyone, especially a girl, he did not deign to play with her.

  He made up his mind and walked to the pharmacist’s home. With mechanical rigidity he sat around the table with the other men, watching as one of them emptied the box with the game pieces.

  Rather than being upset at the monotony of this game, he was soothed by the familiar faces and rituals. Unlike Casiopea, who had grown disenchanted with the town, with the sameness of expressions, he was comforted by its familiarity.

  By the time Martín went back home and saw Casiopea walk across the interior patio, headed for bed, no doubt, he was in a hazy, pleasant state of mind, and being the kind of drunk who naturally engages in multiple apologies when inebriation erodes his defenses, he spoke to her.

  “Casiopea,” he said.

  She raised her head. She didn’t look at him with a question in her eyes, like others might, but stared at him instead.

  When he’d been a boy Martín had feared the monster that dwelled under his bed, pulling his covers up to his chin to stay safe. Martín had the nagging suspicion that as a child his cousin had feared nothing, and that she feared nothing now. He thought this was unnatural, especially for a girl.

  “Casiopea, I know the old man is punishing you, and I have to say it’s a raw deal. Do you want me to ask him to let you come with us tomorrow?” he asked.

  “I don’t want anything from you,” she spat back.

  Martín was incensed. Casiopea loved to push against him, to disobey him, to speak in that insolent tone of hers. How could he be kind when she was this willful? It had been wrong to even consider extending her this courtesy.

  “Very well,” he told her. “I hope you enjoy your chores.”