his face flecked with dirt, his white hair greasy. When he opened his mouth one saw a maw with nary a tooth. Where there had been a left arm, there dangled an empty flap of clothing.
The beggar raised his cup and rattled it, trying to attract Martín’s attention. The young man looked down at the poor wretch and instead of offering the man a few coins, he kicked his cardboard sign away.
“Motherfucker!” the beggar yelled.
Martín did not reply. He stomped all the way across the street. The beggar stood up and kept yelling, “Motherfucker, motherfucker!” When Martín disappeared, the man grabbed his sign and set it back in place, then he sat down again with a loud grumble. The pedestrians, having seen such spectacles before, returned to their routine, heads down, eyes on the newspapers, or else they inspected their watches and the billboards advertising face creams and detergents.
“And what did you tell him?”
“What do you think I told him? Told him to take a hike,” Casiopea said.
She kept walking in circles, sick with worry. Hun-Kamé, on the other hand, was leaning back in a plush chair. Nice suit, black hair slicked back, he looked more bored than anything else.
“Doesn’t it bother you? Your brother has tracked us down,” she said.
“I imagined he’d track us down, sooner or later. I’m glad you did not agree to speak to him, though,” he replied. “Nothing good would come of it.”
“He tried to explain that I’d be welcome back at home. As if that might ever happen. Oh, why are you looking so calm?”
Because he did look far too calm. Carved in stone. Apparently, he did not wish to partake in her agitation, which disturbed her even more. It was as if a mirror refused to give back her reflection.
“Would it please you if I ran around like a headless chicken, as you do?” he inquired.
He seemed to be fond of comparing her to animals. She wondered what he’d come up with next. A turtle? A cat? She might be an entire zoo to him, both funny monkey and pretty bird.
“You are scared of what, precisely?” he asked her before she could become properly incensed by the comment.
“Well, I’m…I’m scared of your brother, of course. He’s found us.”
“I do not think it is what frightens you. Is it your cousin that has you in such a state?”
Casiopea stopped moving for a second, her hands clasped under her breast. Although she wished to tell him that no, Martín had nothing to do with this, the truth was he had everything to do with her current agitation. But it wasn’t him. When she reached deep into herself, she found a slightly different answer.
“I don’t want to go back to Uukumil,” she whispered.
She missed her mother, she felt unsure of herself outside of the safety of her town, and she had no idea where their adventure would eventually lead them, but she did not wish to turn back, for turning away from a quest felt to her akin to sacrilege.
“When I saw him…for a moment, I thought he’d make me go back. He always gets his way and I have to do as he says. And I keep thinking…” She trailed off. She did not understand herself.
“What if you are shackled to the loser in this contest?” Hun-Kamé said, his voice dry. “What if your cousin is the smarter one, sitting in the victor’s corner.”
“What if I’m only free for a few days?” she replied, the disquiet of a butterfly fearing it will be trampled.
Hun-Kamé had been looking around the room, distracted. Now he gazed at her. The god’s age was unknowable; it eluded a specific bracket. He was not old, yet he did not give the appearance of youth. One may count the rings of trees to know the time of their birth, but there were no lines on his face to offer such clues. There was a sense of permanence in him that rendered such inquiries null.
When he looked at her, however, Casiopea noticed he was boyish, which she’d never realized before. Of course, this was because he had never been young before. But in that moment he reflected her, sympathy and the same apprehension masking him. Somehow this capacity to understand her also brought forth the strange change in his countenance. No longer ageless, he was a young man. Twenty-one, twenty, a passerby would have guessed.
“I ask myself the same question,” he told her, and his voice was equally young,