She woke up screaming. The rooms were connected, and Hun-Kamé must have heard her because he rushed in, looking startled. At first Casiopea said nothing. She was terribly embarrassed. She’d roused him, and he seemed entirely unsure of whether he should speak or dash out.
“What is it?”
“I died,” she told him, her mouth trembling, although she had meant to say “I had a dream, I’ll go back to sleep,” even if the dream had followed her, the room eerily quiet, the shadows much too dark. On the floor, a pillow might have been a wild creature ready to strike, and the wallpaper, it was the foliage of a distant jungle.
“I was in Xibalba.”
The name, so soft, like an insect’s wing, and his face, upon hearing it, strained, uncertain. She kicked the covers away and stood up, her voice hoarse.
“What happened there?”
She shook her head. “There was blood, my blood. The road turned crimson with it. I don’t want to say more; you told me we shouldn’t speak about certain things.”
She rubbed her left hand, which ached, and looked down at the floor, careful to avoid the too-dark shadows in the corners, which resembled black wraiths. She knew, if she stared at them, they might shift and grin at her. There was the memory of death in the darkness, dream-death, but not any falser for its oneiric nature.
“It hurts again?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. Not just the hand. The head, her body, pain like a current running through her. Pins and needles in her arms and legs, a sour taste in her mouth. The pain came and went, but it didn’t end.
He reached out and held her hand. The ache diminished and he released her. She looked up at him. “I apologize for the discomfort, both the physical pain and the pain gazing upon Xibalba may cause you,” he said. “I know that contemplating my kingdom of dust and smoke is no simple thing for a mortal.”
“ ‘Yesterday a dream; tomorrow dust. Nothing, just before; just after, smoke,’ ” she replied.
It was an automatic reflex. In her desire to soothe herself she’d stretched her mind, looking for something familiar, and ended up finding the old tome with Quevedo’s sonnets. A poor choice, but one made in haste.
“Pretty words,” he said. “What do they mean?”
“It’s a poem, from one of my father’s books. It was titled ‘He indicates life’s essential brevity, unexpected and with suffering, assaulted by death.’ I don’t think I’d mind if life was brief if only…”
“If only what?” he pressed her, when she didn’t speak.
“You’d laugh.”
“I don’t much laugh at you.”
Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have said a word to him, to anyone, but her fear clung to her like a spider web, and in her attempt to shake it off she forgot she should have been mortified about speaking so plainly. Babbling, truly. In the end, what did she care? And had she not told him so many things already?
“I’d like to dance. The dances we couldn’t dance in Uukumil. My mother, she said a waltz had been fine in her day, but now she’s heard people dance too fast. But I’d like to dance fast.”
She wouldn’t know where to start, couldn’t imagine how they did the Charleston, but words were whispered, even in towns like Uukumil, about the dances and the shoes and the dresses the girls wore. Enough to seed the idea in her mind, let it take root.
“And what else?”
“Swimming at night, in the Pacific. To taste the water, taste the salt. To see if it tastes any different from the water of the Yucatán.”
He chuckled at this.
“You said you wouldn’t laugh!” she chided him.
As she spoke, the sounds of the city returned. The distant, strident note of a trumpet blasted the night, the laughter of pedestrians spilled against their window, and the room became ordinary: the headboard, smooth and lacquered, the pillows on the floor a pale lump of cotton, the wallpaper a pattern of rhomboids. Casiopea and Hun-Kamé were ordinary, too, sitting in the semi-darkness of any spring night. They’d scared away whatever odd shadows had crept by their side.
“I don’t laugh out of malice. As I’ve said, I like your daydreams. I’ll tell you what, when this is over, I’ll give you many gifts so that you may go dancing and swimming as you wish,” he declared and made a motion with his hand, tossing upon the floor dozens of black pearls, which rolled under the bed, a chair.
She caught one, and it dissolved into nothingness between her fingers, an illusion, like others he used. Now it was Casiopea’s turn to chuckle.
“They’re not real. You’re giving me fake pearls. It’s like handing me a slice of cake and taking it away.”
“It’s merely an amusement, for the time being. But I will pay you back, when it is all over.”
“When it is over,” she repeated, and she couldn’t help the uncertainty in her voice.
The Black Road, the blood on her hands were gone but not forgotten. The hand hurt, with its bone shard that was death, and she knew herself minuscule and mortal.
“I won’t lie to you,” he said. “I don’t know what awaits us in Tierra Blanca. My brother is a liar and a traitor, and if he lopped my head off once, no doubt he will attempt to do it again. You have been brave, and you might have to be braver.”
“I won’t stop now, not when we are almost there,” she replied, not wishing him to assume her worries meant she’d falter at this point. “And afterward, when you are a god, we’ll laugh at all the trials we went through. Maybe they’ll even tell stories about us, like with the Hero Twins.”
She smiled. Casiopea thought this would reassure him, but instead he was rattled; he looked away. She’d been scared and now it was his turn to look anxious. She felt his dread, as if it were scraping against her skin, but it was a different sort of dread. She feared death, Xibalba, the bone shard in her hand. He feared something else.
“Listen to me, there’re not many hours in the night left. Everything will change soon,” he said, hurriedly, as if someone were chasing him. As if to emphasize this, he began pacing, back and forth he went. “Tomorrow I may be someone else. I’ll regain my throne, I’ll change. Six hours, sixteen, maybe not tomorrow, maybe sixty hours, but no matter, soon. I’ll look at you with different eyes. You must trust me, now, when I speak to you, will you?”
He kept talking, unwilling to give her a space to raise her voice, his words apparently of the utmost urgency.
“I deal in illusions. It is my gift. But it’s not an illusion. Who I am right this second with you. Do you understand? I can’t say it any better. Remember me like this, if you choose to remember me at all.”