The brothers were both exactly the same height, and when they looked at each other, their eyes were level, dark and light. They were eternal, never changing, and yet they had changed.
“Welcome to your abode, Supreme Lord of Xibalba,” Vucub-Kamé said.
The wind, whispering in the branches of the World Tree, repeated these words.
Crowned anew, Hun-Kamé might have been expected to make his triumphant entrance into the palace, to bask again in the glory of his kingship. Courtiers filled cups brimming with liquor, the incense burners perfumed the air of the throne room. A hundred exaltations waited to be spoken.
Await they must a little longer.
He returned to the girl.
“Come,” he told Casiopea and took her by the hand. His power restored, he did not need the Black Road to walk between shadows, as she’d done, and he simply slipped into that space between spaces and out into a distant corner of his kingdom.
This was the desert of gray. Nothing grew here. It was the outer edge of Xibalba, where the Black Road begins, even if the borders of Xibalba are ever-changing and no cartographer could ever draw an accurate picture of it. Nevertheless, it was the border of his realm.
“Soon you must return to Middleworld,” Hun-Kamé told her. “And I must become a god.”
“Are you not a god yet?” she asked.
He shook his head. “One last thing remains,” he said, taking her hand between his, and she knew he meant the connective thread of the bone shard, binding death to life. It was there.
“After this…there is no way for me to stay?” she asked.
“You live,” he told her soberly.
“I died, moments ago,” she countered.
“Yes, and I have returned you to your life. Nothing living can remain for long in the Land of the Dead. It will invariably wither.”
“And you cannot exist in the land of the living.”
“No. You forget, besides, my mortality comes to an end. With it, my heart.”
Casiopea nodded. She understood, and if tears prickled her eyes, she quickly rubbed them away. Hun-Kamé, likely wishing to soothe her, spoke.
“You’ve asked for nothing, but I wish to place before you these gifts. Let me grant you the power to speak all tongues of the earth, since death knows all languages,” he said. “And let me give you also the gift of conversing with the ghosts that roam Middleworld. Such necromancy may be of value.”
No show of power accompanied his words, and when the words were said, nothing more remained but to bid each other goodbye.
He pierced her with his gaze, but his face grew softer as he looked at her, like a man who still lies dreaming. He smiled.
He cupped her face between his hands and then he pulled her so very close to him. She slid a hand upon his chest, felt there the heart he’d spoken about.
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him, willing him to remember her. It was impossible, like asking the ocean to remain in the palm of one’s hand, but he was somewhat mortal. He was, despite his gleaming garments and the restitution of his power, more mortal than he’d ever been, and he kissed her back with the absolute belief in love only the young can possess.
He kissed her knuckles and closed his eyes for a moment. His hand fell upon her throat. No mark of the wound she’d inflicted remained, but he traced the invisible line nevertheless, before opening his eyes and looking at Casiopea.
Then he pulled out the bone shard that lay deep within her flesh, the last piece in the puzzle of his immortality.
The dark thread that bound them snapped. She stared at him as he placed a hand on his chest and gasped. His heart was grinding to dust beneath the palm of his hand, and it hurt to see this, but she did not look away.
When there was but a gray speck of his heart left, he bent down and kissed her again, briefly, a brush of lips. A grain of dust may contain a universe inside, and it was the same for him. Within that gray speck there lived his love and he gave it to Casiopea, for her to see. He’d fallen in love slowly and quietly, and it was a quiet sort of love, full of phrases left unsaid, laced with dreams. He had imagined himself a man for her, and he allowed her to see the extent of this man, and he gave her this speck of heart, which was a man, to hold for a moment before taking it back the second before it faded.
As he straightened up, his eyes all darkness, a curious thing happened. The speck did not fade, instead turning vermillion, and it lodged behind those dark eyes, unseen. But Xibalba, so intimately connected to its lord, must have seen, must have known. Xibalba sensed the echo of this silent goodbye.
The inhabitants of this realm, who had been startled when the land held its breath, now had a second chance to be surprised. Such a dark place, Xibalba, built of bitter nightmares and fever dreams, with the stones of sorrow; a land where lost souls could never find the proper road. But the Lord Hun-Kamé had dreamed a different dream, and this dream that was now nothing but a speck subtly transformed the land.
There were no flowers in Xibalba. Trees and weeds and the strange orchids that were not orchids dotted the Underworld, wild desert anemones grew upon its white plains, but there were no flowers in its jungles, its swamps, nor its mountains. Yet now flowers bloomed in the most astonishing of places, across the gray desert. Tiny, red flowers, as if demonstrating for Hun-Kamé what he could no longer demonstrate, so that Casiopea, instead of observing the cold face of a stranger as he’d warned her, beheld instead the appearance of the red flowers, like the ink of a love letter. The stars, when traced by the human eye, formed constellations, and the flowers, linked together, spoke to her. They said, “My love.”
Hun-Kamé bowed his head to her, like a commoner instead of a lord.
Then he took Casiopea’s hand again and wrapped her in his cloak for a second. It was like slipping into an absolute blackness, the darkness of the garment blotting out Xibalba, and within another second she had slipped into her hotel room. Alone.
Grief arrived, eager to keep her company, and she clutched her hands together and raised them to her lips, head bowed. Yet as Casiopea stood in the middle of the room she did not consider her heartache for long, because the sound of crying reached her ears, startling her. It was as if someone else gave voice to her unhappiness. Cautious, she approached the doorway of the room Hun-Kamé had occupied and found Martín sitting on the floor. Her cousin wept.
Casiopea leaned down next to him, slowly, like one might when dealing with a scared child.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Grandfather is going to kill me when I get back to Uukumil,” he said, sniffling. “You might as well have asked Hun-Kamé to cut off my head.”