Gods of Jade and Shadow

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “Let me think, let me think. Yes…I have a grandson, lord. He is young and strong, and besides, he knows Casiopea well. He can recognize her and he can bring her to you,” Cirilo suggested after he managed to stand and find his cane, pretending that this had not been his first thought.

  “I would speak to him.”

  “I will fetch him promptly.”

  Cirilo went in search of his grandson, leaving the god to contemplate the room. Vucub-Kamé ran a hand across the lid of the chest, feeling the absence of his brother like a palpable thing. The girl had left no imprint, he could not picture her, but he could imagine Hun-Kamé reconstituted, in a dark suit, the kind mortals wore, traversing the country.

  The old man waddled back in. He had with him a young man who looked like Cirilo had once been, his face vigorous.

  “This is my grandson, my lord. This is Martín,” Cirilo said. “I have tried to explain to him who you are and what you need of him.”

  The god turned toward the young man. Vucub-Kamé’s eyes were as pale as his hair, paler, the color of incense as it rises through the air. Impossible eyes that gave the young man pause, forcing him to look down at the floor.

  “My brother and your cousin seek to do me wrong. You will find the girl and we will put a stop to them,” the god said. “I know where they will be headed, as they will no doubt try to retrieve certain items I’ve left in safekeeping.”

  “I want to assist, but your brother…sir, he is a god…and I am a man,” Martín said. “How would I accomplish such a thing?”

  He realized the boy was unschooled in magic, unschooled in everything. Raw like an unpolished gemstone. This might have been a source of irritation, but then Cirilo had been much the same and had played his role.

  Besides, he could taste the mordant laughter of fate in this affair. That it should be Cirilo’s granddaughter who would assist his brother and in turn it should be the grandson who would assist Vucub-Kamé. Folktales are full of such coincidences that are never coincidences at all, but the brittle games of powerful forces.

  Vucub-Kamé shook his hand dismissively. “You will be my envoy and I shall endeavor to assist you in your journey. You need not do anything too onerous, merely convince her to meet with me.”

  “That is all?” Martín asked.

  “Take this.”

  Vucub-Kamé slid a heavy jade ring from his middle finger and held it up, offering it to the mortal man. Martín hesitated, but he took the ring, turning it between his fingers. Skulls were engraved all around its circumference.

  “Wear this at all times, and when you wish to summon me, say my name. But I will come to you only after the sun has set, and you must not call on me for foolish matters. You will find the girl and convince her to meet with me. Take care that my brother does not discover you are around.”

  “Your brother will not suspect I am following him?”

  “Let us hope not. I will arrange for transportation for you; await my word.”

  Cirilo had begun to speak, but Vucub-Kamé shushed him. He stood directly in front of the young man and read in his eyes fear and pride and many wasted human emotions, but he focused on his hunger, which was considerable.

  “I raised your family to wealth after your grandfather assisted me. Do this properly and you will not only continue to enjoy a privileged position, but I shall raise you very high, higher even than your grandfather was ever raised,” he said.

  The young man had the good sense to nod, but he did not speak.

  “Fail and I will shatter you like pottery against the pavement,” the god concluded.

  Again, the young man nodded.

  Vucub-Kamé then descended back to his realm quick as the wind, having said all the words he wished to say. Middleworld had chafed Vucub-Kamé that night, the mockery of the empty chest, the missing bones, rubbing the god raw.

  Alone, in his chambers, the god drew a magic symbol upon a wall and the wall opened, allowing him to enter a secret room. It was pitch-black in the room, but Vucub-Kamé said a word and torches on the walls sputtered into life.

  Upon a stone slab there lay a bundle of black cloth, fringed with yellow geometric patterns. Vucub-Kamé slowly extended a hand and pulled away the cloth to reveal the iron axe he had swung years before, severing his brother’s head. Symbols of power adorned the blade and the handle. He had entrusted a mortal sorcerer, Aníbal Zavala, to have it forged, because no artisan of Xibalba could produce such a thing. Their weapons were of obsidian and jadeite. Iron came from far away: it was the metal of the foreigners. And it could pierce the body of a god like the strong jadeite blade could not.

  Wielding such a weapon, made of noxious iron and tattooed with powerful magic, had burnt Vucub-Kamé’s palms, left him with scars, but it was a small price to pay for a kingdom. Now he contemplated the weapon, which he’d not seen in many years, and bent down, passing his hand over it without touching it. He felt the threads of power embedded in it, like static electricity, and pulled his fingers back.

  Yes, its magic and its blade were sharp. It would allow him to succeed a second time.

  Vucub-Kamé had been smart, he had scattered his brother’s organs across the land. He’d also built something. Far in the north, in Baja California, there awaited a tomb fit for a god.

  Gods may not be killed, but Vucub-Kamé had found a way, just as he had found a way to imprison his brother in the first place, a feat that few would have ever dared to contemplate.

  Progreso’s lofty name did not initially match the nature of the port city, north of Mérida. It had started as a quiet town with houses made of mud and stone, and roofs of palm tree fronds. But then the government sketched a railroad between Mérida and Progreso, a telegraph line was installed, and a new pier was built. It became the chief point through which henequen moved out of the peninsula. The new Progreso sported a municipal building with marble stairs, and all kinds of ships streamed in and out, full of cargo. This meant there were plenty of ships willing to take two passengers who found themselves in need of transportation, and plenty of captains who did not care to ask why they needed such speedy service.

  Loray had obtained for them passage on a fast, reliable vessel that was headed to Veracruz, carrying mostly bales of henequen. Casiopea and Hun-Kamé were to share a stateroom with two berths. The beds had clean, crisp sheets, but aside from a washstand, a chair, and a mirror, there was nothing more to say about their accommodation. The ship had no smoking room, no lounge. It was a bare-bones operation.

  “We’ll be rather crammed in here,” she mused.

  “We will look for proper lodging in Veracruz,” he replied, sliding his suitcase under one of the beds, strapping it in place.

  “But you and I…a man and a woman,” she said, a reflex. The teachings of the priest, her mother, grandfather, repeated without thought. Bad, bad, bad. Immoral, really, to be alone with him behind closed doors.

  “I’m not a man,” he said simply and sat in the one chair. It had a wicker back and seemed rather comfortable. He set his hands upon its arms in a kingly gesture that was as reflexive as her own. He was used to sitting in a throne.

  She looked at him and thought it was easy enough to say the words, but he looked like a man. And should anyone ask, what should she say? No, he is a god, you see. No sin there, despite how beautiful he may be.

  If sins were about to be tallied, Casiopea realized she might be in trouble. At this point she’d probably have to pray about five hundred rosaries. Running away from home, talking to a demon, seeing a man naked…best not to dwell too much on this.

  Casiopea set down her suitcase and placed it next to his own.

  To keep herself from recalling the town priest’s angry face, she sat on the bed and began peeling an orange. She’d bought a bag of them when they were walking around the port as a precaution. She did not know what kind of meals th
ey’d be served or at what time of the day.

  “Do you want one?” she asked Hun-Kamé. “Or do you not eat?”

  “I don’t need to eat this kind of food in Xibalba, but I am not quite my old self at this moment,” he replied.

  “Well, you can have one.”

  She held up the orange for him. He extended a hand slowly and grabbed the fruit. At first he simply palmed it and did not attempt to peel it, but then, watching her fingers upon her orange, he began to strip the peel away.

  “How’d you end up in that chest, anyway?” she asked, orange juice dripping down her chin. She wiped it off with the back of her hand.

  “Treachery.”

  “What kind? And how was my grandfather involved?”

  “Mortals prayed to us and gave us sacrifices, they composed hymns and burned incense. They don’t anymore. When your grandfather lanced his skin and drew blood, and begged me to pay him a visit, reciting the proper words, I was curious. I went. The greatest sacrifices are always in blood and from a mortal’s own volition. Unfortunately, it was a trap. He was working for my brother.”

  Outside of their room the air crackled with the shouts of the captain, ordering the men to finish loading the cargo so they might sail away. To and fro the sailors went. They’d be off any minute now. Travel by water did not alarm Casiopea; in fact, it was soothing for her nerves. She could understand water. She’d slipped into the cenotes since she was a toddler. Had travel by train been necessary she might have been more reluctant or more excitable.

  “How long did you spend in that chest?” she asked.

  “Fifty years. Your grandfather was a young man then.”

  “Were you aware of what was going on?”

  “I slept, but it’s not the sleep of mortals.”

  She remembered what Loray had told her, how gods could not die. Instead they slept. Casiopea frowned.

  “How many gods are there?”

  “I have eleven brothers.”

  “And beyond that? I go to church every week, and well…the priest says if you are good you’ll head straight to Heaven, but is Heaven real, then? Is there one God up there or many?”

  It was another sin to ask this. Four, five, how many was that? Oh, did it matter? She wanted to know.

  Although he had carefully peeled his orange, Hun-Kamé was not eating it. He held it in the palm of his hand. “Chu’lel,” he said. “It is the sacred life force that resides around you. In the streams, in the resins of trees, in the stones. It births gods and those gods are shaped by the thoughts of men. Gods belong to the place where the chu’lel emanated and birthed them; they may not travel too far. The god of your church, if he is awake, does not live in these lands.”

  She spit out the seeds from her orange, cupping them in her hand. There was a wastebasket next to the washstand. She tossed them in there.

  “Why wouldn’t he be awake?” she asked, frowning.

  “The prayers and offerings of mortals feed gods, they give them power, just as they give them shape. But when the prayers cease, the chu’lel that bubbled to the surface may sink back into the earth, and the gods must sleep. But they remain and may flower again.”

  Finally Hun-Kamé took a section of the fruit and placed it in his mouth. If he enjoyed the taste of the food, his face did not show it. Whatever foods the gods sampled in their abode would be much more enticing than an orange.

  She thought back to the tale of the Hero Twins, when they defeat the Lords of Xibalba and decree that no sacrificial blood will ever be offered again to them, and she wondered if that was the moment when the gods had lost their worshippers, or whether it happened later. Perhaps she might ask about them at some point, but now a more urgent question assailed her.

  “How can you be here, then, when mortals do not pray to you?”

  “There are wells of power, secret places unlike others, where the land is fertile and strong, and gods may remain. My dominion is vaster than others because a stone weaved through the heavens and cleaved the oceans, the earth itself. Kak noh ek. A boiling kiss upon this world.”

  “You mean an asteroid,” she said, finally understanding. “You were born from an asteroid.”

  How silly that she had not caught Loray’s meaning before! Yes, an asteroid. She had not paid them too much heed when perusing astronomy books, being more interested in distant stars.

  “But then, the moon would be filled with gods, would it not?” she asked.

  “Have you not heard a word I said? Mortals gave us our form,” he told her.

  Like a furnace? she wondered. Did mortals sculpt the forms of gods? And if so, did those forms change? Or were gods inviolable, their visage, once imagined, forever remaining in its original shape?

  Then her mind turned to the chunk of rock that had delivered the gods onto her continent. How could that have been the raw material from which the dark-haired god arose?

  “Is that why my ancestors built observatories and looked at the night sky? Did you want them to look at the place you came from?”

  “What funny thoughts you have,” he said. “What would I care about the heavens when I reside in the Underworld?”

  “I would care. All I could do sometimes was stare at the sky,” she admitted.

  “Whatever for?”

  “Because it made me think one day I’d be free,” she told him.

  She had looked up at the night sky far too often, trying to divine her future in the face of the pockmarked moon. Casiopea was a realist, but her youth also made it impossible to remain rooted to the earth every second of the day. Once in a while she sneaked a line of poetry into her heart, or memorized the name of a star.

  “Free of what?”

  “My grandfather was terrible. I do not miss him or his house,” she admitted. Her mother she did not miss yet, either. She knew that would come. For now, the excitement and newness obliterated those feelings, though she realized she must pen Mother a letter. At least a postcard. She would send one from Veracruz.

  “Then it is a good thing I rescued you,” Hun-Kamé said.

  “You did not rescue me,” Casiopea replied. “I opened that chest. Besides, I wasn’t a princess in a tower. I knew I’d get away one way or another, and I was not waiting for a god to liberate me. That would have been both silly and unlikely.”

  “You appear very certain of yourself for a girl without a penny in the world who had not even seen what lay a kilometer away from her home until a couple of days ago.”

  “Well, now I have a god by my side.”

  “Just watch how you speak to me, stone maiden,” he said, pointing at her.

  He did not sound angry, but she disliked the words all the same. After having been ordered by her family to mind her tongue and her manners, she was loath to allow a man to so quickly dictate her speech patterns.

  “My grandfather and my cousin slapped me when I was impertinent. Will you do that too?” she asked, and she couldn’t help but to cut her words with a tad of defiance.

  He gave her an odd look, which wasn’t quite disapproval. And he didn’t quite smile even if his lips curved, teeth showing.

  “No. I would not. I also can’t imagine it would do any good, since their blows did not curb your spirit. That is worthy. My brother did not break me, either.”

  She chided herself for not considering the cruel imprisonment he’d suffered. He was at turns quiet and a tad rude, but then he had not spoken to anyone in many years, locked in a place of blackness, left alone.

  As much sorrow as Casiopea had known, she had still an understanding of kindness.

  “I’m sorry about that. What my grandfather and your brother did to you,” she said, her voice soft.

  “Why would you be sorry?” he asked in surprise. “It had nothing to do with you.”

  “Yes, but if I had known, I’
d have let you out long ago.”

  His gaze fixed upon her. She thought he had not looked at her yet, and only in that instant did she materialize before him. It was an uncomfortable sensation, because his gaze was cool, and yet it burned, made her look down at the folds of her skirt and feel like she might blush, an uncommon occurrence.

  “You are gracious, stone maiden,” he said.

  “Why do you call me that?” she asked.

  He was perplexed. “Is that not your name? Casiopea Tun.”

  “Oh, my surname,” she said. Of course, it meant stone.

  “And are you not a maiden?” he inquired.

  This time she did blush, her cheeks very hot, and if she could have she might have crawled under the bed and stayed there for an hour, utterly mortified.

  “Casiopea…it’s better if you call me Casiopea,” she said.

  “Lady Casiopea,” he replied.

  “Not lady. You said that at Loray’s house. You said ‘lady’ as if…I scrub pots on Saturdays and starch my grandfather’s clothes. I’m not a lady,” she said, rubbing her hands together.

  “Loray would not know a lady from a snail. I had to correct him.”

  “But—”

  “Courage is the greatest of virtues,” he told her, holding up his hand and extending his index finger. “You have been brave. I thought a mortal, faced with my abrupt appearance and an equally abrupt quest, would have broken into sobs and abject fear. You have not. There is merit in this, as it would have been very vexing to drag you around in such a state.”

  It was a bizarre compliment, and she could only nod her head at him.

  “I will call you Casiopea if you wish it.”

  “That would be nice,” she said.

  The matter settled, he leaned back in his chair and finished eating his orange, his movements precise as he tossed the peel away. She watched him with interest. Exactly what human mind had conjured him? What had been the basis of him? Had a mortal turned her head toward the heavens and thought “hair as black as a moonless night” and evoked him? And then had this person given him a name just like that?