Gods of Jade and Shadow - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,22

set down her suitcase and placed it next to his own.

To keep herself from recalling the town priest’s angry face, she sat on the bed and began peeling an orange. She’d bought a bag of them when they were walking around the port as a precaution. She did not know what kind of meals they’d be served or at what time of the day.

“Do you want one?” she asked Hun-Kamé. “Or do you not eat?”

“I don’t need to eat this kind of food in Xibalba, but I am not quite my old self at this moment,” he replied.

“Well, you can have one.”

She held up the orange for him. He extended a hand slowly and grabbed the fruit. At first he simply palmed it and did not attempt to peel it, but then, watching her fingers upon her orange, he began to strip the peel away.

“How’d you end up in that chest, anyway?” she asked, orange juice dripping down her chin. She wiped it off with the back of her hand.

“Treachery.”

“What kind? And how was my grandfather involved?”

“Mortals prayed to us and gave us sacrifices, they composed hymns and burned incense. They don’t anymore. When your grandfather lanced his skin and drew blood, and begged me to pay him a visit, reciting the proper words, I was curious. I went. The greatest sacrifices are always in blood and from a mortal’s own volition. Unfortunately, it was a trap. He was working for my brother.”

Outside of their room the air crackled with the shouts of the captain, ordering the men to finish loading the cargo so they might sail away. To and fro the sailors went. They’d be off any minute now. Travel by water did not alarm Casiopea; in fact, it was soothing for her nerves. She could understand water. She’d slipped into the cenotes since she was a toddler. Had travel by train been necessary she might have been more reluctant or more excitable.

“How long did you spend in that chest?” she asked.

“Fifty years. Your grandfather was a young man then.”

“Were you aware of what was going on?”

“I slept, but it’s not the sleep of mortals.”

She remembered what Loray had told her, how gods could not die. Instead they slept. Casiopea frowned.

“How many gods are there?”

“I have eleven brothers.”

“And beyond that? I go to church every week, and well…the priest says if you are good you’ll head straight to Heaven, but is Heaven real, then? Is there one God up there or many?”

It was another sin to ask this. Four, five, how many was that? Oh, did it matter? She wanted to know.

Although he had carefully peeled his orange, Hun-Kamé was not eating it. He held it in the palm of his hand. “Chu’lel,” he said. “It is the sacred life force that resides around you. In the streams, in the resins of trees, in the stones. It births gods and those gods are shaped by the thoughts of men. Gods belong to the place where the chu’lel emanated and birthed them; they may not travel too far. The god of your church, if he is awake, does not live in these lands.”

She spit out the seeds from her orange, cupping them in her hand. There was a wastebasket next to the washstand. She tossed them in there.

“Why wouldn’t he be awake?” she asked, frowning.

“The prayers and offerings of mortals feed gods, they give them power, just as they give them shape. But when the prayers cease, the chu’lel that bubbled to the surface may sink back into the earth, and the gods must sleep. But they remain and may flower again.”

Finally Hun-Kamé took a section of the fruit and placed it in his mouth. If he enjoyed the taste of the food, his face did not show it. Whatever foods the gods sampled in their abode would be much more enticing than an orange.

She thought back to the tale of the Hero Twins, when they defeat the Lords of Xibalba and decree that no sacrificial blood will ever be offered again to them, and she wondered if that was the moment when the gods had lost their worshippers, or whether it happened later. Perhaps she might ask about them at some point, but now a more urgent question assailed her.

“How can you be here, then, when mortals do not pray to you?”

“There are wells of power, secret places unlike others, where the land is fertile and strong, and gods may remain. My dominion is vaster than others