Gods of Jade and Shadow

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  It was not the gift that had prompted this, but their daily interactions, his politeness, which were quickly endearing him to her. This was hardly surprising considering how few friends Casiopea had. There was her mother, who with her never-ending optimism helped the young woman face each day. Casiopea’s female cousins tended to ignore her. When she was younger she had been able to play with the children of the maids and the other boys and girls in town, but as she matured everyone grew distant. Her grandfather was the cause of this, since he didn’t want any grandchild of his, however nominal, in the company of “rabble.”

  Casiopea, caught in this in-between state, focused on her chores instead of socializing. In her spare time, she looked to books or the stars for company.

  To have someone at her side was alien and yet a delight. There was joy in the quest, now, the joy of her nascent freedom and his company.

  “It is of no consequence,” he replied.

  “It is to me,” she said. “And I want to say…of course I want to say thank you, even if I have no idea why you even bothered with it.”

  She smiled. In return, he gave her a smidgen of a smile, so tiny she felt she might have to cup it in her hands to keep it safe, or the wind might blow it away.

  The Lord of Xibalba did not smile often, and he did not laugh. This does not mean he did not find amusement in certain things. It was a dry sort of amusement, which was not polluted by mirth. That he smiled now was because he was dislocated, altered and altering, and due to the mortality creeping in his veins. But it was also because, like Casiopea, he had been alone for a very long time and found an amount of comfort in the company of another being.

  He drew nearer to her, the smile growing, becoming careless. Abruptly he remembered himself. The smile faded. She did not notice, too busy turning her head, looking down the avenue.

  “I should find a hairdresser,” Casiopea told him as they crossed another street.

  “Would you like me to accompany you?” he asked.

  “I can manage,” she said, not wanting to seem a child who must be guided at every turn.

  “Then I will see you back at the hotel,” he replied, handing her several bills.

  She looked at the money. “Won’t it turn into a puff of smoke when you walk away?”

  “Don’t worry. Loray gave me real money; I have not been casting illusions in order to obtain sufficient legal tender. Though he’ll have to wire more if we want to pay people in these delightful bills rather than sticks and stones. A nuisance. Were I in Xibalba, I’d simply command my servants to bring me the jewels and treasures of the earth. Were I in Xibalba I’d show you truly fine jewelry to wear, necklaces of silver moths and the blackest pearls you’ve ever seen, darker than the darkest ink.”

  “This bracelet is more than fine,” she said simply, running her fingers along its surface, for she did not want to begin wishing for impossibilities and great treasures.

  She set off, then, first to find a post office. Casiopea had thought to write her mother a letter explaining herself, but she considered better of it. She decided a letter would be too problematic. She would not know where to begin or end her narrative. Instead, she opted for a pretty postcard. Casiopea kept her words brief, saying she was in Mexico City and was doing well, that she would write more later and send her address. She guessed that by now everyone in town thought she’d run off with a lover, and she did not bother to mention the presence of her companion. Besides, she could hardly say “and I am with a god at this time.”

  After the post office Casiopea found a hairdresser who looked at her curiously, wondering if she’d tried to bob her hair by herself. Casiopea lied and said that had been the case.

  “Yes, bobbed hair is all the rage,” the hairdresser told her. “My husband doesn’t like it much, but it makes for good business. You’re not from here, are you? Your accent…”

  And so on and so forth, the hairdresser trailed on, making small talk. She informed Casiopea that the best place to go dancing, if she was looking for such fun, was the Salón Mexico, though it was important that she pay for the first-class section.

  “You want to be in the ‘butter,’ not the ‘lard’ or the ‘tallow,’ ” the hairdresser explained, because that’s what they nicknamed the sections. “The butter is where the decent men in suits and ties go to dance.”

  The lard, the hairdresser told her, was where small-time employees, maids from fancy houses, and secretaries congregated. The tallow was the lowest of the low, and no decent lady should head there. It was full of whores, she was warned.

  But when Casiopea looked in the mirror and saw her bangs and her short hair grazing her cheek, she thought she looked like the whores they’d warned her about. And yet her hair seemed quite nice. This might mean that the whores were not as bad as they’d said. Or maybe it meant something else entirely. Like most questions that had assaulted her during her journey, Casiopea had an impressive ability to mark them down as topics she should process later, but that she could not be bothered to consider at the time.

  She exited the hairdresser’s shop and for a block or two, she walked very slowly, fearful that people would point at her, even ridicule her new hairstyle. But the pedestrians kept walking, the policemen directed traffic, the motorists banged their palm against the horn. Mexico City was too busy to notice a young, provincial girl with her black hair cut short. She gave a beggar a smile and asked a woman for directions, and neither person seemed shocked by her appearance.

  Casiopea let out a sigh of relief, realizing no one was going to stop her because she looked different. Just as she was smiling, however, a heavy hand fell on her shoulder.

  “Casiopea, we have to talk,” a voice said.

  She knew that voice well. It was her cousin Martín.

  Our Father, who art in heaven, he told himself, repeating the Lord’s prayer inside his head. But then he switched from prayer to curses, and back again. The curses were all destined for Casiopea.

  He kept his eyes closed tight, fearing he might fall and dash his body against the ground, and the owl flapped its wings quickly. It was a gigantic creature, its talons large enough to lift a man in the air, and Martín kept thinking it would either throw him off his back or rend him with its beak and devour him whole.

  The night wind toyed with the young man’s hair and he squeezed his eyes harder, he held tight to the feathers and the flesh of this supernatural creature. When the owl landed on the roof of a building, Martín could hardly contain his joy. He almost burst into tears.

  “Your cousin will be at the Hotel Mancera,” the owl told him.

  Or at least he thought it was the owl who had spoken, although it might have been Vucub-Kamé making himself heard through the animal, since the bird’s voice had a flintlike quality that made Martín bow his head, respect instinctive in the presence of the unnatural.

  “You will tell the girl the Lord of Xibalba wishes to speak with her,” the owl said. “But do not scare her. It is best to make an ally than an enemy.”

  “Of course,” Martín said, although he frankly thought it might be better to slap some sense into his cousin. “What if she refuses?”

  “Then we will determine another way to proceed. Do nothing else without the Supreme Lord’s consent,” the owl said, before it batted its wings and flew off into the night.

  Martín was left alone on the roof of a building he did not know, in a city he had never visited before. It was the middle of the night, and he was afraid of being robbed by ruffians. He was also dreadfully cold; the trip on the owl’s back had left him sniffling and tired. Martín checked himself into a hotel near Casiopea’s lodgings and went to sleep because there was little he could do until the morning and he needed a pillow under his head and a hot bath.

  He hoped for good dreams. Instead, he dreamed of Uukumil, his childhood, and his hateful cousin.

&
nbsp; * * *

  —

  In dreams, she hit him with the stick and Grandfather laughed.

  Martín Leyva was indolent, proud, and cruel. His faults were not solely the result of an inherent nature. They had been honed and coaxed by his family, through explicit action and through lapses in judgment.

  As a man he already saw himself as worthy of praise. As a Leyva, child of the wealthiest family in town, his ego grew inflated. There was little he could not do, from berating the servants to lording over his female cousins and his sisters as if he were the ruler of a principality. His grandfather was a bitter tyrant, and Martín copied his mannerisms, feeling disappointed with his father, who was a much more placid fellow, meek, gray, and subdued by the patriarch. Rather than imitate the father, then, he took after the grandfather. He considered himself the future Man of the House, the undisputed macho of the Leyva clan.

  Nevertheless, sometimes cracks showed in his narcissistic façade. Martín was sent off to a good school but expelled. He’d had a hard time fitting in at the institution. Not only were the intellectual demands too much for his limited, closed brain, but he could discern scorn in the faces of the other pupils. The Leyvas were kings of Uukumil, but not kings of Mérida. He felt like an outsider, diminished. Unable to be the center of attention, he managed to get himself packed back to his hometown and refused to return to the school.

  But home did not offer the respite he might have expected, mainly because Casiopea was living with the family.

  At first, Martín had not quite known how to react to the girl, who was two years his junior. He was aloof, but his cool indifference turned to outright anger the more he observed her. First of all, there was Casiopea’s personality, which irritated him.

  The day he returned from school, the letter narrating his expulsions clasped between his hands, she’d been with Grandfather to observe his humiliation…

  His sisters and his other girl cousins were mild, quiet creatures who knew better than to defy him. But Casiopea was made of sterner stuff. She did as she was told, but sometimes she’d protest. She’d rebel. And even if she said nothing, he read mutiny in her eyes.

  Then there was the matter of her intelligence. Martín thought books were for fools. If a man could do long division and read the headlines of the newspapers, that was all that was required. For a while he had read the paper for his grandfather, stumbling over big words, until the man, exasperated, assigned the task to the younger girl. Lo and behold, she could read well, could write in a neat hand, and did her sums with surprising quickness. Her mother had taught the child, and then the child continued to teach herself more. Martín believed this was suspicious, unfeminine.

  “Why couldn’t you be a boy?” Grandfather said, eyes on Casiopea, and Martín almost broke into tears…

  Hostile, he circled around the girl, issuing orders, seeking to dominate her, finding pleasure in this power. Yet he held back an inch. There was the slim veneer of civility to his actions. He spoke unpleasantries, but in the tone of a gentleman.

  This changed when she hit him. He had been goading her for a while and did not think she’d break. But then Martín told her that she was almost a bastard: her mother had been pregnant when she married, round with child. Casiopea grabbed a stick and swung it against the boy’s head.

  She almost took out his eye. In pain, hollering, thinking he had been dramatically injured, Martín had wept until his mother and the other members of the family ran out to see what was wrong.

  Casiopea pretended she hadn’t heard the words, ducking her head, but she’d heard and Martín had heard…Why couldn’t you be a boy?

  The beating Casiopea received from Grandfather did not satisfy Martín. Nothing could satisfy him. He quivered in his bed as the doctor examined him and rubbed an ointment on his face. A man, overcome by a girl. Because at fifteen he had considered himself a man already, and suddenly he was reduced back to infancy. He saw the disgust in his grandfather’s face, the veiled smiles of the servants, the scorn there, hidden and quiet and real, and he felt such utter shame.

  He hated her from then on. It was not animosity or the scuffles of youth; he could not stand her.

  Although, if he admitted it to himself, the trouble had started before, that day when he returned from school. But he did not like to think of it. Somehow the physical beating was a better start to the animosity. It justified it more neatly. She’d started it.

  In dreams, she hit him with the stick and Grandfather laughed. Martín twisted and turned and muttered in his bed, her name on his lips.

  * * *

  —

  Martín disliked the city when he saw it at night, and his impression did not improve once the sun was out. He thought it was too large and indifferent to him, that here he was nobody, while in Uukumil he was Young Mister Leyva, people tipping their hats at him when he walked by.

  Martín’s brain was rather dismal in its ability to imagine anything that was not solid and palpable, but he did fantasize about success. These were coarse dreams of money, nebulous power, undisputed respect. In Mexico City Martín felt the metropolis dwarfing him and his desires. He did not enjoy it.

  Early he rose and went to station himself outside the Hotel Mancera, thinking he might wait to see if Casiopea would come out. She did and walked in the company of a man in a navy jacket, dark-haired. It was Hun-Kamé, no doubt. They went into a store and then separated—which suited Martín’s purposes perfectly—at which point she headed to the hairdresser.

  He caught her when she came out, her hair shockingly short. He disliked her look at once and even more the way her eyes darted up to his face, concerned but not as afraid as she ought to have been.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I could say the same thing,” he told her. “Your mother’s been worried sick, you did not even leave a note, and Grandfather will not shut up about you.”

  This much was true, but he said it in order to admonish and mollify her, not because he cared to inform her about the state of affairs in Uukumil. He thought if he could make her feel guilty, he might get her to agree to the meeting.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve made anyone uneasy,” Casiopea said, and she did look honestly pained, but then she frowned. “How did you know I was here? I’ve told no one.”

  “You didn’t think you could steal—”

  “Steal? I didn’t steal anything,” she replied, interrupting him.

  “You did, you stole some bones that were locked in an old box and now we’ve got hell to pay for it.”

  They were standing in the middle of the street. Martín maneuvered his cousin aside, so that they were now under the awning of a store, which offered more privacy.

  “What do you mean?” Casiopea said.

  “The Lord of Xibalba, Vucub-Kamé, is upset. He’s angry at Grandfather, at your mother, at me, at every single Leyva.”

  “You had nothing to do with it.”

  “Try telling that to a god.”

  His words were having the expected effect. Casiopea lowered her eyes, her lips pursed.

  “I’m sorry. But I don’t see why you are here,” she muttered.

  “He’s sent me.”

  “Vucub-Kamé?”

  “Yes, of course. Didn’t you wonder what would happen to us when he learned what you’d done?”

  “I…I had no choice,” she protested. “But if you must blame someone, you can blame me.”

  “What good do you think that might do? He is upset.”

  “But—”

  “However, Vucub-Kamé did say he’d be willing to listen to your side of the story.”

  Someone came out of the store and elbowed Martín away. He frowned, and would have barked a nasty word or two at the fool who dared to push him like that, but there was no chance of it. Blasted city with its rude citizens, Martí
n would swear no one could recognize him as a man of good breeding in this place, not with this smelly stew of unsuitable people.

  “My side of the story?” Casiopea repeated.

  “Yes. He wants to speak to you. Casiopea, you must say yes. If you decline, who knows what ruinous future awaits us. Grandfather served Vucub-Kamé, and that is how we came to be so well positioned in Uukumil. He is our protector.”

  “He’s certainly never behaved like my protector,” Casiopea replied.

  “Cousin, I realize we’ve done you a bad turn. But I promise you that if you talk to him, all of that will be in the past, and upon your return home, with me, you’ll have a rightful place in Uukumil, as it should have been from the beginning.”

  Although not terribly imaginative, Martín did have a natural talent for pushing people’s buttons and understanding their moods. He was a manipulator at heart, and though he had a difficult time establishing true intimacy with others, he could pretend it. Therefore, he had considered what the best way to speak to his cousin might be, and he had decided he must be firm, but also promise a reward that could soften her. The lure of a social position, a place in the family, those were to him the most natural appeals. After all, he was highly aware of the pecking order and he imagined others were as well.

  “I am sure Vucub-Kamé could be made to understand that we are innocent, that we have not willingly betrayed his trust. Grandfather will be very grateful if you make the Lord of Xibalba see this.”

  “Hun-Kamé is the Lord of Xibalba,” she said.

  “He was. Not anymore. Casiopea, you do not owe him anything, but you owe the family your loyalty. You are a Leyva,” he concluded.

  The girl was stunned by the speech. He saw her shrink, her shoulders falling, her whole frame becoming smaller. Martín smelled success. Years bullying Casiopea had done the trick, made him aware of how to shove the girl around. But then she raised her head, eyes brighter than they should have been.