“Hun-Kamé needs my help,” she said.
“And we don’t? You’ll treat us as if we were rubbish?”
“You are the one who has treated me like rubbish, and now that you need me you are willing to offer me the things I’ve wanted. I wanted so much to be liked by you and the family, to make Grandfather proud, but nothing I’ve ever done has been good enough.”
The brat! Talking to him with a brazen tone, the way no woman should talk to a man. She was imperious, like he was somehow beneath her when she ought to have fallen on her knees and begged for forgiveness. She should have agreed without hesitation to do as he said. He was so shocked he could not even begin to speak.
“You will pick him over us?” Martín asked, outraged, when he managed to recover his wits.
“He has shown me more respect and kindness in a few days than you ever showed me my entire life,” Casiopea said, her words slow and deliberate. “I do not care about your crumbs.”
Crumbs! What a ridiculous thing to say when he was offering her the greatest honor imaginable. Brat and bitch. Ungrateful bastard. He wanted to hurl insults at her, but the girl had already stepped away, done with him. The gesture was even worse than her speech. He’d always dismissed Casiopea, he said when their conversation was over. She was supposed to do as he said, when he said it.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Martín demanded, and he clutched her arm.
She froze, lips open, and looked so utterly tiny he almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
Suddenly she clasped her mouth shut, raised her chin, and gave him a shove. He lost his balance and the wicked creature took off, leaping away like a hare. Martín tried to follow her, pushing people aside, but she was swift and small, and waded between pedestrians with much more ease than he did.
“Stop!” he demanded, giving chase. “Stop!”
She looked over her shoulder at him, but she did not slow down. A boy on a bicycle, a basket with bread balanced atop his head, was blocking the way and he thought, Aha, I’ve got you! Martín rushed forward, his fingers gripping her sleeve, but she elbowed him away and pushed the boy on the bicycle aside, sending sweet breads flying around.
The boy groaned, climbing off the bicycle to pick up the bread that had fallen on the ground, and Martín almost collided with him.
There was an intersection up ahead, and the traffic light was about to change. He thought she wouldn’t chance it.
She dashed across the street.
Damn her!
Martín prepared to go after her, but the light turned green and cars were streaming by, the traffic like a river separating them. Anyway, she’d turned a corner and he couldn’t see her anymore, lost among multitudes. He took off his hat, clutching it between his hands in frustration.
A beggar sat at the corner with a tin cup in his lap and a cardboard sign at his feet that said “ALMS.” He was an old man, the deep creases on his face flecked with dirt, his white hair greasy. When he opened his mouth one saw a maw with nary a tooth. Where there had been a left arm, there dangled an empty flap of clothing.
The beggar raised his cup and rattled it, trying to attract Martín’s attention. The young man looked down at the poor wretch and instead of offering the man a few coins, he kicked his cardboard sign away.
“Motherfucker!” the beggar yelled.
Martín did not reply. He stomped all the way across the street. The beggar stood up and kept yelling, “Motherfucker, motherfucker!” When Martín disappeared, the man grabbed his sign and set it back in place, then he sat down again with a loud grumble. The pedestrians, having seen such spectacles before, returned to their routine, heads down, eyes on the newspapers, or else they inspected their watches and the billboards advertising face creams and detergents.
“And what did you tell him?”
“What do you think I told him? Told him to take a hike,” Casiopea said.
She kept walking in circles, sick with worry. Hun-Kamé, on the other hand, was leaning back in a plush chair. Nice suit, black hair slicked back, he looked more bored than anything else.
“Doesn’t it bother you? Your brother has tracked us down,” she said.
“I imagined he’d track us down, sooner or later. I’m glad you did not agree to speak to him, though,” he replied. “Nothing good would come of it.”
“He tried to explain that I’d be welcome back at home. As if that might ever happen. Oh, why are you looking so calm?”
Because he did look far too calm. Carved in stone. Apparently, he did not wish to partake in her agitation, which disturbed her even more. It was as if a mirror refused to give back her reflection.
“Would it please you if I ran around like a headless chicken, as you do?” he inquired.
He seemed to be fond of comparing her to animals. She wondered what he’d come up with next. A turtle? A cat? She might be an entire zoo to him, both funny monkey and pretty bird.
“You are scared of what, precisely?” he asked her before she could become properly incensed by the comment.
“Well, I’m…I’m scared of your brother, of course. He’s found us.”
“I do not think it is what frightens you. Is it your cousin that has you in such a state?”
Casiopea stopped moving for a second, her hands clasped under her breast. Although she wished to tell him that no, Martín had nothing to do with this, the truth was he had everything to do with her current agitation. But it wasn’t him. When she reached deep into herself, she found a slightly different answer.
“I don’t want to go back to Uukumil,” she whispered.
She missed her mother, she felt unsure of herself outside of the safety of her town, and she had no idea where their adventure would eventually lead them, but she did not wish to turn back, for turning away from a quest felt to her akin to sacrilege.
“When I saw him…for a moment, I thought he’d make me go back. He always gets his way and I have to do as he says. And I keep thinking…” She trailed off. She did not understand herself.
“What if you are shackled to the loser in this contest?” Hun-Kamé said, his voice dry. “What if your cousin is the smarter one, sitting in the victor’s corner.”
“What if I’m only free for a few days?” she replied, the disquiet of a butterfly fearing it will be trampled.
Hun-Kamé had been looking around the room, distracted. Now he gazed at her. The god’s age was unknowable; it eluded a specific bracket. He was not old, yet he did not give the appearance of youth. One may count the rings of trees to know the time of their birth, but there were no lines on his face to offer such clues. There was a sense of permanence in him that rendered such inquiries null.