Gods of Jade and Shadow(19)

“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?

“Hun-Kamé,” she said, trying his name experimentally.

He raised an eyebrow at that, hauteur in the gesture. “Lord of Xibalba,” he corrected her.

“I can’t go around calling you that. Do you think if we are in the street I can cry ‘oh, Lord of Xibalba, could you come here?’?”

“I am not a dog for you to call me,” he replied, standoffish.