Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Some people are born under a lucky star, while others have their
misfortune telegraphed by the position of the planets. Casiopea Tun,
named after a constellation, was born under the most rotten star
imaginable in the firmament. She was eighteen, penniless, and had
grown up in Uukumil, a drab town where mule-drawn railcars
stopped twice a week and the sun scorched out dreams. She was
reasonable enough to recognize that many other young women lived
in equally drab, equally small towns. However, she doubted that
many other young women had to endure the living hell that was her
daily life in grandfather Cirilo Leyva’s house.
Cirilo was a bitter man, with more poison in his shriveled body
than was in the stinger of a white scorpion. Casiopea tended to him.
She served his meals, ironed his clothes, and combed his sparse hair.
When the old brute, who still had enough strength to beat her over
the head with his cane when it pleased him, was not yelling for his
grandchild to fetch him a glass of water or his slippers, her aunts and
cousins were telling Casiopea to do the laundry, scrub the floors, and
dust the living room.
“Do as they ask; we wouldn’t want them to say we are spongers,”
Casiopea’s mother told her. Casiopea swallowed her angry reply
because it made no sense to discuss her mistreatment with Mother,
whose solution to every problem was to pray to God.
Casiopea, who had prayed at the age of ten for her cousin Martín
to go off and live in another town, far from her, understood by now
that God, if he existed, did not give a damn about her. What had God
done for Casiopea, aside from taking her father from her? That quiet,
patient clerk with a love for poetry, a fascination with Mayan and
Greek mythology, a knack for bedtime stories. A man whose heart
gave up one morning, like a poorly wound clock. His death sent
Casiopea and her mother packing back to Grandfather’s house.
Mother’s family had been charitable, if one’s definition of charity is
that they were put immediately to work while their idle relatives
twiddled their thumbs.
Had Casiopea possessed her father’s pronounced romantic
leanings, perhaps she might have seen herself as a Cinderella-like
figure. But although she treasured his old books, the skeletal remains
of his collection—especially the sonnets by Quevedo, wells of
sentiment for a young heart—she had decided it would be nonsense
to configure herself into a tragic heroine.
Instead, she chose to focus
on more pragmatic issues, mainly that her horrible grandfather,
despite his constant yelling, had promised that upon his passing
Casiopea would be the beneficiary of a modest sum of money,
enough that it might allow her to move to Mérida.
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