He had not recalled—had not wanted to recall—the rebellious streak that marked his cousin, how once in a while she talked back at him or muttered under her breath. That rebellion was in full bloom now as she straightened up and threw him a cold, determined look.
“Hun-Kamé needs my help,” she said.
“And we don’t? You’ll treat us as if we were rubbish?”
“You are the one who has treated me like rubbish, and now that you need me you are willing to offer me the things I’ve wanted. I wanted so much to be liked by you and the family, to make Grandfather proud, but nothing I’ve ever done has been good enough.”
The brat! Talking to him with a brazen tone, the way no woman should talk to a man. She was imperious, like he was somehow beneath her when she ought to have fallen on her knees and begged for forgiveness. She should have agreed without hesitation to do as he said. He was so shocked he could not even begin to speak.
“You will pick him over us?” Martín asked, outraged, when he managed to recover his wits.
“He has shown me more respect and kindness in a few days than you ever showed me my entire life,” Casiopea said, her words slow and deliberate. “I do not care about your crumbs.”
Crumbs! What a ridiculous thing to say when he was offering her the greatest honor imaginable. Brat and bitch. Ungrateful bastard. He wanted to hurl insults at her, but the girl had already stepped away, done with him. The gesture was even worse than her speech. He’d always dismissed Casiopea, he said when their conversation was over. She was supposed to do as he said, when he said it.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Martín demanded, and he clutched her arm.
She froze, lips open, and looked so utterly tiny he almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
Suddenly she clasped her mouth shut, raised her chin, and gave him a shove. He lost his balance and the wicked creature took off, leaping away like a hare. Martín tried to follow her, pushing people aside, but she was swift and small, and waded between pedestrians with much more ease than he did.
“Stop!” he demanded, giving chase. “Stop!”
She looked over her shoulder at him, but she did not slow down. A boy on a bicycle, a basket with bread balanced atop his head, was blocking the way and he thought, Aha, I’ve got you! Martín rushed forward, his fingers gripping her sleeve, but she elbowed him away and pushed the boy on the bicycle aside, sending sweet breads flying around.
The boy groaned, climbing off the bicycle to pick up the bread that had fallen on the ground, and Martín almost collided with him.
There was an intersection up ahead, and the traffic light was about to change. He thought she wouldn’t chance it.
She dashed across the street.
Damn her!
Martín prepared to go after her, but the light turned green and cars were streaming by, the traffic like a river separating them. Anyway, she’d turned a corner and he couldn’t see her anymore, lost among multitudes. He took off his hat, clutching it between his hands in frustration.
A beggar sat at the corner with a tin cup in his lap and a cardboard sign at his feet that said “ALMS.” He was an old man, the deep creases on his face flecked with dirt, his white hair greasy. When he opened his mouth one saw a maw with nary a tooth. Where there had been a left arm, there dangled an empty flap of clothing.
The beggar raised his cup and rattled it, trying to attract Martín’s attention. The young man looked down at the poor wretch and instead of offering the man a few coins, he kicked his cardboard sign away.
“Motherfucker!” the beggar yelled.
Martín did not reply. He stomped all the way across the street. The beggar stood up and kept yelling, “Motherfucker, motherfucker!” When Martín disappeared, the man grabbed his sign and set it back in place, then he sat down again with a loud grumble. The pedestrians, having seen such spectacles before, returned to their routine, heads down, eyes on the newspapers, or else they inspected their watches and the billboards advertising face creams and detergents.
“And what did you tell him?”
“What do you think I told him? Told him to take a hike,” Casiopea said.
She kept walking in circles, sick with worry. Hun-Kamé, on the other hand, was leaning back in a plush chair. Nice suit, black hair slicked back, he looked more bored than anything else.
“Doesn’t it bother you? Your brother has tracked us down,” she said.
“I imagined he’d track us down, sooner or later. I’m glad you did not agree to speak to him, though,” he replied. “Nothing good would come of it.”
“He tried to explain that I’d be welcome back at home. As if that might ever happen. Oh, why are you looking so calm?”
Because he did look far too calm. Carved in stone. Apparently, he did not wish to partake in her agitation, which disturbed her even more. It was as if a mirror refused to give back her reflection.
“Would it please you if I ran around like a headless chicken, as you do?” he inquired.
He seemed to be fond of comparing her to animals. She wondered what he’d come up with next. A turtle? A cat? She might be an entire zoo to him, both funny monkey and pretty bird.
“You are scared of what, precisely?” he asked her before she could become properly incensed by the comment.
“Well, I’m…I’m scared of your brother, of course. He’s found us.”
“I do not think it is what frightens you. Is it your cousin that has you in such a state?”
Casiopea stopped moving for a second, her hands clasped under her breast. Although she wished to tell him that no, Martín had nothing to do with this, the truth was he had everything to do with her current agitation. But it wasn’t him. When she reached deep into herself, she found a slightly different answer.
“I don’t want to go back to Uukumil,” she whispered.
She missed her mother, she felt unsure of herself outside of the safety of her town, and she had no idea where their adventure would eventually lead them, but she did not wish to turn back, for turning away from a quest felt to her akin to sacrilege.
“When I saw him…for a moment, I thought he’d make me go back. He always gets his way and I have to do as he says. And I keep thinking…” She trailed off. She did not understand herself.
“What if you are shackled to the loser in this contest?” Hun-Kamé said, his voice dry. “What if your cousin is the smarter one, sitting in the victor’s corner.”
“What if I’m only free for a few days?” she replied, the disquiet of a butterfly fearing it will be trampled.
Hun-Kamé had been looking around the room, distracted. Now he gazed at her. The god’s age was unknowable; it eluded a specific bracket. He was not old, yet he did not give the appearance of youth. One may count the rings of trees to know the time of their birth, but there were no lines on his face to offer such clues. There was a sense of permanence in him that rendered such inquiries null.
When he looked at her, however, Casiopea noticed he was boyish, which she’d never realized before. Of course, this was because he had never been young before. But in that moment he reflected her, sympathy and the same apprehension masking him. Somehow this capacity to understand her also brought forth the strange change in his countenance. No longer ageless, he was a young man. Twenty-one, twenty, a passerby would have guessed.
“I ask myself the same question,” he told her, and his voice was equally young, jade-green, the color of the ceiba tree before it reaches maturity.
As soon as he’d spoken, the youth dissipated, as if he’d remembered his full nature and the extent of his roots. Hun-Kamé’s face grew still, whatever ripple that had stirred it fading. He was again ageless, polished like a dark mirror. The change was so startling and so quick, Casiopea was not certain it had taken place.
Hun-Kamé turned his head again, looking i
n the direction of the window. The wind was stirring the curtains.
“We need to speak to Xtabay,” he said, smoothing his hair and standing up. He reached for the box with the necklace, which he’d left atop a coffee table.
“I’ve heard she is a demoness,” Casiopea said, glad to change the topic. Ghosts that devour people and monsters of smoke were much easier for her to consider than her family and the fears knotted under her skin.
“Not a demoness. Who said that to you? Your town’s priest?” he asked.
The stories had not come from the priest, but from the gossip of the servants. The priest would not have abided such talk, complaining as he did about the Yucatec propensity for superstition, magic, and legends, the peasants whispering about the aluxo’ob while they learned their catechism.
Xtabay was a figure she had discovered with the assistance of the cooks and pot scrubbers, intently listening to their tales. Like all legends, the stories contradicted themselves, and it was hard to know who was wrong and who was right. Some said Xtabay was a mortal woman who, due to her cruelty and indifference, returned to the land of the living to steal men’s souls. Others claimed she was a demoness. She lived near the ceiba tree, no, in the cenotes. She would appear in the middle of the jungle, and run away when a man approached her, luring him until he was forever lost. But other stories said she tossed them into cenotes, where they drowned. And yet others insisted she strangled the men or ate their hearts. They said she used her beautiful singing voice to ensnare them, while the cook had told Casiopea it was her sheer beauty that served as the lure, and there were those who said it was her hair, which she combed with a magical comb, that attracted her victims. The Xtabay seduced, she lied, she tempted, peeking through the leaves of the trees and smiling her red smile.
Since she was no man and thus immune to her spell, Casiopea did not fear the tales.
“I don’t remember,” Casiopea said, shrugging.
“She is a spirit. You’ve met a demon already. They are not the same.”
“What is the difference?”
“She was human and was altered. A hungry ghost who grew more powerful and became something new. Spirits, unlike ghosts, may travel the roads instead of being nailed to a single spot.”
“Then she is a type of ghost. But I thought men could sleep with her, how—” Casiopea blurted out and was instantly mortified by her frank comment.
It was wrong, outright wrong, to discuss whatever went on between men and women in bed. The priest had drummed into the young girls of Uukumil the importance of chastity. Despite this, Casiopea had witnessed secret kisses between the servants. On one occasion, a traveling troupe had come to town with a film projector. Against a white sheet, Casiopea had had the chance to gaze at Ramón Novarro, the “Latin lover” who had Hollywood agog, and watched him embrace a gorgeous woman, promising her his undying affection. And there were books too, which her grandfather never cared much to read, but which she had perused. Poetry speaking of love and fleeting desire.
This knowledge was forbidden and was never to be spoken of.
“As I said, she is something else, alive and not, a creature of flesh who may also be unfleshed,” he replied. “A seductress who consumes men.”
Of course, once he said “flesh” and “seductress,” her mind, instead of drifting toward less profane matters, immediately focused on the amorous pursuits of supernatural beings. If spirits could lie with men, she wondered what that meant when it came to demons. Or…gods, since the Mamlab clearly had no problem chasing after women. The legends were of no assistance in this matter—the Hero Twins were the product of a virgin birth, and not denizens of the shadows—but Casiopea had read enough Roman and Greek mythology to recall that Hades had indulged in these pursuits, snatching Persephone and seducing her with bits of pomegranate. Zeus enjoyed the company of nymphs and goddesses alike. And then there were all those mortal women, not goddesses. Leda, supine, with the swan against her breast, an illustration that she’d found rather absorbing.
She considered this in an abstract way. Gods and goddesses. Gods and mortals. However, with a god standing in front of Casiopea it was impossible that her mind not make another leap and connect Hun-Kamé to the matter of these pairings.
It was immoral to even think it, to stare at him and wonder…well. Did he ever seduce a woman, tempt her with pomegranate seeds? Ridiculous question! As if there were any pomegranates nearby. Although that was not the point, the point was—
The point was her cheeks were burning, and Casiopea had the good sense to bite her tongue back and not voice such an impudent train of thought.
“You seem upset,” he said.
Casiopea shook her head, evasively, unwilling to commit to words. This had the unexpected effect of making him move closer to her, as if to get a better look at her, like a physician who must examine the patient. Casiopea wanted nothing more than to shrink against the wallpaper and disappear. She couldn’t look him in the eye for fear he’d guess what she’d been wondering about.
And what would she say if he guessed? Pardon me, but you are handsome, and if you are handsome, then I assume you must have chased spirits of your own near the waterholes.
She did not want to know the answer, did not want to know a single thing right now, and this was precisely why the priest admonished them to keep their thoughts on the works of Christ and the saints who judge everyone from the heavens. If she’d done that, she wouldn’t be dying of mortification, but she knew more names of stars than names of saints.
“What is the matter with you?” he asked, frowning.
The words were green once more. He was young for the span of a moment. Fortunately, this deepened his confusion, made it a different sort of puzzlement, and it threw him off.
Casiopea regained her composure. She decided she was being ridiculous. Enough was enough.
“We shouldn’t waste any time,” she said. “Let’s go meet Xtabay.”
He nodded, himself again, and Casiopea had no idea where they were headed, but she led the way out of the room and out of the hotel because it had become too stuffy in there. The dirty city air never felt so refreshing. She practically sprinted across the street.
When they reached the corner, Hun-Kamé placed a hand on her arm and steered her in the right direction, which turned out to be toward a taxi. They headed to the Condesa.
“You’ll have to get us in to see her,” Hun-Kamé said as the taxi rolled down the street.
“Me?”
“The handmaiden provides the introductions and delivers the gifts.”
“What kind of introductions?”
“It does not matter as long as we are allowed in,” he said.
On her lap Casiopea carried the box with the necklace. She rested her fingers on its lid and nodded.
* * *
—
The Condesa was in motion, was modern, was being filled with Art Deco buildings. The neighborhood had been part of a vast hacienda that had belonged to the Countess of Miravalle. There the Porfirian elite held horse races on a vast track. Now, a delightfully modern park was rising in its heart. There were no haphazard alleys and tenements in this colonia but a perfectly orchestrated collection of boulevards and trees.
The houses and apartment buildings in the Condesa were of sturdy concrete, sharp geometric patterns decorating their façades, tribute to the “primitivism” that was in vogue. Zigzags evoked notions of Africa, while certain colorful tiles tried to paint a fantasy image of Middle Eastern mosaics.
It was hip, the Condesa, the place to be for the young and the rising stars. An urban triumph, the architects told themselves, even if the colonia was not quite finished, structures half completed, lots empty. It was like watching cocoons that have yet to reveal butterflies.
Hun-Kamé and Casiopea headed toward one of these newer structures, a four-story build
ing with stained double-glass doors depicting sunflowers. Hun-Kamé unlocked the door, and they walked through a lobby filled with potted plants. They boarded a cage elevator, very grand, all glinting copper, with geometrical motifs and flowers running up and along its sides. Hun-Kamé pressed the button for the top floor and up they went.
Hun-Kamé slid the door open with a rattle of metal and they stepped out. The elevator opened onto a well-lit hallway.
A single knock on a sturdy door, and a severe man immediately greeted them.
“We bring a gift for the lady of the house, and we are hoping for an audience,” Casiopea said. She’d had time to prepare a speech while riding in the taxi.
“Has the lady said you might visit today?” the man asked, raising an eyebrow at her.
“No, but she will be pleased to see my lord.”
“She is busy,” the man said and would have closed the door in their faces, but Casiopea would not allow it; she shoved the door open, making the man’s eyebrows go up even higher. She had not rehearsed this, but she was quick to improvise.
“If you do not obey me or make us wait, you will regret it very much. My lord is a great lord and very kind, but trust me, you would not want to sour his day,” she said. “Now, let’s try this again. We bring a gift; take it to her.”
Casiopea bowed and extended the box with the necklace toward the man, who snatched it from her hands and wordlessly walked away, leaving them to wait at the threshold.
“I suppose that is one way to get someone’s attention,” Hun-Kamé mused.
“It’s the kind of thing you would say,” Casiopea replied.
“It is indeed,” he replied, sounding pleased.
The man came back, guiding them to a room that might have been best fit for a Hollywood fantasy. The floor was checkered, black-and-white, like a chessboard; gauzy burgundy curtains fluttered slightly, teased by a gentle breeze, revealing colored windowpanes. Potted plants and vases with flowers were profusely set upon any available surface—multiple coffee tables, side tables, cabinets, all made of fashionable Bakelite. Dwarf palm trees were arranged against a wall, enormous black pots held luxuriant plants, and baskets with ferns dangled from the ceiling, as if the owner of this apartment meant to snatch a piece of the jungle and toss it between four walls.
Gods of Jade and Shadow Page 14