Gods of Jade and Shadow

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  The lobby had a similar marine theme. The ceilings were extremely tall, as if giants, rather than men, were supposed to walk the halls. The floor was tiled blue-and-white, with powerful Art Deco accents here and there: in the chandeliers, the lines of the furniture, the painting behind the front desk. The elevators, she noticed, were flanked by stylized stone caimans. There were floor-length mirrors spanning the lobby, duplicating the entrance, magnifying it, and milky-blue windows that changed the light filtering in, as if they were gazing up from the bottom of a waterhole up to the heavens.

  There were frescoes, the walls painted in the brilliant shade of blue they called Mayan blue, the truest blue you’ve ever seen. Oceans filled with marine creatures appeared on those walls, the flora and fauna painted in rich reds and intense yellows, fringed with geometric shapes. Above them, the ceiling was silver and gold, with the glyphs for earth and water repeated over and over again.

  It was like tumbling into another world, the textures on display—stone, glass, wood—coming together in a mixture so heady it was impossible not to stop and gawk.

  “Come along,” Martín said. “No need to check in, it’s all been arranged.”

  “What has been arranged?” Casiopea asked, regaining the capacity for speech.

  “Your stay.”

  They went into the elevator, all gleaming metal—the glyphs there again—and got out on the third floor. The porter had attached himself to them and carried their bags. When they reached the end of a hallway, Martín unlocked the doors and motioned for them to step in.

  They stood in a vestibule, the sofas yellow, the walls blue. A table in the center with lilies on display. At each side a door. Martín opened one, then the other.

  “Your rooms,” he said.

  Casiopea took a tentative step into one of the bedrooms. The yellow and blue scheme also reigned here. The windows were huge and led toward a balcony. If she stood out there she might smell the ocean, its salt. They’d come so far! She had not even realized the magnitude of the trip until now, all the states they’d crossed, the cities that had gone past their window, to reach this point at the edge of the sea.

  She felt such joy then. This was one of the things she’d dreamed about. An ocean offering itself to her. It was the postcard in the old cookie tin, it was that breathless feeling she’d carried hidden in her heart. She stepped out, onto the balcony, and gripped the railing with both hands. She could hear them talking from where she was standing.

  “You are to have dinner with Zavala tonight at eight,” Martín said. “He’s asked that you make use of the stores downstairs to outfit yourselves. Zavala has dinner in the main ballroom. Travel suits and ordinary dresses will not do.”

  “Very well. And my brother, will he grace me with his presence tonight during dinner?” Hun-Kamé asked.

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ll see you at eight. If you need anything, do ring for it,” Martín said, making his exit.

  Casiopea turned and went back into the room, leaning against the balcony door, watching Hun-Kamé. He walked around, looking at the ceiling, inspecting the windows, all the finery, his hands behind his back. He was smiling.

  “Vucub-Kamé is up to his clever games. Very, very clever, my brother.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Hun-Kamé continued his inspection, now running his hands along a wall, scratching with a nail its blue paint. Casiopea saw the expensive room and the elaborate décor, but he was clearly finding something unusual about the setup. “I told you about the chu’lel, remember? Vucub-Kamé wanted to connect two points of power together. Look at this place. Look at the glyphs, the shape of it, each wall, each angle, it sings with magic. It’s not an ordinary hotel.”

  Casiopea cocked her head, staring at the motifs on the ceiling and the walls. It reminded her of the images in history books, drawings of temples in the midst of the jungle or the ruins dotting the peninsula where she’d grown up. “It’s a pyramid without being a pyramid,” she ventured.

  “Precisely,” Hun-Kamé said, looking very pleased, although she wasn’t sure why he would be so happy.

  “You said he had not connected the two points of power.”

  “No, he hasn’t. This place is thrumming with potential, it’s a sleeping beast, one of your engines before it’s been set in motion.”

  In her dream there had been an obsidian throne, the Lord of Xibalba on it. Now she recalled other details: piles of bones as tall as houses, littering the land, skulls that formed walls, blood slick upon the earth. Yes, she had glimpsed something that was not, but which could well be.

  “Why hasn’t it been set in motion?” she asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Hun-Kamé replied. “There must be a mortuary chamber somewhere. He intends to kill me and rule across this whole vast expanse of land; my blood is bound to be the final stone. Oh, I can feel it.”

  “Why aren’t you afraid, then?”

  He smiled even more, as if she’d made a particularly clever joke. “Because, Casiopea Tun, he hasn’t killed me yet, has he?”

  “He could come barreling down that door, ready to fight you,” she said, pointing in that direction. It was unlikely, but there was no sense in dismissing the possibility either.

  “Gods don’t fight each other with shields and swords. That would be improper.”

  “He cut off your head.”

  “I’m aware of it. When I am done with him I’ll have this place hauled off, bit by bit, into the sea, not a speck of his work left behind. How glorious that will be. The misery of his cries when he gets to enjoy a few centuries in a carved box, and the added misery of watching his creation crumble into nothing.”

  “That’s your plan, then. You’re going to do exactly the same as he did to you,” she said, taken aback by the harshness of his words. “It hardly seems right.”

  “It’s always been the plan.”

  Casiopea stepped away from Hun-Kamé, rubbing her left arm. The ache reached far beyond the wrist, a constant though dull pain, but worse when it came to her hand. “Then gods don’t fight with swords, but they can be as petty as men,” she mused.

  “Do not chide me. I’ve waited too long for this vengeance, and I intend to enjoy it.”

  “It’s unnecessarily cruel.”

  “Then maybe I should rap his fingers with a ruler instead, what do you say?” he asked her. “What would you have me do, hmmm?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. She could not even begin to imagine how the conflicts between divinities played out, but she had not liked the sight of the decapitation of the Uay Chivo, even if he’d risen afterward, a strange cloud of smoke that spoke to them. She did not fancy observing the decapitation of Hun-Kamé’s brother, either.

  Hun-Kamé sat down on a chair, which was upholstered in a vibrant yellow, crossing his arms. He was shy of twenty, an angry boy and nothing more. Casiopea shook her head and took a seat across from him.

  “You’ve never told me what he was like, before your fight,” she said. She had not asked. Likely she wanted to imagine Hun-Kamé as a unique creature, no other like him, even if this was illogical, since the existence of his sibling proved this a false notion.

  “What?” Hun-Kamé replied.

  “You and your brother couldn’t have always hated each other.”

  He frowned. “We are both different principles of the same thing. It was impossible for us to exist in constant hatred any more than the moon can despise the stars.”

  She looked at Hun-Kamé and found herself thinking of her own family, of Martín. Had Martín always hated her? Did she truly hate him? The anger that had felt so hot in Yucatán had cooled down during her trip.

  “My brother wanted more,” Hun-Kamé said. “There is a stasis in eternity, but he did not…I am the senior of the two, ruler of the night. He questioned me, spoke when he s
houldn’t, did not show the appropriate deference. It was there, the resentment. That is not the same as hate.”

  “You didn’t speak about it?”

  Hun-Kamé scoffed, and she thought again about Martín. Had that not been what Martín wanted? That Casiopea show the appropriate deference, that she be quiet? Back in Yucatán, had her resentment not knotted and grown, poisoning her gut? She realized, with a shock, that she might have more in common with Vucub-Kamé than with his brother.

  “What?” Hun-Kamé asked, frowning.

  She raised her head, and she looked at him, and she thought he’d pulled her away from all that. Unintentionally, yes, but he’d granted the distance she’d needed from Uukumil, from Martín and everyone. But Vucub-Kamé had been meant to reside eternally in Xibalba, by his brother’s side, wrapped in his quiet rage.

  “Maybe it hurt, for him,” Casiopea said. “Watching you have the last word, having to follow each of your commands.”

  “Are you saying it was right of him to do this to me?” Hun-Kamé said, rising from the chair and pointing at his face, at the eye patch that hid the empty eye socket.

  She stood up, echoing him. “It was wrong. But I have the feeling you were cruel. That who you are now is not a reflection of who you were before.”

  “Anyone who expects sweetness from the grave is a fool,” he declared.

  “Not sweetness. But…I don’t know, kindness. It’s strange, perhaps it is because I am dying that I do not want others to die too. I want everything to live.”

  This was true. She could hear the gulls outside, the waves crashing against the rocks, and the sun filtering through the windows shined brighter than it had ever shined before. It was the memory of that old postcard, that childish joy, which made her happy; it revived her, and her face was not muted nor gray.

  He looked at her with a visage as cold as ice. He allowed her nothing, and yet his expression softened, his chance to echo her.

  “I’ve told you the words you speak have power, and yet you don’t seem to comprehend me, do you?”

  Casiopea shook her head slowly. There he was, so near she might press her fingertips against his chest. Had he moved closer to her or had she breached the space between them?

  “I am someone else when we are together. I am kinder…I want to be kinder,” Hun-Kamé said. He sounded embarrassed when he spoke, transformed into someone very nearly innocent. “Was I cruel? I was a god; you might as well ask the river if it is gentle in its path, or the hail whether it hurts the land when it strikes it. At times, I can barely recall it.”

  He was not lying. Looking at his face no one could have said it was the face of a being that has existed beneath the earth for centuries upon centuries. Looking at his face anyone would have thought Who is this confused fool? and kept walking. Even his beauty was now tempered, not the handsomeness that had sliced her so painfully when she’d first looked at him, but the good looks of a young man one could find in many cities, in many streets.

  “That is the magic you make, you see?” he told her, his voice low.

  Hun-Kamé did not look at her when he spoke. She could tell by his expression that he was looking at Xibalba. The memory of Xibalba, realm of shadows that glistened in his mind and could not be denied.

  It lured him. It was him.

  There was no point in pressing her hand against his chest.

  “My brother, he’ll try to trick us,” Hun-Kamé said, his tone changing. “He’ll play on our weaknesses. We must not let him win. Believe nothing he promises—he is a thief, a cheat, and a liar. Remain at my side, no matter if he threatens or flatters.”

  She felt the bone shard in her left hand and stepped back from him, nodding.

  Tierra Blanca had all the conveniences one could ever desire. A barbershop, a spa, a pool, and a multitude of shops that offered fur wraps, perfumes and colognes, pipes, glassworks, clothes, magazines, for the enjoyment of the well-to-do and their hangers-on. Fabulous amounts of money could be spent on authentic Japanese kimonos and French silks, tweed jackets and embroidered blouses. The idea was that the guest should never want for anything, should never have to leave the premises, that the world would come to Tierra Blanca.

  Martín had not been exposed to this level of luxury and palatial tastes, and found himself stiffly uncomfortable as he waited for Casiopea to walk out of the clothing store she’d gone into. He was relieved when she came out, bearing a couple of bags.

  “Let me help you,” he said, stretching out a hand.

  Casiopea, instead, froze and looked at him warily. “What are you doing?”

  “Are you headed back to your room?”

  “I’m going to the hairdresser,” she said. “What does it matter to you?”

  “I want a word with you. Please.”

  She did not seem too happy with the idea, but she nodded, and they scooted to the side of the store’s front door.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “I have a telegram for you, all right? Read it,” he said, holding it up.

  Casiopea took the piece of paper and unfolded it. The missive was from her mother. Casiopea frowned.

  “You put her up to this?” she asked when she was done reading.

  “No. I telegrammed Grandfather to let him know how I’m doing, and she decided to also send a message. She’s worried about you. As far as she knows, you ran off with a man and Grandfather sent me to find you.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel guilty?”

  The telegram had been a spontaneous occurrence, like he’d told Casiopea, but Martín had thought it might benefit him. He shrugged, but knew it had had the required effect. Casiopea looked rattled.

  “If you felt guilty, you’d have listened to me in Mexico City.”

  “Right. I’m sorry, I don’t want to keep talking to you.”

  “Relax. I just passed the telegram on to you. Did you want me to toss it away instead?” he asked.

  Casiopea twisted the handles of the bags she was carrying. She was quiet.

  “Vucub-Kamé wanted to talk to you in Mexico City, yes, and maybe you could have saved me a trip if you’d spoken to him back then. But you’ve got another chance now,” Martín said and raised a hand. “Now wait before you start saying you don’t want to hear anything else, because I’m telling you this for the sake of both of us, all right?”

  “As if you’d do anything for my sake,” she countered.

  “Both of us, I said. If you don’t want to believe in my goodwill, believe in my selfishness. Look, these gods don’t care a lick about us. I’m trying to keep my head in its place. Will you listen to what I’ve got to tell you?”

  Casiopea hesitated, nodding uncertainly. Martín took his cousin’s arm and directed her down the hallway. He didn’t want to keep standing next to the shops, speaking in the shadow of the mannequins. The casino had tennis courts, beautiful gardens, and if you walked down a series of steps toward the beach, an excellent view of the ocean. Martín guided her to the gardens, following a row of palm trees. No cacti in sight, a profusion of flowers and lush greenness greeted them instead: it was meant to make patrons forget about the relentless desert awaiting not far beyond the rows of manicured trees.

  “Zavala is going to propose a contest tonight. Vucub-Kamé will want to meet with you later and make another offer, a bit of a deal,” he said. He had wondered how to speak to her this second time around and decided to be direct, no half-truths or tricks. Or the bare minimum to achieve his purpose.

  “What offer?” Casiopea asked.

  “I don’t know the terms, they wouldn’t say, but Vucub-Kamé will be generous to you. He…it would be best if you take Vucub-Kamé’s offer, because the other option, that first one, is no good.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s a road, all right? The Black Road, it runs through Xibal
ba. They’ll have us walk it.”

  “You and I?”

  “Yes. A contest.”

  They stood by a stone fountain, water spilling from the mouth of a stone frog resting at its top. It made him think of home, their courtyard there, the parrot in its cage. All he wanted was to go to Uukumil. He’d never desired the world; it was Casiopea who had wanted that.

  “Look, Casiopea, I don’t…whatever shit competition they have planned, it scares the hell out of me. So if for once in your life you’d do as you’re told and…I mean, that asshole you’re hanging out with, it’s not like he—”

  “What are you talking about? I always do what I’m told,” she interrupted him.

  “No, you don’t. Not without a fight,” he said.

  It was true. She was willful, daggers hidden beneath her muttered yeses, her eyes fixing on him, slick as oil. Like now, the way her mouth curved, a painting of defiance without uttering a single sound.

  “Is that why you hate me?” she asked.

  “Why does it matter?” he replied.

  He thought of the dark little girl who had arrived in Uukumil one afternoon, stepping down from the railcar with her hair in a pigtail and her pretty mother at her side. He had been curious, then, instead of hostile. She was a poor relation and therefore Martín did not know how to talk to her, whether it was proper to play together, so he kept a cautious distance. That mild courtesy became ice one spring.

  “Do you remember the day after I came back from school, when they expelled me?” he told her, the memory loosening his tongue. “I went to talk to Grandfather, and he was in his room, of course, and you were there, reading the newspaper for him.”

  Sitting with her simple navy dress and the pigtail that reached her waist. Martín had felt wretched as he walked into the room and realized he’d have to explain himself in front of her, which increased the humiliation, but his grandfather had ordered him to speak up and did not bother to dismiss the girl.