Gods of Jade and Shadow(70)

He jerked his head up, annoyed, and did not reply.

“You should have told me. I thought you feared nothing,” she said, pressing on.

“Quiet now,” he said, his voice low. “The things you name grow in power.”

She closed her mouth and stared at him, wondering what black luck she was inviting by speaking as she’d done. There was magic to be reckoned with and the rules of gods she didn’t comprehend. She’d made him speak, and maybe she ought to have let him be quiet, as he’d wanted.

“I’m sorry,” Casiopea said in a whisper.

“It is no matter,” he replied, casually, and she realized there was pretense in his voice; he was rattled but would not show it openly.

Casiopea nodded, but his distress was palpable, a frightened creature that circled the room.

“Let’s see what they are serving in the dining car. It’s probably something disgusting, like roast beef,” she said, because she’d had a chance to look at the menu and had been dismayed by all the American dishes.

She took him by the hand and before he could object, dragged him out of their compartment. But rather than stopping in the ornate dining car, with its silver and crystal and porcelain, she kept going until they reached the observation car. There were tables, arranged with stationery so people could pen letters to their families, plush chairs, and panoramic windows offering an excellent view of the receding tracks. The observation car served drinks and light food, functioning as a lounge, but right that moment there was no service and there were scarcely any other people there. Everyone must be having a proper dinner in the dining car or else had turned in for a nap. It made perfect sense to sleep the evening away.

Casiopea sat down, and Hun-Kamé sat next to her. For the moment the thought of food was forgotten, and she rested her head against the glass.

“Well, if we are going to sit here doing nothing, we could have stayed in the compartment,” he said after a while. “What’s the reason for this excursion?”

“Not everything needs a proper reason. I wanted to get out of there,” she told him. “Do you want to go back?”

“I suppose not. One compartment is as good as another.”

The rattle of the axles was very loud. Clack clack clack. Casiopea smiled.

“I like the train, but I think I will fall in love with the automobile,” she said, tapping her foot to this rhythm.

“Why is that?”

“This heads in one direction, back and forth in a line. But can you picture an automobile? Cutting in whatever direction you will, winding down roads. Did you see them in the city? You could do as you pleased in one of those,” she said, thinking of the vehicles that had rolled before their eyes, providing an exciting chaos to the streets in downtown Mexico City. Along with the night swimming and the dancing, this was one of her secret, deepest wishes.

“You want to go back home,” she said. “I don’t want to go back. Not for a thousand years, and yet…I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m not taking care of Grandfather and fetching the groceries. I’ve never seriously thought of it, and now it seems I should. Or maybe not, maybe it’s too soon. Maybe there’s no point in talking about automobiles when I don’t know if I’ll live to be nineteen. But it would be fun, wouldn’t it? To ride one. Maybe to ride it with you.”

He tossed her a strange look she’d never seen before. She catalogued all his looks and thought she knew them by now. This look she did not recognize. It reminded her of the movement of a match as it strikes the box.

“With me?”

She felt abashed, tried to shrug it off. “It’s only daydreams.”

“Casiopea,” he said. His voice had a deep, pleasant rumble to it. He let his hand fall upon hers.

Again she had the sensation that she was in the belly of a whale, swaying gently, as she had had during the ride from Mexico City to El Paso. She recalled that Jonah was thrown into the sea to appease God, and he lay nestled inside the creature, but she could not remember, for the life of her, what had happened to him.

His thumb stroked over her knuckles. and Hun-Kamé leaned down in what she took to be a motion to kiss her. He had been afraid and uncertain, and now he was composed, and it was she who felt a shiver go down her spine.

She remembered a story she’d read or heard—she could not much remember where—about men who took advantage of women on trains, using the privacy of the compartment as a means for mischief. It might have been the priest who issued the warning during a sermon, it was the kind of thing he might lecture them about. Ride a train and find yourself with a bold, strange man. Kiss a man and soon enough he’ll be taking liberties with you. Wait a little and you’ll be carrying a bastard baby to be baptized at the church, with a single surname to his name.

Yes, men could be brazen on a train.

And so could women, she mused. She was, after all, here, with him. Chasing adventure, a fancy. Chasing something.

There was tightness in her throat, and the sun shone harshly through the window, making his dark eye even darker, as if he objected to its light and conjured more shadows. Since she’d cast away seven layers of decency already, she decided one more would not matter, and if he attempted a kiss she’d allow it.

“I like your daydreams, dear girl,” he said quietly.

“I’ve never said them aloud before,” she told him.