“I suppose it was.”
“It wasn’t very good.”
“I don’t have much practice with them.”
She smiled at him and he smiled back. Minutes passed before he half turned away from Casiopea, regarding the wall of flame.
“The spell is sound enough, but there is a solution to every riddle,” Hun-Kamé said. “If I thrust myself against the flames, I’d simply scorch my body and writhe in pain. But I won’t do that, not exactly. What we need is that guard to come here, right next to the barrier.”
“What do you propose?”
“Have you any practice at playing the damsel in distress?”
“I could manage.”
“Good. The man is tired; so is the Uay Chivo. Magic takes a toll. Exhaustion may engender mistakes. I will cast an illusion, make myself disappear. You must make a ruckus. Say I’ve run off and get him as near as you can.”
“That is all?”
“I’ll manage the rest.”
Casiopea nodded. Hun-Kamé stood up, and he slowly lifted his hands. He was there, but then an inky darkness lifted from the floor, enveloping him in the blink of an eye, and he disappeared. The guard who was supposed to watch them had his eyes closed; he had witnessed nothing. Casiopea hoped for the best, took a deep breath and cried out.
“He’s gone! He’s left me, he’s gone!”
The guard was startled awake and stood up, his hand immediately going to the hilt of his knife.
“He’s escaped!” Casiopea cried.
The man’s eyes went wide. He opened his mouth but did not seem able to believe the sight, the girl alone in the circle of fire, hands pitifully pressed against her face.
“He went away, like a puff of smoke, left me here. Please, come, see,” she babbled.
The man looked like he was about to bolt out of the room. Casiopea pointed to the floor. “See! All he’s left behind is a jewel, a tiny diamond, like the coin you toss a beggar.”
Creative, her tongue, schooled by books and poems. The words, along with her distraught expression, must have done the trick. The guard rushed forward, stood by the rim of fire, and bent down to look at the nonexistent diamond Casiopea was pointing at.
All of a sudden the guard was pulled forward, Hun-Kamé became visible again as the man was violently flung against the floor, the top of his head falling inside the circle of fire. Blood welled from the man’s temple and Hun-Kamé dragged him around, following the circle’s contour, whispering several words. It was as if he were wiping chalk off a slate, the wall weakening, dissolving with each word and each drop of the man’s blood. Every single link in a spell is precious. Topple one, the others will fall, and this is exactly what Hun-Kamé did. He wrote over, crossed out, he eliminated a single link, and the violet fire ceased to burn.
Once the barrier was gone, Casiopea bent down, pressing a hand against the man’s neck, relieved to feel a pulse beneath her fingers.
“Thank God, he is not dead,” she said.
“What if he was?” Hun-Kamé replied with a shrug, smoothing the lapels of his suit. “He is only a man.”
“I am only a woman. It doesn’t mean you can chop me down like a weed, without any care or thought; neither can you chop him.”
“You forget, maybe, who I am.”
“I think you are a nobleman, and killing a man who need not be killed would be ignoble. Am I mistaken?” she countered.
Behind his handsome, polished stillness, there lay a hard and ugly core. Her naïveté allowed her to glimpse it, but she could not fear it. He’d been kind to her, and she therefore expected his kindness would extend to the entire world. He must have realized this and rather than reply with a harsh word he raised a palm up politely.
“You are gracious. I will be gracious, for your sake,” he told her.
At that point she noticed that Hun-Kamé’s hand, which he’d used to get hold of the guard and thrust briefly into the barrier, was blackened, as if it had been charred. This distracted her from the meaning of his words, which, had she analyzed, she would have found rather shocking, since he’d said he meant to please her. He did this thing for her.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“It is not a nice sensation, but soon remedied,” he replied and shook his hand, bits of blackened skin flaking off, revealing a whole and perfect hand again, which now reached for the knife the guard had dropped. “But I suspect there will be more fire and pain. Come, we need to find the Uay Chivo. I can’t leave without that necklace.”
They headed up the stairs quietly. The house had been a tomb when they entered it, and it had returned to its stillness, their steps almost soundless. At the end of a hallway they glimpsed a man standing in front of a door and retreated. It was the other guard.
“What now?” she whispered.
“Same as before, I’ll make myself hard to spot.”
As he said this, the inky darkness shrouded him and he disappeared, but when she peered down carefully at the shadows she noticed that they were darker than they should have been, a thing of velvet. This velvet piece of darkness drifted around the corner and away. Casiopea pressed her lips together and waited.
Hun-Kamé came back a couple of minutes later and guided her to the door the sentinel had been guarding, only the man was now sprawled before it.
“Alive,” Hun-Kamé pointed out, half in jest. “Never say I was not generous to you.”
“If anyone asks, I’ll say you are the most generous of all the gods I’ve ever met.”
“Your jokes are no good either,” he replied.
But he was smiling again; the practice of it made it easier.
He turned around and fiddled with the door, unlocking it as he’d done with the boxes. The Uay Chivo’s room was crammed with many bottles, jars, and sundry objects, just as his study had been filled with odd specimens. In the room there were two goat sculptures that matched the ones downstairs, but the sculptures in this room were made of a dark, rich wood. There was also a four-poster bed, heavy and ornate. On it slept the old man, his hands against his chest, covering the necklace.
They moved quietly, but no sooner had they taken three steps than the wooden goats turned their heads in their direction, staring at them. The room grew warmer.
“What a pair of brazen fools you are,” the Uay Chivo said, rising from the bed. “Walking into my inner sanctum like one walks into the maw of a beast.”
“Rethink whatever it is you are planning,” Hun-Kamé said.