Vucub-Kamé took a half dozen steps and carefully placed the apple back in the bowl.
“I’m offering you your secret wish,” Vucub-Kamé said simply.
Casiopea felt as if she’d swallowed a goldfish whole and it swam in the pit of her stomach. She pressed a hand against her body, thinking this might soothe her, but it did no good, because she opened her mouth and sputtered silly words, anyway, unable to control her shaky voice.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“He knows what I mean,” Vucub-Kamé said with that same slice of a smile he’d smiled before, circling them. “You know what I mean, Casiopea. I mean the chance to live a life in Middleworld, a whole, long, happy life, even to love. Are you not tired of your denials?”
Vucub-Kamé stood immobile, watching them with his strange, inhuman eyes, as firm as a cliff against the ocean’s spray, so cold she shivered. Next to her Hun-Kamé wrapped an arm around her shoulders, as if to keep her warm, keep her from trembling.
“You don’t have the capacity to accomplish such a thing,” Hun-Kamé declared.
“If the whole of your blood spills upon this place, if this ultimate sacrifice is performed, every stone and every bit of metal in this building will thrum with the might of Xibalba. Bow before me, brother. Give me your blood and forget yourself. If you will it, it will be.”
Conviction, symbols. Casiopea thought the pale-eyed god spoke truth; that this could happen, this scared her more than any foe they’d met during their journey.
“I must ask again if you want her to walk the Black Road. Or maybe you’d prefer my most generous alternative,” Vucub-Kamé said, his voice light and sly.
No, she thought. She wasn’t entirely sure why Vucub-Kamé was offering this and what was happening, but she’d say no. She’d seen bones and ash and death. She was afraid, she wished to live, and yet she was no fool. She could not agree to this. She opened her mouth, struggling to put this into words.
“We need time to consider it,” Hun-Kamé replied instead.
Casiopea was so startled she gripped his arm and looked up at him. But Hun-Kamé was busy staring at his brother, and Vucub-Kamé stared back at him.
“Time is precious. How much time do you think this darling girl has left? How much death poisons her veins? Answer me now.”
“Give me an hour,” she said.
She saw a glimmer in Vucub-Kamé’s eyes, an intense, cold flash, like the edge of a blade, directed at her.
“A single hour,” she insisted. “Surely a great lord can grant an hour.” If words have power, then requests must have power too, she guessed and she guessed right. Vucub-Kamé nodded reluctantly.
“One hour, then,” he granted her. “Think about it carefully. Reject me and you’ll face the Black Road. I doubt you wish for that.”
Vucub-Kamé summoned shadows, and the shadows wrapped him as warmly as the cape he wore, then collapsed on the floor, the god vanishing and the darkness that had infected the room disappearing. The lights were bright, the room ordinary.
“Come, we need to go down by the sea,” Hun-Kamé said, clutching her hand.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because my brother would surely spy on us here, but he has no dominion over the sea. That belongs to others. Let’s go,” he urged her.
Not many people visited the beach, despite the wide stone steps that led down to it. Most guests preferred the comfort of the swimming pool and the shade of its umbrellas, the waiters walking by with drinks on a tray. At night, the beach was absolutely deserted. The full moon lurked in a corner of the sky, guiding their way, but a cloud drifted over its surface, muffling its light. Strangely, this illumination resembled the night-sun of the Underworld, rendering all things half hidden, as if to aid their secrecy.
Despite the lack of proper light, Casiopea could see Hun-Kamé’s face clearly. It is possible her vision had sharpened since she shared some of the god’s essence, revealing secrets tucked in the dark, or she had grown so accustomed to Hun-Kamé she could conjure his features with ease.
“Come into the water,” he said.
“Our clothes will be ruined,” she told him, her shoes in her hands.
“It is necessary,” he said and walked toward the waves, ankle deep. “The cenotes we may roam, but the ocean with its currents and its tides, that was never ours. The salt will keep our secrets. My brother can’t hear us here.”
She placed the shoes on a rock and went into the water. It was cold; the waves struck the land with a stark precision, violent almost. The water, in the daytime, was of a precious blue-green, but it had now turned gray and she waded into this grayness.
“You have a plan, yes?” she told him. “Some way to defeat him?”
“I have nothing beyond the two options he has offered us,” he said, sounding solemn.
“But then…”
She’d assumed he would reveal a plot of some sort, a trick they could employ, like the Hero Twins, who burned the feathers of a macaw to avoid the peril of the House of Gloom and fed old bones to the jaguars so they would not be devoured. That’s the way stories went.
“What do you think my name is?” Hun-Kamé asked abruptly.
The wind was picking up and whipped at her expensive dress, and the sea was loud, and the lights from the casino were far. Casiopea shook her head.
“I know your name,” she said.
“No. Not the name I told you. If you’d seen me on the street, if you’d met me while you walked through the city and you’d looked at me over your shoulder, what name would you have given me?”
“Are we playing a game?” she asked, exasperated.
“I told you we all have different names. You are Lady Tun, you are Casiopea, you are the Stone Maiden, and deep inside your heart you have a secret name. Grant me a name and it will be yours and mine alone.”
“I don’t—”
He was standing close to her, but he moved closer, and she stared at him.
“I could be a different person. If you gave me a name, who is to say it is not mine? If I had an ordinary name, I could have an ordinary story,” he said. “I could swear I first saw you in Mérida, standing in the middle of the street.”
It was too cold out there, and she without a jacket, the tips of her fingers tingling. Casiopea wanted to rub her hands against her arms, but did not move.
“It’s all symbols, the stories we tell; if you give me a name I could die and I could open my eyes again, and I’d remember that name.”