Gods of Jade and Shadow - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,70
profile for a second. She spoke, her voice as light as she could make it.
“Do you think they’ll have opened the dining car yet?” she asked.
“We can find out,” he said and they rose.
He brushed a few wrinkles from his suit, and she fixed her hair. He offered her his arm.
The dining car was empty but the tables were all set, with spotless white linens and gleaming glasses. Casiopea rested her chin against her hand and looked out the window, at the stars, which were fading. She longed. Not for one specific thing but for everything; she had longed for a long time. He’d made this longing worse: it followed her quietly, this awkward feeling under her skin.
“What do you dream about?” he asked.
“Sorry?” she replied, turning her head away from the window.
“When you dream, what do you dream about?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Lots of different things, I suppose,” Casiopea said with a shrug, tracing the rim of a glass with a hand.
“Do you dream about the things you see on the streets during the daytime and the people you know?”
“Sometimes.”
She wondered what he was going on about. He looked rather serious, and he rubbed his chin. She noticed the trace of stubble on his cheeks. Had he needed to shave before? He’d seemed very pristine to her, a statue in his perfection.
“I think I dreamed tonight. It’s difficult for me to understand it since I am unused to the activity.”
“My father had a book and it claimed that dreams can have secret messages. If you dream you are flying it means one thing and if you dream your teeth are falling out it means another. I do hate it when my teeth fall out in dreams,” she said.
“I dreamed about you,” he said, the voice deliberate, cool.
Casiopea coughed so loudly she thought the entire train had heard her, every single person in every berth and the conductor to boot. And then she blushed so brightly she seriously considered slipping under the table. She grabbed her napkin, tossed it on her lap, and fidgeted with it instead, unwilling to look at him.
“What is the matter?” Hun-Kamé said. “You are very strange sometimes.”
“Nothing is the matter with me. You dream about me and nothing is the matter,” she said, lifting her head and almost shouting at him. Couldn’t he see how mortified she was?
Now he looked irritated, as if she’d been mean to him. But she was not trying to be mean; it wasn’t the sort of thing she’d expected to hear.
“I shouldn’t have dreamed, not about you or teeth or whatever men dream. I feel like I’m standing on quicksand and I’m sinking fast. I’m forgetting who I am,” he admitted.
He looked utterly lost. She patted his hand, which rested against the mahogany table, in sympathy, not knowing what else to do.
“You’ll be yourself again soon,” she promised.
He looked down at her fingers resting on top of his. He seemed surprised, and she felt abashed, thinking she’d done something wrong. But when she attempted to pull away her hand, he gave it a squeeze and he nodded.
“I dreamed you walked the Black Road of Xibalba,” he said. “I did not like this. It is a dangerous path. And I was glad when you woke me. It is not that I think you a coward, Lady Tun, it is that I wish you no harm.”
He slid his hand away, and she stared at the empty plate before her. “I suppose there’s nothing to do but hope for the best.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Hun-Kamé said thoughtfully, grabbing his napkin and unfolding it. A server had walked by and filled their glasses with water. Casiopea guessed they would begin the breakfast service soon.
“Have I told you,” he said suddenly, “how beautiful are the mountains in the east of my kingdom? They are made of different layers, first a layer of sturdy jadeite, then a layer of vibrant malachite, and finally a layer of pale pink coral. Even your stars would envy their beauty.”
It was a strange comment. Was he attempting to distract her? A light danced in his dour eye. It was muted. The light of a half moon instead of the sun, but it made her lean forward, quick and eager.
“You say that because you have not seen them streaking the sky,” she replied.
“Are they made of malachite and coral?”
“Well, no.”
“Then they do not compare.”
She smiled at Hun-Kamé. He smiled at her too. What was this? A simple act of