The outside of the Uay Chivo’s house was unassuming; its pale blue paint had peeled and the potted plants at the windows were wilting. The inside was a different story. First of all, Casiopea was certain the interior was too spacious, as if extra rooms could exist within the limits of this home, breaking all laws of physics. Second, it was filled with peculiar, unsettling items. The studio they wandered into had two large stone statues of goats, fitting considering the name of the sorcerer who owned the place, and creepy since the goats were carved in a very realistic style, their huge blind eyes making Casiopea frown.
On the shelves there sat multitudes of jars stuffed with herbs and dried plants, others filled with bits of starfish and corals. Some contained whole specimens: fish, snakes, lizards, scorpions, carefully preserved. Bottles glinted with their multicolored liquids and powders, here a green, there a vivid red.
There was a metal safe, which Hun-Kamé manipulated, revealing a small chest, and inside this chest an even smaller box. The house was dark, nobody was home, but the eyes of the stone goats did not allow her to relax. They’d tricked a god and invited themselves into the abode of a spirit, but they had not stolen from anyone yet. This audacious act seemed to Casiopea more perilous than their previous encounters, even if the house was quiet and empty.
“Why is it taking you so long?” she asked, watching Hun-Kamé as he worked his magic.
“All three of these boxes are made of iron, which annoys me, and therefore I proceed more slowly than I’d like,” he replied.
“Please hurry. I think I heard something.”
“I am doing what I can. It’s not just the metal. He cast protective spells. There are locks upon locks.”
With a click, Hun-Kamé finally opened the third box to reveal…nothing. There came thin, malicious laughter, and Casiopea turned around to find two young men, their hair slicked back with too much pomade, and an older gentleman standing at the doorway, looking at them. It was the older man who had laughed, a gray-haired fellow in a long gray coat who leaned on a cane decorated with the silver head of a goat, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
“Welcome to my home. I suppose proper introductions are not necessary,” the man said.
“Yet introductions are always proper,” Hun-Kamé replied.
The old man’s steps proclaimed his identity as loudly as if he had yelled it at the door. For there could be no denying that this was the Uay Chivo. His gait was odd, and there were the eyes too, with a strange spark in them, the tilt of the head, and all about him this…stench: tobacco and ashes, covered up with a cloying cologne.
“You behave improperly, riffling through my things. I doubt you found anything worth your while.”
One of the men helped the Uay Chivo out of his coat and placed it on a chair.
“Maybe you were looking for this?” he asked.
The old man pointed to the necklace he was wearing, now revealed after the removal of the coat. It looked heavy and was made of jade beads and a spiny oyster shell. “The boxes were for show. I carry it around my neck.”
Hun-Kamé did not seem perturbed by this revelation. “We are indeed looking for my property,” the god replied simply.
“And did you think it would be that easy to get your claws on it?”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t be too complicated.”
The sorcerer grinned at them, pointing the head of his walking stick at Hun-Kamé, shaking it as he walked slowly toward them.
“Then you’ll be sorely disappointed,” the Uay Chivo said. “I’ve been expecting you. Only a fool would not have guessed this fact.”
“A wise man would choose the words he uses with me.”
“Wisdom! And yet you, dear lord, have been most unwise, or I wouldn’t be wearing the necklace of a Death Lord. I’m afraid I won’t bow to the likes of you.”
“No, you bow your head low before my brother,” Hun-Kamé replied. “Kiss the dust he steps on, I suspect.”
“I do the will of the Supreme Lord of Xibalba,” said the Uay Chivo, and so confident he must have been in the support of Vucub-Kamé that he stepped forward and pressed the tip of the cane against the god’s chest, a threat and the stamp of his authority.
He reminded Casiopea of her grandfather.
“My younger brother is a usurper, gaining his throne with deceit. You do the will of a liar,” Hun-Kamé said.
“Does it matter? Power is power.”
Hun-Kamé slid the cane away with one hand, a gentle motion, as if he were removing a piece of lint from his well-tailored suit.
“I know you, Uay Chivo. You are one of the Zavalas. Carnival magicians with delusions of grandeur,” Hun-Kamé said casually.
The god was all quiet elegant contempt and his words held no threat. It was as if threats would be beneath him at that moment, as if he would not waste his breath on a creature as humble as the sorcerer. The Uay Chivo must wave his cane and snarl, but Hun-Kamé would not. It was a double humiliation, in words and gesture, the mark of the deepest scorn. And the old man knew it. He stepped back, gripping his cane tightly with one hand, his face red.
He handed his cane to one of the young men who stood next to him and took a deep drag from his cigarette.
“Carnival magicians, huh?” the Uay Chivo repeated.
The sorcerer inspected his cigarette with great care. Flames curled out from his mouth, resting there, hot against his lips, before he spat them out and pushed them away with a wrinkled hand, tossing a fireball against Hun-Kamé. The impact of it sent the god crashing against the floor, toppling a side table and a vase in the process.
Casiopea leaned over him.
“Does that seem like the work of a carnival magician?” the sorcerer said triumphantly.
“Hun-Kamé,” Casiopea whispered urgently, touching his neck, his chest, his brow. The fireball had not ignited his clothes, yet his skin felt feverish to her touch. His eyes were closed. She shook him a little.
The sorcerer’s assistants were holding knives in their hands, cutting their palms, and the Uay Chivo had started speaking, weaving words and a spell together. Casiopea, not knowing what to do, held Hun-Kamé in her arms and watched as the men pressed their bloodied hands against the floor, tracing a circle around them, the blood bubbling and sizzling, as if water had hit a hot pan.
Despite her fear, which was real and alive, sharp enough to make her fingers tingle, Casiopea chased away panic. It would do no good to cry or scream. She knew no magic, she realized that she could not undo this spell; therefore she merely drew Hun-Kamé closer to her, as if she might protect him with her touch. She clutched him and stared at the men who circled them not with her face deformed by terror but with a more distant look.
A wall of fire rose from the spot where the blood had fallen. It was a fire born of a strange flame, blue in its cast. One moment it was solid, the next as flimsy as a spider web, yet it shivered as a flame would. The sorcerer tossed a handful of ash against it, and the fire acquired an almost violet hue.
The old man and the young ones were pleased with themselves; they chuckled and yelled a few obscenities in their triumph.
Casiopea, knowing nothing, unable to understand the nature of the spell, extended an arm, intending to touch the wall of fire.
“Don’t,” Hun-Kamé said, grabbing her arm.
He had finally opened his dark eye and stared at her. Casiopea felt such stupid joy in this, in the realization that he was not grievously injured—although he couldn’t have died of such an injury, immortal as he was—that she almost spoke an inane term of endearment before she was cut off by the laughter of the sorcerer.
“You won’t be able to get out, but it will hurt like the devil if you try,” Hun-Kamé whispered in her ear. “Hotter than blazing coals.”
Casiopea pulled her arm back, nodding.
“What was that?” the Uay Chivo asked. “Speak up. Or have you been rendered speechless by my magic?”
Hun-Kamé did not appear aggrieved. His eye was cool, though it was a tad too dark, too flat, a pool of ink directed at the silver-haired sorcerer.
“Your magic is thin, like watered-down pulque, no bite to it. Do you think your spell will hold? I can already see the strain it causes you,” Hun-Kamé said, and his voice had the same flatness of the eye.
“Strain? Not with this lovely necklace in my possession,” the Uay Chivo said, touching the jade beads, the sharp points of the oyster shell.
“Your face tells a different story, flushed like a fool’s.”
The Uay Chivo was indeed flushed, beads of sweat on his forehead, streaming now down his narrow, angry face, as if he’d been running for a while. Even his voice sounded breathless. The accusation made it worse, the face growing redder. The sorcerer bit into his cigarette with such strength Casiopea thought he’d snap it in two.
“I don’t have to hold you forever, Hun-Kamé. I only have to slow you down. By the time you reach Baja California, if you ever reach it, you’ll be weak as a kitten,” the Uay Chivo said.
“Don’t count on it,” Hun-Kamé said, and his voice was like the dead of night, utterly still, it clouded everything, it dimmed the lights for a moment. Even the flames that rose around them grew softer before leaping up and shimmering violet-red as the sorcerer tossed another handful of ash at the barrier.
“Enjoy your time in my house,” the Uay Chivo replied.
But when he stepped out of the room, he bent over his cane with a great deal of effort, and one of his assistants walked by his side, speaking in his ear. The other assistant remained, obviously meant to guard them.
Casiopea and Hun-Kamé sat next to each other quietly. The guard wrapped his hand in a handkerchief and crossed his arms, sitting down on a chair and watching them intently. At length he grew bored or tired and closed his eyes.
“How will we get out of this?” Casiopea asked in a whisper.
“I imagine with some effort,” Hun-Kamé replied laconically.
Casiopea raised an eyebrow at his words. “Was that a joke?”
“I suppose it was.”
“It wasn’t very good.”
“I don’t have much practice with them.”
She smiled at him and he smiled back. Minutes passed before he half turned away from Casiopea, regarding the wall of flame.
“The spell is sound enough, but there is a solution to every riddle,” Hun-Kamé said. “If I thrust myself against the flames, I’d simply scorch my body and writhe in pain. But I won’t do that, not exactly. What we need is that guard to come here, right next to the barrier.”
“What do you propose?”
“Have you any practice at playing the damsel in distress?”
“I could manage.”
“Good. The man is tired; so is the Uay Chivo. Magic takes a toll. Exhaustion may engender mistakes. I will cast an illusion, make myself disappear. You must make a ruckus. Say I’ve run off and get him as near as you can.”
“That is all?”
“I’ll manage the rest.”
Casiopea nodded. Hun-Kamé stood up, and he slowly lifted his hands. He was there, but then an inky darkness lifted from the floor, enveloping him in the blink of an eye, and he disappeared. The guard who was supposed to watch them had his eyes closed; he had witnessed nothing. Casiopea hoped for the best, took a deep breath and cried out.
“He’s gone! He’s left me, he’s gone!”
The guard was startled awake and stood up, his hand immediately going to the hilt of his knife.
“He’s escaped!” Casiopea cried.
The man’s eyes went wide. He opened his mouth but did not seem able to believe the sight, the girl alone in the circle of fire, hands pitifully pressed against her face.
“He went away, like a puff of smoke, left me here. Please, come, see,” she babbled.
The man looked like he was about to bolt out of the room. Casiopea pointed to the floor. “See! All he’s left behind is a jewel, a tiny diamond, like the coin you toss a beggar.”
Creative, her tongue, schooled by books and poems. The words, along with her distraught expression, must have done the trick. The guard rushed forward, stood by the rim of fire, and bent down to look at the nonexistent diamond Casiopea was pointing at.
All of a sudden the guard was pulled forward, Hun-Kamé became visible again as the man was violently flung against the floor, the top of his head falling inside the circle of fire. Blood welled from the man’s temple and Hun-Kamé dragged him around, following the circle’s contour, whispering several words. It was as if he were wiping chalk off a slate, the wall weakening, dissolving with each word and each drop of the man’s blood. Every single link in a spell is precious. Topple one, the others will fall, and this is exactly what Hun-Kamé did. He wrote over, crossed out, he eliminated a single link, and the violet fire ceased to burn.
Once the barrier was gone, Casiopea bent down, pressing a hand against the man’s neck, relieved to feel a pulse beneath her fingers.
“Thank God, he is not dead,” she said.
“What if he was?” Hun-Kamé replied with a shrug, smoothing the lapels of his suit. “He is only a man.”
“I am only a woman. It doesn’t mean you can chop me down like a weed, without any care or thought; neither can you chop him.”
“You forget, maybe, who I am.”
“I think you are a nobleman, and killing a man who need not be killed would be ignoble. Am I mistaken?” she countered.
Behind his handsome, polished stillness, there lay a hard and ugly core. Her naïveté allowed her to glimpse it, but she could not fear it. He’d been kind to her, and she therefore expected his kindness would extend to the entire world. He must have realized this and rather than reply with a harsh word he raised a palm up politely.
“You are gracious. I will be gracious, for your sake,” he told her.
At that point she noticed that Hun-Kamé’s hand, which he’d used to get hold of the guard and thrust briefly into the barrier, was blackened, as if it had been charred. This distracted her from the meaning of his words, which, had she analyzed, she would have found rather shocking, since he’d said he meant to please her. He did this thing for her.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“It is not a nice sensation, but soon remedied,” he replied and shook his hand, bits of blackened skin flaking off, revealing a whole and perfect hand again, which now reached for the knife the guard had dropped. “But I suspect there will be more fire and pain. Come, we need to find the Uay Chivo. I can’t leave without that necklace.”
They headed up the stairs quietly. The house had been a tomb when they entered it, and it had returned to its stillness, their steps almost soundless. At the end of a hallway they glimpsed a man standing in front of a door and retreated. It was the other guard.
“What now?” she whispered.
“Same as before, I’ll make myself hard to spot.”
As he said this, the inky darkness shrouded him and he disappeared, but when she peered down carefully at the shadows she noticed that they were darker than they should have been, a thing of velvet. This velvet piece of darkness drifted around the corner and away. Casiopea pressed her lips together and waited.
Hun-Kamé came back a couple of minutes later and guided her to the door the sentinel had been guarding, only the man was now sprawled before it.
“Alive,” Hun-Kamé pointed out, half in jest. “Never say I was not generous to you.”
“If anyone asks, I’ll say you are the most generous of all the gods I’ve ever met.”
“Your jokes are no good either,” he replied.
But he was smiling again; the practice of it made it easier.
He turned around and fiddled with the door, unlocking it as he’d done with the boxes. The Uay Chivo’s room was crammed with many bottles, jars, and sundry objects, just as his study had been filled with odd specimens. In the room there were two goat sculptures that matched the ones downstairs, but the sculptures in this room were made of a dark, rich wood. There was also a four-poster bed, heavy and ornate. On it slept the old man, his hands against his chest, covering the necklace.
They moved quietly, but no sooner had they taken three steps than the wooden goats turned their heads in their direction, staring at them. The room grew warmer.
“What a pair of brazen fools you are,” the Uay Chivo said, rising from the bed. “Walking into my inner sanctum like one walks into the maw of a beast.”
“Rethink whatever it is you are planning,” Hun-Kamé said.
The admonition had no effect. The sorcerer held up his hands. The goats charged at them. Casiopea was able to move to the right and jump behind a table, putting it between herself and one of the magical beasts. This slowed down but did not deter the goat. It glared at her with its blind eyes, lowered its head, then rushed forward, shoving the table with brutal strength. Casiopea was thrust back, the goat pinning the table and her against the wall.
She could do little except watch the animal as it glared at her and tried to push the table harder, pressing her like an insect, sending splinters jumping through the air as it bored into the wood, into the wall behind her, and squeezed the girl. Casiopea thought she would die, her lungs would burst, for surely no one could withstand this and survive.
The goat, frustrated with the slow progress of such an endeavor, now attempted to chomp at whatever part of Casiopea’s body was visible and available. It happened to be the face, and if it didn’t bite off half a cheek, it was because she managed to lower herself a few centimeters, evading its maw, though this angered the goat, which kicked the furniture and squeezed her harder against the wall.
She could not scream. Her breath seemed to have escaped her body; it hovered in an empty space, and no plea of help rose from her lips.
Hun-Kamé shot forward and plunged his knife into the creature’s head and yelled a word. A ripple, a crack, ran down the goat’s head, and it split into two pieces, and those pieces jumped in the air, the knife jumping with them, and the wood split into more pieces. It dashed against the walls, dashed against the floor, shivering, twisting, and growing still.
Hun-Kamé pulled the table away and pulled Casiopea toward him.
She felt boneless, a flower with a broken stem, and if he had not held her she would have fallen to her knees. On the opposite side of the room she spotted the remains of the other wooden goat. She took a breath and pressed a hand against her throat.
“That knife, where has it gone?” Hun-Kamé said.
Before he could add anything else, he was shoving her away. Casiopea fell on her knees and watched as a long rope of fire whipped him, tangling around his limbs. Hun-Kamé ripped it away, but even as he did the sorcerer was rushing toward him. He was a man, old, his gray hair wild, and then in an instant he wasn’t. He had changed into the shape of a monstrous goat, as big as a horse, its black horns sharp, the hoofs heavy and shiny as steel, the eyes red. The goat snorted, opened its mouth, and out poked the tongue of fire, whipping Hun-Kamé and tossing him against one of the bed’s posts, snapping the post in two in the process.
Pain shot through her arm, and she curled her fingers into a fist, unable to rise to her feet. The pain cleaved her, it made her eyes water, and she watched the goat rearing up and smashing Hun-Kamé like a rag doll. But he’d said a knife. He’d said a knife, and she forced the fingers to uncurl.
“A knife,” she whispered and once she said it, it became the only thing that could matter, and the pain in her arm diminished. She ran around the room, tossing bits of furniture away even as she struggled to regain her breath. At last she spotted it in a corner, half hidden by a curtain, but when she stretched out a hand to retrieve it, the broken mouth of the wooden goat statue, which lay nearby, attempted to bite her fingers. Casiopea let out a loud yelp and used a chair’s leg to smash the chomping piece of wood, smash and smash until it did not move. She kicked it aside.
Her hand curled around the handle of the knife. Other bits of wood began to shake and tossed themselves against her body, trying to scratch and harm her. Casiopea blindly stabbed at the wooden remains of the goat, she kicked them away and managed to climb on a desk, shielding herself from the attack.
At this point the room was in more than shambles, furniture toppled and ripped to shreds, feathers from cushions spread upon the rugs. The Uay Chivo was stomping in fury, breathing out fire that scorched the god’s body and although it touched him and left no permanent mark, Hun-Kamé looked like he was out of breath. The goat pressed forward and gave Hun-Kamé a monstrous shove. The god lost his balance and fell on his back.
It was then that he caught sight of her and made a grasping motion.
The knife. She tossed it in his direction, and he caught it in his left hand. The goat was springing forward again, but Hun-Kamé jumped to his feet and as the animal reared its head back, baying, Hun-Kamé sliced a swift arc through the air, cutting, almost completely severing, the animal’s neck.
It was a feat of impossible strength for a man, and it was even more impossible that as the goat lay shivering on the floor, its blood seeping out through the enormous gash on its neck, it attempted to stand up and managed to kneel. A man, kneeling now, not a goat, but Hun-Kamé struck a second time, and the head was detached from the body.
Casiopea turned her face, the taste of bile and blood in her mouth.
When she looked again, Hun-Kamé had snatched the jade necklace from around the dead man’s neck, clutching it in one hand. A white, foul smoke lifted itself from the corpse. Casiopea coughed and her eyes watered.
The smoke had no face, but it did have a mouth, and the mouth spoke blistering words.
“You think you’ve defeated me, Xibalban? My lord will raise my bones before two nights have passed.”
“And we will be long gone by then,” Hun-Kamé replied.
“Ah, yes, run. Run to meet your destiny. But you may find yourself outmatched in Tierra Blanca, and I will be avenged, one way or another. Vucub-Kamé brings a new era with him; you are the dregs of the old one.”
“And you, meanwhile, are dead.”
The Uay Chivo’s mouth snarled, but it could not bite, it could not harm anymore, and as the blood of the sorcerer cooled, like diminishing embers, the smoke dissipated.
She jumped off the desk.
Hun-Kamé placed the necklace around his neck and turned to her. On his cheeks and forehead, on his hands were the black burn marks left by the goat, but they crumbled away in the beat of a heart, the skin flawless again. Yet he reached for her and leaned against her, like a man who has been injured in a nasty brawl, like she had leaned on him before.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“As well as can be under the circumstances,” he said, although he sounded breathless.
Casiopea nodded, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“You cut your lip,” he said.
“That explains the taste,” she muttered. She had no idea at what point that had happened. “It’ll go fine with the other bruises.”
“What bruises?” he replied.
His fingers grazed her lips, the lightest touch, there and then gone. She realized he was merely casting his magic, healing whatever cuts and abrasions she sported, no alternate agenda aside from this, but her heart leaped up.
“There. A useful trick, don’t you think?” he said.
“Yes, but it would help if you could also mend clothes,” she said. He looked a complete mess, the furthest from a god one could imagine, his hands dirty with soot and his hair wild. Which didn’t matter one bit, because that heart of hers was dancing, and she smiled.
“Let us leave this city,” he told her, shaking his head. “And let us sleep.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” she replied. “And maybe…maybe, we could buy some aspirin before that.”
His lips curled, his eyes grew lighter. He returned the smile. He hadn’t smiled at her before, or if he had it had not been like this, his face clumsy and unadorned. The artless shape of the smile endeared him to her. She chuckled despite all the aches in her body, which did not fade as quickly as the shape of the bruises.