Her eyes darted away, and she took Hun-Kamé’s hand in one fluid motion, rising to her feet with the quickness of an arrow.
“I think we should dance,” she said. It was the first thing that popped into her head, the excuse so that she wouldn’t have to answer the question.
Casiopea guided him toward the people dancing without sparing Zavala a single look. She felt her conviction faltering when he placed a hand against her waist. She did not know the steps to the song, which was slow and sweet, like syrup. She wanted to look down at her feet, to make sure they were moving in a somewhat coordinated motion, but she knew this would seem clumsy. Not that he was looking at her: his head was raised, as if peering above her shoulder.
“Your brother made me an offer today,” she said, finding a rhythm. “He spoke, somehow, through my cousin, and promised glory or gold. And he showed me, too, what might happen to me. He showed me death and Xibalba.”
“He has the power of prophecy, but not all his visions come to pass,” Hun-Kamé said.
“But I had already dreamed it, before, during the journey.”
He’d not been worried before, but now a frown creased his brow. His mouth grew tight.
“I am afraid,” she said. “You were right, if I was a hero I’d know this is the way things go. I wouldn’t hesitate to risk my life to save the land, to save you. I’d charge ahead. But I’m scared, and if we go up those stairs…maybe I won’t refuse him a third time. And…and so I wish we could just keep dancing.”
Hun-Kamé did not reply, sinking into one of his hard silences. She might have been worried if the music hadn’t been so divine, the swaying to the song so languorous. Had she not wanted to dance? Not quite to this song, not quite in this ballroom next to women in silks with diamonds in their hair and men with their bow ties and crisp jackets; these were unexpected elements to her fantasy. And of course she had never pictured her dance partner when she chanced to think of dances. She’d swatted the idea away too quickly, and her partner remained an amorphous figure. Even if she’d been able to picture a boy, he would never have come close to the man guiding her in the dance.
Therefore she danced, because she’d desired the dance and because if she paused to rest she might begin questioning herself. Do you fear death? Yes, she did.
Hun-Kamé danced, she thought, to distract her. Or else, to show them all—Vucub-Kamé, Zavala, Martín—his disdain, his aloofness.
But when she chanced to look aside, catching a glimpse of their reflection splayed across a mirror, she did not observe any disdain or aloofness.
In Uukumil, when she’d gone to fetch a few items from the general store, on an occasion when she forgot to bring her shawl and conceal her hair with it, she’d caught the eye of one of the boys who worked there. He was the shopkeeper’s assistant, and on that summer day he was carrying a heavy sack of flour in his arms. When she walked in and began reading out the list of supplies, he lost his hold on the sack and dropped it, the flour spilling over the floor. Casiopea remembered three children, who were also in the store, giggling at the mishap, and she’d blushed because the boy had stared at her. Not a normal stare, if there was such a thing, but a startling look of eagerness.
Casiopea recognized the look on Hun-Kamé’s face: it was that same look, more engrossed if anything, heavier than the brief flicker of a look she caught in Uukumil before she mumbled an apology and stepped outside the store.
This look went to her head. It was stronger than the champagne and she gripped his hand tight and she would have stumbled if he hadn’t held her against him.
“I wish we could keep dancing too,” he said.
They walked up the stairs of the hotel, avoiding a group of drunk patrons who, between giggles and shoves, were making their way down the wide staircase. It was a somber march for Casiopea and Hun-Kamé, almost funerary. When Hun-Kamé placed the key in the door’s lock, she thought to turn around.
But they’d danced, and now they were here, and they needed to keep going.
He turned the key.
Shadows had invaded the vestibule. Hun-Kamé and Casiopea walked into one of the bedrooms, and there were pools of darkness so vivid they looked liquid, as if someone had left a window open and the night had dripped against the wallpaper and elegant furniture, making the bulbs of the lamps dim.
A lazy plume of darkness rose in the middle of the room and a man stepped out from it, clad in a white cape. He resembled Hun-Kamé, his skin dark, the face proud. His hair was very pale, the color of the fragile crust of salt that forms upon the seawater when it evaporates. The eyes were devoid of color, not dark like Hun-Kamé’s, but a silken gray. Therefore the brothers mirrored and did not mirror each other.
“How long, our parting,” Vucub-Kamé said, his voice also silken, the curve of his lips not quite forming a smile.
Hun-Kamé did not say anything, but Casiopea felt his anger like a hot coal. If she reached out and touched his hand she feared he might scorch her.
“Long enough for you to construct this monstrosity,” Hun-Kamé replied, at last.
“Monstrosity? Hun-Kamé, you are caught in the past.” Vucub-Kamé smiled fully. But the smile did not reach his eyes. “Do you think I could build a temple in the middle of Baja California? They have outlawed the Christian churches—not that I mind—and now they pray to idols of aluminum and Bakelite. We need new trappings, new acolytes. And blood, of course.”
“So, not everything is new.”
“Blood is the oldest coin. Blood remains.”
Hun-Kamé took several steps until he was standing in front of his brother. They were of the same height and stared each other in the eye.
“I told you not to defy the wisdom of eternity. Your scheme is ignoble. If ever Xibalba should rise anew, it shall rise by the will of fate and not by cheap sorcery,” Hun-Kamé said. “You will pay for your treason.”
“I paid long ago, swallowing each one of your offenses.”
“We all play our roles,” Hun-Kamé said. “My role was to rule over Xibalba.”
“Over Xibalba, not over me. I was not born to be your slave.”
“Enough with your nonsense.”
“You expected me to gnaw at scraps, to drink spoiled wine. One time we were gods, not shadows. Until they, the twins—”
“The Hero Twins defeated us and we were humbled, as we had to be humbled for our pride was great,” Hun-Kamé declared.
“Then I shall build great temples and paint them with blood until our defeat is washed away! Until we are humbled no longer!”
“Enough, I said.”
Hun-Kamé’s voice was imperious and well rehearsed. She imagined they’d had similar conversations before. She imagined, by the tone Hun-Kamé employed, that the conversations ended with Vucub-Kamé’s acid silence. Not on this occasion.
“Has he told you what it was like?” Vucub-Kamé asked, turning toward Casiopea and moving in her direction. She saw Hun-Kamé shift uncomfortably, but Vucub-Kamé blocked her line of sight with his body.
“The burning of the most precious incense, the sweet blood of priests, the sacrifices in the cenotes littered with jewels, the ball game concluding in glorious decapitation,” he said.
Casiopea almost thought she could see it, could taste it. The night skies like velvet darkness, pierced by the stars, the murals in the palaces, waterholes so blue you’d think them inked with the leaves of the añil, and the devotion of men, like a wave, a sound, this force that made the land quiver. The adoration of mortals filling one’s lungs. Then that same adoration receding, the emptiness it left, the way the azure remained on the walls of temples, weathering the assault of time, but everything else faded until it felt as if you’d fade too.
“The world was young then, it smelled of copper and brine,” Vucub-Kamé told her, almost wistfully, and she thought even though he stood bef
ore her, he wasn’t there, his eyes far off, gazing into the land of his memories.
Slowly he looked down at her, tilting her head up as if to better examine goods at the market, and it reminded her, oddly enough, of the town’s butcher, his eyes on her as he tried to tip the scale. Now this god weighed her flesh on a scale of a different sort. “Young, as you are young. Look at you, like the dawn,” he said. “You can’t understand, of course, but one day you’ll want to be new again,” he continued. “You’ll wish to return to this moment of perfection when you were the embodiment of all promises.”
Vucub-Kamé took a strand of her hair between his fingers. He was so close to her she thought his eyes were not gray, but lighter, the shade of bones that have been pecked clean by wild animals.
“You’ve refused me twice. Will you do it a third time and risk my wrath, I wonder? Three is a special number, for it is the number that represents women and I ask what shall you represent? Shall you perhaps be the fruit, plucked too soon and left to rot upon the ground? You are, as I’ve said, so young.”
There was Xibalba deep in his gaze, and the promise of her death. And deeper yet she saw the bones of men that would litter Middleworld if his schemes came to fruition; she saw the splash of blood on stones; she felt the fright and the pain of mortal beings.
She looked away.
“Stop your nonsense,” Hun-Kamé said, moving to stand by Casiopea’s side, his arm brushing against hers, his fingers pressing against her knuckles.
“My nonsense? You’ll pit her against the Black Road, brother,” Vucub-Kamé said.
“I did not conceive the challenge,” Hun-Kamé replied, his voice unpleasant, his body tense.
“It does not matter. One way or another, you are killing her before her time. Such cruelty.”
Vucub-Kamé spoke with the most delicious mockery, Hun-Kamé replied with a haughty silence.
“It does not have to be this way. The lot of us, we could be friends,” Vucub-Kamé said, looking at her again with the same care he’d granted her all through their meeting. She felt she was being weighed anew.
“What do you mean?” she asked cautiously.
“I’d like to offer you life instead of death,” Vucub-Kamé said, sliding past them, and picking an apple from the bowl of fruit that had been set by the window. “It’s a simple trick. You cut your left hand off.”
“I know how that goes,” Casiopea said. “I cut it off and sever the link between Hun-Kamé and me, and then he’ll be so weak he won’t be able to fight you, and you win.”
“I must admit that did cross my mind. I’m thinking something more complicated, but beneficial for all parties. Don’t just cut the hand. You kill yourself.”
He paused, as if to allow her to perfectly understand the meaning of his words. She scoffed. Did he imagine she was mad? Or so exhausted she’d simply admit defeat? She was tired, her body pained her, her hand ached, and there was a weariness of her spirit, as if it was being ground down bit by bit, and yet she was not so tired she’d stop at this point.
“Kill yourself, and as you die offer yourself to me in sacrifice,” he continued, tossing the apple in the air and catching it. “Those who pledge themselves to the Lord of Xibalba are invited to dwell in the shadow of the World Tree.”
“I don’t see how that is any better for me,” Casiopea said. “I’d be dead, and then you could harm Hun-Kamé.”
“Oh, Hun-Kamé offers himself afterward, too; he pledges his allegiance. He kneels down and I cut his head with my axe. Then his blood spills upon the floor and I collect it, using it as the mortar to complete my spells. But as weakened as he will be after you die, and as changed as my brother is, the Hun-Kamé who will walk into Xibalba will be very much a mortal man.”
Vucub-Kamé squeezed the fruit and it shrank, blackening and rotting in the blink of an eye, until he was holding nothing but ashes, which he displayed on his palm for her to see.
“I have the power to restore mortals who worship me,” Vucub-Kamé said.
As he spoke, the ashes in his hand formed themselves back into an apple, as crisp and red as it had been seconds before. Not a scratch on it.
“Gods don’t…they don’t become mortal,” Casiopea said. “They don’t die.”
“There are two warring essences in my brother’s body in this instant. Separate his immortal elixir from the mortal substance coursing from his body, and why not? I lop off his head, he resurrects. He’d open his eyes and be a man,” Vucub-Kamé said. “Free to walk Middleworld, to dream the dreams men dream. And you, too, Casiopea, alive again. I am offering you what no one else can offer. Give up your quest. And you, my brother, give up your claim. Give yourself to me, and in giving, grant me all you are.”
Vucub-Kamé took a half dozen steps and carefully placed the apple back in the bowl.
“I’m offering you your secret wish,” Vucub-Kamé said simply.
Casiopea felt as if she’d swallowed a goldfish whole and it swam in the pit of her stomach. She pressed a hand against her body, thinking this might soothe her, but it did no good, because she opened her mouth and sputtered silly words, anyway, unable to control her shaky voice.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“He knows what I mean,” Vucub-Kamé said with that same slice of a smile he’d smiled before, circling them. “You know what I mean, Casiopea. I mean the chance to live a life in Middleworld, a whole, long, happy life, even to love. Are you not tired of your denials?”
Vucub-Kamé stood immobile, watching them with his strange, inhuman eyes, as firm as a cliff against the ocean’s spray, so cold she shivered. Next to her Hun-Kamé wrapped an arm around her shoulders, as if to keep her warm, keep her from trembling.
“You don’t have the capacity to accomplish such a thing,” Hun-Kamé declared.
“If the whole of your blood spills upon this place, if this ultimate sacrifice is performed, every stone and every bit of metal in this building will thrum with the might of Xibalba. Bow before me, brother. Give me your blood and forget yourself. If you will it, it will be.”
Conviction, symbols. Casiopea thought the pale-eyed god spoke truth; that this could happen, this scared her more than any foe they’d met during their journey.
“I must ask again if you want her to walk the Black Road. Or maybe you’d prefer my most generous alternative,” Vucub-Kamé said, his voice light and sly.
No, she thought. She wasn’t entirely sure why Vucub-Kamé was offering this and what was happening, but she’d say no. She’d seen bones and ash and death. She was afraid, she wished to live, and yet she was no fool. She could not agree to this. She opened her mouth, struggling to put this into words.
“We need time to consider it,” Hun-Kamé replied instead.
Casiopea was so startled she gripped his arm and looked up at him. But Hun-Kamé was busy staring at his brother, and Vucub-Kamé stared back at him.
“Time is precious. How much time do you think this darling girl has left? How much death poisons her veins? Answer me now.”
“Give me an hour,” she said.
She saw a glimmer in Vucub-Kamé’s eyes, an intense, cold flash, like the edge of a blade, directed at her.
“A single hour,” she insisted. “Surely a great lord can grant an hour.” If words have power, then requests must have power too, she guessed and she guessed right. Vucub-Kamé nodded reluctantly.
“One hour, then,” he granted her. “Think about it carefully. Reject me and you’ll face the Black Road. I doubt you wish for that.”
Vucub-Kamé summoned shadows, and the shadows wrapped him as warmly as the cape he wore, then collapsed on the floor, the god vanishing and the darkness that had infected the room disappearing. The lights were bright, the room ordinary.
“Come, we need to go down by the sea,” Hun-Kamé said, clutching her hand.
“Because my brother would surely spy on us here, but he has no dominion over the sea. That belongs to others. Let’s go,” he urged her.
Not many people visited the beach, despite the wide stone steps that led down to it. Most guests preferred the comfort of the swimming pool and the shade of its umbrellas, the waiters walking by with drinks on a tray. At night, the beach was absolutely deserted. The full moon lurked in a corner of the sky, guiding their way, but a cloud drifted over its surface, muffling its light. Strangely, this illumination resembled the night-sun of the Underworld, rendering all things half hidden, as if to aid their secrecy.
Despite the lack of proper light, Casiopea could see Hun-Kamé’s face clearly. It is possible her vision had sharpened since she shared some of the god’s essence, revealing secrets tucked in the dark, or she had grown so accustomed to Hun-Kamé she could conjure his features with ease.
“Come into the water,” he said.
“Our clothes will be ruined,” she told him, her shoes in her hands.
“It is necessary,” he said and walked toward the waves, ankle deep. “The cenotes we may roam, but the ocean with its currents and its tides, that was never ours. The salt will keep our secrets. My brother can’t hear us here.”
She placed the shoes on a rock and went into the water. It was cold; the waves struck the land with a stark precision, violent almost. The water, in the daytime, was of a precious blue-green, but it had now turned gray and she waded into this grayness.
“You have a plan, yes?” she told him. “Some way to defeat him?”
“I have nothing beyond the two options he has offered us,” he said, sounding solemn.
“But then…”
She’d assumed he would reveal a plot of some sort, a trick they could employ, like the Hero Twins, who burned the feathers of a macaw to avoid the peril of the House of Gloom and fed old bones to the jaguars so they would not be devoured. That’s the way stories went.
“What do you think my name is?” Hun-Kamé asked abruptly.
Gods of Jade and Shadow Page 26
