Her fingers on the rope relaxed for a moment, then she grasped it tight.
She’d been nervous before, but now she grew still and calm. She pushed him away, gently, coyly, so that he smiled. His hands fell on her waist. And she gave him another gentle shove; she raised the rope and attempted to tie his hands but it proved difficult because one of those hands was now roaming down her stomach, pinching at the buttons of her costume. Casiopea let out an irritated sigh and held his wrists together.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“You want that kiss, then you’ll let me do it,” she said, although she intended nothing of the sort.
“What a perverse thing you are! What game are we playing?”
“You’ll see,” she said. “Now, if you will. Be still.”
He laughed as she tied a sturdy knot. When she was done, he tried to kiss her on the lips, and she turned her head and slapped him soundly. Even then he thought she was playing, but when he tried to pull a hand free, he could not.
His face changed: it grew stormy.
Casiopea slid away from him. His eyes were bright as lightning, and when he spoke it was a hiss, like the wind through the trees.
“Who are you?” he asked. “How did you do this? I will give you a thrashing, girl.”
“You will not,” she replied, stepping away from him as he fumbled and tried to undo the knot, even going as far as putting it in his mouth and gnawing, which accomplished nothing. Frustrated, he spat on the floor and began circling her.
“You come here and undo this now, girl! You do it quick and I won’t drown you in the river and play music on your bloated corpse.”
He ran toward her, trying to pin her against the wall, and Casiopea moved aside, the god crashing against it, loosening a few bricks in the process. He turned around and opened his mouth as if to let out a scream, but instead out came a warm gust of wind, which shoved her back two, three steps, and got under her clothes. It felt like someone had rubbed a hot stone against her skin.
She blinked and considered how ridiculous it was to be standing in an empty alley with an angry god when she ought to have been running in the other direction, far and away, back to the guesthouse, and maybe all the way back to her home. But Hun-Kamé had said not to release the man or leave his side, so she brushed the hair away from her face and crossed her arms.
“Well, must I crush your every bone, you idiot?” he asked, looking ready to charge at her like an angry bull.
“How disrespectful you are,” Hun-Kamé said.
He was there all of a sudden, right by her side, like a fallen piece of the velvety sky, like a nocturnal plant that unfurled and greeted her, his hand touching her shoulder, shielding her from any threats with that quick gesture.
Juan, the Mam, smiled, his attention jumping from her to him. He laughed, riotous, sounding like a man in his cups.
“Hun-Kamé, my cousin. So it is you who has set such a soft trap for me. What a surprise,” he said, his toothy smile bright.
“Not too big a surprise, I’d think. Hasn’t my brother sent his owls to inform you of my escape and to warn you I’d come looking for my property?” Hun-Kamé replied, unsmiling.
“Maybe he has. I wouldn’t know. I move between the hills and the streams. I am difficult to find.”
“Not too difficult, treacherous cousin,” Hun-Kamé said.
“Treacherous? I? For guarding the property of the lord Vucub-Kamé?”
“For keeping my ear, you dog. As if you didn’t know who it belonged to.”
Hun-Kamé’s face was cold, but a sliver of anger colored his words, red hot, like the embers of a cigarette.
“I did know it was yours. Then again, I also know the Supreme Lord of Xibalba is now Vucub-Kamé. Can I be chided for doing the bidding of the ruler of nine shadow regions?”
Juan made a mocking gesture, bowing down low before Hun-Kamé and then jumping up to his feet.
“You can be chided for changing your allegiances in the blink of an eye,” Hun-Kamé said.
Juan shook his head. “I follow the direction of the wind, and I cannot be blamed if a new wind begins to blow. Vucub-Kamé gave me your ear, yes, and I bent my knee, not because I have love for your brother, but because one must follow the order of things. The order and the reign now belong to Vucub-Kamé.”
As he spoke, Juan circled Hun-Kamé and Casiopea, slowly, a smile gracing his lips. The smile grew wider.
“These bonds won’t hold me for too much longer,” he said, rubbing his hands together, testing the rope. “What do you intend to do then?”
“As if the bonds mattered. What I wanted was your attention,” Hun-Kamé replied.
“You have it.”
“Return to me the item Vucub-Kamé entrusted you.”
“And disobey the orders of the Supreme Lord of Xibalba? You are not to have it back,” Juan said, shaking his head.
“Disobey the orders of the false Supreme Lord and please the righteous one.”
The Mam shrugged. “Those are such confusing terms. False? Righteous? I am not a betting man, cousin. Today Vucub-Kamé has the throne. Tomorrow you may have it, maybe not. I wouldn’t want to face your brother when he is angry. Conflict between us is tiresome and unnecessary.”
Despite his words, the god opened his mouth wide, the corner of his lips distended. He unleashed another gust of wind, stronger than before, which might have indeed broken Casiopea’s bones as he’d previously promised, except that in the blink of an eye Hun-Kamé had raised a hand and the shadows on the floor rose like a wave, a cocoon, against which the wind crashed and shattered.
The Mam coughed and opened his mouth again, but Hun-Kamé spoke.
“Don’t try that with me or I’ll think you uncivil,” he said.
The god smiled and shook his head, his voice hoarse. “I thought we were playing! We have a rope to skip, and your friend can be Doña Blanca and we’ll dance around her. I wouldn’t seriously—”
“Be quiet.”
Hun-Kamé’s face had the grimness of the grave. It rubbed the insolence off the other god’s smile, sobering him a tad.
“If you do not return what belongs to me, you will find yourself in a very unpleasant situation. The bonds, as you say, may not hold long, but they will hold long enough for me to ruin your merry week of feasting. And when I sit on my throne, I will make sure to sour your nights. No drumming down the river, no imbibing of spirits, no laughter for you and your brothers.”
“And what if you do not regain your throne?” Juan asked, with mock innocence.
“Would you like to chance it, cousin? Remember who I am, remember my magic and my might. Remember also that my brother has always been the weaker one,” Hun-Kamé said, speaking in a low voice.
Juan’s smile was eclipsed completely. Although the night had been warm, Casiopea felt a chill go down her spine and rubbed her arms. The coldness seeped up from the earth, as if the ground had frozen beneath their feet. In Xibalba it was said there was a House of Cold where it hailed, and the hail cut your hands as sharply as a blade, and she thought perhaps this was the cold they felt. Whatever its source, it was unnatural and had an immediate effect on the god.
“This…this chill. I like the nights warm, cousin,” Juan said, and his teeth chattered, a plume of smoke escaping from his lips.
“Oh? I feel nothing. Casiopea, do you feel anything?” Hun-Kamé asked smoothly.
She shook her head and the Mam chortled, but the tips of his fingers were turning white, a delicate frost lacing itself across them.
“I respect you, Hun-Kamé. You know as much,” Juan said.
“Truly? I was beginning to doubt it.”
“I would not wish you as my enemy.”
“Swear to return my property and I will consider you blameless.”
Althou
gh Casiopea had been awed by Hun-Kamé when he appeared before her, and although she had been frightened too, she had not understood the whole extent of him. It was only watching the gods speak that she realized the weather god was intimidated, and she began to wonder about Hun-Kamé’s nature and his might.
Death, she walked next to Death, and Death wore the face of a man. So she spoke to Death like a man, raised her voice to him, she might even defy him, but of course he was no man. She’d seen drawings of Death in dusty books. It was depicted as a skeleton, its vertebra exposed, black spots on its body symbolizing corruption. That Death and Hun-Kamé seemed entirely different from each other, but now she realized they could be the same.
She glimpsed, for the very first time, the naked skull beneath the flesh. And if a god feared Death, should she not fear him too, rather than share oranges and conversation with him?
“I swear by air and water, and by the earth and fire too, if need be. Let me go and I’ll hand it over,” Juan said.
The frost now covered his whole chest and had worked itself up to his neck, turning his voice into a whisper, but Hun-Kamé spoke a word and the ice crystals melted off, though a chill infected the air.
He loosened the rope around the Mam’s hands and the god, in turn, reached into his pocket and took out a wooden box, inlaid with iridescent mother of pearl. Hun-Kamé opened it. In it lay a human ear, perfectly preserved. Hun-Kamé pressed it against his head, cupping it in place, and when he drew away his hand the missing ear was attached to his flesh, as if it had not been cut off.
Hun-Kamé inclined his head at the other god, gracious.
“I will assume you remain my beloved cousin, then,” Juan said, rubbing his hands together, “and that I may be allowed to leave now.”
“Go. Enjoy the night.”
The Mam nodded, but now that the frost had melted he quirked a mischievous eyebrow at them.
“I might enjoy the night better if I’d had a chance to taste the sweetness of your pretty girl. Would you not let her dance with me?” the god asked, turning his sly eyes toward Casiopea. “How I love mortal women, you know that, and since we are friends again, it would be a nice gesture to grant me this one to warm me up. I think we both agree I could use some warming up after—”
“Oh, I’ll slap you twice if you even think it,” she declared.
“I like a good slap now and then. Come here,” he said, holding his palm upward and crooking his finger at her.
The death god stood stiff as a spear, and his hand fell upon Casiopea’s shoulder. “Look elsewhere for diversions,” Hun-Kamé said drily. “And apologize to the lady for being crude tonight.”
“How prickly you are! I was trying to be friendly, but instead I’ll be off, then. There is no point in offending Death and his handmaiden any further. My apologies, miss. Be well, cousin.”
The weather god took out a cigarette and he lit it, chuckling as he walked down the alley and disappeared from sight, heading back toward the music and the raucous crowds. The night grew warmer, again the ordinary tropical night of the port, and Hun-Kamé lifted his hand from her shoulder.
“Thank you,” she told him.
“You should not thank me for such small things,” he replied.
Casiopea supposed he was correct, since he needed her and if he had stood up for her, it was because she was valuable to him. Nevertheless she considered it a nice gesture. No one had ever defended her when Martín bothered her, and she could not help but to feel grateful and to look kindly at him. Thus, minutes after she thought she might want to fear him, be wary of him, she was again forgetting his true nature and seeing a man.
“Lady Tun, if you’ll come with me, we have work to do,” Hun-Kamé said, heading in the opposite direction from the one the Mam had taken.
“What kind of work?”
“Now that I have my ear back I can listen to the voices of the psychopomp and the dead. Let us find a proper crossroad.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You shall see,” he said.
They walked away from the downtown area, the crowds growing thinner until there were only a few people around them, then none. They walked for a long time. The white houses on each side of the street were silent as tombs. The silver in their costumes caught a ray of light here and there, like a stray spark.
They reached a crossroad. There were no more houses, not a single lonely shack on the side of the road, only the narrow path they’d been following. Casiopea glanced up at the stars, looking for Xaman Ek, which the Europeans called Polaris. This star was the symbol of the god with the monkey head, to whom the resin of the copal tree is offered at the side of the road. She wondered if he was as real as Hun-Kamé, and whether he truly had the head of an animal.
A moth flew by, and Hun-Kamé stretched out his hand, as if calling for it. The moth obeyed him, gently settling upon his palm, and he closed his fingers, crushing it. Had Hun-Kamé been mortal, he would have needed a more substantial sacrifice—a dog would have been suitable—to engage in this sorcery of the night. But since he was a god, and a god who had regained his lost ear and with it a smidgen of his magic, the moth sufficed.
Hun-Kamé opened his hand, sprinkling gray-and-black dust upon the ground.
He said several words that Casiopea could not understand. It was a strange tongue, very old. Where the dust had fallen, smoke began to rise, as if a charcoal brazier had been lit. The smoke had a shape, that of a dog, but then it shifted and it was a man, and then a bird, until one could not precisely define the nature of the apparition. The more she tried to pin it down, the more jumbled it became, threatening to give her a headache.
“I greet you and thank you for obeying my call,” Hun-Kamé said. “Do you know me?”
“Prince of the Starless Night, Firstborn Son of Xibalba. You are a god without a throne. I know you,” the smoke said. Its voice was low; it resembled a smoldering fire.
“Then you realize you must obey my command,” Hun-Kamé said with the hauteur of a king, a hand pressed against his chest. “I wish to know where my essence is hidden.”
“To you I owe three answers, and three I will give.”
The smoke rose, the dog, the bird, the shape, towering above them. It had two black eyes, two black pinpoints, which shone despite its blackness. Casiopea, standing next to Hun-Kamé, felt it looking at her. It was a fabulous thing, this creature, which brought with it the scent of incense and dead flowers. It made her wonder what other impossible beasts the Lords of Xibalba commanded.
The smoke opened its jaws and spoke.
“The city on the lake, the impossible city, Tenochtitlán. Deep in the arid wastelands, El Paso,” it said.
Then the apparition shook its head and stared at the ground, evasive. It was clear it did not wish to say any more.
“Where else?” Hun-Kamé demanded.
The apparition curled out its tongue. “In Baja California, by the sea, find Tierra Blanca. Find your destiny, Lord of Xibalba, but find your doom, for your brother is more cunning and more powerful than you ever imagined,” the smoke-creature said, and its voice was now the crackling of burning wood.
“Do not lecture me, messenger,” the god replied.
“I speak the truth.”
“Who has what belongs to me? Where do they reside?”
“You must ask the ghosts, or sorcerers, or some other who can aid you, oh Lord, for I have given you three answers and a warning, which is the most even a god such as you may command of me.”
“Then I dismiss you and will take your answers with me.”
The smoke creature grew larger, then it bowed, its body folding upon itself, its forehead touching the ground. The smoke seeped into the earth, like the rain sinks into the soil, and was gone. Around them the night trembled, bidding the apparition goodbye.
“You have
heard where we will journey,” Hun-Kamé told her. “Tomorrow we depart for Mexico City.”
He could have said they’d depart for Antarctica and it wouldn’t have mattered much; she couldn’t muster the energy for a reply and her forehead ached.
They walked back to the guesthouse. It was very late and the front door was closed, but Hun-Kamé opened the door with ease. They went to their rooms and Casiopea, exhausted by the excursion, fell upon the bed without bothering to change out of her clothes, dressed in silver and white. The wonders of the night did not keep her up, and she slept soundly.
* * *
—
The next day, they caught the evening train to Mexico City. Had they taken an earlier train, Casiopea might have been able to gaze out the window and observe the landscape, the marshes and the scrub growth and the rows of palm trees. Huts with walls of bamboo, old men sitting in worn chairs, children chasing stray dogs. She might have been able to see the train climb up from the low hills of Veracruz and approach the mountains, their tops dusted with snow. But the night was like spilled ink upon the page, blotting out all vegetation and natural features.
Casiopea did feel the train, though. It lumbered onward, away from the humid heat of the coast. She had never been on such a contraption. She felt as if she rested in the belly of a metal beast, like Jonah who was swallowed by the whale. This image in her family’s Bible had often disconcerted her, the man sitting inside a fish, his face surprised. Now she sympathized with him. She could not see where they were headed, nor the place where they’d come from, and thus felt as though time and the world around her transmogrified, became unknowable; it was as if she were traveling in a dream.
She listened to the metallic click of the wheels along the steel rails while Hun-Kamé leaned back in his chair. They were sharing a sleeping car and it was small, so when he sat like that, his legs stretched out, he seemed to take up all the space. She did not mind, though, curled up against the window, the stars and the sky absorbing her thoughts. She associated her father with the smell of musty books or ink, the rustle of paper—he’d been a clerk, those had been the tools of his trade. But most of all she associated him with the stars, which he loved.
Gods of Jade and Shadow Page 9