Gods of Jade and Shadow

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “Maybe,” she conceded.

  “Of course. Everyone does.”

  “Do you have a secret name?” she asked.

  His arm stilled, the glass freezing in midair. He placed it down, carefully, on the table. “Do not ask silly questions,” he told her, his tongue whip-hard.

  “Then I’ll ask a smart one,” she said, irritated by his scalding tone, hotter than the coffee they were drinking. “How will we find your cousin? The city is large.”

  “We will let him find us. As I’ve explained, he is fond of pretty young women he can seduce. You will do for bait.”

  He looked at her with a certainty that would accept no excuses, the certainty of a god before a mortal, yet she felt compelled to protest. Casiopea had a gap between her two front teeth and heavy-lidded eyes; neither trait had ever been declared attractive. The papers were full of ads for whitening creams that would yield an “irresistible” face. She was dark and made no effort to rub lemons on her skin to acquire what people said was a more becoming shade.

  “You must be joking,” she told him.

  “No.”

  “You claim he is fond of pretty young women, and I am not a pretty young woman.”

  “You have never gazed at your reflection, I suppose,” he replied offhandedly. “Blackest of hair and eyes, black like the x’kau, and as noisy.”

  She could tell he wasn’t trying to flatter her; he had remarked on her looks like he might remark on the appearance of a flower. Besides, he’d insulted her in the same breath.

  He did not mean it as a compliment. He couldn’t have meant it like that, she thought.

  “Even if he’d look at me—”

  Hun-Kamé rested a hand flat against the wooden surface of the table.

  “Some of my essence drifts in your body. This means some of my magic rests upon your skin, like a perfume. It strikes a strange note, which will surely attract him. The promise of something powerful and mysterious cannot be ignored,” he said.

  It puzzled her to imagine death as a perfume that clung to her and, rather than striking the sour note of decay, could be as pleasant as the scent of a rose. But she did not give this too much thought because she was busier summoning her outrage.

  “I do not want to be seduced by your cousin,” she countered. “What do you take me for, a woman of ill repute?”

  “No harm will come to you. You will lure him, bind him, and I will deal with him,” Hun-Kamé said.

  “Bind him? You are mad. How? Won’t he know—”

  “Distract him with a kiss, if you must,” he said, sounding impatient. Clearly they had been discussing the point far too long.

  “As if I would be going around kissing men at the drop of a hat. You kiss him.”

  She stood up and in the process almost toppled the table. Hun-Kamé steadied it and caught her arm, lightning fast. He stood up.

  “I am the Supreme Lord of Xibalba, a weaver of shadows. What will you do? Walk away from me? Have you not considered my magic? It would be foolish. Even if you managed it, the bone shard will kill you if I do not remove it,” he whispered.

  “Perhaps I should hack off my hand,” she whispered back.

  Casiopea realized she should not have said this, alerting him to her knowledge of this exit clause, but she’d spoken without thinking, needled by his haughtiness. She wanted to bring him down a peg, and though it is impossible to humble a god, her youth allowed her to naïvely think it might be done.

  “Perhaps. But that would be unkind,” he replied.

  His gaze was hard as flint, ready to strike a spark. Despite her outburst of boldness, Casiopea was now forced to lower her eyes.

  “It would also be cowardly, considering you gave me your word and pledged your service to me. Though it might merely reflect your heritage: your grandfather was a traitor and a dishonorable man. He knew not the burden of patan, nor its virtue.”

  She closed her hands into fists. There was nothing she had in common with her grandfather: it was Martín who inherited all his virtues and his vices. Casiopea liked to believe herself a copy of her father or closer to her mother, even though she did not feel she possessed the woman’s kindness. Like many young people, ultimately she saw herself as a completely new creature, a creation that had sprung from no ancient soils.

  “I’m no coward,” she protested. “And when have I pledged anything to you?”

  “When we left your town. ‘Very well,’ you said, and accepted me. Is that not a promise?”

  “Well, yes…but I meant—”

  “To cut your hand off at the first chance?” he asked, taking a step forward, closer to her.

  She echoed him, taking a step too. “No! But I’m also no fool to…to blindly do your bidding.”

  “I do not consider you a fool, although you do raise your voice louder than an angry macaw,” Hun-Kamé said, gesturing toward their table and its two chairs. His movements were those of a conductor, elegant and precise.

  “It might be that, in my haste, I have been crude,” he said. “I do not wish to give you a poor impression. At the same time, I must emphasize that we are both united by regrettable circumstances and must proceed at a quick pace. Had I been given a choice, I would not have inconvenienced you as I have. Yet your assistance is quite necessary, Casiopea Tun.”

  On a table nearby, old men shuffled their dominoes with their withered hands, then set down the ivory-and-ebony pieces. She glanced at the game pieces, lost for a moment in the contrasting colors, then looked back at him.

  “I’ll help you,” she said. “But I do it because I feel sorry for you, and not…not because you are ‘supreme lord’ of anything.”

  “How would you feel sorry for me?” Hun-Kamé asked, incredulous.

  “Because you are all alone in the world.”

  This time his face wasn’t flint, but basalt, cool and devoid of any menace or emotion, though it was difficult to pinpoint emotions with him. Like the rivers in Yucatán, they existed hidden, under the surface. Now it was as if someone had dragged a stone upon a well, blocking the view. Basalt, unforgiving and dark, that was what the god granted her.

  “We are all alone in the world,” he said, and his words were the clouds when they muffle the moon at night, they resembled the earth gone bitter, choking the sprout in its cradle.

  But she was too young to believe his words and shrugged, sitting down again, having accepted his invitation. He sat down too. She finished her coffee. The slapping of dominoes against wood and the tinkling of metal spoons against glass around them was music, possessing its own rhythm.

  “You said you’d bind him. How?” Casiopea asked.

  “A piece of ordinary rope.”

  “A piece of ordinary rope,” she repeated. “Will that work with a god?”

  “It’s the symbolism that matters in most dealings. I’ll speak a word of power to the cord, and it will be as strong as a diamond. It will hold him, and I will do the rest. Do not be frightened,” he concluded.

  “It is easy for you to say. I bet gods don’t need to fear many things while regular people have an assortment of fears to choose from,” she replied.

  “You are not a regular person, not now.”

  For how long, she wondered. And she had to admit to herself that part of what kept her next to him was not just the promise of freeing herself of the bone splinter or a sense of obligation, but the lure of change, of becoming someone else, someone other than a girl who starched shirts and shone shoes and had to make do with a quick glimpse of the stars at night.

  “Do not be frightened, I say,” he told her and took her left hand with his own.

  It was not a gesture meant to provide comfort, at least not the comfort that can be derived from the touch of another person. This would have required a trace of human empathy and affection. It was a demonstrati
on, like a scientist might perform. And still her pulse quickened, for it is difficult to be wise and young.

  “Feel here, hmm? My own magic rests in your veins,” he said, as if seeking her pulse.

  He was right. It was the tugging of a string on a loom, delicate, but it ran through her, and when he touched her it struck a crystalline note. Upon that note, another one, this one much more mundane, the effect of a handsome man clutching a girl’s hand.

  She pulled her hand free and frowned. She was not that unwise.

  “If your cousin frightens me, I’ll run off, I don’t care,” she swore. “Angry macaws bite, you know?”

  “I shall have to take my chances.”

  She tapped her spoon against her glass, summoning the waitress, who poured more coffee and milk for them.

  “Do you like it? This drink?” he asked her after the glass was refilled, a frown upon his brow.

  “Yes. Don’t you?”

  “It’s too thick and awfully sweet. The milk disrupts the coffee’s bitterness.”

  “We must not disrupt the purity of the coffee bean,” she said mockingly.

  “Precisely.”

  She chuckled at that, and he, of course, did not find it amusing. Not that it would be likely that a god of death would be very merry, not even in Veracruz, where no one must wear a frown, and not even during Carnival, when every trouble must be thrown to the air, left to be carried off by the winds.

  Thus they sat there, together in the café, the dark, serious god and the girl, as the night fell and the lights were turned on in the streets.

  How short their hair was! Casiopea watched all the fashionable young women with their hair like the American flappers, serving as “ladies in waiting” for the Carnival queen. In Casiopea’s town no one dared to sport such a decadent look. Even face powder might be cause for gossip there. In Veracruz, during Carnival, there were plenty of painted faces and rouged cheeks and unabashed looks to go around. If her mother had been there, she’d have told Casiopea that such shamelessness should be met with scorn, but seeing the girls laughing, Casiopea wondered if her mother was mistaken.

  The queen, after being crowned, waved at the crowds, and thus began the formal masked balls at the Casino Veracruzano and other select venues. But the revelers were not confined to the insides of buildings, and those who could not afford the masked ball tickets made their own fun in the streets and parks, drinking, dancing, and sometimes engaging in mischief. Lent would arrive soon, the moment to say farewell to the flesh. So now was the time to throw caution to the wind and carouse. No one would sleep that first night of Carnival, and sometimes they wouldn’t sleep for days, too preoccupied with floats, parades, and music to bother heading to bed. A thousand remedies would be available the next morning to fix the hangover many locals would suffer from. One local solution was the consumption of shellfish for breakfast, although others contented themselves with aspirins.

  The buildings down Cinco de Mayo Street were decorated with streamers and flags, and the cars that ventured into the streets sported flowers and colorful banners. Revelers set off firecrackers and shared bottles of booze. Inside restaurants and hotels, folkloric dancers twirled their skirts and musicians played the danzón, a Cuban import that was wildly sensual but also wildly popular.

  Veracruz had an African legacy. In this port, the slaves had been hauled off the European ships and forced to toil in sugar plantations. Descendants of these slaves clustered in Yanga and Mandinga but had influenced the whole region, leaving a mark on its music and cuisine, and like everyone else they attended Carnival, flooding the streets. There were black-skinned men dressed as skeletons, indigenous women in embroidered blouses, light-skinned brunettes playing the part of mermaids, pale men in Roman garb. Once Carnival was over, the fairer skinned, wealthier inhabitants of the city might look with disdain at the “Indians” and the “blacks,” but for that night there was a polite truce in the elaborate game of class division.

  Casiopea watched all this with amazement and trepidation as they joined the crowds of masked and disguised revelers. Hun-Kamé had rented two costumes for an exorbitant price that morning. He was decked soberly in a black charro suit, with a silver-embroidered short jacket, tight trousers decorated with a long line of buttons on the sides, and a wide hat upon his head. He cut a dramatic, attractive figure and looked as though he were ready to leap upon a stallion and perform the typical tricks of these horsemen, especially apt given that he carried a rope on his right arm. She matched him, attired as a charra, with a jacket and a skirt and a great deal of silver embroidery, except her clothing was white. Unlike him, she lacked a hat.

  Earlier that day, at the guesthouse, she had pressed the embroidered jacket against her chest and curiously stood in front of a mirror. “Have you never seen your reflection?” he’d asked her.

  Thus she looked at herself. Not the quick, darting glance Casiopea was allowed in the mornings, but a long look. Vanity, the priest in Uukumil had warned her, was a sin. But Casiopea saw her black eyes and her full mouth, and she thought Hun-Kamé might be right, that she was pretty, and the priest was too far away to nag her about this fact. Then she grabbed a brush and pinned her hair neatly in place.

  Casiopea and Hun-Kamé walked together down the busy streets, the earthy sound of the marimba spilling out from a nearby building, urging her to dance.

  “Where are we headed?” she asked.

  “To the busiest, most crowded part of the city,” he replied.

  A sea of revelers greeted them, thicker than the throng they had passed. It was a chaos of horns and drums, people dressed as devils and angels, the scents of tequila and perfume mingling together. Above them, people in balconies threw confetti and children tossed eggshells filled with glitter, while a few men, either drunk or full of spite, emptied a bottle of rum onto the pedestrians.

  There, in the midst of this mess of feathers, sequins, and masks, Hun-Kamé stopped.

  “Walk around here,” he told her, handing her the rope, “and remember to tie his hands when you have the chance.”

  When Casiopea’s father died, her mother attempted to make a living for them doing odd jobs. For a while she tried her hand at macramé and taught her daughter the trade. Casiopea could tie several knots, but she did not know if they would be fit for supernatural beings, even though Hun-Kamé had assured her any simple knot would do.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, because he was turning away from her.

  “He shouldn’t see me with you.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll be watching and I will follow you. Whatever he says, do not release him and do not leave his side either.”

  “How will I know what he looks like?”

  “You’ll know.”

  “Wait!” she said as he stepped away.

  He stopped, his cool hand brushing hers, and her hold on the rope slackened.

  “I’ll be behind you,” he said. It wasn’t an attempt at reassurance, it was a fact.

  With that, he was gone. She was scared, abandoned among all these strangers. In Uukumil, the biggest event of the year was the peregrination of the local saint, which was hauled from the church and carried around the town. This, this was so much bigger! There were women in terrifying masks and a boy who kept banging a drum, and Casiopea thought of simply running off.

  She tightened her grip around the rope and bit her lower lip. She’d said she’d do this and she would. She began walking, pushing her way next to dancers who were paired together and shuffling their feet right in the middle of the street. She slid past two harlequins who tossed confetti at her and evaded three rowdy men who were bumping into people and yelling obscenities.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have matches, would you?” a man with a melodious voice asked her.

  He was a dark fellow, broad-shouldered, good-looking, and strong.
He was dressed like a pirate, with a blue coat, a sash upon his waist, and tall boots. The way his teeth gleamed and the way he stood drew Casiopea in.

  This is him, the Mam, she thought.

  It is likely that having already met one god, she was able to quickly identify another. Or else it was Hun-Kamé’s essence, caught under her skin, that allowed her to see there was an extraordinary element about this stranger.

  “No,” she said, looking down at her shoes, not in modesty, but because she didn’t want him to read the recognition in her eyes.

  “A pity. What are you doing all alone on a night like this?”

  “I came with my friends, but I seem to have misplaced them,” she said, lying again with panache. She had, it seemed, a talent for it.

  “That is terrible. Maybe I could help you find them?”

  “Maybe,” she agreed.

  He took out a cigarette and a lighter and placed an arm around her waist, guiding her through the street.

  “I thought you needed matches,” she said.

  “I needed an excuse to talk to you. Look, you sweet thing, how nicely you blush,” he said, his voice honeyed.

  He said a number of things to her in that cloying tone of his, things of little importance, because a minute or two later she could not recall them. Compliments, enticements. His words were electric, charged like a cloud pregnant with rain. She followed him away from the revelers, down an empty alley. There he pressed her against a wall and ran a hand along her chest, smiling, the touch making her shiver. Was this what women and men did in the dark? The indecencies the priest muttered about? Books were coy on the specifics of seduction.

  “What would you say, hmm, about giving me a kiss or two?” he asked, tossing away his cigarette.

  “Now?”

  “Yes,” he told her.

  Casiopea nodded. The man leaned down to kiss her. She’d never been kissed before and didn’t particularly know if she wanted to start with him. She turned her head.