“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.
Casiopea made a scoffing noise; it lodged in the back of her throat. She scratched one of the oranges with a single nail.
He was quiet, and she imagined they would spend the remainder of the trip in silence, just as they’d traveled in silence to Mérida and then to Progreso. He minced his words, as though they were precious stones, probably thinking her unworthy of them. She had rationed her words too, having to conceal her thoughts in the presence of her family members, but this was not her nature. It was an act born of sheer necessity.
“I suppose you do have a point,” he said, surprising her.
Casiopea raised her head, thinking she’d heard him wrong.
“Hun-Kamé you may call me, while we are in Middleworld.”
“That is very generous of you,” she said sarcastically.
“I realize that,” he replied in earnest.
She was unable to suppress a chuckle. “You don’t have a sense of humor, do you?”
“What good would that do me?”
His voice was flat and she smiled, feeling the rest of the trip might not be all silent stares after all. It was her first trip by boat, her first trip by anything, as a matter of fact, and she did not particularly relish the thought of spending it pretending she was a nun who had made a vow of silence.
“Do you have more fruit?” he asked.
Casiopea grabbed another orange and tossed it at him. He caught it with his left hand.
The crew had finished securing all the bales and the ship slid out of Progreso, on its way to Veracruz. She did not even realize when this happened, as she was too engrossed in their conversation and had forgotten she was supposed to feel nervous about being alone with him.
“There, in the cabinet. Get me a brandy,” Cirilo ordered.
Martín obeyed, opening the cabinet that contained some of his grandfather’s favorite trinkets. It also housed a wonderfully expensive set of glasses with a matching decanter, decorated with a row of hexagons and stylized ferns. Grandfather had said Martín could have it as a gift on his wedding day.
He poured the old man a drink and handed it to him. His grandfather had slid back into bed, pulling the covers up, and drank his brandy slowly. Martín was not ordinarily invited to share a nightcap with the old man, but he was rattled and did not bother asking him for permission, pouring himself a drink too. When he was done, he sat on a chair by the side of the bed and chuckled.
“Christ,” Martín said. “Fucking Christ.”
“Watch your blasphemous mouth,” Grandfather said.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve recently met a god,” Martín snapped back.
Despite his impertinent tone, Martín stared down at the floor, unable to look at the old man. He, like everyone else in the house, regarded Cirilo as an intransigent stone idol who must be meticulously obeyed, lest they incur his wrath.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about this? A lord of the Underworld, a chest filled with bones. Nothing,” Martín muttered, feeling cheated.
“I didn’t think you were ready. And I believed I had more time.”
For all his aches and pains and complaints, despite leaning more heavily on his cane these days, the old man was indestructible. His eyes shone bright and alert in his weathered face and his teeth, yellow with time, remained sharp.
“Well…will you tell me now?”
“What do you want, Martín? A bedtime story?”
“An explanation.”
“What is there to explain?”
Cirilo busied himself with a pillow, trying to make himself more comfortable, and then deciding that he couldn’t, or wouldn’t do it, gestured for his grandson to finish the task. It was the kind of request that Casiopea would have fulfilled, but she was gone. Martín placed another pillow behind the man’s back, frowning.
“Grandfather,” Martín said when he was done, hoping the man would deign to answer his question. Cirilo looked irritated, but he spoke all the same.
“I was a nobody, with no prospects, minding my own business and carrying on as best I could, when one day this woman came to see me. She was very beautiful, unhumanly beautiful, and she told me I’d been born on the appropriate day, of the appropriate month.”