The wind was picking up and whipped at her expensive dress, and the sea was loud, and the lights from the casino were far. Casiopea shook her head.
“I know your name,” she said.
“No. Not the name I told you. If you’d seen me on the street, if you’d met me while you walked through the city and you’d looked at me over your shoulder, what name would you have given me?”
“Are we playing a game?” she asked, exasperated.
“I told you we all have different names. You are Lady Tun, you are Casiopea, you are the Stone Maiden, and deep inside your heart you have a secret name. Grant me a name and it will be yours and mine alone.”
“I don’t—”
He was standing close to her, but he moved closer, and she stared at him.
“I could be a different person. If you gave me a name, who is to say it is not mine? If I had an ordinary name, I could have an ordinary story,” he said. “I could swear I first saw you in Mérida, standing in the middle of the street.”
It was too cold out there, and she without a jacket, the tips of her fingers tingling. Casiopea wanted to rub her hands against her arms, but did not move.
“It’s all symbols, the stories we tell; if you give me a name I could die and I could open my eyes again, and I’d remember that name.”
He was determined and grim, and something else entirely, which she did not recognize, and then his face softened. “I wouldn’t be a god. I…I told you already, I hardly remember myself sometimes. I could forget it all.”
But we’ve come this far, her mind protested. Her tongue, however, was unwilling to voice the thought. Her mouth caged the words.
“Gods don’t die and yet, at times, when I’ve sat next to you I thought I’d die, this pain in my chest that I can hardly understand except it’s you, caught there,” he told her, more than a little bewildered, very quietly, the waves almost drowning out his voice. “Have you ever felt anything like that?”
Casiopea’s breath was a burning coal. She did not reply, tentatively raising her left hand, where the splinter lay, where he’d marked her, brushing away a lock of hair from his forehead.
“Yes,” she said finally.
He leaned down, pressing his lips against her neck, before grasping her face and kissing her on the mouth.
He was untested, raw, worse than Casiopea. She’d at least found kisses on the printed page. But it was nice, the kiss, and he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. He wanted her. She hadn’t thought…had not allowed herself to think she might be wanted like this.
But this plan! To become mortal!
Madness. He’d gone mad.
But who was to say she had not met him in Mérida? That the story Martín had told her family had not been the truth? Who would look at Hun-Kamé, devoid of his supernatural sheen, and think There goes a man who was a god? They’d simply say, “Look now, look at this pretty couple, look how he holds her hand and she kisses him. Like they are the air each other breathes.”
His mouth against her own, the imprint of his smile against her cheek, and she knew she wanted nothing other than this man. Not the god, but the man, with the dark brows, his long nose, the slender hands that rested against her back. She had already picked a name for him—Francisco, like that poet who wrote about life and death and loving—and might have said it, sealed the bargain this way, but a nagging detail tugged at her, made her open her eyes and look at him. The eye patch, the missing eye, the bit of him that wasn’t there hitting her like the waves hit the shore.
Casiopea understood the strength of narrative and the strict rules that govern a sonnet. The rhyme scheme constant, like the tide. There is a way to things. And, long ago, so very long ago, she recalled a word: patan. It was this that stalled her.
“You told me we must not let him win,” she reminded him. “What happens in Middleworld, with your brother now all powerful?” she asked. “Blood and sacrifice, and—”
He shook his head. “The glory he desires. The rest, does it matter?” he told her. “It doesn’t matter, if there’s you and me.”
She wished she could repeat his words, like the parrot in its cage back in Uukumil. But she remembered what he’d told her: the cenotes would be piled with corpses, men riddled with arrows. She’d seen it, it was no illusion, and she couldn’t quite make up her mind, she couldn’t be heedless, even if her resolve was crumbling.
“Vucub-Kamé would do wickedness upon the land, and there might be pain, but we’d be together and we’d go far away. The world is wide. What matters what happens to a fraction of it?”
“But—”
“My brother can have the halls of Xibalba and the black throne,” he said. “We can have each other.”
He kissed her again, and it lasted forever. Casiopea thought there’d be nothing left of her when he moved away, it wouldn’t be he who was erased and granted a new identity. And when she pressed a hand to his hair she was sure nothing but love mattered, there was only the two of them in this place by the sea.
“You’ll lose me otherwise,” he said, in a whisper.
“I want you to stay with me.”
“Then make me stay.”
She was dazed and breathless, leaning forward into the touch of his fingers, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to simply whisper a new name for him. It lingered heavy on her tongue, the name.
Francisco.
He was there; he raced through her bloodstream, and she saw no way to deny him.
“I want to dance with you, to the fastest music possible. I want to learn the names of stars. I want to swim in the ocean at night. I want to ride next to you in one of those automobiles and see where the roads go,” he said, laughing, as he held her face between his hands.
She clung to him, felt his hammering heart under her palm. It was real, he was real, this was real, and the rest was just…stories. Children’s stories. There was no magic, no gods, no quests. She could convince herself she had imagined it all and then it would be that way. A wisp of a nightmare and the reality of them.
But…stories. She knew poems and she knew stories and to recognize shapes in the stars when learned men cannot make out constellations. She knew this story, and it must have a different ending. Mythmaking. It was the treacherous weight of mythmaking, of patan, that pulled her up, made her push back.
“It would not be fair,” she said, and the words were like a knife: they seemed to hurt him. He lifted his hands, beholding her.
“Fair? Nothing is fair in the universe.”
“But I want it to be fair. I do not want the wicked to triumph, the innocent to be slaughtered by your brother. I do not want to turn back.”
“Don’t be foolish. You cannot have a perfect, happy ending,” he said warily.
“But, Xibalba—”
“I do not care about it.”
Casiopea looked at him. His gaze was the gaze of a naïve young man, but behind it she caught the flickering darkness of Xibalba even as he attempted to deny himself and kiss her a third time. She turned her head.
“You are the Lord Hun-Kamé, and you do care about Xibalba. And life may not be fair, but I must be fair. I can’t turn away,” she said.
The words, they bruised him. A light dimmed in him, and his naïve, young face was not that naïve anymore. Lord of Xibalba again, old as the stones in the temples deep in the jungle.
“I wish you were a coward instead of a hero,” he said, speaking bitterly, like old wood cracking, snapping in two, making her ache.
“I don’t think I’m much of a hero.”
“And yet you are,” he said, his gaze deepening, becoming a velvet black as he tilted her face up. She thought he’d kiss her. He did not.
He walked past her, farther into the water. It reached his knees and she followed him, wondering what he was doing, where he
was headed. He turned abruptly, and she realized he did not know where he was going, he was simply moving with the sea, troubled and adrift.
“I can’t protect you in Xibalba,” he said, his voice anguished. “How can I let you go there?”
“Would I have a chance?” she asked. “A real chance?”
“I can’t assure victory. The Black Road is dangerous. You’ll be alone, you may feel lost, but the road follows the commands of the person who walks it, and it will listen to you since you are also part of me.”
“How can I speak to it?”
“Command it as you’d command a dog, and look carefully. The road may seem a single solid line, but there are shadows where it becomes dimmer and you can jump through the shadows. Do not fear it. Fear will make it more difficult. And never step off the road.”
She nodded, taking a quick breath. “I won’t,” she promised.
“The greatest peril is inside your heart. If you focus, if you are steady, you will find the way to the city. Picture my palace and you will arrive at its doors.”
“I’ve never seen your palace.”
“You have, you must have glimpsed it in my gaze.”
She recalled the times they’d spoken of Xibalba. He had said his palace was like a jewel, and he had mentioned the ponds surrounding it.
“There are silver trees near it,” she said tentatively. “And strange fish swim in the ponds.”
“They glow, like fireflies,” he said.
“Your palace has many rooms.”
“As many rooms as the year has days.”
“Painted yellow and blue,” she continued.
“And there is my throne room and my throne, of the blackest obsidian.”
“You sit on the throne, a diadem of onyx and jade upon your head.”
The phantom image they built of the palace was nothing but that, a fragile creation of the imagination, and yet it was solid. Casiopea saw the palace and she knew she pictured its true likeness even though she had never walked its hallways.
She took a long, deep breath.
“I can do it,” she said.
“Then there’s no more to it,” he concluded. His voice had recovered its customary coolness. “You’ve made your choice.”
“No, there is no more.”
He nodded and moved back toward the sand, trousers sodden. Casiopea’s lips tasted of salt; her throat was dry. She spoke before he set a foot on dry land.
“Wait a few minutes,” she said. “They won’t miss us for a few minutes, and this is the last time I will see you, isn’t it? Either way.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be a god again, or dead.”
“Then wait a few minutes,” she said. It was stupid to try to extend the reach of time, it did them no good. She’d refused him, besides. And yet.
Casiopea looked up at the sky with its multitude of stars. Then she looked at him, standing in profile. Feeling her gaze on him, he turned to her and smiled a crooked smile. He drew her against him, and then he tipped his head up, to look at the stars that he’d never bothered to survey before.
They dallied like this by the sea, the waves splashing against their legs, attempting to make the minutes stretch, until all time had been spent. A hotel employee greeted them at the top of the stairs that led into the hotel. He informed them Zavala wished to speak to them.
Casiopea and Hun-Kamé were ushered into a windowless room decorated with intricate carvings. Bone-white were the walls of this chamber, though the floors were black, and polished with such intensity they reflected the columns and the frieze and the walls, as if one were walking upon an ocean of ink. Although it might be used for one casino function or another—a dance, a lavish party—the place had the quiet air of a temple.
As if to reinforce this impression, in the middle of the room there were two heavy wooden chairs with high backs, fit for priests or kings, or both. Between them a rough stone pedestal had been set, and on it rested a huge axe.
Vucub-Kamé sat on the chair at the right, but when they walked in, he rose and walked in their direction, his cape trailing down his back. The cape was a curious creation, made of bones and owl feathers, stitched with the silk of moths, standing stiff and strong despite its delicate components. When he moved, the bones rattled and laughed.
Behind Vucub-Kamé stood Zavala—looking more yellow than before, his white clothing contrasting badly with his jaundiced face—and Martín, who also wore white.
“Your time is up,” Vucub-Kamé told them. “Will you be wise and take my offer, or foolish and reject it?”
“I’ll walk the Black Road,” Casiopea said.
Vucub-Kamé did not appear surprised nor annoyed by the answer. He looked down at her with his pale eyes, impassive.
“You reject me at every turn,” he said. “Very well. I’ll teach you humility.”
She said nothing, chose to stare back at him rather than regaling him with her fear.
“You may have a blade and a gourd filled with water for your journey, but nothing more,” Vucub-Kamé declared.
She saw then that he’d set up two tables with these items, the obsidian knife and the gourd. She wore an evening gown not fit for traveling, but when she held the knife her clothes changed, the pale cream chiffon became plain cotton, transforming into a black blouse, a long black skirt, and a black shawl, like the ones she might have worn back home. At her waist was a belt, with a sheath for the knife. The gourd had a cord, which she might place around her neck or tie to the belt, but as she held it, her fingers twitched, and there came the pain brought by the bone shard, as if it had dug deeper into her flesh.
“Allow me to assist you,” Hun-Kamé said, looping the cord around her belt. When he was done, he held her hand between his. “We could—”
She felt she might faint, but she shook her head firmly. “It’ll pass, it always does,” she said, and tried to play the part of the fearless hero, even if she did not quite feel up to the role.
Her performance must have been acceptable, because he nodded.
“Let’s not waste any more time,” Vucub-Kamé said, though he sounded more bored than eager to begin the game. “Your champion looks ready.”
“A minute,” Hun-Kamé replied.
He grasped her hand, tighter, and she thought he might bid her goodbye, he might kiss her one last time. He leaned forward.
“Xibalba will attempt to confuse you,” Hun-Kamé told her in a low voice. “But you must not let it. The road listens to you, you don’t listen to it.”
He let go of her. This was his farewell. She could not help the drop of disappointment, even if they had already, for all intents and purposes, parted ways by the ocean.
Hun-Kamé sat down on the chair on the left. Vucub-Kamé sat on the matching chair, his bone cape clacking, looking indolent. She imagined the brothers had been like this in Xibalba, side by side, in a fabulous underground throne room.
“Shall we begin?” Vucub-Kamé asked, looking ahead, his eyes empty.
“We will,” Hun-Kamé replied, and he also looked ahead, but his gaze settled on her.
Zavala lit a cigar and stood before the twin gods, taking a puff.
Casiopea glanced at her cousin, and he replied with a wary look, but no words were exchanged. What was there to say?
Zavala opened his mouth and spat out a violent cloud of smoke and ash, which enveloped Casiopea and Martín.
The smoke was substantial, and the room grew darker, but it did not bother her throat, she did not cough. As the smoke thickened, it erased the borders of the room, the contours of the brothers’ faces, Martín’s silhouette, the carvings on the walls. It even wiped away the floor on which she stood. Casiopea rested upon a surface and yet she stood on nothing; she might have been floating, no angle to guide her eyes and give her a sense of perspective.
Casiopea took a deep breath and began her journey. She walked for many minutes, but when she looked ahead the land was exactly the same, and behind her there was only the road, the gray desolation. Hun-Kamé had told her it was not possible to determine how long it would take her to reach the city. Time and distances were not the same as in Middleworld. Now she understood what he meant, because she had made little progress; it was as if she’d walked the span of three steps in an hour. Even worse, she could not spy the gaps Hun-Kamé had mentioned.
Casiopea pressed the gourd against her lips and took a sip. She walked slowly, looking down at the road, trying to see if there were spots where it was different, but it was all a deep blackness, like obsidian.
As she walked she noticed that this land was eerily quiet. No wind, no rustle of the gray sand by the road. It was so quiet that she began to hear the beating of her heart, the movement of the blood through her veins; each step was like the trampling of the elephant. But this was the only noise: it all came from within her and had a disorienting effect. She paused a couple of times to sip from the gourd, and the sloshing of the water was as loud as the rapids of a river in this desert of silence.
She could hear her lungs, the breaths she drew, and she began to walk faster, hoping to find a source of noise, an end to the silence. But when she walked the road was the same, it did not change, and neither did the absolute stillness of the land. It was like being encased in amber.
Casiopea sped up her pace, then she ran. Her heart thundered inside her chest and she had to stop, out of breath, the sound of Casiopea drawing air as loud as a hurricane.
Once she had recovered, the stillness wrapped around her and she discovered she was standing at a crossroad. Casiopea spun around, trying to determine which direction she should follow, but no matter where she turned the gray desert was the same, and the roads had no end. They did not curve, they were four straight lines. Hun-Kamé had said nothing about this.
Gods of Jade and Shadow Page 27