“Then I dismiss you and will take your answers with me.”
The smoke creature grew larger, then it bowed, its body folding upon itself, its forehead touching the ground. The smoke seeped into the earth, like the rain sinks into the soil, and was gone. Around them the night trembled, bidding the apparition goodbye.
“You have heard where we will journey,” Hun-Kamé told her. “Tomorrow we depart for Mexico City.”
He could have said they’d depart for Antarctica and it wouldn’t have mattered much; she couldn’t muster the energy for a reply and her forehead ached.
They walked back to the guesthouse. It was very late and the front door was closed, but Hun-Kamé opened the door with ease. They went to their rooms and Casiopea, exhausted by the excursion, fell upon the bed without bothering to change out of her clothes, dressed in silver and white. The wonders of the night did not keep her up, and she slept soundly.
* * *
—
The next day, they caught the evening train to Mexico City. Had they taken an earlier train, Casiopea might have been able to gaze out the window and observe the landscape, the marshes and the scrub growth and the rows of palm trees. Huts with walls of bamboo, old men sitting in worn chairs, children chasing stray dogs. She might have been able to see the train climb up from the low hills of Veracruz and approach the mountains, their tops dusted with snow. But the night was like spilled ink upon the page, blotting out all vegetation and natural features.
Casiopea did feel the train, though. It lumbered onward, away from the humid heat of the coast. She had never been on such a contraption. She felt as if she rested in the belly of a metal beast, like Jonah who was swallowed by the whale. This image in her family’s Bible had often disconcerted her, the man sitting inside a fish, his face surprised. Now she sympathized with him. She could not see where they were headed, nor the place where they’d come from, and thus felt as though time and the world around her transmogrified, became unknowable; it was as if she were traveling in a dream.
She listened to the metallic click of the wheels along the steel rails while Hun-Kamé leaned back in his chair. They were sharing a sleeping car and it was small, so when he sat like that, his legs stretched out, he seemed to take up all the space. She did not mind, though, curled up against the window, the stars and the sky absorbing her thoughts. She associated her father with the smell of musty books or ink, the rustle of paper—he’d been a clerk, those had been the tools of his trade. But most of all she associated him with the stars, which he loved.
“You can speak with ghosts?” she asked, breaking the silence in their compartment.
“And other things that roam the night, as you may have noticed,” Hun-Kamé replied.
“Would you be able to speak with my father? He passed away when I was small.”
He turned his head, looked at her with disinterest. “Ghosts generally attach themselves to the stones, to a single place; rarely they may be shackled to a single person. I could not, from here, summon your father. Besides, he may not be a ghost. Not everyone who dies binds himself to the land. If your father perished quietly, then quietly he will have left this mortal realm.”
“Would he be in Xibalba?” she asked.
“Most mortals stopped worshipping the gods of Xibalba long ago, and since their belief calcified, they do not venture down our roads anymore. Your father is not my subject.”
For a moment she had thought she might be able to see her dear old father’s face, to listen to his voice. Disappointed, she turned toward the window.
“I suppose it’s for the best,” she said with a sigh.
“What do you mean?”
“Xibalba is a terrible place. There is a river of blood, and the House of Bats and the House of Gloom. I would not want my father to be in such a frightful land.” But here she paused and tapped a finger against the glass, frowning. “But then, the Hero Twins kill you in the story I heard, yet here you are. I wonder if all of it is true. Perhaps it is not as bad as that.”
“Mortals like to speak their stories and do not always tell the true tale,” Hun-Kamé said disdainfully. He had taken his straw hat off and was inspecting it, his fingers carefully touching the fibers.
“What is Xibalba like? What is the true tale?”
The straw hat interested him more than her question, and since he did not always provide an answer, she had almost given up on an explanation when he spoke with that cool, collected voice, which was drained of emotion.
“The Black Road leads to Xibalba, and at its heart there sits my palace, like a jewel upon the crown of your kings. It is very large, and decorated with colorful murals. It has almost as many rooms as the year has days. It is surrounded by other fine buildings, so elegant no human construction may approximate them. Picture a jewel, yes, but one without a single imperfection, balanced upon your palm.”
He leaned forward, the hat dangling from his fingers. His face had become more animated. “My palace can be found by a series of ponds of blue-green waters, and in the ponds swim the strangest, most curious fish from the coldest depths, blind, but beautiful. They all glow with an interior light, like the firefly glows. There are trees around these ponds. Trees like the ceiba tree, but their bark is silver and their fruits are silvery, and they shine in the dark.”
“Do you miss it?” she asked, because there was longing in his words, and his kingdom sounded quite astonishing, not like the shadowy place of sorrow she’d been told about.
“I belong there,” he said.
She thought it might be a good thing to possess such certainty. She had never known quite where she belonged, a Leyva but not really a member of the family. And Uukumil had been stifling. It worried her; he knew exactly where he’d be headed, and she realized she could not return to her hometown.
What would she do when Hun-Kamé regained his missing organs? This line of thought in turn made her consider his health.
“How does it feel?” she asked. “The ear.”
Casiopea touched her own ear as she spoke. The process of reintegrating it had appeared effortless, but it might not truly be so.
“What?” he asked.
“Does it pain you?” she said.
“No.”
“My hand hurts sometimes,” she admitted.
“Let me see.”
“It doesn’t hurt now,” she clarified. “But yesterday, it did. Like grit in your eye, you know? But not in my eye, of course.”
Hun-Kamé stood up and went to her side, lifting her hand and holding it up, as if to get a better look at it, even though there was nothing to look at. Maybe he could see the bone shard, hidden inside her skin.