How short their hair was! Casiopea watched all the fashionable young women with their hair like the American flappers, serving as “ladies in waiting” for the Carnival queen. In Casiopea’s town no one dared to sport such a decadent look. Even face powder might be cause for gossip there. In Veracruz, during Carnival, there were plenty of painted faces and rouged cheeks and unabashed looks to go around. If her mother had been there, she’d have told Casiopea that such shamelessness should be met with scorn, but seeing the girls laughing, Casiopea wondered if her mother was mistaken.
The queen, after being crowned, waved at the crowds, and thus began the formal masked balls at the Casino Veracruzano and other select venues. But the revelers were not confined to the insides of buildings, and those who could not afford the masked ball tickets made their own fun in the streets and parks, drinking, dancing, and sometimes engaging in mischief. Lent would arrive soon, the moment to say farewell to the flesh. So now was the time to throw caution to the wind and carouse. No one would sleep that first night of Carnival, and sometimes they wouldn’t sleep for days, too preoccupied with floats, parades, and music to bother heading to bed. A thousand remedies would be available the next morning to fix the hangover many locals would suffer from. One local solution was the consumption of shellfish for breakfast, although others contented themselves with aspirins.
The buildings down Cinco de Mayo Street were decorated with streamers and flags, and the cars that ventured into the streets sported flowers and colorful banners. Revelers set off firecrackers and shared bottles of booze. Inside restaurants and hotels, folkloric dancers twirled their skirts and musicians played the danzón, a Cuban import that was wildly sensual but also wildly popular.
Veracruz had an African legacy. In this port, the slaves had been hauled off the European ships and forced to toil in sugar plantations. Descendants of these slaves clustered in Yanga and Mandinga but had influenced the whole region, leaving a mark on its music and cuisine, and like everyone else they attended Carnival, flooding the streets. There were black-skinned men dressed as skeletons, indigenous women in embroidered blouses, light-skinned brunettes playing the part of mermaids, pale men in Roman garb. Once Carnival was over, the fairer skinned, wealthier inhabitants of the city might look with disdain at the “Indians” and the “blacks,” but for that night there was a polite truce in the elaborate game of class division.
Casiopea watched all this with amazement and trepidation as they joined the crowds of masked and disguised revelers. Hun-Kamé had rented two costumes for an exorbitant price that morning. He was decked soberly in a black charro suit, with a silver-embroidered short jacket, tight trousers decorated with a long line of buttons on the sides, and a wide hat upon his head. He cut a dramatic, attractive figure and looked as though he were ready to leap upon a stallion and perform the typical tricks of these horsemen, especially apt given that he carried a rope on his right arm. She matched him, attired as a charra, with a jacket and a skirt and a great deal of silver embroidery, except her clothing was white. Unlike him, she lacked a hat.
Earlier that day, at the guesthouse, she had pressed the embroidered jacket against her chest and curiously stood in front of a mirror. “Have you never seen your reflection?” he’d asked her.
Thus she looked at herself. Not the quick, darting glance Casiopea was allowed in the mornings, but a long look. Vanity, the priest in Uukumil had warned her, was a sin. But Casiopea saw her black eyes and her full mouth, and she thought Hun-Kamé might be right, that she was pretty, and the priest was too far away to nag her about this fact. Then she grabbed a brush and pinned her hair neatly in place.
Casiopea and Hun-Kamé walked together down the busy streets, the earthy sound of the marimba spilling out from a nearby building, urging her to dance.
“Where are we headed?” she asked.
“To the busiest, most crowded part of the city,” he replied.
A sea of revelers greeted them, thicker than the throng they had passed. It was a chaos of horns and drums, people dressed as devils and angels, the scents of tequila and perfume mingling together. Above them, people in balconies threw confetti and children tossed eggshells filled with glitter, while a few men, either drunk or full of spite, emptied a bottle of rum onto the pedestrians.
There, in the midst of this mess of feathers, sequins, and masks, Hun-Kamé stopped.
“Walk around here,” he told her, handing her the rope, “and remember to tie his hands when you have the chance.”
When Casiopea’s father died, her mother attempted to make a living for them doing odd jobs. For a while she tried her hand at macramé and taught her daughter the trade. Casiopea could tie several knots, but she did not know if they would be fit for supernatural beings, even though Hun-Kamé had assured her any simple knot would do.
“Where are you going?” she asked, because he was turning away from her.
“He shouldn’t see me with you.”
“But—”
“I’ll be watching and I will follow you. Whatever he says, do not release him and do not leave his side either.”
“How will I know what he looks like?”
“You’ll know.”
“Wait!” she said as he stepped away.
He stopped, his cool hand brushing hers, and her hold on the rope slackened.
“I’ll be behind you,” he said. It wasn’t an attempt at reassurance, it was a fact.
With that, he was gone. She was scared, abandoned among all these strangers. In Uukumil, the biggest event of the year was the peregrination of the local saint, which was hauled from the church and carried around the town. This, this was so much bigger! There were women in terrifying masks and a boy who kept banging a drum, and Casiopea thought of simply running off.
She tightened her grip around the rope and bit her lower lip. She’d said she’d do this and she would. She began walking, pushing her way next to dancers who were paired together and shuffling their feet right in the middle of the street. She slid past two harlequins who tossed confetti at her and evaded three rowdy men who were bumping into people and yelling obscenities.
“You wouldn’t happen to have matches, would you?” a man with a melodious voice asked her.
He was a dark fellow, broad-shouldered, good-looking, and strong. He was dressed like a pirate, with a blue coat, a sash upon his waist, and tall boots. The way his teeth gleamed and the way he stood drew Casiopea in.
This is him, the Mam, she thought.
It is likely that having already met one god, she was able to quickly identify another. Or else it was Hun-Kamé’s essence, caught under her skin, that allowed her to see there was an extraordinary element about this stranger.
“No,” she said, looking down at her shoes, not in modesty, but because she didn’t want him to read the recognition in her eyes.
“A pity. What are you doing all alone on a night like this?”
“I came with my friends, but I seem to have misplaced them,” she said, lying again with panache. She had, it seemed, a talent for it.
“That is terrible. Maybe I could help you find them?”
“Maybe,” she agreed.
He took out a cigarette and a lighter and placed an arm around her waist, guiding her through the street.
“I thought you needed matches,” she said.
“I needed an excuse to talk to you. Look, you sweet thing, how nicely you blush,” he said, his voice honeyed.
He said a number of things to her in that cloying tone of his, things of little importance, because a minute or two later she could not recall them. Compliments, enticements. His words were electric, charged like a cloud pregnant with rain. She followed him away from the revelers, down an empty alley. There he pressed her against a wall and ran a hand along her chest, smiling, the touch making her shiver. Was this what women and men did in the dark? The indecencies the priest muttered about? Books were coy on the specifics of seduction.
“What would you say, hmm, about giving me a kiss or two?” he asked, tossing away his cigarette.
“Now?”
“Yes,” he told her.
Casiopea nodded. The man leaned down to kiss her. She’d never been kissed before and didn’t particularly know if she wanted to start with him. She turned her head.
Her fingers on the rope relaxed for a moment, then she grasped it tight.
She’d been nervous before, but now she grew still and calm. She pushed him away, gently, coyly, so that he smiled. His hands fell on her waist. And she gave him another gentle shove; she raised the rope and attempted to tie his hands but it proved difficult because one of those hands was now roaming down her stomach, pinching at the buttons of her costume. Casiopea let out an irritated sigh and held his wrists together.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“You want that kiss, then you’ll let me do it,” she said, although she intended nothing of the sort.
“What a perverse thing you are! What game are we playing?”
“You’ll see,” she said. “Now, if you will. Be still.”
He laughed as she tied a sturdy knot. When she was done, he tried to kiss her on the lips, and she turned her head and slapped him soundly. Even then he thought she was playing, but when he tried to pull a hand free, he could not.
His face changed: it grew stormy.
Casiopea slid away from him. His eyes were bright as lightning, and when he spoke it was a hiss, like the wind through the trees.
“Who are you?” he asked. “How did you do this? I will give you a thrashing, girl.”
“You will not,” she replied, stepping away from him as he fumbled and tried to undo the knot, even going as far as putting it in his mouth and gnawing, which accomplished nothing. Frustrated, he spat on the floor and began circling her.
“You come here and undo this now, girl! You do it quick and I won’t drown you in the river and play music on your bloated corpse.”
He ran toward her, trying to pin her against the wall, and Casiopea moved aside, the god crashing against it, loosening a few bricks in the process. He turned around and opened his mouth as if to let out a scream, but instead out came a warm gust of wind, which shoved her back two, three steps, and got under her clothes. It felt like someone had rubbed a hot stone against her skin.
She blinked and considered how ridiculous it was to be standing in an empty alley with an angry god when she ought to have been running in the other direction, far and away, back to the guesthouse, and maybe all the way back to her home. But Hun-Kamé had said not to release the man or leave his side, so she brushed the hair away from her face and crossed her arms.
“Well, must I crush your every bone, you idiot?” he asked, looking ready to charge at her like an angry bull.
“How disrespectful you are,” Hun-Kamé said.
He was there all of a sudden, right by her side, like a fallen piece of the velvety sky, like a nocturnal plant that unfurled and greeted her, his hand touching her shoulder, shielding her from any threats with that quick gesture.
Juan, the Mam, smiled, his attention jumping from her to him. He laughed, riotous, sounding like a man in his cups.
“Hun-Kamé, my cousin. So it is you who has set such a soft trap for me. What a surprise,” he said, his toothy smile bright.
“Not too big a surprise, I’d think. Hasn’t my brother sent his owls to inform you of my escape and to warn you I’d come looking for my property?” Hun-Kamé replied, unsmiling.
“Maybe he has. I wouldn’t know. I move between the hills and the streams. I am difficult to find.”
“Not too difficult, treacherous cousin,” Hun-Kamé said.
“Treacherous? I? For guarding the property of the lord Vucub-Kamé?”
“For keeping my ear, you dog. As if you didn’t know who it belonged to.”
Hun-Kamé’s face was cold, but a sliver of anger colored his words, red hot, like the embers of a cigarette.
“I did know it was yours. Then again, I also know the Supreme Lord of Xibalba is now Vucub-Kamé. Can I be chided for doing the bidding of the ruler of nine shadow regions?”
Juan made a mocking gesture, bowing down low before Hun-Kamé and then jumping up to his feet.
“You can be chided for changing your allegiances in the blink of an eye,” Hun-Kamé said.
Juan shook his head. “I follow the direction of the wind, and I cannot be blamed if a new wind begins to blow. Vucub-Kamé gave me your ear, yes, and I bent my knee, not because I have love for your brother, but because one must follow the order of things. The order and the reign now belong to Vucub-Kamé.”
As he spoke, Juan circled Hun-Kamé and Casiopea, slowly, a smile gracing his lips. The smile grew wider.
“These bonds won’t hold me for too much longer,” he said, rubbing his hands together, testing the rope. “What do you intend to do then?”
“As if the bonds mattered. What I wanted was your attention,” Hun-Kamé replied.
“You have it.”
“Return to me the item Vucub-Kamé entrusted you.”
“And disobey the orders of the Supreme Lord of Xibalba? You are not to have it back,” Juan said, shaking his head.
“Disobey the orders of the false Supreme Lord and please the righteous one.”
The Mam shrugged. “Those are such confusing terms. False? Righteous? I am not a betting man, cousin. Today Vucub-Kamé has the throne. Tomorrow you may have it, maybe not. I wouldn’t want to face your brother when he is angry. Conflict between us is tiresome and unnecessary.”
Despite his words, the god opened his mouth wide, the corner of his lips distended. He unleashed another gust of wind, stronger than before, which might have indeed broken Casiopea’s bones as he’d previously promised, except that in the blink of an eye Hun-Kamé had raised a hand and the shadows on the floor rose like a wave, a cocoon, against which the wind crashed and shattered.
The Mam coughed and opened his mouth again, but Hun-Kamé spoke.
“Don’t try that with me or I’ll think you uncivil,” he said.
The god smiled and shook his head, his voice hoarse. “I thought we were playing! We have a rope to skip, and your friend can be Doña Blanca and we’ll dance around her. I wouldn’t seriously—”
“Be quiet.”
Hun-Kamé’s face had the grimness of the grave. It rubbed the insolence off the other god’s smile, sobering him a tad.
“If you do not return what belongs to me, you will find yourself in a very unpleasant situation. The bonds, as you say, may not hold long, but they will hold long enough for me to ruin your merry week of feasting. And when I sit on my throne, I will make sure to sour your nights. No drumming down the river, no imbibing of spirits, no laughter for you and your brothers.”
“And what if you do not regain your throne?” Juan asked, with mock innocence.
“Would you like to chance it, cousin? Remember who I am, remember my magic and my might. Remember also that my brother has always been the weaker one,” Hun-Kamé said, speaking in a low voice.
Juan’s smile was eclipsed completely. Although the night had been warm, Casiopea felt a chill go down her spine and rubbed her arms. The coldness seeped up from the earth, as if the ground had frozen beneath their feet. In Xibalba it was said there was a House of Cold where it hailed, and the hail cut your hands as sharply as a blade, and she thought perhaps this was the cold they felt. Whatever its source, it was unnatural and had an immediate effect on the god.
“This…this chill. I like the nights warm, cousin,” Juan said, and his teeth chattered, a plume of smoke escaping from his lips.
“Oh? I feel nothing. Casiopea, do you feel anything?” Hun-Kamé asked smoothly.
She shook her head and the Mam chortled, but the tips of his fingers were turning white, a delicate frost lacing itself across them.
“I respect you, Hun-Kamé. You know as much,” Juan said.
“Truly? I was beginning to doubt it.”
“I would not wish you as my enemy.”
“Swear to return my property and I will consider you blameless.”
Although Casiopea had been awed by Hun-Kamé when he appeared before her, and although she had been frightened too, she had not understood the whole extent of him. It was only watching the gods speak that she realized the weather god was intimidated, and she began to wonder about Hun-Kamé’s nature and his might.
Death, she walked next to Death, and Death wore the face of a man. So she spoke to Death like a man, raised her voice to him, she might even defy him, but of course he was no man. She’d seen drawings of Death in dusty books. It was depicted as a skeleton, its vertebra exposed, black spots on its body symbolizing corruption. That Death and Hun-Kamé seemed entirely different from each other, but now she realized they could be the same.
She glimpsed, for the very first time, the naked skull beneath the flesh. And if a god feared Death, should she not fear him too, rather than share oranges and conversation with him?
“I swear by air and water, and by the earth and fire too, if need be. Let me go and I’ll hand it over,” Juan said.
The frost now covered his whole chest and had worked itself up to his neck, turning his voice into a whisper, but Hun-Kamé spoke a word and the ice crystals melted off, though a chill infected the air.
He loosened the rope around the Mam’s hands and the god, in turn, reached into his pocket and took out a wooden box, inlaid with iridescent mother of pearl. Hun-Kamé opened it. In it lay a human ear, perfectly preserved. Hun-Kamé pressed it against his head, cupping it in place, and when he drew away his hand the missing ear was attached to his flesh, as if it had not been cut off.
Hun-Kamé inclined his head at the other god, gracious.
“I will assume you remain my beloved cousin, then,” Juan said, rubbing his hands together, “and that I may be allowed to leave now.”
“Go. Enjoy the night.”
The Mam nodded, but now that the frost had melted he quirked a mischievous eyebrow at them.
“I might enjoy the night better if I’d had a chance to taste the sweetness of your pretty girl. Would you not let her dance with me?” the god asked, turning his sly eyes toward Casiopea. “How I love mortal women, you know that, and since we are friends again, it would be a nice gesture to grant me this one to warm me up. I think we both agree I could use some warming up after—”
“Oh, I’ll slap you twice if you even think it,” she declared.
“I like a good slap now and then. Come here,” he said, holding his palm upward and crooking his finger at her.
The death god stood stiff as a spear, and his hand fell upon Casiopea’s shoulder. “Look elsewhere for diversions,” Hun-Kamé said drily. “And apologize to the lady for being crude tonight.”
“How prickly you are! I was trying to be friendly, but instead I’ll be off, then. There is no point in offending Death and his handmaiden any further. My apologies, miss. Be well, cousin.”
The weather god took out a cigarette and he lit it, chuckling as he walked down the alley and disappeared from sight, heading back toward the music and the raucous crowds. The night grew warmer, again the ordinary tropical night of the port, and Hun-Kamé lifted his hand from her shoulder.
“Thank you,” she told him.
“You should not thank me for such small things,” he replied.
Casiopea supposed he was correct, since he needed her and if he had stood up for her, it was because she was valuable to him. Nevertheless she considered it a nice gesture. No one had ever defended her when Martín bothered her, and she could not help but to feel grateful and to look kindly at him. Thus, minutes after she thought she might want to fear him, be wary of him, she was again forgetting his true nature and seeing a man.
“Lady Tun, if you’ll come with me, we have work to do,” Hun-Kamé said, heading in the opposite direction from the one the Mam had taken.
“What kind of work?”
“Now that I have my ear back I can listen to the voices of the psychopomp and the dead. Let us find a proper crossroad.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You shall see,” he said.