Gods of Jade and Shadow(98)

“Very well,” Hun-Kamé said. “As for you, my brother—”

“I submit to you,” Vucub-Kamé replied, scarred palms up, toward the sky. “Take your vengeance. You’ve earned it.”

Vucub-Kamé sank to his knees, his head bowed, like a war captive, under the shadow of the World Tree. He offered no resistance, the defiance had been drained from him, and the color had vanished from his eyes. They were as pale as pearls, and his clothes, mimicking his debased state, withered, becoming moth-eaten tatters fit for a beggar.

Hun-Kamé looked at Vucub-Kamé with a hard face, the face of the blade against the jugular, but when he leaned down it was to clasp his brother’s shoulder.

“I’ve desired nothing except your death,” he said, “and yet now I do not find the need for it. I was unkind to you and you returned the unkindness, but I cannot perpetuate a cycle of sorrows.”

At this, Vucub-Kamé did raise his head. He tried to read deceit in his brother’s voice, but could not find it.

“It is the remaining mortality in your veins that renders you like this,” he said, wary.

“Perhaps. Or the wisdom to understand the order of duality should not be challenged,” Hun-Kamé said, and then, quietly, “Or the fact that despite my bitterness you are my brother.”

Hun-Kamé looked down at his brother’s scarred hands, and Vucub-Kamé beheld Hun-Kamé’s face, the empty eye socket.

The nature of hate is mysterious. It can gnaw at the heart for an eon, then depart when one expected it to remain as immobile as a mountain. But even mountains erode. Hun-Kamé’s hate had been as high as ten mountains and Vucub-Kamé’s spite as deep as ten oceans. Confronted with each other, at this final moment when Hun-Kamé ought to have let hate swallow him, he had decided to thrust it away, and Vucub-Kamé slid off his mantle of spite in response.

Casiopea had given herself, after all, and Hun-Kamé ought to give too.

Hun-Kamé handed Vucub-Kamé back the box, and Vucub-Kamé hesitated for a moment before carefully grabbing the missing eye and placing it in his brother’s eye socket. Then Vucub-Kamé lifted his hands, and a crown knit itself between his hands, the royal diadem of onyx and jade, which he placed on Hun-Kamé’s head. Around Hun-Kamé’s waist there was now a leather belt decorated with large incrustations of matching onyx and jade.

The brothers were both exactly the same height, and when they looked at each other, their eyes were level, dark and light. They were eternal, never changing, and yet they had changed.

“Welcome to your abode, Supreme Lord of Xibalba,” Vucub-Kamé said.

The wind, whispering in the branches of the World Tree, repeated these words.

Crowned anew, Hun-Kamé might have been expected to make his triumphant entrance into the palace, to bask again in the glory of his kingship. Courtiers filled cups brimming with liquor, the incense burners perfumed the air of the throne room. A hundred exaltations waited to be spoken.

Await they must a little longer.

He returned to the girl.

“Come,” he told Casiopea and took her by the hand. His power restored, he did not need the Black Road to walk between shadows, as she’d done, and he simply slipped into that space between spaces and out into a distant corner of his kingdom.

This was the desert of gray. Nothing grew here. It was the outer edge of Xibalba, where the Black Road begins, even if the borders of Xibalba are ever-changing and no cartographer could ever draw an accurate picture of it. Nevertheless, it was the border of his realm.

“Soon you must return to Middleworld,” Hun-Kamé told her. “And I must become a god.”

“Are you not a god yet?” she asked.

He shook his head. “One last thing remains,” he said, taking her hand between his, and she knew he meant the connective thread of the bone shard, binding death to life. It was there.

“After this…there is no way for me to stay?” she asked.

“You live,” he told her soberly.

“I died, moments ago,” she countered.

“Yes, and I have returned you to your life. Nothing living can remain for long in the Land of the Dead. It will invariably wither.”

“And you cannot exist in the land of the living.”

“No. You forget, besides, my mortality comes to an end. With it, my heart.”

Casiopea nodded. She understood, and if tears prickled her eyes, she quickly rubbed them away. Hun-Kamé, likely wishing to soothe her, spoke.

“You’ve asked for nothing, but I wish to place before you these gifts. Let me grant you the power to speak all tongues of the earth, since death knows all languages,” he said. “And let me give you also the gift of conversing with the ghosts that roam Middleworld. Such necromancy may be of value.”

No show of power accompanied his words, and when the words were said, nothing more remained but to bid each other goodbye.

He pierced her with his gaze, but his face grew softer as he looked at her, like a man who still lies dreaming. He smiled.

He cupped her face between his hands and then he pulled her so very close to him. She slid a hand upon his chest, felt there the heart he’d spoken about.

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him, willing him to remember her. It was impossible, like asking the ocean to remain in the palm of one’s hand, but he was somewhat mortal. He was, despite his gleaming garments and the restitution of his power, more mortal than he’d ever been, and he kissed her back with the absolute belief in love only the young can possess.