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Chapter IX: A Balyan's Body

Note #49: Room 32-Oasis Balyan, Volume I of Forgotten Entries From Dead and Missing Dreamers

I cannot keep stride with the living these days, for I am still chasing the dead.

Their names are banished with time, but my heart still longs for their ghost.

Except for Hiwaga Salakep, Gugurang’s unit bursts out in a series of whines and aggressive complaints. Outside the gates of Nieves Base, the three unit members stare at their mentor, wide-eyed, as if he announced a death sentence.

Each sandbag weighs approximately fifty kilograms, a heaviness equivalent to carrying a whole person on one's back. Multiply that by five, and that might cause their bones to break and die at an early age by the end of the day.

They intensely fight for their right to function properly by pointing out their small stature and the muscle work needed for it that only the strongest adults could make up for. Even their Calisthenics subjects back in the Akademya never made them run around the institution’s field with 250 kilograms holding them back. Those exercises only kept them fit and strong with basic drills, for they knew their age could not handle heavier tasks.

Gabay opens his daily beer with a flick of his thumb and raises the bottle to them. “When I was your age, and even when I was still a child in Luna Akademya, I was able to run around with ten sandbags worth five hundred kilograms total.”

“That’s a lie,” Indak says. “You’re just saying that for motivation’s sake.”

“Impossible if you only lock your own limits and consider too much your imaginary fragility.” Their mentor chugs down the bottle and tucks it in his uniform’s pocket. “You’re balyan now, remember? Think about it.”

Hiwaga nods and walks away. “I’ll start on my own, Senyor. Fifty laps around the baryo, correct?”

“Where are you going?” Silakbo grabs them by the back of their shirt. “Fifty laps around two hundred and fifty kilograms, even you can’t achieve that! Stop bragging!”

Hiwaga glares at him and shoves him to the side. “Don’t touch me.”

“Great, then the instructions are settled.” Gabay claps his hands together. “After you finish your laps, you’ll be climbing some buildings around this baryo with those sandbags. Next, we’ll have you do push ups. Then, we’ll have some planks. And then some handstands. Fifty sets each. It’s an excellent plan for the whole month. I’ll add some crunches and jumps to that too. Maybe we’ll climb some mountain or tower using handstands too.”

Sigla pouts. “My life is so difficult. Yesterday, the grass used to be greener and the sky brighter. The malkoha with their blessed chirps helping me through the day as the wind caressed my worries away.”

“And today you’ll strengthen your body so your soul won’t fade away. If you test my patience further, I’ll send you to your grave,” Gabay responds with his own rhymed poetry, as if teasing his protege. “Get going, Sigla Halas, or you’re dead end.”

Indak gives her mentor a hard and long stare, scrutinizing every detail of their person. “Are you saying that we could actually achieve those tasks using only this body? Without fail?”

Gabay blinks down at her. “You’ll fail a few times, of course. That’s natural. However, it’s only a failure due to wrong execution, wrong body formation, wrong stance, wrong focus or concentration, wrong understanding of your own body system as an aspiring balyan. Also, if you have insecurity and disbelief in yourself, then you’re good as useless. If you cannot do even this, then you’re a failure to the hagdan. Physical strength is fundamental for your gahum, and you cannot open your third eye if you’ve got no mental and spiritual strength to back it up. If you don’t have all those three types of strengths, then let’s just reconsider your career.”

Hiwaga nods. “Understood, Senyor. I think I got it.”

Silakbo scowls with his hands on his hips. “Understood what? All he did was talk a lot!”

Indak’s face sours. “What do you mean wrong execution, formation, and all that? Thanks for the assurance, but maybe you should guide us first on how to do this correctly without risks.”

Sigla pulls on her hair and sighs. “Ah, it’s so depressing today!”

The four of them stare at the outlandish girl when she starts securing the sandbags around her legs, arms, and stomach before launching herself on her first lap. Even with just average speed, Indak and Silakbo still gape at her in disbelief when they see her running down the base and to the baryo central without without so much a as a tremble or loss of balance.

Within a few seconds, Hiwaga clicks their tongue and catches up to her after securing five sandbags on their person as well. Similar to the green-haired girl, the prodigy also never falters in their steps as they descend down the road.

“Oh, Hiwa. Are you trying to race me?” As the both of them go neck and neck, they witness Sigla increase her speed and outrun Hiwaga. “I’d like to see you try!”

Silakbo huffs. “Impossible!”

Indak’s brows furrow. “I don’t believe it.”

Gabay tuts and shakes his head as he looks down at the remaining sugdi in disappointment. “Look at you, in that awestruck air. This must be your daily life, only a willing audience of prodigies being their gifted, prodigious self. No quick wits to back it up either. I’d hate to be in your position. Should I just fail you on the spot? It’d be less embarrassing if you leave the hagdan earlier.”

“Shut up!” Silakbo secures his own sandbags on his body and marches down the base in slow half-steps. “I could do it too!”

Indak almost laughs at the sight of the boy’s shaking form, with him constantly falling flat on his face after each step he takes. Though he grumbles under his breath whenever he falls, he continues down the road without even looking back at her. She almost praises him for his determination until she remembers her own predicament. As she looks at the sandbags in trepidation, a scale-feathered malkoha hovers above them and settles on Gabay’s shoulder, whistling close to the mentor’s ear.

“Ah, an informant told me that the pink-cheeked child and that snake are already halfway through their first lap,” Gabay slurs. “What about you, little girl? You’re the only one left standing in front of me, doing nothing.”

“You’re a mentor. You’re supposed to teach us something that could make this whole thing easier to handle,” Indak insists. “How could I start with no assurance that I’ll be alright?”

“I’m a mentor and not your babysitter.” Gabay opens another bottle of beer and squats in front of her. “Plus, your other unit members easily got over their problems with that, so why are you still so worked up about it?”

“But—”

“But?” Gabay chugs down the drink without breaking eye contact. “I told you already, right? If you won’t perform my teaching methods, you can leave this baryo with your things and take a kalesa back to your parents. You can cry about it as much as you want then.”

Indak’s expressions morph into a glare before she rolls her eyes and turns her back on the older balyan. She straps the remaining sandbags tight around her arms, legs, and stomach while silently cursing Gabay in her head. If her muscles strain with the weight, then she just needs to grab their mentor by those pinned bangs and stalk him in his sleep.

Gabay scoffs at the way she walked away from him. “Did you see that, Malkoha? All my baby proteges are giving me attitude. It's adorable. How is it going on your end?”

The malkoha only whistles and flies away.

Indak Agui hopes for an ease in her steps, some miracle that she might attract. Alas, the girl only struggles to even make a single move downhill. Once she finally gains enough strength to nudge a foot forward, her whole body goes with it. The next situation plummets her in the air, and she topples over and rolls down like a barrel to the baryo central. Her skin harshly rubs against the gravelly surface, her eyes watering at the stinging feeling of the newly formed abrasions on her body. When her fall finally comes to a stop at the end of the road to Nieves Base, she holds herself in that lying position until the pain alleviates, enough for her to move again with less discomfort.

From here, she imagines her mentor muffling a scoff, and she wishes nothing more than to smack his face with a tree trunk to make herself feel better. He truly gives no damn whether or not his students get hurt. Even the onlookers to her situation, to no surprise, only glances at her and continues on their merry way. This scenario must be a norm to them, especially on training days.

Indak Agui pushes herself upwards and stumbles down almost immediately. She attempts this a few times, and she still ends up wincing flat on the ground. A millisecond of her thoughts considers giving up, if not for Hiwaga Salakep who jogs past her and up the base without so much as a notice. Gritting her teeth, she deeply inhales and makes use of all of her muscle strength to keep herself standing. With shaky breaths and beads of sweat lining her head down to her neck, she slowly drags herself forward and ignores the veins showcasing itself underneath her skin.

She prolongs her mental and physical strength up to its full capacity the whole route, but once she passes the wet market, all of her words of encouragement and burst of energy fall away as she double takes at the sight of Sigla Halas eating ube panna cotta inside. The girl with reptilian eyes absentmindedly sits on one of the benches, her weight bags discarded to the side and the scrolls for their team's schedules thrown in a nearby sack reserved for biodegradable trash.

Indak leans on the bamboo fences of the entrance and calls for Sigla surreptitiously. "Psssst! Sigla! Sigla!"

Sigla makes her way towards her with a smile, proudly showing the bits of food still stuck between her front teeth. “Indi, nice to see you doing well!”

“What happened to fifty laps?”, Indak hisses. "You're making me do all the work."

Her unit member absentmindedly glances to the side. “Oh, don’t worry…is that Hiwa?”

Indak looks to the direction she points and sees Hiwaga on what could be their tenth lap around the baryo. She sighs in disappointment at the sight of them not even showing signs of fatigue nor did they lose their visuals in the process. As they pass the both of them, only a millisecond raise of their eyebrow greets their current stature before picking up speed.

“That’s just not fair,” Indak complains.

“Hiwaga Salakep.” Sigla whistles and winks at Indak. “My ideal type. Have they figured out Ilokanos Kara since birth?”

Indak rolls her eyes. “They’re everyone’s ideal type. Plus, Ilokanos Kara remains a concept short-lectured in the Akademya but never practiced. It’s forbidden arts for non-balyan. You’d get trialed for death. They wouldn’t risk that at all.”

The very foundation of balyan arts rests in their soul system, in what the people of Lam-ang call as the Ilokanos Kara. The kara embodies their soul, and this energy hosts three layers—karma, ani, aria. The definitions of these may as well be in vain and only generalized in Indak’s head. The Akademya never truly explored the concept in fear of the more sharp-witted children figuring out its intricacies that balyan alone should piece together in their work. Kara is the resilience layer, Ani is the rift layer, and Aria is the layer where their gahum resides. When all layers become one and unlocked, the third eye then opens to the new world that only balyan vision may witness.

“So scary!” Sigla feigns a frightened face but it slowly relaxes into a mysterious smile. “So Urduja is that type of strict. In the pre-Lam-ang history, Ilokanos Kara is taught to children just after they learn to walk and talk. In my land, it is that way. You are so far behind, Indi.”

“What are you talking about? Who gave birth to you and where did you come from anyway?” Indak makes a face. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. I don’t care.”

Sigla looks up to the sky in awe. “But it’s too impossible to reign in habits molded into our blood by past generations, Indi. Hiwa must have unknowingly triggered it on their own. Ilokanos Kara is a beautiful gift from our deities. Why should it be suppressed unless suitable in application? The first era of Lam-ang was unbound by restrictive laws.”

Indak blinks. “You don’t understand what happened here anyway. Wars broke out in the past and that completely changed things for Urduja. The second pinuno was the one who limited Ilokanos Kara. No Akademya lessons will suggest its activation and only balyan training can truly trigger it. He also inserted the gahum locks into our chromosomes so the soul system is laced tight together to prevent its access. It’s just how it is.”

Sigla tilts her head in amusement. “Oh, you know a lot.”

“The Akademya rots into your brain, especially history lessons.”

Sigla draws closer to Indak and touches her cheek. "The ideal BPM for Ilokanos Kara reaping is between 250-270. It's when you're closest to death but too afraid to die. Once your kara breaks open due to the pressure, the karma would find its way for your advantage. If you're lucky enough to fight your way back to life, the karma layer would heal you for your generosity and gift you an increase in natural vigor. It's not about limits. It's about staying alive despite exceeding it."

Indak slaps her hand away. "You're so weird. Why are you spouting philosophies at me?"

Sigla only grins and paces backwards, walking away from her. "This training might kill you, Indi, oh, but a wonderful experience that is." She raises one arm in a goodbye and prances away, disappearing into a rowdy crowd of balyan.

Indak mulls over Sigla’s words for a few moments until she remembers the added weight on her body. She brushes the thoughts away and leaves it frozen at the back of her mind unless necessary for dissection. Right now, she needs to catch up with her fifty laps, else that damned mentor of theirs might truly send her back to her baryo. Nothing of the Ilokanos Kara left to contemplate about when she decided to kindly donate her third eye to her cousin.

I’m such a generous person, she thinks as she drags herself forward into something quite similar to a lopsided half-run. The more her body aches, the more she imagines her mentor’s suffering.

It took her approximately five hours to complete her laps. She swears Hiwaga Salakep and Sigla Halas passed her more than twenty times. For multiple times, she curled up on the streets with tears lining her eyes as her stomach vibrated in hunger. A piercing sound rang through her ears and into the back of her head the more she pushed forward with heavy breathing. She even caught up to Silakbo with only a neck distance. His poor state matches hers very well—bloodshot eyes and scrapes eating on their flesh.

At the last lap, when Silakbo and Indak near the finish line at the gates of Nieves Base, the green-eyed girl squatting beside their mentor shoots up from her seat and punches the air, as if cheering for their championship.

“Go, go, go! Indi, you’re the best! Bobo, you’re almost there!”

In a different situation, Indak might laugh at the given nickname for the Tambal. Bobo means stupid in their language.

Silakbo grits his teeth. “Stop calling me Bobo!”

Hiwaga covers their ears beside them and glances at their unit member in annoyance. "So loud."

Indak’s sight blurs at her final step, and she collapses right when she finishes. Silakbo collapses on top of her, but not enough of her remaining strength complies with her mind’s demands to get the boy off. As the sound of the Tambal’s snores reaches her ears, her eyes droop close along with it, and only the bored eyes of their mentor remain as the last thing her vision captures before she sets off into a good dream.

Gabay claps Hiwaga's shoulder. "Wake them up for lunch. We'll be back for crossing tightropes by twelfth takna. Dare send them to an albularyo with only this minimal injury. I'd know if you do, and I will send you home without warning."

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“A tagayan?” Indak repeats, not buying what Sigla Halas told them. “You live in a tagayan?”

Before the day started, Diwa suggested that Sigla and Indak should eat lunch together as well. Despite feeling like she needs the Oasis Balyan to recover, Sigla Halas maneuvered her by the shoulder and into the training grounds of Diwa's unit, informing her all the while that Gabay strictly prohibited their healing through albularyo. The damned man said himself that recuperation through natural means may benefit their bodies' immune systems, but Indak highly doubts it. Despite that, she agrees without much of a choice in the matter.

Inside Diwa’s training ground lays a cave made of vines with little holes above, forming tiny dots on the ground like scattered stars. Torches light every side, illuminating the outlines of various traps hidden underground. Currently, on the unit's break, Dalisay Idianale and Bayani Sarimao spar blindfolded with their hands bound behind their backs. At the notice of their conversation, Diwa plops herself between Indak and Sigla, abandoning her interest in her unit members' exercises for their spare time.

The red-eyed girl wiggles her eyebrows. “Tagayan? What’s this tagayan talk I hear?”

“Sigla says she lives in a tagayan that her guardian owns,” Indak replies.

Bayani hears them from his spar. “Sigla lives in a tag—”

A foot to his stomach cuts him off and sends him flying to a human-sized cheese trap. The rest of them watch his body slide into it as its roof tips down to capture him. Bayani lets out an awkward laugh as soon as he tore himself out of the trap. “Well, what do you know? I somehow slipped.”

“You didn’t slip. I beat you,” Dalisay corrects him as she pulls out a book and a pencil from her pasiking and sits in front of their other unit member who keeps fiddling the hem of their shirt.

Diwa remembers their original topic, and she returns to Sigla to clasp her hands in hers. "That's the place where grown people go right? I think a tagayan is a good place for lunch."

Sigla’s smile is wide as she winks at the girl. "Oh, you'll love the meals there."

"I'm in." Dalisay Idianale slams her book close, startling the three of them. The person beside her, who keeps looking over her shoulder the whole time, jumps in place along with her announcement. She only glances at them before turning to Bayani, her thin lips pressed into a line. "Bayani?"

"What about Senyor Malkoha?" Bayani drags a hand through his hair. "We're only allowed break because he had short matters to attend to today, you know. He'll be back soon."

Diwa frowns. "Why are you all coming? This is strictly early-morning-girls squad lunch only! You can't have the same best friends as I do."

Indak rolls her eyes and winces as she feels her body ache along with the rumble of their stomach. "Please. We've known each other for only three days. I just need to eat."

"You don't have to come if you don't want to, Yani, if you're that worried," Sigla assures the only boy in the room and winks at him. "No boys allowed."

Bayani seemingly offended, tilts his head up, puffs his chest, and raises an eyebrow. "And why? Someone has to watch over you! I'm the quarter commander, you know. Who knows what shenanigans you come up in there. I have to keep you safe."

Indak groans. "Enough with that already. Quarter commander this, quarter commander that."

"Then that settles it." Dalisay shifts her gaze to the person behind her. "What about you, Alpas?"

Alpas Binturong's freckled face reddens. Their hand ruffles their own golden curls as they make little to no eye contact. Signing with their fingers, they say, 'I don't know. My mother would be mad at me if she knew.' They look at Dalisay, but she only crosses her arms and sighs. Alpas lowers their head, the three gold piercings in one ear and the hoop earring in their other glinting inside the cave.

"Alpas is coming with us too! You can't just leave him alone." Bayani insists with absolute finality. "I have to make sure he gets back to the quarters in one piece."

Diwa grumbles and crosses her arms. "None of you are even invited."

After packing up their things in their respective pasiking, the small group of sugdi venture out the base for lunch and into the wet market. Somehow, no matter the time, crowds of balyan constantly gather around the stalls and stores of the market. Indak assumes that maybe trainings and missions burn their calories too much, so the need to fill that void rises as time goes by. After her damned mentor's training, she deeply understands this and relate to the struggle. She stands in solidarity with all the abused sugdi.

On the way, Indak contains her annoyance at Bayani's and Diwa's unrestrained bursts of energy. Both keep childishly pointing and laughing at random people that they deem funny-looking while criticizing the architecture and designs of some buildings like some professional artisans. Sigla, if not busy with leading them towards the tagayan, might even join in on their antics. Instead, the girl kept her back on them and walked a few steps ahead, not even glancing in their direction. Meanwhile, Dalisay's eyes never left the book in her hand. Alpas silently trailed behind her with their head bowed and one hand on the end of her shirt.

They walk inside the building reserved for coffeehouses and barhouses and stop in one corner of the building. Tagayan Kampilan, a barhouse built with stones painted a lighter shade of burgundy and with six vests smeared red firmly attached to the wall. The red painted on leather might be even real blood, if Indak dares to guess. Once she turns her head to the entrance, she notices the rusted goloks and hagibis lining the door frame. Bayani also points to a notepad left open on top near the door. The smell of metal and something akin to pig's blood from the Panalangin greets their senses as the quarter commander flips the pages, and she only managed for a few seconds to peek at different maps and ship designs before pulling away in disgust.

Sigla moves to open the double doors as the rest of them crane their necks to see the inside of the tagayan from a capiz shells window. They spot a familiar sugdi munching on a bowl of candies while a porcelain mug of water balances on his thigh. He sits face down on a round table, ignoring the singing balyan and the audience cheering and clinking their mugs of tuba.

The smell of spice and acrid ale hikes up their noses as they rush into the dark and smoky ambience of the bar. While the rest of them take their time to absorb the entirety of the place, Diwa stops behind the sleeping sugdi and pulls on his side ponytail, causing the mug on the boy's thigh to shatter on the wooden floor. Adhika Cacao raises his face from the table and curses under his breath as he takes in the sight of their group.

"You're in the mood to curse us when you're too irresponsible to attend your trainings?" Bayani smacks the back of Adhika’s head as they take their seats on his table. "Why aren't you training, Adhika? And where are the rest of your unit?"

Adhika glares at them after his nose almost hits the table. "Seriously, Bayani? It's none of your business. I can't even sleep well nowadays."

"Really. But of course you're the one getting no sleep." Indak drags her words as she squints at the boy, memories of his saliva on her clothes flooding back to her.

"You need to train nowadays, Cacao. Otherwise, higher objectives might kill you," Dalisay retorts, pushing up her glasses as she flips to the next page of her book. "It's not the right time for rest."

"Well, they said ours is the most peaceful era out of all eras, so I'm not that worried." Adhika rubs his eyes. "Why are you all here together, anyway?"

"Our mentor cut training short," Diwa lies, skimming the menu a server passed to her. "And I'm finally going to know what alcohol tastes like, and my older sister will finally shut up."

"So pretentious," Adhika mutters. "So, you're all here because you're dismissed? Lucky."

"Not us," Indak says, eagerly looking over the menu with Diwa. "It's just lunch break. We'll be back by twelfth takna."

"It's almost the twelfth takna. Only three minutes left," Adhika says, pointedly.

Indak waves him off. "That damned mentor can wait."

Dalisay finally closes her book, puts down her glasses, and sighs. "Well, that read was a waste of time. I can't find anything that could explain why the sixth pinuno would do that."

"What, like the massacre? Isn't he just crazy? People can just be crazy with no explanation and do crazy things, you know." Bayani looks over the menu in Diwa's hand and points at the bottom half. "I want this one."

Diwa scrunches her nose. "Ew. Too boring."

Bayani lets out an indignant sound. "Well, you're not the one eating!"

Indak groans and massages her belly. "Can we all just order first before we talk about the very person responsible for my tribe's end?"

Bayani's mouth forms into a circle. "Right. I forgot the Agui was one of the perished ones."

Diwa glares at Bayani. "Perished ones? You're so insensitive to my new best friend!"

Sigla tilts her head at Dalisay. "What happened with the sixth pinuno?"

"The Six Point Bloodbath. It's a massacre that took years ago, back when we were just toddlers," the girl says with a glimmer in her green eyes. "Of course, the death of tribes isn't really an original, for it's done multiple times. This is why Baryo Bonifacio exists. This massacre was less relevant in the greater picture too, because only the small, less influential tribes were victims. However, you have to question the motives behind that. No one genuinely cares about it for some reason though."

Bayani raises his hands in surrender. "Alright, I'm sorry. If it makes you feel better, Indi, my tribe was one of the perished ones too, fifty years before I was born. Now, it's just my family and me. We're practically siblings in tragedy."

Indak rolls her eyes. "Whatever."

Sigla giggles. "Me too! I'm also your sibling in tragedy!"

Bayani cheers along with her before turning to Adhika once again. "What about you? What's training like with your mentor?"

Adhika freezes at the question. He shoves his hands deep into his pockets and his shoulders rise to his jaw. He only answers with a shiver before putting his face down on the table again. "Wake me up when you leave or when my mentor comes to get rid of me."

Indak holds back her laughter with a hand on her mouth. "I guess that means you're suffering like me. Good to know."

The server soon arrives at their table and starts asking for their orders. Bayani, Diwa, and Sigla each order one mug of pangasi, an alcohol produced by a mash of cooked rice. Sigla squeals in glee when Dalisay orders three mugs, causing Bayani’s eyes to almost pop out of his head. Meanwhile, Indak orders one mug of pangasi with three shots of milk. For their meals, they insist on a plate of red rice, sisig, lumpia, and dinuguan. They add two jugs of water with it too.

Diwa's face morphs into distaste. "Ew, Indi. What's with the milk?"

“Thanks. I think you mean that I have exquisite tastes," Indak responds, ignoring her disgusted reaction.

Sigla puts down the menu to look at Alpas Binturong who remained silent the whole conversation. "What about you, Alpas? Want any dessert with our meals?"

Alpas Binturong fiddles with their shirt, turning their head away before answering in a soft voice. "Just...calamansi pie."

"Well, he can talk. Thought he only knew sign language," the boy in a side ponytail comments, which earned him another smack on the head from Bayani, who was kind enough to repeat his unit member's order to the server. Once the server walks away, Adhika tries to get back at Bayani, to which the boy successfully dodges.

"Be nice, Adi," Bayani shoots him a glare. "Alpas was raised by his mute grandmother. She's dead."

"What does that even mean?", Indak mumbles, questioning his choice of words. "Should you even say it that way?"

"Don't mind it, best friend," Diwa tells her. "Alpas understands that Bayani's brain is still developing. Right, Alpas?"

Their orders came after a while.

Indak tastes mint and sugar the first time she takes a sip from a reed straw, coughing when the alcohol stings her throat. After a long time of just Indak hearing Diwa's rants about her older sister looking down on her, and a bit of Dalisay's plans to investigate Oasis Balyan in the future for political reasons, the room starts warping into waves in her perspective. The feeling of being lifted off her chair and blown away by the wind follows, making her uncontrollably laugh until her breath runs out.

Somewhere between her euphoria, she hears Bayani and Alpas chatter about something that suspiciously sounds like jokes and light insults concerning their mentor. Alpas then grabs the kudyapi from the stack of instruments on one side of a wall and walks to an elevated platform. At the same time, Diwa and Bayani pull Indak from her seat to maneuver her directly in front of the usually shy Alpas, who now boldly plays the instrument as they sing a song about betel nuts and pangasi.

Diwa cackles in her ear. "Do you double promise and solemnly swear to be tagayan best friends now and forever?"

"I do! I do!", Bayani shouts in her other ear.

The crowd behind Indak sings along as they clink their own mugs with the occasional mention of how Alpas Binturong's tribe must be proud of them right now. Indak dances with them until someone bumps past her and disrupts her rhythm, sending her falling to the floor on her behind. A polka-dotted handkerchief settles on her stomach out of nowhere, and her fingers absently move to trace the red-colored stains of the cloth. She thinks she hears screams and surprised voices in the background as an overbearing sound similar to gambal overlap with the music. A sharp pain pierces through the side of her head, but she must be too out of order that she only giggles and rolls on the floor.

After dead air overtakes the commotion, a scarred hand quickly snatches the handkerchief from her fingers. A harsh pull on her wrist forces her back to her feet, but her laughter ensues as she clings to her restrainer’s waist.

"The barhouse is closing! Return to your posts!"

The tagayan's atmosphere abruptly transmutes into dead dead silence at the stern voice of a tall woman, the only sounds left being Alpas’ syncopated strumming and Diwa and Bayani’s off-key singing as they awkwardly dance beside her.

The woman takes on a more somber tone as she delivers her next words. "There's three dead children delivered to each of this baryo's four gates and five balyan murdered right inside my tagayan. Details will be given by your respective division heads regarding this matter. Something is terribly wrong today."

As she stares at the seven drunk sugdi, either dancing, singing around her, or laying collapsed on the floor, a grim smile crosses her soft features. "As for these irresponsible brats lying dead center at the crime scene, I have no choice but to take them for interrogations once they're sober. Please inform each balyan and all present civilians in the baryo regarding today's events, so they're fully aware that you will all be questioned about it as well. Precautions are more important now that this has happened."

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yangsoeuvre · 2 months ago

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Chapter VIII: Orientations

Note #235: Training Ground 8, Volume I of Forgotten Entries From Dead and Missing Dreamers

I don't know how to go back in time. Some days, I wish I could meet you again.

I can't even remember how many of us are left.

The war is almost over, but I don't think I'll ever stop feeling the loss of people.

Indak might not be right about the boy sleeping beside her. He never snored last night. However, he drooled on her shoulder instead, when he rolled over to her side, which she found worse. She bathed for a good hour with her duster on before Reyna Manlangiten arrived in their quarters and dropped them in groups of four to their respective training grounds. Depending on their assigned mentor, and which dynamics they chose to comprise a unit, she’d either be stuck with annoying teammates for a year or perhaps some people useful enough to not get her killed in action. Her assigned training ground is the one nearest from the quarters but deep into a forest around a crescent-shaped pond. Balete trees scatter across the area with its thick and long branches, its leaves stretching up towards the sky and its hanging roots touching the ground. If not for the red-painted stones that clue a pathway to the place, they might have gotten lost inside after passing through the molave forest that hide the space. A push from her left pulls her out of her thoughts, and she falls to the pond in one big splash. Indak yelps when she submerges into the water, squirming around to try and save herself. When two pairs of eyes only stare at her, her movements come to a halt. She stands back up when she realizes that the pond only reaches her waist. Indak scoops water in her palm and hurls it on the short perpetrator. She wishes to throttle him for making her wash another set of clothes later. “What was that for, Tambal?!” The boy avoids the attack and sticks his tongue out, much to her annoyance. “Can you please keep it down?” A person sitting under a tree, legs spread apart, chews on their bottom lip as they turn to glare at Indak and Silakbo. “You’re both so loud.” Indak remembers Hiwaga Salakep, the kid with jet black hair and naturally pink cheeks made prominent by their ivory skin. They always bag the top place in all their years of education, as far as Indak remembers. In their batch in their baryo’s Akademya, Hiwaga runs the scene and honor rolls with their topnotch brain and skills in all aspects. Everyone in the village knows them and their academic achievements despite never speaking to them. Not to mention, almost everyone in their batch names them as their first love or some other name for a crush. Silakbo marches over to Hiwaga’s spot and shoves them to the side. “You should rebel against this unit’s predicament too, ghost skin! How am I stuck with you this year? Let’s work together in never seeing each other again.” “Don’t touch me.” Hiwaga’s slanted eyes narrow into slits. “You heard the reyna. The mentors were the ones who decided what would comprise this unit. Sinugdanan results must have deemed us compatible enough to make up a team.”

Hiwaga dusts their pants and stands to their full height before walking away from the boy. Silakbo glowers at the taller child. He tiptoes up to them and tries to roughly bump his chest to their back. “Pink cheeks, stop acting like you’re better than all of us for once! You think I don’t know that? That’s why I’m telling you to go against it!”

Indak rolls her eyes when Silakbo begins to grab the back of Hiwaga’s shirt.

When Hiwaga stumbles at the pull of their clothes, they twist their body around to slap the hand holding their shirt away. “I said, don’t touch me.” Silakbo, ready to retaliate, puts his hands on his hips. The missing space of his teeth makes an appearance again as he scowls at them. Indak could not help but remember a spoiled toddler from Compound Five’s orphanage at that moment, and the thought that she has to deal with him for a year almost made her wish she just stayed home and never participated in any of this at all. The interruption from a fight about to happen comes in waves of emerald locks flying in the air as a girl descends from a tree. Eyes with vertically slitted pupils curve at the sight of them, and the spirited smile of one Sigla Halas graces them early in the morning. The light of the sun reflects on the core of the jade stone pendant of one of her rusty bracelets, and it bounces as a small spotlight gliding past their faces. The three of them shield their eyes from it as Silakbo grumbles at her late arrival. “Oh, I wish I could live here forever!” Sigla hums, skipping around them as she admires the place. “Have you all seen the view from above? It’s so wonderful and…”

As she goes on her rants about the endless beauty of nature, Indak takes one glance at her and walks away.

Now that she thinks about it, the only information around this strange girl revolves in her being from a distant land, estranged from Urduja. Other than that, her whole character seems highly suspicious. However, that’s a problem for the higher ups to solve. She’ll pretend the girl is nothing special to ease her mind from the mystery and keep her nerves at peace with themselves. She must only focus on herself. Out of nowhere, a drop of orange, steaming lava shoots through the strap of Silakbo's sandal and his scream cuts off Sigla’s rambling. “Who was it?!” Silakbo’s wide-eyed glare fixes on Indak as he throws his burnt sandal into the pond. Before she could even say anything, he marches in her direction and kicks her leg. “Was it you? It was you, wasn’t it?” “Ow!” Indak falls on her behind, her face twisting in pain as she rubs the sore spot with her palm. “Are you stupid? How could I even do that?!”

“Well, you’re an Agui! Fire is your thing!”

She glares at the boy who hasn’t done anything kind since she met him, pulls him by the collar, and shoves him to the pond. “It’s magma that attacked you, not a flame!”

“Someone else is here.” Hiwaga’s brows furrow as they stand in front of Sigla, who only blinks at the commotion. They roam their eyes around the clearing. “It’s gahum. Gahum is only accessible to… it might be our mentor.” “Oh, I’m sorry.” Indak holds her laughter at the sight of the equally drenched boy that fell into the water, only half-listening to Hiwaga as she’s fully immersed in the satisfaction of finally getting the boy into the pond as an act of well-deserved revenge. “Don’t cry now, you know you deserved that.”

When she turns her back to return to her other unit members, a wet hand grabs the ends of her hair. She wrestles her head back in resistance before spinning around to smack the boy in the face. Silakbo cries in pain as a handprint forms on his cheek. He tries to claw at her, but she steps on his toes to prevent him from reaching her. “Sigla, go and stop them.” Hiwaga clicks their tongue and walks to the opposite direction, away from the other three sugdi. “This is ridiculous. I’m going to find our mentor. Volcanic gahum means someone from the Gugurang Tribe. He must be hiding somewhere.” Sigla purses her lips as she watches the other two’s ongoing scuffle. “Why stop? I think they’re really having fun.” Hiwaga glances at their unit in contempt. “They’re two unintelligent species, in different genera, trying to outdumb each other, and it’s our responsibility to tame them. I suggest we do so before it causes troubles to our unit in the near future.” A shriek comes out of both of Silakbo’s and Indak’s mouths as a bullet of magma shoots through the ends of Indak’s hair that Silakbo latched his fingers on. The boy retracts his hand in surprise, and Indak rolls to the ground to keep it from scorching her hair further. Hiwaga stops in his tracks upon hearing the loud screeches and immediately dashes towards Indak to grab her by the arm and pull her up. They also snatch an alarmed Silakbo by the shoulder to huddle the boy close to them. “Who was that?” Silakbo’s voice falls quiet for a moment before he squares his small shoulders and looks around for the source of the attack. “Show yourself, coward!” “Were you not listening to me?” Hiwaga clicks their tongue. “It’s our mentor.” “So our mentor’s first lesson is death?” Indak sweeps her gaze past the trees. “Very motivational.” Sigla’s smile stretches wider as she hums an upbeat tune. “I think this year is going to be the most amazing I’ve ever had.”

A drizzle of lava comes down at them from above. When a pint of it drips to their shoulder, Hiwaga instantly reacts and grabs hold of Indak and Sigla’s wrists. Their hold tightens on them as they run towards a massive tree at the center of the clearing while yelling at Silakbo to climb up with them. The toothless boy doesn't seem to listen, opting to throw his remaining sandal towards the pond instead and threaten the person responsible for the attack. While Sigla and Indak start to move up the tree, Hiwaga falls back to grab Silakbo by the back of his shirt and try to pull him up with them. “Climb up the tree!”, Hiwaga demands. “Its branches will shield us!” “Let me go!—” Silakbo lets out another shriek when a dot of lava strikes his forehead. “Can you listen to me for a second, you idiot?!” Hiwaga’s voice grows louder. “Go up, or you’ll die!” “You’re the idiot!—” Hiwaga cuts him off with a poke to the back of his neck with their index and middle finger. As Silakbo falls unconscious in their arm, they call for Indak and Sigla, who settles themselves on a thick branch, and pleads with them to go back down for a hand.

“I’m going to give him to you, so you have to—” Hiwaga winces as another dot hits the side of their face and the weight of Silakbo turns their arm numb. “—pull him up with you. Don’t let him fall, okay? And help me up too.” Sigla is the first one to crawl down and grab hold of Silakbo’s body. She pulls him up with her hands under his arms while her legs tightly wrap around a lower branch. “He’s heavy!” “Or we can just leave him there,” Indak jokingly suggests as she descends the tree as well. “Maybe dying will wake the good out of him.” Hiwaga presses their lips together. “Indak, please?” Indak rolls her eyes. “I was kidding. Not really, but he’s kind of annoying right now, so I probably wouldn’t mind his death.”

Sigla cackles. “If you’re not aiming to be a good and pure person, then your feelings are valid.”

Indak snorts as she reaches for Silakbo. “Right? I'm not risking my life here for any of you after this. Sorry in advance."

Hiwaga groans. "Hurry, please."

As soon as they got him up their safest perch, the girls adjust his body so that it leans on the trunk of the tree. Hiwaga sits between Indak and Sigla right after, and the three of them watch steam gradually rise from the pond until it eventually disperses through the area. During this time, Silakbo begins waking up with his hand on his nape, disoriented from his sudden collapse. His eyes glimmer after a few beats of silence, as if something clicked in his brain, and his face turns bright red in anger. “You think it’s funny?” Silakbo crosses over to Indak’s lap and lunges at Hiwaga. He shakes them by the collar of their shirt. “Let me get even!” “Get off!”, Indak shouts in his ear as she grabs the back of his shirt to try and put him back in his place. “You’re pushing all of us off the tree!" Hiwaga slaps his hands off. “Don't touch me. You should be grateful that I even saved you.” Silakbo’s scowl deepens. “I should beat you up!” “I’m going to fall!” Indak’s grip on the branch tightens as she continues to push Silakbo off her. "You better pray hard, Tambal! if I die here, I will haunt you forever!" In between their screaming, Sigla Halas taps Hiwaga’s shoulder to grab their attention. “I still don’t see our mentor.”

Upon hearing her, Silakbo and Indak quiet down to also search for their mentor’s presence. Loud buzzes and thrums from strange-colored birds echo above them. The scale-feathered malkohas flying everywhere in Nieves Base zip past them in a straight line, just an inch apart from their small heads, and they duck further to avoid the sharp slash of their wings that seem to cut the wind puffing across the area. Indak, who almost lost her balance on the branch, had to grab the back of Hiwaga’s shirt to avoid the future of splattering her own head on the ground.

“The branch is about to break,” Sigla informs them as she examines the crooked line on the branch, creaking between Indak and Silakbo. Indak glares at Silakbo. "This is all your fault."

Silakbo only sticks his tongue out at her. Indak catches his tongue just in time before he could put it back in his mouth, and she pulls on it until tears wet his eyes and his cries of freedom come out like incoherent noises. The small boy flails around and grasps Indak's neck in a chokehold, his little hands trembling as the girl in front of him chokes on her own spit.

Hiwaga cups their mouth and steadily stands up on the branch. “Is anyone there? Show yourself!” “I’m here.” A strong wind blows through the clearing and ruffles their hair. Simultaneously, a man appears upside down on the same tree they found security in, solidified lava gluing his feet to the bottom of a thick branch above. A fat silence passes between the children before they take turns screaming. The man only continues to blankly stare at them from his perch, appearing quite unaffected despite the small pandemonium. Their overreaction only stops when they hear their branch creak from underneath, the unit's faces freezing in terror. They look at each other as if figuring the same prediction on where the next few seconds might lead them.

Sigla is quick to somersault to another tree, and Indak follows close by, swinging from tree to tree to get to safety. Meanwhile, Silakbo clings to the trunk of their previous tree like a spider as Hiwaga leaps to another branch above, just in time for the branch to break into half. From the other side, the few more swings that Indak made up for to run away from an accident causes a branch to break as she weighs down on it. She screams and screws her eyes shut to brace for the incoming pain while desperately screaming for help. She hears Hiwaga shout her name in alarm and Sigla gasp from afar. Like prayers answered, someone catches her body midfall. She feels herself tossed around in sturdy arms, from tree to tree, until her savior gently settles her on soft grass. A finger pokes her cheek to burn, forcing her awake, and she swats it away.

While rubbing the inflamed spot with her fingers, she blinks her eyes open and comes face to face with a man squatting beside her with a bottle of alcohol in his hand.

He speaks to her in a slur, disinterested, as he chugs a beer down before throwing the container to the pond. “You must be Silakbo Tambal."

Her gaze lingers at the large and irregular velvet skin patch covering the whole of his neck, noticing that the color almost matches his eyes.

She makes a face. “My name’s Indak Agui.”

A choking sound, followed by some shrieking, pulls their attention towards the shortest boy yelling at their mentor.

With his hands on his hips, Silakbo Tambal confronts the man who tried to kill them with his gahum. “You call yourself our mentor? I do not accept it!” "Well, lovely welcome." The man pins his bangs to the top of his head with a peineta hair comb and grabs another beer from the pocket of his uniform. “I am Gabay Gugurang. Senyor Gugurang to you, that is. I am this unit’s mentor, unfortunately.” Indak's brows furrow as she gathers her wits back and sits up. “What do you mean ‘unfortunately’? You chose us. That’s what this batch’s host said. You can't back out this late too, if you're unsatisfied.” “Right. So, I did.” He throws the empty bottle to the pond after drinking it again with impressive speed. The object skips on the surface of the water before it hits the balete tree across them. “Anyways, despite that, you should be well aware by now that it’s quite an impossible feat for the lot of you to pass the hagdan. How do you think you passed?” Sigla gives her mentor a long look. “We won tongits!”

Silakbo nods. “Some stupid card games. Whatever. It’s so dumb that I could hardly remember it!"

Gabay eyes Silakbo as he adjusts the collar of his uniform, just enough to cover the injury that revealed itself to them. “Why do you say so? Do you remember ever winning it? Was that truly a part of your memory?”

“No, Senyor,” Hiwaga confidently replies.

“Why does it matter?”, Indak genuinely wonders. “The point is we passed.”

Gabay opens another bottle with his thumb. “That's what you would say if you believe anything you are told and anything planted in your mind that replaces actual memories, thoughts, and feelings. Don't you think it's strange that you're in front of me and you can't even remember how you passed?”

“I don't want to have this conversation," Indak says.

“Yes,” Hiwaga says without a hint of hesitation.

The emerald-eyed girl pouts. "I'm not following, Senyor."

"Did you just imply that I'm inadequate?" Silakbo scowls and points his unit members with his thumb. "Them, I could understand. However, me? I'm—"

"Tell me exactly why would a simple card game determine your worth or capability to be in the Balyan Hagdan? How would that even measure who among our people are fit enough to serve the nation?," Gabay continues as he turns his back on them and sits cross-legged on a nearby rock. "It's stupid and such empty-headed strategy in terms of selection. Don't you agree?"

"Don't you listen, Senyor? I already said it was dumb." Silakbo rocks his head back and whines. "I demand a change of unit!"

"I honestly don't know what's the point," Indak says. "Whatever happened in the Sinugdanan led me to be selected, so that's the only thing that matters. We should be moving on to the next step by now. Like training, for example."

Indak and her unit members continue to raise questions and demands on what they will do for their first meeting, with Silakbo’s voice growing louder by the second. Their mentor tunes them out, his eyes trained on the tree across the pond. Their complaints only cease when he flings a thick string of lava on the ground in front of them, right by their feet. His proteges yelp and jump out of its range as the magma melts and cools through the soil. Effectively, this silences them after staring hard at the indent that it left.

Without a slur in his voice, he locks eyes and speaks to them with more firmness in his voice. "You know damn well I could kill you with just one strike, children, and it's not just me who will be capable of it in the future. Now, I know your lot are still twelve or thirteen, same age that I also started as sugdi, but it's not an excuse to be unserious and ignorant. Since you got accepted in the hagdan, you will be pressured to wisen up beyond your years and more than any child your age that is not balyan. Innocence and naivety has no place here, so you will have to drop your childish antics and spoiled behavior earlier. If you can't even adjust that, then I'm afraid this nation is doomed with immature balyan. How can you save people when you can't even discipline yourselves?"

The unit does not make a sound, and even Silakbo chooses to clamp his mouth shut with a scowl. They only lower their heads and refuse to make any more eye contact with their mentor.

Gabay chugs down another beer and throws it across the pond. "Because I am your mentor, I will do my very best to keep you safe. However, once we are through this year, when you are no longer under my tutelage, you will be your own responsibility. You shall keep no contact with me after you complete your sugdi term, and I will no longer care about whatever will happen to you. If you die out there, your soul won't see me in your wake. That is why, if you are under me, all I require you is to listen to me. The only adult you will trust in a year will be me alone. Do you understand?"

They do not respond.

"Do you understand, children?", Gabay repeats in a louder voice. "I do not accept protests about this one rule. My instruction method is a dictatorship, so you can get out of this training ground if you object."

After another silence passes them, the unit slowly nods and mumbles their agreements. Gabay surveys them one more time before he stands up and paces closer to them.

"Anyways." He clears his throat. "Each year, the children's memories of the trials are altered to protect them from post-traumatic stress that they might have after the Sinugdanan. However, this is not for the selected sugdi's own benefit. Instead, this is for who would not pass. The selected sugdi would have to bear what truly occurred during the trials. You will not remember how you felt and what exactly took place, but the mentors are required to narrate to their proteges their assessment results and help them realize their decisions that led to their acceptance in the hagdan."

Hiwaga raises a hand. "What did happen in the trials, Senyor?"

"I need you to take note that historical records of the era in Baryo Aliguyon and the old map of Lam-ang remains a blur. The teachings about it in your history subjects in the Akademya remain as theories and hypothetical details. Whoever it was that buried everything we need to know about the colonial god, the cursed banaba tree, and the baryo remains a mystery. This is well discussed by your maestro. One thing is confirmed though. The banaba tree is still tethered to the colonial god, and we must destroy it completely. However, Tala Mayari never jotted down and told a soul about whatever happened between them and their other three lovers. Even Yari's actual place in the story and legitimacy of their execution is some secret they kept burnt with their ashes. None of her remains were found."

"And?" Indak sighs. "Your point is?"

Gabay halts in front of her and flicks the injured part of her forehead, making the girl cry out in pain and glare at him. "Salakep, the trials are designed so that the triers witness some key scenes, ones that are almost confirmed by our archivists and historians, and then play certain characters later on to make decisions for them regarding the situation served to them. For this batch, triers from Nieves Base play Yari, Magdalena triers get to be Tala Mayari, and then Teresa triers become the Anitun that Yari mothered, which is the second pinuno. However you make decisions in their place and walk their story is helpful in our data gathering to piece together historical records, and however triers moved was crucial in finding out who among you had choices that were unselfish and thoughtful of the people. It's simply hitting two birds with one stone."

"My name's Indak Agui," she grumbles.

"Blah, blah, blah." Silakbo puts his hands on his waist once more. "How did I do then?"

“I’m not a narrator, that is why I put all your results on paper.” Gabay pulls out four scrolls from his back pockets and hauls them to his unit. “Go read it yourself.”

The four of them catch it in the air, except for Silakbo whose scroll hits his forehead. This elicits an indignant ‘hey’ from the small boy before he picks up the fallen material and opens it without erasing the scowl on his face. Hiwaga nods at their own results the moment they read the scroll and they seal it back with a look of satisfaction. They attempt to return it to their mentor, but Gabay waves a hand and shakes his head to affirm that they get to keep their records.

“Hiwa, look.” Sigla shows them her results with a strange glint in her eyes. “It said here that I chose to attack the colonial god right on his holy seat.”

Hiwaga nods. “But that's also your cause of death.”

Sigla giggles. “Right? I didn't even let him finish talking!”

“The way I chose you is how you managed to end the calamity during that era, or cataclysm, as what I like to call it, by way of death.” Gabay says. “It could be any death, really. The condition is that you, yourself, must cause it to happen. Sigla Halas, you were brave enough to go for the colonial god the first time you saw him, and I think we need that type of confidence to pursue something bigger than us. If you die, well, that's on you.”

“This child with the pink cheeks regained consciousness much earlier in Yari’s body,” he continues, pointedly looking at Hiwaga. “The observers have wanted to eject you out of the trials early after noticing that, but I stopped them when I realized you were carrying on with the storyline intended for you, despite your confusion, and completed it still with a strategic plan to cut off the colonial god while simultaneously cooperating with the rest of the balyan in Baryo Aliguyon. That alone surprised all of us for it was a...successful one. I fought with the others for you to be in this unit. If we don't have a smart one here, we die.”

Indak and Silakbo look at Hiwaga with mouths wide open in a mix of awe and jealousy as Sigla teasingly praises and applauds them. Hiwaga remains nonchalant, only nodding at the information passed on to them.

“The short boy—”

“It’s Sil!”, the Tambal fumes. "Sil!"

“You have quite the mischievous results. I admit, I did not expect you to be so sly and sneaky, but that one was well done,” Gabay acknowledges with a sigh. “Well done, it could actually be helpful data.”

“Why?” Indak raises an eyebrow. “What’d he do?”

“I,” Silakbo pounds his fist to his chest, “did whatever you could never do! I swear, Agui, you could never be me.”

Indak blinks. "You need an albularyo."

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose this protege’s results, and neither should you spread information about it, boy,” Gabay warns him with narrowed eyes. “You’re ordered to come with me after this orientation for investigatory and research purposes. So, please keep your mouth shut about your results for now.”

“And for this young girl.” Gabay examines her from head to toe. “You surrendered yourself for execution. I am afraid I don’t understand your results, but I can’t argue that it’s a generous one. What I am not sure of is that if it’s truly your decisions or something else entirely is controlling it for you, and you’re just a witness to it. There was some strange essence mixed into your simulation for that one. Not only you, but other twenty something triers had the same essence injected to theirs as well. We reviewed your conversation with the hanged body of Yari, and it was quite unusual. Basically, my point is, you are an under observation trier who also happens to be selected by me to complete this unit.”

Indak looks at him in disbelief. “Under observation? For that?”

“Your results are strange,” Gabay repeats. “Even birthing a few babies to get the perfect savior is insanity.”

Silakbo scrunches his nose in both horror and disgust. “You did what? What's the babies for?”

Gabay Gugurang waves him off. "That's enough questions for now. It's not for little brats to ponder on. Anways, I'd have to give you our routine schedules, so please listen carefully. Today, I'll not hold you for long, but I will keep you for a whole day tomorrow for physical training. We must catch up as soon as possible."

"I want to do it now," Silakbo demands. "Why not now? It's only morning."

"I have meetings to attend to. It's quite a busy year for your higher ups." Their mentor sighs as he yet again throws another set of scrolls at them. "That is your official map on what we will do for the following months. Our sessions start at sixth hour and ends at the twenty-two. Breaks will be at the eleventh, fifteenth, and nineteenth."

Sigla whines, "Six is too early, Senyor."

"Well, maybe you should leave my unit if you disagree," Gabay says. "Any other complaints? What about the short boy?"

"I'm not even saying anything!"

A corner of their mentor's mouth lifts upwards. "Ah, so you do agree that you're short. Very good."

Indak rolls her eyes and opens the scrolls to see their schedules:

FIRST SEMESTER:

SECOND SEMESTER:

She sighs in relief, realizing that explaining as to why her third eye is dormant might not be an early problem. She still has four months before the opening of the third eye begins. She might be able to plan some heartfelt speech right before, so she could weasel some reasons to stay. Whether it be sheer luck that brought her in or a bit of ability to be able to get through things, she needs to keep herself standing on it no matter the cost.

Whatever happens, she refuses to leave the hagdan now that it acknowledges her.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Indak sits on her heels under red skies and a crimson lake by the edge of a floating dock. The air feels cold on her skin and an eeriness blankets the atmosphere. Her eyes flit everywhere before settling on a naked form lying on a bed of algae at the bottom of the lake. Tiny parasols stick on every inch of its skin, the threads tied to them pointing to the surface. Indak’s heart stops when she realizes these threads connect to her body.

Her hands reach out to touch the lines that pierce every pore of her face and at the ones pushing through the tips of her fingers and interlacing through the rest of her skin. When she attempts to pull them off, they drag her closer to the edge instead, prompting her to let go, but the strings continue to nudge her forward until her whole body submerges into the lake.

Headless corpses encircle her in lukewarm water. Her arms try to claw her way out, only to be yanked closer to the naked body. She pulls on the threads again, and the parasols on the body close one by one until it reveals her face, but the corpses crowd around her before she could acknowledge the image. When the parasols turn to fire and consume the figure, her fiery threads begin binding her to the corpses as the flame slithers to devour her.

She suffocates as she feels the hollow part of her soul, carved out with only sediments of its original form left behind. Rejection and disappointment come through the edges of her heart and nip at it. It hurts for a while, and she fears that she might scream in desperation. She hears her own thoughts begging for something she could not decipher, and the corpses leave her to slaughter in both fire and water. She sinks further down with only her hand trying its best to reach for the surface and anchor itself before her last breath runs out.

Her eyes snap open.

Something heavy weighs on her chest, and she turns to the side to discover the leg of Adhika, the boy sleeping beside her, sprawled across her stomach. He also has his arm around her neck.

She aggressively throws him off her and rolls him in a blanket until it completely cocoons him like a newborn baby. When she hears her stomach rumble in hunger, she takes one last look at the boy and slaps his forehead before walking out of the quarters. She scrambles to find her slippers in the dark before heading out towards the kitchen area.

When she lights the candles in the kitchen table and sinks, two pairs of eyes stare back at her from the long wooden table. The girl with the cropped hair pauses with meat in her mouth while the other girl sitting in front of her, who also happens to be her unit member, smiles at her with some rice sticking to the corners of her lips. She slowly walks over to them while rubbing her still sleepy eyes.

"You're finally awake," Diwa says in between chewing her food. "It's the second hour of the day, Indi."

Indak sits beside Diwa and yawns. "I'm just hungry right now. I don't even know when I went to sleep yesterday."

Sigla drinks a mug of water and burps. "After our mentor sent us back to our quarters, you instantly went to your banig and slept super soundly. Not even Bayani could disturb you."

Diwa laughs and playfully smacks Sigla's hand. "Ew, Sigla. Mind your manners. It's embarrassing."

Sigla giggles. "What? It's human nature."

They both laugh at each other while Indak smacks her face on the table.

"Oh, right. You must be hungry, Indi. You didn't eat your dinner so we saved it for you." Diwa hands over some meat to her and rice wrapped in banana leaves. "Have you seen the housekeeping schedules? It's posted right by the sink. Bayani made it."

Indak sits up and looks over to the sink and finds two scrolls pinned above the pottery.

CLEANING SCHEDULE:

SALO ARRANGEMENT:

"There's a seating plan for meals too?"

Sigla hums and slides a mug of water to Indak. "He's crazy."

Diwa nods. "I have to agree with you on that. Reyna Manlangiten came by today to check up on us for our first day and was flabbergasted with the scrolls. He also praised Bayani a bit for it's the first time some sugdi's taking this thing seriously and organizing some tasks for each day."

"Why?" Sigla tilts her head in curiousity. "What do previous triers do?"

"Reyna says that in his batch they just clean if they feel like it. In my Ma's batch, they just do these tasks like three days per week. In my sister's batch, they clean when necessary and do individual grocery. Definitely not everyday."

Sigla nods. "Then Bayani is super crazy."

"How do we even manage training schedule with that housekeeping schedule?" Indak groans. "Our mentor requires us to be there at the sixth hour. Sixth. Hour."

Diwa snorts. "You know what Adhika's mentor said to their unit? That it doesn't matter what time they'll come. The only fixed thing is how they'll always end at twenty-two. They can take breaks whenever they like. However, if you've got five absences, then you're out of the unit and banned from the hagdan forever."

Indak starts unwrapping her food and digging in, ignoring how cold it had gone. "Well, some people are lucky."

"Right?" Diwa shakes her head. "You know what our mentor told our unit? While we have to be in at thirteenth, there will be no breaks and we will have to end at twenty-two. That's tiring!"

Sigla sighs and holds Diwa's hand. "I would do anything for that schedule, Wadi. I would take it over coming to train at sixth hour."

They spent the rest of the hours, before preparations, complaining about their mentors and talking about the strangeness of their other basemates. Right after, they quickly went down to the river together to wash up. By the fifth hour, Indak and Sigla already came racing down to their training grounds. Silakbo still remains at the dining table during this time to finish his breakfast while Hiwaga continues to clean themselves in the river. On the sixth hour, Gabay Gugurang appears before the four of them and drops twenty weight bags by their feet.

With a teasing smile on his face, he points to the heavy objects and gestures his proteges to put them on. "These are new clothes that I got for you to show off around Baryo Melchora. If you ever drop dead, I'll kill you."

0 notes

yangsoeuvre · 2 months ago

Text

Chapter VII: Nieves Base

Note #5: dug under the Sugdi Quarters, Volume I of Forgotten Entries From Dead and Missing Dreamers

If I ever make it out alive, you would never be able to read this.

Tandang Mirisi's Kapehan (Coffeehouse)

Come to Tandang Mirisi's as soon as possible. We will be there the whole day to wait for you.

The trek to the corner kapehan lasted Indak longer than usual as she hops on one foot on the way while holding on to lantern-lit talisay trees that guide the roads at night.

Around the day, she snuck out of the house, bringing only the acceptance papers and her pasiking with her. She avoided the routes that led to the apothecary of the village and hurried straight to Tandang Mirisi's despite her injury. If people ever stared at her strange predicament, then they never made it noticeable. Though, the group of toddlers playing in the baryo quadrangle might have thrown some fits and giggles until she left their sight.

She can smell the welcoming blend of caffeine and vanilla from outside the kapehan. Despite the aroma signaling the presence of servers attending to customers, the stone seats and tables from outside lay clean and unstained. A cardboard sign with the baybayin characters of "sarado" hung on the close swinging doors, clearly stating the place's unavailability.

She walks through the pebbled ground leading to the doors and pushes them open. Her eyes fall on the group of people, in their traditional binakol-weaved clothes, occupying all the bamboo seats and tables. The servers dressed in barong orderly enter and exit the kitchen to serve various types of pastries and drinks on brass trays. They even offer hot meals on banana leaves and some frozen desserts with wooden cutlery. However, what truly struck her attention was the cleared area around the middle of the room.

This space hosts a large triangle with an eye in the middle, drawn in black ink, much like the image of a balyan's anting. Three candles on wooden saucers are distributed along its corners and a thick pile of codex lay scattered on the sides, with some leftover pounded leaves of a tomato plant mixed with soot and water. Across this formation is an altar of hot food on banana leaves, the taotao figure of Agui and Bathala, two empty coconut bowls, and a jar of water.

Indak points at the strange setup. “What’s this? And why are you all here?”

Her uncle gestures for the empty seat across him, near the open windows, where the sight of a few sikad cycling past the kapehan are visible. “May I invite you to please sit down for a moment, Indak Agui.”

“What are you all up to?”

She looks at him then to his two children behind him, one looking like he would slap her out of the kapehan and the other crying like the end of their world is near.

Bahandi snaps, “What do you think?”

“Bahandi,” his father reprimands him in a stern voice and a cold gaze as the young girl takes the seat despite the confusion well written in her eyes. “Are you well? How did the Sinugdanan go for you, Indak Agui?”

Indak shrugs. “I don’t think I even remember anything. Why?”

“Did you fail?”

She tilts her head at her uncle and narrows her eyes at him. “What’s the answer you prefer? You’re looking at me like you’re anticipating something.”

Buwan smiles. “Whatever the result, we will help you.”

Indak shows them a smug smile. “I passed.”

Gunita cries even harder, and the room falls to a silence at her words. Everyone's heads turn to her direction. When the servers slowly begin to leave the kapehan, the noise returns in chatters about the incredulity of the result and some gossip about her family to their neighbors.

“Impossible,” Bahandi says in disbelief, eyes and mouth wide open. “It must be a lie.”

Indak rolls her eyes at their reaction.

The man in front of her slams a closed fist on the table, silencing the mumbles and whispers around them. “We miscalculated. Gunita Venancio, can you explain this situation? You’ve clearly reported that she is only of average rank in her studies. What is this?”

Indak stares at Gunita’s weeping form in suspicion. “Now, you’re really losing me. What is going on?”

Her cousin sniffs. "Pa, I swear her academic performance could not make it through the hagdan. I swear!"

Indak makes a face. "Nobody said the Sinugdanan would be based off it, so I don't see why I should do better. They invite a few triers each year from non-Akademya children as well. It's not like they have academic records to boast."

"It must be the trial design this year, Pa. Something about it must have enabled her to pass," Bahandi says. "Indak Agui, there is really no point in lying here, if that's the case."

She glares at the older boy. "Why would I lie?"

Buwan sighs. “We will still proceed accordingly with our other plan. She has no choice.”

Gunita manages to resist the ones holding her. She crawls to her father’s robes and clings to it on bended knees. “Pa, please. I don’t want this. I don’t want any of it at all!”

Buwan removes her fingers from his clothes and closes his eyes in deep thought. “Let us all calm down, please. Bahandi, get a hold of your sister. This is her duty after all.”

Bahandi pulls Gunita to her feet and gently drags her back to the corner.

“Indak Agui.” Buwan leans on the table and crosses his arms. “It has been eleven years since the massacre of your tribe. Because your family relied on our tree’s support throughout these years of recovery, you are able to live well without worry. However, trees still follow a mutualistic type of conduct with the tribe they serve. The fact that, for the past years, you have made no contribution to your gods and the tree that stayed loyal to your tribe for generations, this warrants for a seal and contract termination. You could not sustain us as you should, and therefore, fall short on our agreements.”

“Wait, wait.” Indak puts a hand over her forehead, feeling a headache coming. “Why are you discussing this with me? I’m only turning thirteen! Not to mention, I may be from the Agui, but my father and I are only of the thirteenth lineage. We are no heirs or in blood relation to our tribe’s last rajah, or the first lineage, so signings don't involve my line at all. If you want to discuss compensation, then ask the dead.”

Bahandi glares at Indak. “Pa, you know she would be this disrespectful to our generational contracts and unable to comprehend even simple things. What’s the use for diplomacy? Just clock and lock her up immediately.”

Gunita grabs her brother by the collar and shouts at his face, "Kuya! How could you even suggest something heinous as that?! This is our cousin!"

“Bahandi, this is the last time you ever speak out of turn. Any more, and we will have to discuss punishments. Do not test my patience,” Buwan warns him. “While what you say is true, Indak Agui, you are still from the tribe and one of its last two. The authority of a tribe’s first lineage naturally falls upon you and your father. However, as I’ve said, you’ve not made any contributions and only turned the name of the god that you carry as nothing but an ornament.”

"I'm only one person, and I'm physically helpless!", Indak sputters. “What do you want me to do? Spawn out a tribe that could sustain a whole tree? I can't do anything at this age!”

Buwan slams his fist on the table again. “Do not be absurd, Indak Agui. This is exactly the reason why you are unfit to house a third eye and exercise our god’s gahum. You've no wisdom nor diligence to serve Bathala and Agui.”

"Wow, alright." Indak puts on a fake smile. “Thank you, but I didn’t come here to be evaluated as a person and as Agui’s follower. Who are you to judge me? You said you're going to help me get in the hagdan, so let's talk about that instead.”

An elder seated near the formation snarls at the young girl and angrily points a shaky finger at her. “You dare call yourself Agui’s follower? When you could not even consistently attend and host the anito semana held for your own tribe and run the cremation business your tribe managed for generations? The Agui handled the dead for hundreds of years and kept all contracts and compensations for even the ferrymen before the souls traverse to the afterworld. The rituals are something taught to the tribe’s children and memorized as early as four years old, yet here sits an Agui who is unable to practice it.”

Ah, the anito semana.

Her mother and the Venancio Tree never failed to gather around and pay respects to her dead tribe during the anito semana. This happens three times a year, and she remembers having to kneel in front of burial jars with them as her thoughts drift to what Tandang Mirisi’s menu will be that day. Her father usually takes her there after the rites, and waiting made her impatient sometimes. She blames the Akademya schedules for her days truly got busier as she got older, and her failed attendance might have left a cold impression.

“Sorry, but I really can't help it if I've educational priorities. Plus, my father said you offered to manage that business until I am of age, so why is there a problem now?”, Indak reasons. “Why are we even talking about this? Didn’t you say you’re going to help me? Unless you lied about that only to call me up for a lecture.”

“We will help you, Indak Agui, but I repeat that we operate on mutualistic conduct,” Buwan says after a long pause. “Give me a moment to adjust our plans. We did not have much faith in you, so your acceptance is truly unexpected.”

“What? Over academic records?”

“Initially, if you failed the trials, we would have forcefully demanded the gouging of your third eye and commence a gahum transfer. We would have a lawful reason to do this for your failure to be in the hagdan terminates all excuses of your lack of participation in tribal duties. According to the contracts, the tree has every right to execute the allegiance and ask for whatever reparation for when the agreements are crossed out. All members of the fallen tribe will have their third eyes gouged at as punishment for not fulfilling their duties. Additionally, the tree gains the gahum of the fallen tribe and becomes the tribe. Our tree is quite large, Indak Agui. We would be able to carry Agui's name for a few more generations. ”

Inda scoffs and crosses her arms. “Thanks for explaining. So, in less justification, you want to steal our gahum, and then run away with the title of a tribe.”

"Pa, one chance," Bahandi whispers, "One chance, Pa, and I'll discipline some kid for you."

“To call this thievery is blasphemous and preposterous,” another elder from the table next to them firmly shares their views. “The contract has been signed in front of a balyan and all our anito’s shrines. Bathala is a witness of this hundred years agreement. To add, we can't steal what has never been yours.”

Indak rolls her eyes again.

The first elder wipes the sweat off their face with a clean towel in the large basin beside them. “Must we really converse with this ignorant and clueless girl that is not even from the first lineage? She is not wise enough. Oh, if it was the true heir, Aso, that survived, then we surely won't be demanding some gahum transfer. Unfortunately for us, you were the one who got away from the massacre. We only followed you and your father here, to Bonifacio from Luna, child, as fulfillment of our responsibility and promise of service to your tribe. We even helped your family move forward, for every oath we took is considered sacred. Now, it is your turn to do your part in the agreements.”

All the tribes in Urduja mostly reside in Baryo Luna. Indak’s tribe once lived in the village too, but when their population went down to two, they had to transfer to Bonifacio just like every other tribe that had a decrease in population. Those who still have their tribe intact gains advantages from training regimes supported by their still lingering elders that help increase their chances of getting into the hagdan.

The separation resulted from a debate in the past about the compounds of those with a receding population. Other village folks said that these declining tribes took up too much space in a place that gives a whole compound to them. To solve this, the fourth pinuno divided Urduja into two villages, which are now known as Luna and Bonifacio. That way, Luna’s tribes can expand their compounds to fill an increase of their lineages and also establish more buildings within their estate. In return, the businesses and lineages of the fallen tribes gain a chance to flourish and start over again from scratch in Bonifacio before their return to Luna, if they ever make it.

Nobody forced trees to follow their tribes to Bonifacio, Indak thinks with a scowl on her face.

“Okay.” She throws her hands in the air. “Tell me, what is my part in this whatever generational contract?”

“We could no longer perform our initial plan. If we intervene and force you to reject your entry to the hagdan, the higher ups would start investigating your rejection of the proposal and seal off your third eye and gahum. Only they would then be able to probe it open again, and this would lead to our failure to continue serving Agui and Bathala,” Buwan responds with a tired voice. “We will sign your papers, Indak Agui. Consider this your redemption. However, we would still perform gahum transfer. This gahum would temporarily be hostaged by my daughter until you prove yourself worthy enough to get it back.”

Indak's back straightens. “Redemption for what? I've done nothing!”

"Exactly," her uncle monotonously says. "That's enough of a crime."

Indak shoots up from her seat. “Are you joking? How can I proceed as balyan when my third eye turns dormant due to gahum transfer? The main requirements of a balyan is the gahum!”

“Well, then it is up to you to prove yourself to the hagdan using only your own efforts,” the elder beside them says. “Indak Agui, I've never really seen you dedicate yourself to your anito, so I doubt you would actually learn to give your anito’s gahum the honor it deserves. Maybe the hagdan would wake you up without it. Some people do say that you start looking for gods on the brink of death.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Indak scowls at all of them, chest heaving in anger. “You don't think that I can weasel my way in using the hagdan's investigation of me and this situation? Say I want it and you’re just being unfair? I'll drag you behind bars and your heads through a spear!”

“Your mother hates the idea of the hagdan and would intervene, so you would still not have your third eye open.” Buwan looks her in the eye. “You will be stuck in this place forever until all of us rots in another war, wondering if you ever just did what we told you, complied to our complaints, then maybe all of us will be saved and then you wouldn’t be so helpless.”

“You’re threatening me.” Indak nods in realization as she lets out another fake laugh. “You're this bold now, Tito Buwan?”

"A necessary feat for the best of our future. We won't wait for you to grow up to flourish both tribe and tree, Indak Agui. That would be a waste of precious time. It's already embarrassing to be in Bonifacio, just waiting until the Venancio name would gather dust and pushed into oblivion," he tells her. He stands up and slides a brown envelope across the table. “I'll give you a deal. We will send you to Melchora ourselves. We will pack you new things for your stay in the hagdan and even send an extra allowance. This is the last drop of respect we can offer you, Indak Agui. This manner in our decisions regarding your fate is not so bad as dying here, nothing but a child with a dead family attached to your identity.”

Indak immediately tears the envelope open and sees parchments of signatures and records of her time in the Akademya. A clear letter of authorization addressed to both the pinuno and Silya Pentagram also contain them, the business stamp of the Venancio Tree printed at the bottom.

"You can always get your gahum back if you're prepared enough, Indak Agui. If you're strong enough." Buwan offers her a clipped smile. "What? Are you this weak after all and nothing to back your pride? Do you truly agree with the insults we just threw at you? That you want to live and die rotting here because you're too afraid to learn things on your own, without anyone's help? One day be controlled by your enemies? That you've never made any leap of faith, a great and important decision for yourself, in your whole life? Do you not trust even yourself?"

Indak stares at the papers and reads them over and over again, flipping through them until they crease in her hands. Her heart starts beating faster and sweat begins to line the sides of her head. Memories of the stories told about the massacre of the six tribes come flowing back through her mind as she looks at each and every person in the room. From the window's view of the outside, the sikad outside the kapehan and the people pacing through the streets seem to slow down into a pause.

"No, no!" Gunita runs up to her and shakes her shoulders. "Indi, please, wake up! Do not listen, do not listen! You can't go out there. and I can't go out there either! If we stay right here, we can protect each other, and we'll be alright!"

"No, you would be alright!" Indak pushes her away. "You always have your tree, Indi, and I've no one to protect me. My father's always away and my mother's always busy. When another war or colonial god comes, I won't be able to stand against it. The hagdan is the only sensible way to death. It is the only thing I recognize to bury me alive in exchange for strength and power. WIth or without gahum, I will make it. I will make it!"

Gunita screams and pushes her to the ground. "No! You're wrong, and you never did know what you're getting into! You've never cared about what I have to say either! This is not the correct choice!"

Indak winces in pain as she bounces back to grab her cousin by the hair. "You're really losing it, Gunita!"

"Drag them both away to the formation, please." Buwan sighs with a hand on his forehead. He picks up one of the codex from the ground and stands in front of the altar. "We're already doing this in secret, so let's not take long."

One elder guffaws as she passes the young girls screaming and trying to tear their hairs off each other's scalps. "I remember you having destructive temper tantrums too, Buwan. Now, you're almost so calm and collected that it's actually frightening."

A few people from the tree pull the girls apart and drag them into the triangular formation. They hold them in place by a tight grip on their shoulders and a few other people locking any possible exits, including the windows and doors.

Indak struggles in their grip. "Get away from me! I'm not going to resist it!"

Gunita cries even more.

When a few of her brother's cousins start to tease her cousin, Bahandi glares at them and secretly throws a middle finger at the group. It instantly shuts them up. The boy then scowls at Indak and looks her up and down.

Buwan clears his throat as he shoots Bahandi a glare. "May we begin, please."

The children of the tree begin to light the candles and close the curtains of the kapehan, and their shadows entangle and dance on the walls as the flame keeps them entertained within the dim space. Murmurs coming from the elders surrounding them and book pages flipped by wrinkled hands become the only sounds rushing through her ears. Within these stramge vibrations, her cousin's sobs strangle its hushed echo.

Gunita clings to her hand. “Indi, I really didn’t want this. I hope you know that.”

Indak roughly snatches her hand back as she keeps her gaze straight ahead. “Gunita, don’t apologize and cry like it's something tragic. I’ll come back for what’s mine eventually. Until then, burn your third eye until it remembers that it never belonged there.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She repeatedly reads the authorization documents as she walks through the gates of Melchora, lingering on the dried blood printing the baybayin characters of familiar names at the bottom of the second page, just below her basic profile filled in the first half. She feels so naked reading all of the records that recognize even her smaller achievements and estranged relatives. It's quiet proof that although the citizens could go on with their lives not caring about their footprints, the ones that govern them will trace their blood down to their first ancestor's heartbeat.

Still, written documents do not provide evidence that their governing body cares about each and every one of Urduja's people.

The hiraya in blue uniform, who couldn’t be older than twenty, calls her out as she fails to notice her own arrival at Nieves Base. His hooded coat hangs on his back, the sleeves tied around his neck while one sleeve of his turtleneck shirt rolls up to his elbow. He does not look very friendly to Indak, especially when he draws his attention to the tingkep and pasiking on her back.

He furrows his thin brows, the small gash above his left eye stretching inwards. "Who the fuck’s kid are you?"

Before she can answer, the young man turns around to yell at someone from inside. "Kalma, we got someone out here! Kalma, where the—Kalma, stop fucking around and get right here!"

"Do you have to raise your voice at me, Pasyon?" A delicate voice reprimands the balyan, his tone tickling her ears like a feather as it distinctly contrasts the other.

Indak shifts her attention to the newcomer.

Carmine eyes fringed with long lashes emerges from the gates of the base in yellow uniform. His skin looks soft and smooth with no hint of a blemish, his eyes blink each time a light breeze sweeps past them and ruffles his ash-gray curls, and a beauty mark rests on his cheekbone. Indak thinks she has never seen a more beautiful person.

Pasyon throws his hands in the air. "Yes, I fucking have to. You work directly under the seventh pinuno, and yet you motherfuck—"

"Pasyon," he cuts his friend off with a voice that couldn't break even glass. "You know the etiquette of an Ijang Division senyor."

The angry one turns to his side to point his finger at his companion. "Are you fucking threatening me, Kalma? You piece of shit—"

"Hello," Kalma greets her without a smile. "You must be one of this season's sugdi. Do you have your authorization papers with you?"

"—couldn't just keep a decent fucking job and—"

Indak ignores the grandiosity of the other as she hands the papers to Kalma who takes his time to examine the signatures before nodding in her direction.

"You may pass."

Pasyon takes a step back, looking at Kalma with wide eyes. "Did you even check for fucking legitimacy? Are you trying to get me dismissed—"

Another balyan in blue escorts her inside, and Indak walks past the two while looking back, twice, at the youth named Kalma.

A Naiad. If they're pretty, then it's either a Naiad, Minokawa, or Mayari. Or it could be an Anitun.

On the way, they pass by little bamboo sheds beside the entrances to small forests that she guesses might function for training. Scale-feathered malkoha fly around bani trees while some remain perched on the roofs of nearby sheds. From afar, she spots the Sugdi Quarters, a nipa hut on an open field, circled by coconut trees constantly blown by the calm winds of Urduja. A straw-made open kitchen sits right beside it, and behind the hut lies a bamboo bridge built over a slow-flowing river, leading to two smaller huts serving as an area for body waste disposal.

The door of the quarters suddenly slides open, and the bald Likha Manlangiten walks out and blinks at the sight of her in suspicion.

He narrows his eyes as he goes down the front steps and approaches her in greeting. "Am I seeing this right? Is that really Paham's daughter?"

"I have a name," she dryly responds. "Is everyone present?"

"Yes, well you're late, actually," he tells her as he takes her baggage and starts walking back to the quarters. "Why were you late, by the way, kid? Wrestled with your mother first? Or did you use your good mind to find a way to this base? You know we appreciate the dedication to be in the hagdan, but you did not have to injure yourself to do it."

Indak glances at the bandages the Venancio Tree did on her feet. "My mother didn't do it."

"Well, I thought she would. Just like old days."

"Why? Did my mother break your leg or something?"

He guffaws. "Your Ma broke your Pa's archnemesis' arm back when they played house as kids. Oh, how I love to tell my proteges' children about the dumb things they did when they were your age."

She rolls her eyes. "Sure, I appreciate the information."

Seven pairs of eyes greet the both of them as the door slides open to reveal her sleeping quarters. Some unfamiliar faces pause in the middle of unpacking their blankets and sleeping mats from their tingkeps as they look to her direction. Indak notes three people among them that she is sure she saw in the Akademya, though she can’t say she’s ever spoke to them at all. She may have passed them in the hallways often, but she can’t remember a conversation or fight instigated between them.

“Hey, it's you, my great martial arts rival's best friend!” A boy with a blue collar around his neck exclaims, his blueberry eyes beaming up at her in recognition.

Indak raises an eyebrow. "You have the wrong person. I don't have a best friend, and I don't even know you."

He pushes in her direction and draws her in a tight hug. "I'm so glad to find someone from our baryo that is familiar. I thought everyone's a new face."

She pushes her away from her with both hands on his shoulders. "Who are you, exactly?"

He lays his arms wide open in introduction. "It's me! Your best friend's rival, the one and only Bayani Sarimao of the Sarimao Furniture Manufacturing Business. It's alright if you don't know me. The heir to the Sarimao furniture line is strictly hush-hush information. Plus, I don't blame Gunita Venancio for being a little hesitant to introduce such great threat to her 'god of martial arts' reputation. How blasphemous, right?"

"Gunita's my cousin," Indak corrects, "And, not to break your heart, but in my honest opinion, I don't think anybody actually cares who inherits some furniture business. Why should that be secret though when you keep announcing it?"

Bayani puts a hand over his heart. "I love how curious you are about me."

She sighs and rolls her eyes. "Move out of my way, please. Senyor Likha, where should I sleep?"

A sugdi from the right tilts her glasses to fit forest green eyes and points at the twelve sets of baybayin initials inscribed on a wall. “Each side occupies six people. Sleeping mats are arranged alphabetically through lineage names, so mind your own area, and don’t bother mine.”

A smaller boy walks between Indak and Bayani, his shoulders shoving both of them forward as he drags his pasiking through the doorway. Both victims of the impolite behavior let out an indignant ‘hey’ at the rude demeanor as their eyes follow him. The boy glares at Indak over his shoulder as he makes his way to his space and continues to unpack his things from his open tingkep. When their eyes met, Indak immediately registered his face.

Bronze skin and fuschia pink sweater.

Silakbo Tambal.

She initially found it soothing that she never saw Isog Magbabaya in her assigned base since the Sinugdanan. However, finding his best friend trying to instigate some fight during the trials and actually passing it makes her eyes want to cross in frustration. The boy, though merely a bystander in the fights she and Isog had in the Akademya, had the most hateful eyes she'd ever seen when it sets upon her. She can't quite recall how she offended him, but she likes to leave it at that so her head won't ache too much as she figures her goals in the hagdan.

Indak rolls her eyes at him and hurries to a spot beside the open window on the left side. She glares at the boy in a ponytail laying on his side from her right, fast asleep on his mat as he softly mumbles unrecognizable names. He better not have bad sleeping habits for she will not be able to endure it for a whole year.

In the middle of unpacking, someone taps her shoulder from behind, and she tilts her head back to see her face reflected in peach blossom eyes. She stares at the ash gray of her cropped hair, and it reminds her of the youth from the gates. She looks too beautiful and nice, but when she looks at her eyes once more, she realizes they're not red. She almost thought her related to Kalma.

The girl smiles as she stretches out both hands and offers her a pouch of durian candy. "My mother said I should give these to my basemates. I'm Diwa Naiad."

Naiad? But her eyes. Indak bites her tongue to stop her thoughts. It shouldn't matter to her. "My name's Indak Agui, if you want to remember it."

After the reyna gives them enough time to unpack, he whistles to catch everyone's attention.

“Now that your introductions are over and you've familiarized your basemates, I do welcome all of you to Balyan Hagdan, new batch of sugdi! Out of hundreds of triers, you succeeded in landing a spot in Nieves Base. This base has a plethora of training grounds in the deep molave forest, each to be accommodated by certain units or purposes. Your abilities would do well in this base, and your unit's assigned mentors would be glad to get you through this year. I can't really tell you anything more as your mentors will have their own training plan for you, so training and sugdi objective information will have to come from your mentors, personally. You will be meeting them tomorrow. Questions, anyone?”

“Will you be sleeping here with us, Senyor?”, Diwa asks.

Likha guffaws. “Why do you ask, kid? If it’s to sing you to sleep, then I may have to disappoint you. As this batch’s host, I’m only here to gather sugdi reports from the formal objectives your respective units will be assigned to. These reports will contribute to your credentials as you build your reputation in the hagdan and will be helpful for future recommendations in certain organizations or nations. So, do well, unless you want your rank to collect dust.”

“About allowance.” Bayani sheepishly looks to the side in hesitation before returning his gaze to the host. “How much was it again?”

He smirks. "Seven thousand pesos for monthly allowance and another ten thousand for monthly base maintenance."

Bayani grins as he punches the air in celebration.

“Speaking of, who here wants to volunteer to be quarter commander?” Likha surveys the sugdi in front of him. “Somebody needs to manage base maintenance allowances and assign tasks to their fellow sugdi to keep the Sugdi Quarters clean. It’s also for you to coexist peacefully during your stay, and they'll be the ones to report to me personally about some problems that would arise between your batch. Just in case.”

Bayani clears his throat.

“Bayani seems to want it,” Indak answers for the boy.

“What? No, I don’t—” Bayani meets everyone ‘s eyes in the room as he combs his hair with his fingers. “Well, if you want me to.”

“Who wants you to? I don't want you to!” Silakbo puts a hand on his hip. "Sarimao, you looked really greedy when you heard how much the allowance is, and I don't think someone with a potential for corruption should lead in any way.”

Indak looks at the shorter boy in confusion. "What are you even talking about?"

The other boy beside her shifts his sleeping position to the other side as he hugs his legs to his chest. "Well, you can't blame human nature for loving gold."

Bayani glares at Silakbo, indignant. “How dare you make this accusation? I am a very honest person!”

Silakbo runs up to Likha and grabs his uniform as he points at his basemate. "Bayani Sarimao was sent to the prefect for stealing money from teachers during Year Four!"

The room turns quiet.

Bayani sputters. "I can explain—"

After a few moments of silence and judgement, Likha Manlangiten laughs and lends Bayani a limestone jar. “Once again, welcome to the hierarchy, and may Bathala keep you alive for as long as possible, kid.”

0 notes

yangsoeuvre · 2 months ago

Text

Chapter VI: Sinugdanan (IV)

Note #343: found under a noose hung under a treehouse, Volume I of Forgotten Entries From Dead and Missing Dreamers

In the end, I did what you said.

With this, you could finally forgive me, and that's all what the remaining years of my pathetic life and servitude has ever wanted.

Still, despite our mortal experience, I pray to Bathala that our names have been our last words so that it may still echo to us in Maka. Though we are apart, my heart, please do not fret. The pain could last only until my body's death. My soul is then all yours.

With blood and half-digested food, Yari vomits Indak out of her guts.

Indak Agui leaps out of her mouth and onto the floor, body quaking as she brings her knees to her chest and embraces herself. She lays there, coiling motionless with eyes wide open, as if struck traumatized by the aftermath of a storm. Paying no heed to the nauseating liquid and sticky substances that wrap around her form, she stays silent for a while, only watching the older woman’s slow and rhythmic breathing.

“It hurts.” The younger girl starts to whimper. “It hurts.”

She could feel her insides crumpling and the skin burning off her face. Her bones beg to bend on their own and tear her apart from within. The blood pumping in her system sounds like it could crawl out of her throat until she spits it all out. All sorts of intolerable emotions—anger, sadness, fear, disgust, regret—drown her thoughts into a sea of nothingness.

It feels like a shower of a thousand knives nailed every point of her body to where she’s meant to rot. It slashes through her skin and twists into her muscles. Though blood does not reveal itself from all the parts of her that hurt, every bit of torment she currently experiences makes her want to put a noose around her neck and jump until she hangs limp and dead.

The battered woman tied upside down in front of her smirks. “It is only less than what I deserve.”

On her once delicate face, now black and blue after becoming bruised into unrecognition, the expression looks more twisted. Despite her disfigurement, her eyes still smile with a glint of silver in her eyes, as if reassuring the small girl that things on her end seem fine.

Indak struggles to sit up, her arms wobbling as she supports herself into the position. With a pained expression still on her face, she drags herself closer to the mangkukulam and bangs her forehead on the bamboo floor.

“It hurts!”, she repeats with a face wet with tears. “Make it stop. Please, make it all disappear.”

“Today, my child,” Yari whispers, her warm breath blowing the hair on the top of her head, “you received the nightmare of witnessing my tragedy through my eyes. I commend your consciousness and your spirit’s resilience for you managed to crawl right to the very end, until my bitter collapse.”

“What are you talking about? None of this is real and it makes no sense!” Indak chokes in her own spit and a surge of fury intermingles into the torment she feels. “Why do I have to understand this type of pain as some trial assessment for balyan? It’s not my life! None of your decisions are mine and it's not a lesson I have to learn. You did this to yourself.”

Yari softly laughs. “You’re right. None of this is real. That is also one of the reasons your spirit made it up to here. You are of sound mind to discern even my story, a bit of truth that has yet to be revealed to the rest of the world.”

"Exactly!" Indak’s hands curl into fists. “You willingly helped the colonial god attain power through you, and that is all there is to this part of Lam-ang’s history. I don’t need to understand the motives or perspective of someone that hurt a lot of people out of–of selfishness I—”

She stops herself as an image of calatagan pots and a banaba tree in the middle of the meadow flashes through her mind.

Yari glances at the girl. “You don’t dare to call it something out of love?”

“Shut up, you fake,” Indak snaps, her lips trembling. “Is it fun to you? And I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to the one who designed the trials. Is it fun? To make me live in her mind for a long time until I am traumatized? A made up narration about some dead traitor’s life? I witnessed everything and felt it at the same time, down to the punishment this old woman endured!”

Only dead air answers her frustrations.

Yari blinks up at the quaking girl’s fragile state. “You are still a child after all. One day, you will be able to understand the rest of the world, but if this is truly the only thing you are able to comprehend after everything, then you are forever doomed.”

Indak glares at the disfigured woman. "It didn't have to be delivered this way, if you want to make a point about something. Why would you make me feel how it is to give birth to children eighteen times and suffer for it? Why do you want me to watch the world burn, blood and guts on the streets you once called your home? I don't understand!"

Yari smiles.

“Don’t worry, child. When you wake up, you will not remember anything. All trace of me will be lost from your grasp and will be that way unless someone from your generation will emerge to seek the truth. This world is still haunted by the past. The ashes of those who died still scatter within the soil you grew up in. I still remain alone even after my death.”

The mangkukulam's eyelids drop and she turns around from where she hangs, her bloodied back now facing the young girl. “But, one day, when someone truly comes forth to dig up the graves and find all of my remains, everything will rewrite itself. Things that stayed dormant will burn again. For better or for worse, time will race back to where it all began. Soon, when you’re old enough to understand, you will realize the amount of cruelty it will take to give birth to innocence once more."

A group of people barge into the nipa hut, slamming the door open and marching with heavy steps towards the girl on the floor. The intrusion puts out the questions that still squeeze Indak Agui's throat, and her confusion latches on to their manhandling on her person. Without even a last look from the mangkukulam, they harshly drag her away by the arms and into a gathering in front of the hut.

Indak struggles in their hold. "Where are you taking me? I—"

They halt right by the last step of the nipa hut's ladder.

Dressed in the finest malong and lihin-lihin, the Mayari speaks to the people with their head held high as they tightly holds a torch in one hand. Obvious veins trace down their neck and the dodecagram on their forehead looks almost faded against the light.

"Over the past few decades, the colonial god of Ines seized Lam-ang in his darkness," the kapitan says.

"He possessed our souls, corrupted our third eyes, and overruled our own conscience by embracing us with sins that are not of our own doing. He tarnished all innocence this world was once made of and transformed us into our own monsters. There is no greater horror than becoming what we once sought to conquer. My late husband, Matahom Naiad, sweet and kind as he is, could not bear to hurt more of the people he loved dearly. First, he chopped the hands that enabled the vile. Second, he threw himself off the cliff by midnight."

The crowd screams in anguish and cries in despair. Some fell to their knees and mourned their loved ones that had the same things happen to them.

Indak shakes her head. For a second, her heart almost hurt.

It has nothing to do with me.

"But we have no fault on this, my people." Tala turns their back on them and gazes at the hut behind. "The power was served on a silver platter to the colonial god by the very person we welcomed. We trusted her. We fed her. We gave her all the love we are capable of. However, it was never what she was after. She dreamt of our destruction more than anything. The mangkukulam only serves the most wicked of spirits and so wicked she had been."

Tala lowers the torch on the ladder of the nipa hut, setting the wood aflame and watching it slowly burn. The crowd chants the words 'burn, burn, burn' over and over again, and the kapitan mumbles something inaudible into the air before facing the crowd once again. Indak sees them silently shed a tear or two.

"To burn the mangkukulam means to burn the curse with her. With this fire, may the bloodshed end. With her death, may the darkness be lifted."

Before she could see the end of the fire, she gets dragged out of the clearing and shoved into another empty nipa hut. She topples through the curtains that block the entrance and collapses, face first, to the floor.

Once she sits up properly and lifts her head, the scene that greets her drives her into a wall. Quite similar to her state, most of the thirty-five other children inside with her puke spit and blood onto the wooden planks. Some chose to cry while embracing each other and the rest became a congregation of idiots that only muttered vague things to themselves.

Amidst this spectacle, the bald balyan flashes into view and looks at each and every one of them. He pulls out a compiled pad of parchments and skims through them.

"Congratulations for making it this far, triers. Your fellow triers' consciousness have fallen long ago, into the abyss of Yari the Mangkukulam's perspective. We have removed them off the Sinugdanan and they're being treated in Oasis Balyan for fast recovery." He clears his throat once more, ignoring the absence of his desired audience's full attention. "For the rest of you that made it to the final ladder of the trials, this last assessment will truly determine the top twelve to emerge as the most suitable to practice the art of balyan."

"Thank you. Thank you very much," Indak mumbles. "You had to drive us all insane first before installing us into the hagdan? Is this a test of who is going to end up most traumatized and mentally unstable?"

The bald balyan scoffs upon hearing her words in the middle of weeping children. "That's funny, kid. You might be right because we've got a plethora of those up in the hagdan."

Indak buries her face on her knees and hugs her legs.

The bald man clears his throat once again. "I have no time to soothe your whining. That's your problem. Only those who get their shit together will know how to succeed. The Sinugdanan had always been a test of endurance. Knowing the horrors you will have to face in the future once you get in, the balyan we would need for the job should be those who are capable of moving forward. Despite trauma and terror, a balyan always, always does the job. You must be the most resilient for the people you serve."

He walks to the wall behind him and brushes the surface with his fingers. "Behind this is your last test. You must, at all cost, burn the body and properly prepare the ashes into the burial jar. You must never falter when doing so. Failure to stay on your feet will be subject to exclusion in the final sugdi list. This is truly a taxing stage, but do try your best. And no, you cannot close your eyes. That's disrespectful."

The wall parts and reveals a room with a large, horizontal table at the center. A lit torch lays at the side and manunggul jars line up on the shrine of Bathala behind it. In a box underneath, gold jewelry, masks, and an assortment of gemstones and medallions fill the container to the brim.

"A burial rite?", Indak hears the boy laying in front of her whisper to himself. He puts his hands beneath his head and rests a foot on one folded leg. "I don't care."

He turns his back on the balyan and snores.

Indak can't exactly recognize their face in the dark, but someone familiar to her stands up and volunteers. "I would like to go first, Senyor!"

"No, I would like to go first!" Some other person from behind the first volunteer pushes them back down on the floor and rushes to the other side. "The best one always goes first. Stand back and watch the master."

You’re right.

The best always comes first.

The best will always survive.

Her fellow trier’s announcement woke Indak up and pulled her out of drowning into another set of depressing emotions. With a deep exhale, she crawls past writhing, nauseated triers and stands behind the second volunteer.

She meets the gaze of the bald balyan. “I’ll do it. Please.”

The person in front of her whips their head around, their long, inky hair sharply slapping her cheeks. They look her up and down as their mouth twists in disgust. “Ew. Who are you? You don’t look like someone important.”

Despite sill feeling sick to her stomach, Indak manages to roll her eyes at them. She shifts her attention back to the host. “I want to go first.”

"Alright, kid." The bald man gestures for her to step to the front. "It's simple. Just find the body you want to personally attend to. Good luck, and remember that you're not allowed to look away."

Once Indak Agui passes the other side of the corridor, the bald balyan shoves her further into the room and shuts the wall behind her. With a bit of hesitation, she pursues the table in front of her, but before she could take more than five steps towards it, limp bodies abruptly drop down around her. The corpses hang through the ropes on the ceiling, by a noose around their neck, and their blood-soaked clothes stick to their scarred bodies.

The hairs on Indak Agui's nape stands up as the sight of the dead makes her skin crawl. She curls her hands into fists when her legs begin to shake, nails almost digging through her palms. Blood starts flooding the floor, and she braces her mind enough to not falter in the midst of it.

With slow steps, she drags herself through it, only glancing up at their grayish eyes and pale brown lips to find some semblance of a person she recognizes. After going in circles, her feet stops in front of a corpse that looks awfully similar to her figure. When she raises a hand to part the body's hair away from the face, her other hands cups her own face to restrain a scream.

So, this is what she looks like after death.

Gathering a knife on the table and a stool from underneath, she cuts the body out of the noose and hugs it to her form. Heaving, she puts it down on the flat surface and starts to undress it. Next, she wipes the grime off its skin with a warm towel and clothes it with clean garments.

She does all this while holding her breath and clenching her teeth.

When preparations are finally finished, her trembling hand grips the handle of the torch. She tips it down to the corpse until the fire spreads to their clothes and through her skin. She remains watching her dead clone burn for a long, long while that her legs start to feel numb and the tears lining her eyes start to dry. Once nothing else but the ashes of what used to be her body remains, she gathers them in a palm leaf basket and pours them into an empty manunggul jar.

She sets the burial jar in front of the shrine and offers a few golden jewelry from the barrel and to the altar. On her knees, she pleads the ferryman of spirits to take good care of the deceased and deliver it with ease to Maka.

When all is said and done, the young Agui stands with wobbly legs and leaves the area.

She leans her body on the frame and knocks on the wall three times to call for the host from the other side. As soon as it opens to receive her, she collapses in the balyan's arms that caught her just in time.

"Congratulations. I'd still have to judge the results with the Silya Pentagram and the pinuno when this last evaluation produces more than twelve qualifiers again, but you still did really well, kid," the bald balyan says, a smile lighting his face up.

"Burying your comrades will become a common occurrence in the hagdan, and the horror of how they would die is something that we cannot avoid to witness. It's better to know who among you could actually face that. Once you're wiser, you'd realize that you also have to bury yourself alive to survive."

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The brittle yellow color of their ceiling stares back at her as the sun creeps through the open capiz shell windows, lighting a side of her face and shading a part of her hair bronze. As she drowns in the sounds of children's laughter and the little stomps of their bakya from outside her room, the smell of sinigang wafts past her nose and makes her mouth water.

She finds herself back in her bamboo bed, cocooned in a blanket raised to her chest and wearing a duster soaked in her sweat. Sitting up, her eyes blink into focus at the colored stick drawings that her father glued to her walls. They were all from their leisure activities in Tandang Mirisi, back when she still sees him a lot more frequently and when they had nothing better to do after a few boring hours out of the Akademya. She could still remember crayons and pencils littered around the tables of the coffeehouse and cattle milk spilling on gampi paper.

At the very center of those randomly pasted stick figures is that stitching she got from him as last year’s Panalangin, a blessing from guardian to child.

“A shared legacy, my little flame. It does look like the honorable Agui’s abode, no?”

Still half-asleep, she extends an arm towards it and absentmindedly traces each detail with an outstretched finger.

The flamed field surrounds a duyan-slung tree. Its leaves become ashes black as coal and flutter like embers in the wind, burning with it the vivid wings of the butterflies that cascade through its fire.

She tilts her head to the side. “Where have I seen that before?”

"Have you finally lost your mind, Indak Agui?"

A flick to her ear cuts her attempt of recollection short, and she squeaks at the stern tone of her mother’s voice. “Ma!”

She turns to face an older woman in an apron and a dirt-stained duster, sitting beside her bed and keeping a tight hold on the small wooden basin and towel on her lap. Indak’s eyes linger longer at her mother’s hanging eyelids and the loose strands falling from her bun and to her bowed shoulders. Glancing down, she also notices her bandaged fingers.

Chada’s brows meet when she follows her daughter’s gaze. She shakes her head once and glares down at her. “ "Ginoo ko, Indak Agui. Keep your voice down.”

"Shouldn't have scared me then," Indak mumbles as she picks up the mug of water on her bedside drawer and chugs it down. She blinks down at her mother’s hands again. “You can stop working when I become balyan. Those hands appear more terrible each day.”

"Don't talk to your mother like that, Indak Agui." Her mother gives her a look as she fills the empty mug with more water from an earthenware jar. "What I do, you know you couldn't live without."

True.

Her father took a time off the hagdan a few years back for a short while, right after the Six Point Bloodbath. During that break, they have been living through her mother's earnings in her work in their village's cleaning services. Paham Agui insisted his time be used to help, but her mother strongly objected to the idea. She remembers enough of their fights when she was five, and they almost always revolved around the subject.

Chada says he needs to mourn his tribesmen without other worries, perform the rites to send their spirits away to Maka properly, and let the recent events of their tribe’s massacre settle down first before returning to his post.

"What about the Sinugdanan?" Indak asks, almost forgetting the most important matter of her whole life. “How did I get home?”

Her mother's face blanks as she soaks the towel in the basin filled with warm water. She brings it to her daughter's face, cleaning the sweat that clung to her forehead and neck. "Balyan brought you around midday yesterday. You were weak and pale with very high fever. I should have thrown a rag to their face. Ginoo ko, I’ve never seen you so fragile until that time. What even happened in your batch’s trials?"

Indak stares at her sore feet and rubs her wrists as she recalls the details of the trials. When she racks her brain, images of a deck of cards and proctors guarding an empty nipa hut appear in her mind. "Card games.”

Her mother pauses, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Card games?”

Indak tries to reach for her memories again and another set of unfamiliar images come to the forefront. “I was sitting on a large table across two other triers. We played tongits with each other. The one who fails will be refused a chance to advance to the next level. I never got left behind and even made it to the last level.”

“That’s weird.” She scratches her scalp at her own narration as her forehead creases in confusion. “But I’m sure that’s what really happened.”

Chada nods. “That’s unfortunate. You’ve never been good at card games.”

The image of a grinning bald man vigorously shaking her hand flashes through her mind. “Congratulations, sugdi. Welcome to Balyan Hagdan.”

“Ma…I think I p—”

"It is fine if you failed,” her mother interrupts. "I prefer seeing you safe here in Bonifacio. It would be too meddlesome to have you bloodied through Melchora."

"You mean you prefer me rotting here and dying like an ordinary person." Indak mutters as she meets Chada's gaze with a spark of anger visible in her eyes. “Ma, the mortality rate for civilians is higher than that of balyan. We’re defenseless. If another war breaks out in the near future, or if the colonial god returns to end us for good, I won’t even have the chance to run for my life before either of the two attempts to crush me. More than that, Urduja would want the ancient and influential tribes to be the first under the safety nets.”

Chada sighs, exasperated. “You’re overreacting. That mindset is not your responsibility to bear.”

“Ma, listen to me.” Indak grabs her mother’s free hand. “I’ll try my very best to live to my seventies, if you allow it. I can even protect you.”

“Your father is already balyan. He can protect both of us.”

Indak shakes her head. “It’s not enough—”

Chada flips her hand over and returns the tightness of the smaller girl’s grip. “Indak Agui, should I visit the Akademya and interrogate your cousin and teachers about all the nonsense you’re spouting right now? A serious conversation with whoever convinced you that some war or the colonial god would return is in place. Or this may just be the result of your lack of participation in your subjects. You completely forgot the first and second pinuno got rid of that filthy god a long, long time ago.”

“You wouldn’t know that. You can never be too sure,” she insists. "If Papa was here, he would agree with me. He would also encourage me to be balyan."

Chada roughly pulls away from her hold and swiftly stands. “The flu is chasing you delirious with paranoia. It’s better you lay back down and get more sleep.”

Indak slams the mug on the drawer and jumps to her feet on her bed. “You just never understood me, that's why I hate living with you!”

A deafening silence washes over the room, and her mother stares back at her with her mouth clamped shut.

When Indak attempts to take back her words, mouth opening and closing a few times, a knock on the door distracts her and sways her mother’s attention off her form and to the direction of its source.

The older woman lowers the basin to the floor and walks out of her room to answer the door, but not before giving her daughter one last glare. “We will talk later.”

Indak leaps to her room's entryway curtains and shifts the curtain of piña fiber open. She sticks half of her head out, just enough to see her mother slide the bifold doors and come face to face with a familiar figure. She skims the man up and down, slowly recalling the bald host of this season's Sinugdanan.

The man also notices her staring as he looks over her mother's shoulder to wink at her before his greetings.

"Reyna Manlangiten." Her mother bows her head. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"You've gotten too polite." The bald man snickers. "You act like I don't know your Paham, kid."

Her mother bends even lower. "It is only proper, Reyna."

The reyna sighs. "Please don't do that, kid."

Hearing the balyan mention her father's name, Indak emerges from her room and rushes towards him in a half-run. "So you’re his mentor.”

"Indak Agui, show some respect," the woman reprimands her daughter in a whisper. "This is Reyna Likha Manlangiten of the Balyan Hagdan."

"You’re that teacher, right?”, she repeats, moving closer to him.

Her mother opens her mouth to apologize but stops when the senyor puts a hand on Indak’s head. "So this must be Paham’s spawn. You look just like your mother."

Chada bows to him again. "I apologize for her, Reyna."

"Kid, it's fine." Reyna Likha Manlangiten waves her apologies off before squatting in front of Indak, the sun’s light reflecting off the tiny scratches on his head. "What do you mean ‘that teacher’? What kind of nonsense did your father say about me?"

“Papa says you like extorting money from helpless children like him back then,” she confesses without missing a beat. "Why are you here? Does he have something to relay to us? Or did you want to personally pick me up? I’ll pack right away."

"Slow down, kid." The man ruffles her hair and raises an eyebrow at her in disbelief. “So your father took the liberty to talk more shit, now that he’s an old man like me. Back then, the brat used to vandalize the gates of Nieves Base too much with those horrible drawings of his, and idjang used to chase him around the baryo for it. Extort, my ass. He was just getting fined for it, that kid.”

“Ah, good times. My husband also used to scold me about your father’s stupid antics. Argued why I can’t discipline my proteges well.” Likha grins, revealing a fond expression on his face. “But forget that. Would you excuse your mother and me for a bit, kid? I would like to talk to her privately."

Indak looks back and forth between him and her mother.”Is it really that confidential?”

He teases her with an insincere frown. "Top secret, kid. Absolutely prohibited information for amateurs."

"I bet it’s not even that big of a deal.”

“You’re too young to gamble.”

Indak rolls her eyes at him.

“It can’t be. Impossible.” Chada mumbles as she massages her forehead with her eyes tightly shut. She grabs her daughter’s shoulders and whirls her towards her. “Indak Agui. Cook some rice and viand for the both of us. Wash the vegetables properly and clean the pots well. Sanitize before holding anything. Remember to sweep the floor. I’ll come back later after our talk with the reyna.”

She opens her mouth to complain. "Why—"

Her mother’s grip on her shoulders tightens. “Please.”

Without waiting for her response, Chada puts on her purple bakya, follows the bald man on the way out of their home, and slams the door behind her.

“I’ll put a seal up so she doesn’t try to follow us, kid,” she hears Likha say from outside. “Just in case.”

“Many thanks, Reyna,” her mother agrees. “It would be best to take precautions around that child. She’s got the stubbornness of her father.”

“Well, she’s definitely not as polite as you.”

When Indak hears a few scraping sounds by the walls, and the balyan mumbling a few incoherent words, she grabs hold of the handles of their sliding doors and roughly tries to pull it open. When it doesn’t budge, she slams her fists on them and lets out a sigh of frustration. She hears them walk away after a while, carrying on an inaudible conversation as the clacks of their bakya fade to lighter footsteps.

Indak scoffs. “You must be joking.”

She stays standing by the door for a long time, only staring at the wooden frame while repeatedly running her hands through her hair and down her face. As her feet grow numb, she recalls her mother’s leftover directions and decides to follow through with them to pass the time. She might even utilize her obedience as a bribe.

Just watch.

As soon as Chada comes back, she’ll not retire from bothering her about their secret conversation.

Grumbling under her breath, she walks towards the back of their house and into their kitchen while constantly pressing the back of her legs for some relief. She fetches a kabo of warm water from the jar by the drainer—a row of wooden pickets in one of the windows—and washes her hands with it. Before walking over to their kalan, she pours a pint of rainbow gum oil on her palm and spreads it on both her hands.

Indak pulls out two clay pots and fills both with water from the barrel. She rolls her hair in a bun with a wooden ladle and proceeds to build a fire on a wooden bench with two wood-fired stone burners. With a match, she lights up the chopped wood underneath it and places one pot on the stove and leaves it to boil.

For the other pot, she opens the ulbong basket from the corner and places three cups of rice grains inside. After washing it two times, she fills the pot again with clean water and puts its lid on before positioning it on the burner.

She collects okra, eggplant, malunggay, alugbati, squash, taro root, yard long beans, and tomatoes from a heavy bamboo tray that hangs by a rope above a square, wooden table. On a walnut cutting board, she slices the vegetables in even sizes and then sinks them into the boiling water. She covers the pot after adding a few spices.

As she waits for the vegetables and rice to soften and cook, she allows herself to rest on a stool and stand by for her mother’s arrival. She remains sitting still, staring at the kalan’s smoke that escapes through the hole of their kitchen’s bamboo and palm roof. When she feels her neck grow weary, she bows her head to observe her bare feet on their wood-planked floor instead.

When Indak hears the sliding doors click open, she stumbles towards the entrance, just in time to see her mother enter their house with a brown envelope in her hand. Surprisingly, Chada doesn’t return the farewell at the bald balyan waving his goodbye from outside. Instead, she crumples the envelope then bangs the doors shut in his face.

Her mother’s face is grim when she looks down at her. “Did you do what I asked?”

Demanded, more like.

She nods. “What did the two of you talk about?”

“You didn’t forget to wash the vegetables? Did you set the table yet?”, her mother asks, ignoring her question.

Indak’s forehead wrinkles in annoyance. “No. What’s in the envelope? Is it about Papa? Can I read it?”

Chada squats down and sets her bakya to the side. “Indak, you still have a lot to learn in the kitchen. It’s so important that you wash your vegetables first before putting them in the pot. What if critters are crawling over them? Do you intend to eat bugs in your laswa?”

“That’s not important right now, Ma!”

Before stepping into their salas, she washes her feet by the door, wipes it clean with a warm towel, and massages them with a drop of eucalyptus oil. She walks past her daughter and advances through their kitchen, and Indak tails her with a roll of her eyes.

When the smell of burnt rice reaches her nose, she whirls around, glaring, and snatches the laddle in her daughter’s hair. “What are you doing, Indak Agui? Your rice is overcooked! The fire is too strong!”

Her mother puts down the crumpled envelope on the table in favor of closing the air vents and securing the kalan so the flames die down to embers. She opens the pots and presses the laddle through the cooked rice before holding its sides with a dry rag and placing them on a pot holder.

Indak takes her mother’s distraction as an opportunity to smoothen the envelope and try to open it, but before she could read its content, Chada snatches it from her hand, almost tearing it in half.

“Set the table, Indak,” the older woman says, her tone stern and offering no space for protest.

Indak stomps over to the other side of the room while shooting a glare at her mother’s back. To make her irritation obvious, she harshly opens the small cabinet hanging by the wall and ensures to clink the round acacia plates and glass mugs together as she piles them in her arms. She turns around just in time to see her mother about to throw the envelope into the fire.

Indak drops the mugs on the floor and steps on its sharp fragments.

Chada lets go of the envelope in alarm, the brown material falling to her feet as she whips towards her direction. “Indak!”

When she sees the cracked glass and the blood from Indak’s foot that spread on a few pieces, she crosses the room in an instant and pulls Indak away by the arm and out of its vicinity. She hoists her up by the waist and sits her on a stool.

“Stay here, or the wound will get infected. I’ll find some herbs and bandages outside the compound first,” her mother tells her with a worried expression on her face before rushing out the kitchen.

After Indak hears her mother exit their house again, she jumps out of the stool and crawls over to the envelope. She hurriedly rips it open and unfolds the documents that contain it, eager to read about the matter that her mother tried to keep from her.

“I was right,” Indak says, a relieved smile growing on her face. “I passed.”

0 notes

yangsoeuvre · 2 months ago

Text

Chapter V: Sinugdanan (III)

Note #124: found within a small cave dug through a volcano, Volume I of Journal Entries From Dead and Missing Dreamers

My only wish is to slay the hourglass, the time itself that reasoned us to commit a sin too grave for death and to permit the saint to sin instead. Nothing has ever brought me genuine happiness until the chaos you shared with me. For all of the mess that entangled me to you, I recall only one guarantee:

I would still love you after death and even when our gods cease to exist. If Kaluwalhatian does not offer its premise once I hold your hand, then I would gladly suffer with you straight through the eternal torment of Kasanaan.

Drifting through a glass village in a duster embroidered with sampaguita and palm fronds, gold chips like cut fieldstone graze the soles of her feet and leave stardust footprints on diamond bridges. Her fingers brush past the calatagan pots that hang on the sides, encasing moonlit spirits within syllabic inscriptions. From the far end, a hiss lures her in, something sharp and menacing, and she pursues its hypnotic echo, half-awake and unabsorbed.

"Yari," an orotund, disembodied voice bellows once she reaches the wrought-iron gates hidden within the clouds. "Do you realize the audacity of your presence, useless indio?"

Guardians by the gate that wear clothes made of homespun linen and wool try to whisper some snide remarks, but she silently marches past them and moves towards the golden throne.

On this bejeweled chair sits a large and towering figure with three distinct heads: the first one a long, oval shape with thick hair kept in a payneta and a veil; the second, a chubby and wrinkled face boring oceanic eyes; and the third with porcelain skin and patchy goatee. His aureate robes cover the footstool under their jadeite mules, and taaffeite rings and bracelets bedeck his hairy arms and fingers. The spice pendants that adorn his neck consistently rain on platinum silver flooring.

"I exerted almost every bit of my power to imprison all of their deities, vitiate their status in the ethereal worlds, and demolish their faculty and mightiness. I sent you to their last legacy—Lam-ang—their final power on a precipice, and you let one thing get in the way of your vengeance: your empathy."

"They have done nothing wrong," she says. "They're more innocent than I have assumed. They seem to be independent of our anito's faults."

"They left your family tree in Ines hundreds of years ago and only welcomed their chosen people for they viewed your blood as something inferior—weak, fragile, and dispensable. Do you not remember this, mere mortal? That the one diwata you serve could not even call your lineage to the new world though you served them for hundreds of years? Because she did not have faith in your line to carry on her power and name? Because she thinks you did not deserve it. However, I gave you a new life, haven't I? You are showered a fortune. The flowers bloom in your gardens in Ines, yet you show me your ungratefulness through this presumptuous behavior?"

"Where is she?"

"How dare you?" The three-headed god hisses. "I demand you know your place, girl. Do you think you are irreplaceable and I cannot deploy my men on Lam-ang to deal with your mission instead?"

"If that were the case then you wouldn't have asked me first. I am the only one left in Ines with the codex of the mangkukulam and the only one in my tree who trained to wield it. If you dispose of me then you have no cheat to a victory. Your men are weak. I have seen my people's abilities. They have thrived in the new land and are able to replenish within those years, far away from your colonial rule. Without me, your reign will soon come to an end."

The colonial god remains silent as her voice rises an octave and she stomps forward with all of the courage she could muster. "And you are a weakened being. All of that power lost for the sake of the destruction of my people's anito, you are now unable to destroy anything else. You could only exist through coercion of faith, some veneration of stolen humanity, and victims of appropriation. You might have sent me naïve, but I come back wiser now. You cannot fool me."

The god guffaws after a long pause, gold and spices both sputtering out of his eyes and noses. "What is it that you truly want to say, you stupid, low-life mortal? To speak to me in that manner, do you intend to be traitorous and incite a revolution with the people of Lam-ang?"

She blinks and lowers her head. "No."

He holds his beer belly and bends over cackling. "Of course not. Naturally. You were the one who grew that banaba tree in your precious meadow after all, correct? The curse of death that you concocted the moment someone falls in love with you. How can you have the face to fight for them after such betrayal?"

She grits her teeth. "Set her free."

"What can you offer in return?" The god lights a roll of tobacco and puts it between the porcelain head's lips. "Go on."

"Udaya's body is buried under the banaba tree. That will continue to fester and curse the land of Lam-ang and its people to death for as long as it decomposes and for as long as its soul loves me. It is enough to murder everyone. If I inscribe it, your wish is complete, and you can even kill me as you please. What have I to lose? However, if you do not grant me my request, then Lam-ang will emerge as your vanquisher."

"A threat?"

"A free telling of fate. Do you know Tala Mayari? That person is ambitious. They have enough passion and hatred to entertain a vendetta. Their only childhood dream is to deliver your three heads on a silver platter to their deities. Without my ability, they are unstoppable."

"Do enlighten me," a puff of smoke replaces the clouds and engulfs the heavens, "Yari, the only living mangkukulam of Ines."

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Mga pamumulaklak ng mundo at tunog ng lupa, bumalik sa akin na parang bagyo; Ipagkaloob mo sa akin muli ang aking mga hiling, Itatak ang kapalaran sa dugo ng aking pagsusumamo.

[Blooms of the world and sounds of the earth, return to me like a storm; Grant my wishes again, and seal my fate with the blood of my supplication.]

The petals and leaves wilt in Yari's hand and disintegrate into ashes. She continues to chant the hymn as her eyes glow with the fire from her palms, a flame that spreads until it rapidly dissipates to assemble folded parchments with a threadbare cover and a palendag.

She whispers to the codex in her hand, "Welcome home, my savior," and smiles as she flips it open.

On the second takna, Yari of Ines carves a paragraph of sumpa on the bark of the banaba tree and cuts her arms and fingers, collecting blood and spilling it on the soil where the roots grow and Udaya's body lay.

The villagers found her late lover's request to be buried in this manner some unusual tradition. In their practice, the dead's ashes commonly lay in burial jars, but the people have no heart to protest to their dying kapitan's wishes so they just let her be. They failed to conclude that Udaya loved Yari a lot more than anyone could measure, enough that she wished to be buried under the tree she planted for her when she became kapitan.

Yari's tears dripped down her face as she recites more words from her codex and lights up all the flowers circling the tree with the fire from her torch. She recalls memories of Udaya dancing with her as Tala plays an instrument in the background and Matahom attempts to sing. Under their banaba tree, his tone never seemed to matter to any of them. The wind blew just right and the butterflies flew in time. All of the time, every day she spent her life in Lam-ang with them, she wishes she could freeze the moment and take it back to Ines.

She thinks the people of Lam-ang may lack intelligence.

How could they agree to this burial method?

How dare they make a crueler person out of her? How dare they trigger the event that would lead her to sacrifice her lover's corpse for a sumpa that would end her people? How dare they not know she aimed to betray them the moment she entered their lives? How dare Tala not slit her neck the first time they met?

How dare you love me?

She should have returned to Ines or made the three-headed colonial god finish her in a snap. All her life, she never needed love until she stepped into Lam-ang. The land was fertile and bright. People smiled at her. In Ines, she lived with fortune but hosted a spirit buried in poverty. Unlovable as she, how could a glorious person like Udaya deserve her contaminated humanity? It feels impossible for someone like her, Matahom, and especially Tala Mayari to choose her out of all people.

Was it mercy?

"If it is pity, that relieves me," she mumbles as she faces the tree once more. "If your love is a lie, then I'll have no remorse."

Her lips meet the mouth of the palendag. The tune she plays starts serene and soft, slowly chasing the rhythm of the wind until the beats become quicker than lightning. The flamed field sway to her hymn, singing faster and faster as the leaves of the banaba tree chase its pace. Soon, they become ashes black as coal, becoming embers and fluttering in different directions. The smell of burnt flesh hang above the air, putrid and nauseating as rotten meat and roasted leather.

"Don't worry, Udaya," Yari says as her song ends and the entire field becomes an inferno. "All will be well."

Insurrection come natural to those with weaker restraints.

Yari clutches the codex close to her heart as she departs the burning meadow, its blaze reflected in her eyes. The gates of her own execution singe red and orange, and for all it's worth, this catastrophe might catalyze her just enough time for some little redemption.

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The streets turn into a sea of decaying flesh and decapitated bodies. Haunting screams and hacking noises loom over the village of Aliguyon once the dread of the night seeps in and devours the usual calm of their lives. The sumpa of Yari stretches far and wide into the rest of Lam-ang, never leaving a good soul to rest. For the past few months, the moon and sky above them bleed red and refuse to birth new stars. The nipa huts and grass start to match the colors from above, turning a few shades darker as the days continue to pass.

Overnight, the three-headed god plays the role of a marionette master, and she becomes an unwilling audience to his performance.

It was her punishment.

The people turned into puppets, committing all sorts of crimes left and right, for she gave the colonial god the power to play with the strings of their fates and corrupt their souls into something nefarious and profane. He forced them to destroy anito shrines and defecate on sacred statues. He made them rape people and slice off their family’s arms and legs. He turned them into cannibals. It was no different from the state of Ines.

No one could discern where the darkness came from nor who caused it. Everyone marked her missing or dead. She does not even know which of her loved ones still run alive.

It felt like home.

Her new residence no longer resides in a small, peaceful village. She turned her back on the past to build a new shelter for her present truth, one where the temperature suits her cruelty well and could burn her at the first thought of her own death. Holed within a cave formed near the mouth of a dormant volcano that overlooks the fiery meadow and a land tilting to its tragedy, Yari lets herself age with only a calatagan pot and her codex in her embrace.

“You see that, Udaya,” she whispers to the pot as she sits at the entrance of the cave. “Your beloved village will soon be reduced to bones. One day, the people of Lam-ang will only be remembered as relics."

The spirit in the pot could not respond, but she knows it reacts to her words by the way it grows larger and then smaller the next second. It could just be the whistle of the wind that manipulates its movements, except its ghost white transparency flickers when the heat of her new habitat is all that it recognizes.

“I know you’re listening,” Yari continues. “But even if you’re not, you’re always aware. Everything I am, you’ve always known.”

She holds up a crumpled parchment and reads Udaya’s last letter to her before her death. She tears it apart as her face contorts in anguish, and she allows the small pieces to whisk themselves away to the ground and burn with the trees and flower fields.

“My dear, Yari, you can have the world for as long as I love.”

"The corruption will be as potent as your love for me. The state of your beloved village is evidence of how immense your feelings will be."

Looking at the current world, I don’t know how you allowed me to destroy you like this.

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She conceives a dead child and she gives birth to one.

A fruit of experimental pregnancy, and she does not know if she’ll perform another set of taboo rituals for it to live or haul it out of her presence as another failure. It lies still on a small rock, mouth agape and eyes closed. No breaths come out of its small frame and its little arms and legs limply slide off the platform.

Yari paces the cave and contemplates her choices, walking back and forth with her arms folded over her head.

She could not fail to have a living child for the eighteenth time. She fears this method might drag her closer to insanity if she persists despite her body being unsuitable to carry another human. Over the years, this search for some solution thins her form and makes the skin of her flesh stick to her bones. Her face is devoid of the brightness that once greeted Lam-ang, replaced by hollow cheeks and dull skin. She could not even recall when she last took a bath all for the sake that she cannot allow herself to matter more than the salvation of Lam-ang.

And this one finally shares the blood of the Anitun Tribe.

The colonial god still rules beyond this world, and she must create another rite that corrects even just a bit of this mayhem into something salvageable and hopeful.

What changed?

She used to be fine with the ruin.

She grabs the calatagan pot containing Udaya’s soul and sets it on the stone tablet beside the little creature. She carves baybayin characters into a star formation underneath them and places them at the center of another blasphemous rite. The colonial god used to say that there is no way for anyone to raise someone from the dead, but she knows that with the proper practice and faith, the possibilities become endless.

Being mangkukulam, the limits become close to nothing.

Spiritual Immolation.

“It will be your child too, Udaya.” She caresses the pot and gives it a weak smile. “How very incorrigible of me, don’t you think? You surrender your world for me and I attempt to save it by using yours. If Tala was here, they would kill me. This is not how you love.”

She pulls out the codex and palendag from within her piles of tattered clothes and dirty rags, flipping through pages until her fingertips land on the right one. After pricking the baby’s fingers with a toothpick and squeezing a pint of its blood in the pot, she brings the instrument to her lips and starts to whistle a silvery and wind-like tune. As soon as the music took over, the baybayin characters on the seal formation eclipse each other and crawl around the inscriptions on the pot.

"Guminhawa sa lumang kaluluwa, mamatay sa panibagong katawan; silipin ang hangin ng dating kabuhayan, paumanhin sa dalumhati ng susunod na kasinupan."

[Breathe in the old soul, die in the new body; Take a glance at the air of the past life, in deep apology for the melancholy of the next one.]

The pot begins to crack until it is dismantled to reveal a looming white flame. It dances in front of her for a few seconds, as if trying to convey a short and heartfelt message, before finally flowing through the body of the corpse behind it and settling in its chest.

Strong winds blow through the cave in the next second and heavy rainfall begins to wash down the fires of the flaming field. It must have been Anitun Tabu gaining little power over the three-headed god and breaking free, or it might even be—she looks at the wailing body on the stone tablet—the baby.

My son.

She draws closer to him and touches his forehead with the tip of her finger. “Your name is Habagat Anitun, and you’re born in the eye of the storm. Your fate is to always succeed.”

The next day, the meadow stopped burning entirely and the horrors collapsed in a flash. Each night filled with only skies illuminated with polar lights and vivid shooting stars grows a small spark of hope in Lam-ang. After five decades, the land found its peace again and took its sweet time to restore its former paradise.

Yari also discovers a piece of burnt letter at the bottom of the calatagan pot.

“My love, Yari, my hatred could only bear witness to your sins once the love has washed away from me. Until then, I will eternally remain yours.”

That night, she cradled the baby to her sleep and shrieked her grief away.

Habagat cried the whole week.

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For the next ten years, she kept the codex and the arts of the mangkukulam away from her son. She only raised the boy with his tribe’s gahum, handing him the notes about the third eye that she stole from her late lover’s cabinets and Matahom Naiad’s secret nito baskets during their time together as a family. She failed to rummage through Tala Mayari’s scrolls—she remembers the small library in their residence seems to be heavily guarded by other armed balyan in their tribe.

For a decade, she bathed, clothed, and fed the child until he became strong enough to survive the future that the three-headed god would set for Lam-ang once he completely replenishes his strength. She gave her son the necessary lessons to keep once she throws him out of this cave and into the next generation.

She set foot on the village of Aliguyon one time, her identity morphed into a random villager, and discovered that the people no longer smiled. Somewhere along her sumpa, she must have stolen that part of them too for, within their hardened gaze, only a strange vigilance seem to replace their once carefree spirits.

More armed balyan roam the dusty streets, physically disciplining the people and arresting them on sight for something as simple as not following curfew. The current kapitan set the days up to start at the seventh takna until only the twenty-second. Anyone running beyond that meant grounds for an attempted massacre.

She wonders if Tala Mayari felt alright.

“Ma.” Habagat taps his fingers on the scrolls. “My birthday is next week. You remember, right?”

Yari glances at him and gives him a soft smile. “I’ve never forgotten.”

Her son beams up at her. “I was thinking of seeing a sadula. I heard you talk about it in your journals—” He clapped a hand to his mouth as his eyes widened. “I meant in the…conversations we had during—in between meals.”

“So, you went through my journals?” Yari narrows her eyes at the child.

She notes that the boy continues to grow taller, his height now reaching her chest. His russet skin starts to match the mellow-brown light of the forest and his straight, long locks of dark hair frame his oval face perfectly. She guesses the faint blue of his eyeshadow that looks to be born with him would only grow more prominent as time allows him to age. The tribal tattoos also begin to flourish on his navel and neck the more he practices his gahum.

“I—” He sputters. He looks away for a few moments before he bangs his forehead on the stone table. “I apologize, Ma. I was merely curious about the world beyond this cave. I’ve only ever been in this small place for ten years. The kandu you’ve talked about seem…interesting.”

She looks at him for a long, long time. “Alright.”

Habagat shoots up from his seat. The scrolls fly in the air.

“What—”

“We celebrate your birthday in that village through this grandiose sadula. We would eat to our heart’s content and never speak of it again.” She walks towards her son and clams a hand on his shoulder. “However, if I tell you to run and leave, then you must do as I say. You must never look back. You must, at all cost, absolutely obey.”

Habagat’s eyebrows meet. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s time, Habagat. The world is waiting for you.” She sighs as she looks down at her wrinkled hands and feels her sagging cheeks. “As for me, I’ve grown hateful and weary of my absence. I’ve done my part, and I fully surrender.”

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It’s the Prisma Festival all over again.

The same beaded masks and floral-sequined saya greet her line of sight. The dancing procession still herd a crowd into the streets, instruments tingling along to their beat, and the children of the new generation still chase each other near the ocean with their kites and self-painted lanterns taking its flight to the stars.

The mirthful atmosphere served just right for her to decide that her son be born within the duration of the festivities. However, their cloaks and saya woven out of sacks of rice and grains feel out of place amidst an evidently expensive celebration.

As she walks with Habagat, hand in hand, through the lantern stalls and flower stands, it rekindles passionate memories of music, long declarations of love, and devout confessions. She reminisces to her time as a young woman as much as she can and for as long as the hourglass intends her to. She has many great memories of this place, and it would be a shame for her to simply abandon the sweeter moments she experienced in her youth.

“Ma.” Habagat tugs at her hand. He points to a familiar courtyard of waling-waling and rose grapes. “Is it that way?”

Her son pulls her to an isolated wooden table, under a nipa waiting shed wrapped in tayabak and where jars of tuba and betel nut sit. Despite its far location from the set up stage, a few curious onlookers still manage to shift their gaze to them and shoot questioning glances. The five performers that fill the clearing also peek at them from their periphery, a hint of a pause in their dramatics.

Habagat grips her cloak. “Ma, what do you think the kandu is all about? A fierce warrior saving a damsel in distress? The one with the bolo knife and towering over them must be Tala Mayari, but who is that weak girl under the muscular man’s foot?”

So everyone automatically recognizes a Tala Mayari, even when their poor imitation’s only role is to stand still.

The performers reenact a familiar memory of hers. The one in front appears to be a hampered figure of the intimidating older kapitan she met when she first arrived in Lam-ang. She thinks the fake pintado ankles of her loved ones should be points for sacrilege, but considering they aim to make it as accurate as possible, then she does her utmost best to forgive it.

“The kandu is all about the hero and the villain falling deeply in love.” Yari takes a coconut bowl and pours tuba in it. She raises it to the direction of the stage before taking a few sips. “It is unfinished, but tonight we may witness the closure in real life. I look forward to it.”

Habagat pats her hand, his gaze shifting to the left. “Ma, you sound drunk again.”

The sadula moves along to the confession, and something tears within her as the familiar words she let loose on that night reveal itself to a hundred people. The performers become more dramatic, tears streaming down their face as they hold each other’s hand and play the salimbaa. The scene lasts until a punay dove lantern soars towards the night sky and a kiss on the mask seals a new commitment that stretches even beyond death.

She wonders who wrote the script of this kandu, questioning why it follows the exact same dialogue she exchanged with Udaya in her first festival. The bewilderment quickly fades when she figures she knows only one person who could capture the moments and store it in their head in its most preserved state.

“How cruel,” she says, laughing as she chews a betel nut between her teeth. "You must be taunting me out of my cowardice. You hated me this much, enough to take my most intimate moment and show it to the rest of the world?”

The audience and performers now completely shift their attention to her. They whisper among themselves while some quietly left.

“Ma,” her son mumbles, fidgeting in his seat. “I want to go home."

She throws the coconut bowls filled with tuba to the ground and topples the table over, spilling the drink and betel nut over the grass. When she grabs a knife from the strap under her saya and slings an arm around Habagat, the people around start shouting for help and pointing fingers at her while they hold their loved ones closer to them. Drawing her son into her chest, she locks him in a chokehold and holds the edge of her knife by the jugular vein under his chin.

The cries become more high-pitched as a few civilians race out of the courtyard to drag surveying balyan back into it.

Her son squirms in her hold as he looks up to her with his pupils shaking. “Ma! What are you doing?!”

“A pleasant birthday to you, my son.” The mangkukulam smiles in his ear. “My present to you is your freedom.”

“I can’t breathe—”

She scratches baybayin characters across the boy’s face until his blood fuses with the luminescence of the sumpa she aims to plant on him. He screams in pain at the wounds she caused, trying to bite at her hand and push her away, but her grip on him only tightened the more he resisted.

“Ihagis ang lahat sa ilog ng mga patay, poot at galit sa aking dugo ang mananatiling alalay.”

[Toss everything into the river of the dead, my blood's hatred and anger as the only remaining alliance.]

As she concludes her chants, her son collapses in her arms. She harshly throws him to the side, his body tilted to the landing enough to break a few bones but careful not to render him futile. She leaps from table to table in the next second and slashes her knife across the necks and backs of a few caterwauling villagers and performers. But, as she came face to face with balyan with proficient martial arts, she drops her weapon with no hesitation and sinks to her knees. They batter her face to disfigurement, with sticks and elemental gahum, until finally restraining her arms behind her back with barbed wire.

She only smiles at the searing pain.

Only in this moment did Tala Mayari decide to show themself.

The familiar dodecagram birthmark on their forehead glows brighter than ever, a faint reminder of the light of the moon scattering across Lam-ang like a lamp in the gloomiest of times. Though their hair grows white and their eyes appear lighter, the youthfulness of their skin still remains. Unlike her pitiful state in sack-sewn saya and locks all tangled up, the current kapitan still glides through the chaos with the same elegant clothes and graceful demeanor as when she first met them.

Meeting her gaze, their mouth sets into a grim line. They pulls the handles of the barbed wire and tighten the spikes through her flesh.

She winces and bites her lip until its skin tears.

Just like old times.

Tala shifts their gaze towards the balyan. “Who is the child she brought with her here?”

“I don’t know, Kapitan Mayari,” she responds. “She tried to kill him.”

Another balyan walks over to Yari’s son and carries his limp form on his back. “His face seems to be heavily injured, Kapitan. I must take him to an albularyo immediately. The wounds will heal, but I have no assurance if the scars will.”

Tala flicks a slender hand towards them and examines the mangkukulam's wounded state. “Go. I will deal with the intruder myself.”

Yari’s gaze follow her son’s form until the sight of his thin figure and weakened limbs disappears in a corner.

Tomorrow, you will be reborn.

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She does not know for how long she hangs upside down on the ceiling of this empty nipa hut. The barbed wire wrapped around her ankles and legs start to feel like a part of her skin, her body growing numb to its pain with every prick of its sharp ends. Blood still crawls from her ears, eyes, and mouth, dripping down to the floor and painting it red.

She must tire them out already. Most afternoons, they flog her with the thorny tails of stingrays, but if they had to clean it then they would settle for a whip of barbed wires. In the early mornings, just when the rooster crows, they fill an oak barrel to the brim with contaminated, cold water and let her bathe in it for a few hours. Soon after, they move to crush a finger or toe for each day that passes.

For the past few days, Tala’s men came in and out to interrogate her and make her confess all her sins in various, violent ways. She thought the proud ruler would never come for her, but the night before her execution, Tala Mayari finally showed up.

Upon entering, they flash in front of her and instantly remove her from the wires with their delicate hands. They gently assist her down to the ground and carefully wipe the blood stains on her face with a clean, wet cloth. As she rests her dirty hands on the shoulders of their fine lihin-lihin, she looks to the side and refuses to meet their gaze.

Two burly people enter the nipa hut and set down a wooden banyera filled with warm water and moonflowers. They also put down stoneware jars filled with different types of oils and water-soaked gugo bark. Before signaling their exit, they bow to the kapitan without another noise and ties the nipa hut tightly shut behind them.

“I waited for you,” she mumbles.

“I know,” they reply as they wipe the grime off their neck.

“You said you would deal with me yourself. You lied.”

Tala does not respond.

They instead move to cut her tattered baro and saya with their bolo knife and let the soiled garments fall to the ground. Her former love takes in all of her battered form, eyes running down every part of her bruised waist, charred arms, and scarred chest until they finally meet her watery gaze. For all the missing years between them, she knows they only see an older woman with a face marred into unfamiliarity.

They continue to wipe the filth off her body. “You did not take care of yourself, Yari.”

The mangkukulam searches their face and posture for any signs of abhorrence. When none can be found, she nods and softly smiles. “I should feel honor. The kapitan themself is here with me, during a full moon, trying to bathe a renegade. It’s like a solemn ritual for a cleansing of one’s sins, though I know you don’t aim to redeem me.”

Tala lifts her off her feet and carries her like a bride into the banyera. On a wooden footstool, they settle behind her and gather her knotted hair in their hands, combing it straight with a few jars of coconut oil and warm water.

“The boy you came here with says you abducted him and kept him hostage for years in a volcano,” they say as they wash away the oil and starts opening the jar of gugo, “My men have searched the place and found some interesting things. Based on the information we pieced together, I doubt the accusations."

“I resurrected him.” Yari grins as she plays with the moonflowers in her palms. “However, I am near execution, so there is not much point in keeping him attached to me. Let it stay that way.”

“So you manipulated his memories.” Tala hums as they rub the fibers of the gugo's bark until it lathers. “Then abandoned him.”

“I freed him.”

The kapitan brushes the suds through the mangkukulam’s hair, their eyes only glancing at her reflection in the water. “Matahom Naiad jumped off that cliff, were you ever aware? Your three-headed god broke him too much. He woke up screeching each day with blood in his hands he does not know the origins of, and it all drove him to madness. I forgave every last one of his atrocities. I told him every night that it was never his fault. He looked for you. In his last moments, he looked for every dead and missing person in his life. The colonial god then made him think everyone he ever loved was gone, and so, he leapt to his death.”

Tala wraps their arms around her small shoulders and rests their forehead on their wet scalp. “I've had my hands soaked in crimson too, since the three of you left, Yari. When I recognized your handwriting on that banaba tree, drilled into a sumpa, I erased all evidence that led to you and slaughtered every last witness. Then I felt too betrayed. You could have explained everything, and we would have found a way together to make everything alright. You never had to disappear.”

“You would have forgiven me for Udaya’s sake. I don’t want that. The guilt is not your burden to bear.” Yari reaches up to caress their cheek. “Though it fills me with peace that you stopped loathing me enough to suggest these.”

Tala Mayari’s arms quake as they stare at her reflection in the water with a longing gaze. “If I was the one you buried under that tree, Lam-ang would immediately and entirely cease to exist.”

Yari stares back at their image in between floating moonflowers, her forehead creasing at the sudden proposition. As the horrible, dawning realization washes through her in the guise of a piercing pain scratching the sides of her head, she abruptly schools her wizened features into a blank expression.

"Tala Mayari." She forcibly detaches their arms around her and claws the floor of the banyera until her nails bleed. "I refuse to take your words to my death."

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yangsoeuvre · 2 months ago

Text

Chapter IV: Sinugdanan (II)

Note #17: found under the banaba tree, Volume I of Journal Entries From Dead and Missing Dreamers

She feels like the ribcage to my lungs, where strong embraces bind my weakened breaths, That came from anxious thoughts of meeting her with lips upon my neck. There are days when she talks like the journals I keep in old shelves, Like dreams in spaces where every part of me is known to age and die, Where she tells me to take it to the grave like a secret shared between my feet and a step off the cliffside.

Oh, Bathala.

How dare you not have made her crueler to me?

I have not enough virtues to resist following her to the river of the dead.

In the twilight haze, the setting leads Indak to people waltzing with tuba-filled glasses balanced on their heads and hands. They sway past each other in small groups as Tala Mayari plays the kudyapi from the sides. She recollects the Binasuan from her limited life experience, usually enjoyed during Pista Urduja, the foundation day of their land. She always participated in those parts of the festivities.

Indak trudges to where Udaya Minokawa and Matahom Naiad keep watch, far enough to not get in the way of the dancers, but still close enough for the bonfire to illuminate their figures.

"Look at our darling." Udaya whistles. Her eyes dilate after a long time of staring at the person curating the music. "Truly the most beautiful person in the village of Aliguyon, Matahom."

"I doubt they're fond of that compliment." Matahom wraps his arms around Udaya's shoulders from behind. "Do you think they are still mad?"

"All will be fine in the end, Matahom. It may be the village's foundation day, but it is also your birthday, my love. How can they bear to stay mad at you?" Udaya turns her head and plants a soft kiss on his chin. She brings a hand up to settle on top of his and, as her gaze sweeps the crowd once more, her free palm covers her face to hold in a laugh.

Matahom pursed his lips. "What? Do I smell bad?"

Udaya snorts. "Our new villager, Matahom. Look there."

Indak follows their gaze and sees Yari Dalikmata with a crown of gumamela on her head. A few more of these dangle in her hands, and she makes sure to distribute them to each dancer with a sweet smile. When she arrives to where the music plays, she perfectly hoops the last of her handmade flower crowns on top of Tala's head.

Tala stops playing their kudyapi. The dancers also slow to a halt to look over at the commotion. Standing to their full height, they glare down at the new girl's short stature, and Yari takes a step away from them, looking around the people staring as her cheeks become red in embarrassment.

Matahom groans, throwing his head back. "Is she trying to die? Tala will never forgive me."

"At this rate, yes." Udaya giggles. "Come on. We have an angry cat to soothe and a lost puppy to tame."

Without letting go of his hand, Udaya spins out of his embrace and drags him towards the youth close to losing their patience. Indak stays right behind them, a tired sigh escaping her lips. She still wonders when she will get to the point of all this.

As they pass by the villagers, Matahom claps his hands overhead to divert the attention to him. "Abaruray! Abaruray! Abaruray!"

Everyone, including Tala and Yari, look at the man clamouring for a change of music. When they received the message, the dancers nod at each other with a grin and begin to chant the same words. Once Matahom and Udaya cross over to where they intend to be, Matahom gives Tala a slight smile and gently takes the kudyapi from them.

"Why don't you rest for now, Tala." Udaya touches the back of their hand on their forehead as she lets go of Matahom. She leads them to sit beside the young man who now tests the instrument for another song. "You've been playing since the afternoon, and I fear you might get sick."

"I'm sorry," Yari mumbles. "I really didn't mean to bother you. I just thought that-you know-I-"

Udaya turns to meet Yari's watery eyes. This prompts the girl to stop speaking and look down instead to fiddle with the edge of her clean baro. She walks over to the wooden table near Yari, fills a glass of tuba, and offers it to her. The awkward girl blinks, hands shaking when she attempts to receive it, but Udaya pulls it away at the last second and takes a sip from it instead.

She flashes the girl an innocent smile. "Start the fun, Matahom. I would like to entertain the new girl this year."

"What? Dance? I've never—I've—" Yari Dalikmata turns redder. "With you?"

Matahom smirks and raises an eyebrow. "Charmed?"

Udaya covers her mouth when she laughs. "She's too adorable, don't you agree?"

Tala latches on to her arm from behind. Looking down at their feet, a frown takes over their face as they softly call out her familiar nickname. "Didi...What are you doing?"

"Tala?" Udaya turns to the Mayari and sighs. She transfers their grip in her hand and squats in front of them. Looking up to their face, she captures Tala's eyes that try to avoid hers. "Come on, my love. Don't look at me like that."

Tala's gaze sharpens. "Do you like her?"

"Tala." Udaya caresses their face as she lowers her voice. "I would never love anyone beyond you and Matahom unless you both want them in our relationship. This dance, it is only to investigate our new villager. We have done this before, my love."

In the background, Indak knowingly laughs. "If you only knew."

Udaya stands and gestures for Matahom to start playing. Once the music begins, she takes hold of Yari's hand, winks at her, and drags her to dance in the middle of the clearing. Soon, the other dancers follow along to the tune. They barely notice the blushing mess that Udaya made of Yari Dalikmata the whole night, the poor girl stumbling all over, trying to follow her steps.

After some time, Indak sees the kaleidoscope of butterflies again, dissolving the people into a new passage. She no longer questions it and jumps straight into the next page.

The scene beyond the door brings her back to the setting sun, amidst the meadow where they first encountered Yari. She passes by the girl picking flowers and arranging them in a nito basket and sits beside the main lovers of this story to witness them in their usual intimacy.

Matahom Naiad stretches his arms behind him, supporting his upper body, as he gazes at the drift of birds with a contented smile. Tala Mayari leans on his chest, releasing a soft exhale as they braid Udaya's hair that lay sprawled across their lap. The girl with them remains rested on her back with a leg on top of her bended knee and eyes never leaving the Dalikmata enjoying herself from afar.

After decorating it with small flowers and securing it with a hair tie, Tala tugs at the finished braid. "What are you looking at?"

She blinks up at them and touches their forehead with the back of her hand. "Still mad?"

Tala raises an eyebrow. "I'm asking you, Udaya Minokawa. What are you looking at?"

Udaya chortles. She takes their hand in hers and intertwines them on her heart. "The plan was to watch her at all times after all, dear Mayari. How would we do that if Matahom's in his own world at the moment and you're too in love with me?"

Tala looks at her lips, a small smile forming on their own. "You wish."

Udaya pinches their cheek and tilts their head up with a finger on their forehead. "Focus, Mayari."

"What?" Matahom finally looks at the both of them. "I heard my name."

Tala caresses his jaw as their smile grows. He redirects it towards Yari Dalikmata. "The future kapitan has given her orders, Naiad. Focus."

Indak rolls her eyes. "They should pay me just by watching whatever this is."

The butterflies come to whisk the image away again after she speaks her mind, gifting her a new path instead. Indak forces a smile on her face as she stands up and opens the door. "Of course."

Because when will it end?

On the floor, three of the four historical figures sit facing each other while flower parts and small pails scatter around them. Indak reads the words stitched on the banig that serves as a welcoming mat before she invites herself in the nipa hut.

After five years.

"A flower stall," Yari tells them as she shortens the stems of the flowers before sorting them in pails. "When I was in Ines, I had a garden. However, the business did not last long after the three-headed god stole our lands and his people took over. Here, I intend to restore what I have lost."

Udaya clings to her waist. "And that's all you want to do for the rest of your life? Yari, you're too boring. We set you free from our watch a year ago because I thought I could teach you how to fight. Honestly speaking, you're always too frail."

"No, thank you. I want to behave for the next few years." Yari blushes when the other woman's hold on her tightens. She glances at Tala who plays the kudyapi in front of her. "Besides, I would rather your lover keep me alive. That condition is still up if I mistakenly injure you, right?"

"No doubt," Tala seconds it in a heartbeat.

Udaya pouts. "Who could ever hurt me?"

Yari nervously laughs. After gently removing Udaya's arms from her body, she gathers three of the pails in her arms and lifts herself up. "All done! Now, I just have to bring these to the kapitan as gifts and offer them to the shrines as well. Help me clean up when I get back?"

Udaya spreads flat on her back, crushing the discarded plants. She grabs hold of Yari's ankle and winks up at her. "I'm going to be kapitan in a month, you know. How about you offer flowers to me as well?"

Yari shakes the hand off her leg and makes a mad dash through the seashell strands that curtain their doorway. She climbs down the ladder of the nipa hut and rushes away from the Minokawa without looking back.

Udaya rolls on the floor, laughing, as she covers her face with both hands. "Did you see that, Tala? She's so easy to tease!"

She stops laughing when Tala Mayari remains silent. Frowning, she crawls on their lap as her eyes search their face for signs of discomfort. As she wraps her legs around their waist and places one hand on their forehead, her fingers slide along the kudyapi, taking the instrument from them and setting it down.

With a blank expression, Tala finally meets her gaze.

Indak, an audience in the corner, turns her back on them after her face reddens at the woman's actions. She feels like an intruder of a private moment. "Why? What is the point?"

"Tala, tell me what's on your mind. Please?" Indak hears Udaya say. "You know I hate it when you lie to me. Say the word, and we will forget about our talk last night. I will never speak to her again."

Please don't kiss like my parents whenever Pa's home, Indak quietly begs as she turns around to face them again.

"I'm just thinking." Tala tilts their head and gives her a tired smile. "When we were younger, all I have is greed for your eyes. I disliked how you and Matahom gave your attention away to anyone but me. However, we have grown, Udaya, and my heart is larger now. I am sure I will grow to love her. Just as you have grown to love me when I was once the new string in your connection with Matahom."

"But you were easy to love. I had no doubts about you when Matahom introduced you to me." Udaya looks at them for a long time before encircling their neck with her arms and resting her chin on their shoulder. "Don't you dare lie to me, Mayari. That's an order from your future kapitan."

Tala pulls her back by the nape so they could look at her. For a moment, they stay locked in that position, only staring at each other as if trying to capture every detail of their person. Indak shields her face with her hand at this intimate scene but leaves a small space between her fingers for her to peek at them.

A corner of Udaya's lip quirks up. "A few months from now, when she opens her stall. That's when I'll tell her. I'll give you more time to think about it, Tala. Please."

Tala looks away. They try to hold back a smile, but it completely relaxes on their face once their gaze returns to the woman. Closing their eyes, they softly bump their forehead into hers. "Always so considerate, my Didi. How could I ever resent you for anything? I owe you so much just by existing."

"You have no debts, Tala." The woman brushes her lips against their forehead. "I want nothing more than your honesty."

The mellow moment dissolves into butterflies again, and Indak still diligently follows its route with a sigh of relief and a hand on her heart. With face still warm from the scene, she walks out of the nipa hut and into a busy gravel road.

The village of Aliguyon transforms into the month of the Prisma Festival, beginning past dusk and into the second half of the year. The people dress in colorful and creatively designed bahag, baro, or lihin-lihin and large masks hand-painted with prismatic colors, flowers, and feathers. Like a procession, the performers prance past her and through the line of stalls that sell different decorative materials such as beads and sequins. Other vendors also have treats for offerings to either loved ones or anito.

Like most festivals, the kulintang ensemble devour the sounds of the night as lanterns with a likeness to certain animals soar through the clouds. On their structures made of bamboo sticks and gampi paper, these lanterns carry with them their owners' oaths and prayers.

It feels exactly like how Indak remembers it in Urduja.

After walking around, she once again meets two of history's most important figures.

Yari Dalikmata seems to be in the middle of describing the flower bouquets showcased in nito baskets under her stall, entertaining customers and practicing greetings within free times. In the middle of fixing her flower-sequinned saya, she almost fails to notice an important visitor of her newly opened business.

"Can I buy a bouquet of sampaguita and one dance for the pretty vendor?"

Yari looks up and finds a woman clad in a scarlet baro and habol. Though she cannot see her face because of the mask, she seems to recognize her voice. With a hint of red on her cheeks, she stands up and greets the person.

"Udaya—I mean, Kapitan Minokawa, I—What can I do for you?"

"What's with the title?" Udaya frowns. "Just call me as you used to."

They dissolve again into a wisp of butterflies travelling in a single direction. Indak runs after these small creatures, past lovers holding hands and groups of children skipping down the seaside with lanterns in their arms. She hears laughter and irritation at the same time.

She staggers to a stop once they reform into two figures sitting by one of the benches within a courtyard blooming with waling-waling and rose grapes. Yari and Udaya wait with rose-colored cheeks as various people take turns to swing in time with the music of the Kuratsa. Once a beat cues for them to glide in, Udaya winks at Yari and gently guides her to the center.

Yari's eyes become watery. "Udaya. Are you—," she bites her lip and looks away, "Are you asking me for something?"

"Guess," Udaya whispers as she dances past her.

The flower stall owner snaps her gaze back to the girl with a crease on her forehead. "Ask me properly, Kapitan Minokawa. Do not play with me like this. Not with something so important. If it even means something to you."

The kapitan stops dancing. With a huge smile on her face, she tugs the other woman out of the courtyard before a tune could signal their exit. They hasten back to the streets and down the less crowded part of the seaside while Udaya steals a punay dove lantern and mask along the way, throwing assurances of a later payment to the vendors that let her be.

Indak puts her hands on her knees as she catches her breath after the chase. She almost lost them as more and more people crowd the street and obscure her view.

Waiting ahead, Matahom Naiad waves to the two women and opens his arms for an embrace. Tala Mayari sits cross-legged on an armchair beside him and taps a slow and romantic melody with a salimbaa. Indak notices the candles on the ground, buried in sand and forming a walkway, the flames swaying with different colors as they illuminate the night along with the lanterns above.

Udaya looks back and offers Yari a reassuring smile. She releases her hand for a moment and leaps into the man's hug, and Matahom ruffles her hair and kisses her on the forehead. After handing over the lantern to him, she reaches to her side and smoothens her other lover's long mane.

She squats in front of them and holds their hand, stopping the music. "I want to make sure for the final time that you are truly fine with this, Tala."

Tala Mayari nods. They tighten their hold on her hand and bend down to give her a soft peck on the lips, a scene Indak Agui can't help but make a face at.

"If you love her and she loves you just as much, then it is enough for me."

Udaya tilts their chin up and kisses their forehead before returning to Yari's side. "I'll always owe you all of me, Tala."

Once Tala Mayari plays the salimbaa again, Udaya takes Yari by the hand and plants a kiss on her knuckles. She intertwines her hands with hers and gives her a shy look, a first among her flirtatious disposition.

"Yari, I have nothing to my name at the moment, and I may not be worthy of you even after we've spent our whole lives. Still, I'm here in front of you to offer you my truth regardless of the answer you give me. If I please you, I beg you hand me your honesty as well."

Udaya clears her throat. She blinks up at the sky for a moment before her gaze returns to the other woman. "The first time we met, you were just a strange one to me. I was very curious about you, but I was also suspicious of your intentions. Then, you told unfortunate tales about your old home but grew your flower fields in Lam-ang at the same time. I was enamored by that soft future you spun around despite the lingering tragedy. Unconsciously, you introduced to me the meaning of hope. You showed me that there is so much more land ahead of us to cultivate than just on where the soil rots."

"I could not recall when I began to fall for you, but I do recall how my feelings came to be." Udaya coughs, flushing red as she continues to speak. "This is why that meadow you love so much became the very essence of my fragility. It is where I always meet the people I will burn the world for, and it is where I would end my life once all the ones that I love no longer frolic around for another great memory. You, with your easy smile and wild hair, how could I resist you, Yari? There is balance in the way you dance in our home. You entered it with no question and resistance, and it made me want you carved around it just as we are. Do you know where I am going with this?"

Yari covers her mouth. She looks away as tears form in her eyes.

"This is the first time," the flower stall owner inhales before meeting Udaya's unwavering gaze once again, "that I have ever received such soulful confession. Only men have expressed their love for me in Ines. They were never genuine nor delicate with the way they handled their feelings towards me. I've grown to hate being with someone as I thought that it meant constant coercion. That's all I've ever known. However, you are soft with me. In these five years that I have grown alongside you as a new person, you are patient, Udaya. Do you know how many times I've been whipped for my mistakes and ignorance in Ines? More times than I can count. But you, Udaya, you always answer me without raising a finger or your voice. For a lot of people, that is only a small thing, but to me, it means a lot. How could I resist this too?"

"Then, if you have trouble saying no, then allow me to prove myself worthy of your yes." Udaya puts the mask she stole on Yari's face. She presses small kisses on every part of its sequin-designed surface as her hold tightens on Yari's hand. "In this life, you will know only of our love for you. In your last moments, when you have no choice but to leave us and this world, you will only smile for you know you were loved so deeply that even Manduyapit would weep and hesitate to take you."

Indak catches Matahom Naiad from the corner, his grin so large that his eyes become like crescent moons. As Tala creates the last few notes of their music, the scene blurs away into a new one.

After the confession, Indak finds herself stuck in a stone house filled with a maze of doors. Each room leads to a different scene between the four people in the story. However, her complaints from when she first witnessed these memories die down as she dives into all of them, down to the very last.

One opens to the scene of the trio plucking & drumming a few instruments to create new lullabyes for their next generations. The next is the exchange of their love letters and flowers, its deliveries made by nailing on each other's open windows. What follows is the time they spent in the duyan tied under the fully bloomed banaba tree they planted in the middle of the meadow. Then the romantic dances by the bonfire and arguments and kisses in between cooking for meals. A few doors open to the caresses of consolation after bad days. It felt like a few good years of warmth and sincerity wrapped inside the house, becoming soft memories.

Until the last one which leads to the helpless death of one Udaya Minokawa, flesh deteriorated by an incurable disease.

"She loved you so much," Tala Mayari tells Yari as they lay on their side beside her, pulling the woman's strands away from her tear-stained face. "She...loved you more than anyone else."

Yari Dalikmata hugs all of the letters and flowers that Udaya gave her all these years. "Don't say that, Tala. She loved us equally."

Indak falls awfully silent in a corner as she sits down and leans her head on the wall behind. They become more real to her than just apparitions of something lost in time, and even she could not deny the heaviness that took hold of her heart as she progresses through this part of history.

Yari sits up, cleaning her face with a clean towel beside her. "Where's Matahom, Tala? You're not one to approach me without him. All these years, your affection is expensive, and now you're here in front of me willing to give it away."

"My other lover is drunk on a hill and is close to throwing himself off it," Tala quietly says. "If I wanted my sanity intact to continue leading our people in place of Udaya, then I have no choice but to pull back my intensity. I hate it so. I want to hang myself. This is the first time I'm forced to keep it together. If I killed you from the very start, would it have changed things? But her sickness is not your fault. No matter if you came into our life or not, it will still take her away. It relieves me to blame you, but it does not return her."

"Why are you telling me this?" Yari sneers. "You're blabbering like you've never done before. I know that you resent me so much, Tala, I know it. You don't have to explain how you exactly feel towards me, but why are you with me in this hour to spill your guts out?"

"I often seek Udaya for comfort. For assurance. For when I don't think I could go on."

"And I cannot be her replacement," Yari snaps. "Tala, I can count with one hand the times we conversed about our feelings. That is the distance we have. Years ago, I thought I could woo you as well, make you love me just as I loved you, but you are hard to grasp. We have been strangers for a long time, and our time has passed for things to still bend for the better."

"I do not want your conditional feelings." Tala shifts to lay on their back. "You could never love me like Udaya."

Yari pulls them up by the neckline of their baro and strikes their face with her closed fist. She thumps their chest, each hit making them stumble backwards, and shoves them down to the floor. She wails until her knees tremble out of balance and she's kneeling in front of them.

"You should do it. Hang yourself, Tala, for I have nothing left to offer you," she chokes out. "Better yet, set our house aflame and let me burn with it. The foundation has withered away, and I only want to fall apart with it."

0 notes

yangsoeuvre · 2 months ago

Text

Chapter III: Sinugdanan (I)

Note #78: found under mats of an abandoned nipa hut, Volume I of Forgotten Entries From Dead and Missing Dreamers

The girl wearing lihin-lihin. She's cold as frostbite. She never smiles. I wonder what she eats for breakfast? It must be meat and vegetables. My mama never lets me eat on the family table. She likes to make me play games and throw knives at straw figures. She says it'll help me one day. I eat at our backyard during midnights. I go to sleep when the sun rises. I take my lessons when the night falls. The codex is my bed. I am so tired. The elders yell at me in this place. Everyone yells at me.

The girl in that expensive lihin-lihin never yells at me.

I like her the best.

Gray clouds and azure sky greet Indak Agui's sight once she wakes up. Currently, her body lays on outdoor grounds, arms and legs spread flat on a dusty road. As her pupils dart around in search for clues, her hand drifts to her forehead, recalling her situation and assessing the setting. She takes note that not a single breath is present in her vicinity, and only empty stalls and rundown nipa huts scatter across the area.

Am I still in Urduja? She wonders.

In between thoughts of finding out the trial's goal, torn book pages flutter past Indak and skid on cracked soil. She trails after it as she listens to the voices from afar. Drizzle starts to pour over her head until heavy rainfall soon follows, soaking the book pages flat on the ground and pointing to a specific direction. At the end of the leading book page, Indak finds two people whispering in front of a sturdy nipa hut. They don't seem to notice her presence.

"Your other half has lost it, Sinauna," the person in blue hulun sash says. "If he thinks offerings to a forgotten deity could end the genocide and give us salvation, then we will all die."

Sinauna gathers her abaca decorated lihin-lihin and sits on the bottom steps of a ladder leading to the hut. "If my Alab's faith in Apolaki is met, I do hope you remember what you have said to me here, Gamhanan."

Gamhanan covers a scoff with their hand. "You're overzealous, dear sister. And the lot of you are delusional. The farthest you can go from this nonsense is death. I do hope you know what you are doing, believing in grandfather's folklores."

"What have we to fear? We are closer to death sitting here." Sinauna says to her twin, ignoring their mocking. "In the stream by the trees where we offer food for the nature spirits. We'll walk to Mount Pulag and restore what we've lost. Do what you will with this."

Indak watches the forms of Gamhanan and Sinauna scatter into dust before she climbs the ladder and enters the hut. Inside, she finds a young Alab with pintado ankles and dressed in a cloak closed in front by gold gansing. His long braided hair almost touches the floor where he sits on his heel and continue to mumble graces in front of a stone altar. Between candles and smooth carvings of taotao beholding the altar, an excellent stitching of the great Apolaki lays with them.

A metallic gold headband that circled above the eyebrows adorns the deity's head. His long and wavy locks brush past his pupilless eyes, spilling on the golden sun tattoo on his broad chest and ending just above the red bahag around his waist. The sun's rays extend to his shoulders and muscular arms, becoming patterns of beautiful waves and webs as it accentuates the orange tinge of the being's copper skin. The god looks like the sun.

In front of the stitching are round manunggul jars with the lid's handle shaped as two humanoid figures in a boat, depicting a psychopomp and a soul rowing to the spirit realm. On another table are clean water in coconut shells and fishes on top of banana leaves.

Indak opens the jars to look for hints while silently asking for forgiveness to the disrespect that needs to be made. If her history subjects never failed her, then the time at the moment must be set before Urduja's foundation.

When she opens the last jar, Alab startles Indak by rushing out of the shrine while calling for Sinauna at the top of his lungs. She attempts to follow him, but a spark from the corner of her eye grabs her attention back to the jar. Upon inspection, inside the last burial jar are not ashes but a scroll that reads:

May Bathala bless the souls that stand for themselves alone. If your heart is not colonized and your mind is not conquered, then may Urduja bless the child born to diverge from their fixed paths. Your power is your identity. Your only master is your voice. To serve the people, you must first learn to trust yourself.

"Great," she says to herself. "Because that makes sense."

Indak walks out of the shrine with the item fisted in her hand, hoping to search for more clues by finding Alab and following them to Mount Pulag. The rain stops once her sandals touch the ground and the earth beneath her starts to quake. The paper slips out her grip and dances in the air, and she jumps after it, towards a group of barefooted people in lihin-lihin and salakot marching in her direction.

Indak's fingertips could only graze the paper before Alab snatches it with his scarred hands. She stares dumbfounded at the scene as the material transforms into a bolo. She backs away in disgruntlement, but follows their lead once they walk past her. The shrine disappears, and the next scene brings her under sepia skies and on the trails of a honey-colored mountain overlooking a sea of clouds.

Indak gapes in awe at the magnificent view on top of Mount Pulag. It's even better than how the history books sketched the forgotten sacred ground.

A familiar tune and dance of the Panalangin's blessing ritual commences as the people circle Alab with tingkeps raised in the air. Alab mutters incantations as he carves a seal on the mountain's soil with his staff, the design littered with baybayin characters spelling out Apolaki's name and his titles. From the people's bodies, thread-like lights squirrel out through the dust and converge with the seal.

"O, kinsa raman mi para mangayo ug dakong grasya, akong Ginoo. O, kinsa raman mi," Alab mumbles. "Dawata mi, dawata mi na nagatuktok sa imong purtahan, akong Ginoo. Tanan akong ihatag kanimo. Hatagi kami ug ikaduhang kinabuhi palayo sa lugar na ginadauban na sa mga langyaw na walay batasan." (Oh, who are we to ask for great grace, my god? Who are we? Receive us, receive us who are knocking at your door, my god. I will give you everything. Give us a second life away from this place that the shameless foreigners have already set on fire.)

"Kwaa kami!" Sinauna screams to the world, her knuckles turning white as she grasps for her robes to tame her rage. "Ila ming ipaluhod sa ilang ginoo! Gusto sila among sambahon ang ginoo sa mga langyaw na gipangpaslang among mga igsuon! Gusto nila luwaan namo ang abo sa among mga tao sa pamaagi na magyukbo mi para sa ilang ginoo! Kung magpabilin pa mi, wala nami anak! Kwaa nami!" (Take us! They made us kneel to their god! They want us to worship the god of these foreigners that slayed our people! They want us to spit on the ashes of our people by bowing down to their god! If we remain, our children will die! Take us!)

Indak stands to witness it all, this page of history warming a part of her heart and making her skin tingle.

Our oldest ancestors, our greatest pride.

Indak blinks. "But what am I supposed to do here?"

A couple more words are spared to curse the foreigners that colonized their land. The ritual finishes with the people's tingkeps scorched in flames and an enormous golden door bursting out of the seal and standing before them. The skies shift to the color of midnight, and the constellations spin among the clouds, entangling with the northern lights and a plethora of galaxies.

All of their anito appear before them in indescribable forms, their figures uncanny and putting the statues they carved of them to shame. Their energies are more daunting than expected and they could not distinguish some parts of them when compared to the celestial bodies that encompass their images. Their resemblance to humanity lessens, and they become more intertwined with all things that make up nature and the universe.

"Humble yourselves before the supreme one," the being who resembles the sun, Apolaki, speaks.

The larger deity, one that soars above every last one of the star formations, begin to address them in the lowest tone of voice, but it echoes through the mountains so no words become lost within his speech. "You and your past generations have served us for many years now, Alab and Sinauna. Your children and your people naturally follow in your footsteps. However, the rest that exists in your land have fallen out of their beliefs. Some choose to follow a foreign god. Some choose to simply surrender."

The people in front of these celestials all lower their heads in lament, as if to seek forgiveness for the people's weak faith in their own gods.

"They were brutal, our holiness." Sinauna's voice cracks. "When they arrived, the islands bled day and night. The temples we keep for your honors have been destroyed and defecated. They robbed our lands and our parents' graves for gold and raped the people to submission. Some people were tortured to turn against your grace. Some lose their lives in standing ground."

"And day and night we grow angered, but it is not enough," Bathala tells her. "If we lose believers, the distance between your people and ours grow. The divine connection weakens and your third eye vanishes for good. We will be stripped of our power and then cease to exist, along with those bridged to us. For the last few years, we have called for everyone still bound to us, including your people, for another life. Those who heard our call before you have already met second chances in Lam-ang. We resurrect in the new world."

The people drop to their knees and repeatedly bang their foreheads against the ground. They sing and shout their gratitude to the stars above, before their glorious presence. They are only silenced when a hundred large scrolls refined by clouds flutter in the wind to demand their full attention.

"These scrolls will be our soul contracts. You will choose the anito you will mainly serve for your whole lives through these, but you must choose wisely for this bond spans future generations. Once your name seals the threads that relate us, you take the name of the anito you serve and make it your own. I order you to use it and grow us a tribe under your lineages. In return, we offer you gahum. In the new world, we will belong to you as you will belong to us. When the time comes that the foreign god could reach us still and pummel our ties to ruin, you will have no worries for our power will linger on you. You will fight back."

"Our divine one," a man bows from the crowd as a call to be heard. "What will be of Ines after this? Will it be eradicated from existence?"

"My bonds of the rest of my people have weakened now, for they no longer hear my call," Bathala replies. "For the good of everyone, Ines will be cleansed of the wickedness of the foreign ones. I will still grant peace to those who lost their faith in us but, afterwards, sever our ties. I will make some children survive the barbarity of this time. I will make them forget everything we stand for and allow them to bow down to the god of these murderers, if it grants them salvation. These are the only things I am able to do to soothe what will become of Ines. I cannot destroy them. Not absolutely."

The people disperse to evaluate each scrolls. Each person has their own mind, and even a few children separate from their parents to decide for themselves. Once the time comes to seal their bonds, they bite down on their thumbs and join their names with the rest of the believers that signed before them. After the last person finalizes their path, the scrolls burst into specks of light before returning to the heavens.

"The time has run out." Bathala gestures for the door to open. "Once you enter, there is no coming back. In the new world, there is only starting over. For all of us."

Indak walks to Lam-ang with the rest of the people that fell in line to get there, tiptoeing and looking from the sides to get a better view of what lies ahead. Once her turn comes to pass through the door, the glow inside gets a little more brighter that she had to squint and shield her sight from it with her arm. Once the warmth of a soft ray of light touches her skin, and she hears the birds sing, she drops her arm and takes in the new world.

An evergreen forest surrounds Indak this time. Heights above her, the majestic haribon soar through the clouds, and whiskered treeswifts zip past her to take breaks in a clear stream nearby. Her mouth hangs open as she marvels at the beauty of the large rainbow gum trees surrounding the vast area.

Three tall figures leap past the stream in fits of laughter and playful remarks, shifting her distractions. They run around circles in front of her before rushing into the opposite direction. Indak keeps up with them, hoping it would lead to something other than just witnessing a history lesson. However, the trio only cuts their chase short without giving anything away and collapses in a field of multi-colored blossoms with the gentle backdrop of an old volcano.

"Tala," a pale-skinned girl with the darkest hair cooes at the person with a dodecagram birthmark on their forehead. She leaps into their arms and embraces their waist. "Do you think we absolutely need to go to Lam-ang's foundation rituals, or do you think we—"

"Should not show and just stay here for a midnight tryst?", the youth with striking red eyes suggests as he palms a few strands of her long curls and brings it to his lips. He wiggles his eyebrows at her.

"I was going to say we should celebrate your birthday instead of entangling it with the rituals," the corners of her lips quirk up, "but that is quite a temptation."

The boy raises an eyebrow and his smile grows. "Oh, you prefer me that way, Udaya?"

"I have tried countless times before to no avail." Tala sighs, hugging the girl back and combing her hair. "So please, Udaya, it's your turn to beg our man to celebrate his special day for once."

Matahom gives the both of them a bear hug and kisses every inch of their faces. They squirm between his arms until they burst out giggling. "But what more could I ever need?"

"Matahom Naiad, I am warning you!" Tala says in between tears as Matahom starts to tickle them.

"Oh, warn me?" He tickles them some more.

Udaya wraps her arms around Matahom's shoulders. She trails soft pecks down his neck and shoulder blades as she laughs along with them. "Hey, don't leave me out."

Matahom turns his head to give the girl a short and shallow kiss on the lips before pulling Tala off the ground to cuddle them on his lap. Tala Mayari's laughter dies as they rest their head on the youth's collarbones.

Watching their intimacy made all the blood rush to Indak's face. The trier recoils and looks away. "Ew."

"So beautiful."

Indak turns to the stranger who spoke. She wears a long-sleeved shirt and cargo shorts, something unfamiliar to the era at the moment. Her mouth hangs wide open and her pupils tremble at the magnificent sight before her.

After a long pause on their end, the trio ahead becomes alert of her presence, and they dash forward to point their bolo at the poor girl. Just for safety, Indak takes a quick step back to keep herself away from the possibility that these historical imitations could hurt her.

"Identify yourself." Tala Mayari narrows their eyes and pressures the girl by touching the tip of their blade to her neck.

The girl stretches her neck and puts her palms up. "I'm Yari! From Ines? Hello? I'm the direct descendant of Gamhanan. Sinauna's twin? You do know her...right?"

Udaya's forehead wrinkles. "Don't lie. Lam-ang had no more of Ines' survivors since...", she trails off.

"Since five hundred years ago," Tala finishes for her. "Search her."

"I'm sorry for the intrusion, genuinely, but please calm down for a second." Yari carefully maneuvers all knives away from her body with an index finger. "I was offered rights to be here just like your ancestors from ages ago. So, please excuse me a bit."

After ducking under Tala's bolo and removing her slippers, she takes slow small steps forward, throws her arms in the air, and spins around barefoot. She falls to the ground once she becomes unsteady but soon regains her enthusiasm when a kaleidoscope of butterflies flutter through the field and catches her eye. With bright eyes and a wide grin, she scrambles up to chase after them.

"Is she mad?", Matahom asks his lovers.

Udaya crosses her arms and leans on his chest. "Or Ines is so awfully barren that she acts like this in Lam-ang."

"We are still not sure of her origins," Tala reminds them, their grip on their weapon tightening. "Help me capture her. Our village will need answers."

"I don't know. She looks harmless to me," Matahom mumbles. Tala shoots him a glare, and he winks at them. "But whatever you want, dear."

As the trio spreads out and closes in on the strange girl, the four people disintegrate into butterflies to piece together a door made of bamboo planks.

Indak runs towards the existing entrance, to what she assumes to be the official trying field of the Sinugdanan, but only disappointment fills her after seeing what greets her within. When she tries to leave, an invisible force pushes her further inside and slams the door shut. Without much choice, she enters the scene to witness another historical recount.

This time, it brings her to the inside of a large house with chambers separated by wooden partitions with foliage in high relief. Cane strips roped together mats the top of the wooden grill flooring and palm leaf shingles and heavy rattan support its roof. A looming figure with pintado ankles and gold jewelry, dressed much like everyone else in the village, sits poised on the butaka rocking chair of the lounging platform below.

Near his feet, Yari kneels with her hands tied behind by a rope while Matahom stands with his leg on her back and its string pulled towards him. On her sides, Udaya Minokawa and Tala Mayari continue to point their bolo at her.

"This will be the last time we ask you, outsider," the village kapitan warns. "Are you truly not a servant of the foreign god?"

"Oh, help me. Yes! I've already said that ten times now," Yari pleads in tears, her mouth trembling. "Please, I don't mean any harm. I told you. I just want to live here in peace."

"Pardon me for my intrusion, Kaps—" Matahom tries to assert himself in the conversation.

"Kapitan," the kapitan corrects.

"—Kapitan," Matahom continues, an apologetic smile settling on his face. "She told us awhile ago that she was offered rights to be here and that she was a direct descendant of the sibling of one of this village's first leaders."

The kapitan looks at him for a long time, the silence almost deafening when he does not offer him a response.

Matahom scratches the back of his neck. "Tala, support me over here. Udaya?"

Tala gives him a sour look. "I think you're just charmed, Matahom."

Matahom sputters. "Why would I—Why would you ever think that?"

"Enough." The kapitan gives the both of them a hard look before turning his attention back to the girl turning pale. "If you are who you say you are, then who is the anito that allowed you entrance to Lam-ang, child?"

"I serve Dalikmata since I was fourteen," Yari replies, her voice becoming weak. "Please, I'm telling you the truth."

"Dalikmata is known to sympathize with humans. It's fairly logical, Kapitan," Udaya comments. When Tala shifts their glare to her, she smiles at them in response. "Tala, with just a flick of our fingers, we managed to drag her here while she's distracted. Look at her. She's already pitiful in this state. Standing by that observation, she cannot possibly be someone capable of tearing our village apart."

"Innocence is a mask," the Mayari insists. "We have to be smart."

"Tala, please," Matahom coos. "It's not smart if we don't have evidence to prove she's not innocent. I don't want to hurt the ones that haven't done anything wrong yet either. It's poor judgement."

"You forget why our ancestors lost Ines to the colonizers and had to restart in Lam-ang, Matahom. Strangers lure you in with a moment of helplessness and curiosity. We answer to their greed for knowledge. We answer for the attention they give us. Then we lose everything for they will grow to steal what we have given. If we repeat history, we will come to ruin once again."

"Tala, the people of Ines are not colonizers." Matahom frowns and removes his foot from Yari's back. "There was a time when we were younger that you wished all that's left behind in Ines should be welcomed. That they were our people still. That they are in need of salvation just as much as how our ancestors needed it back then."

"I was naive!" Tala lowers their gaze. "I was a child. Ines is the foreign god's abode now. It has become his world. Whoever stays would fall prey to him and his destructive ideologies eventually. So, please Matahom. You're too kind, and I am afraid it will become a flaw in how we support Udaya in the future."

Yari Dalikmata faints in between their argument, her body falling to the side.

Udaya quickly catches her before her head bangs on the floor. She ignores the stare Tala gives them both, eyes only focused on their kapitan. "Kapitan. Please give out orders."

"Ah, Udaya Minokawa, my successor." The old kapitan lets out a soft chuckle, and it lifts the tension in the air for awhile. "Tell me, how would you run this village when I'm gone? You should be the one to give out orders to those two boneheads behind you as a head start."

"Boneheads?" Matahom puts a hand over his heart and pouts. "Kaps, you're really hurting my feelings."

"Kapitan," the kapitan glares at him.

Udaya looks at her lovers in the room. "Kapitan Acerodon, I don't think I-"

"Nonsense!" The kapitan cuts her off. "I am coming to an end, and you should allow me to witness how worthy you are in leading our people while I am yet to become ash. Give me grace, Udaya."

Udaya returns her gaze to him and bows. "Then I am deeply honored to fulfill it, Kapitan."

She turns around, schools all her emotions, and puts more bass in her voice. "We will have her alive. Innocent or not, we will watch her until we conclude upon investigation that she is indeed harmless. For now, we neither let her off easy nor imprison her. Matahom, Tala. The three of us will stand guard and follow her at all times. We will gather data during this period. These are my orders as your future village kapitan."

"The plan is a waste of time and energy, Udaya—"

"Kapitan," Udaya corrects Tala with a small smile. "That's Kapitan Udaya Minokawa for you, Mayari. While I understand your sentiments, I also understand Matahom Naiad's. For now, we settle for my plan. Don't worry. If she ever strays, you will be the first to know, and you will be the one to sentence her to death."

Indak does not hear any more of their conversation, for the butterflies have returned through the open window to take it away through the door of the house.

"Oh, how wonderful." Indak Agui groans as she slides the door open and welcomes another chapter. "What am I even doing right now, following dead people's lives?"

0 notes

yangsoeuvre · 2 months ago

Text

Chapter II: Baryo Melchora

Note #45: found on the walls of the Sisina Compound, Volume I of Forgotten Entries From Dead and Missing Dreamers

You must come home to me, my son. I do not feel comforted with the current pinuno's rule. If you are stuck in the hagdan, I fear what he orders you children to do. The night is often cold and no blankets could warm up the terror I feel for your future. I long to see your face again for you have not been home for seven years. You gave me no letters nor warm greetings, even on my birthdays. You never replied to my letters on your birthdays.

I long for the next Panalangin that I may see your face again.

How could you not visit me when I am growing closer to all the ashes in my wake?

Gunita Venancio met Indak Agui through a paper bird back when they were eight. These birds had been a listener of her life since the first time she scribbled some words in them that she thought had a nice meaning back then:

Taranta ka.

That first paper bird containing those exact words fell on her cousin's feet when their mothers introduced them in a coffeehouse and Gunita didn't know how to strike up a conversation with the girl. Her brother always said it with a small bow and a smile, so the phrase became a pleasant thing to her ears whenever her mother asks her brother to comment about her tree's private mentors. The tutor usually grins in response to her brother whenever he says those words to him, so she expected her aunt to be equally pleased as well.

However, her aunt smacked her upside the head instead while her mother pinched her side.

Her brother said he read it from an old book in one of Urduja's libraries during his travels, but that moment revealed his lie. From then on, those words meant to curse someone became something she only writes over her big brother's parchments. For the rest of her paper birds, she only uses them to write about her day, wishing the wind may take it to Kaluwalhatian.

On rare occassions, they also help when she has something to say to a stubborn girl that refuses to listen.

So, around the seventeenth takna, her paper bird travels under the fine and misty rain, passing through the towering stone buildings and large nipa huts of the Akademya. It lingers by the pond of shrines and imposing stone statue of Bathala in a corner, as if fulfilling small prayers, before gliding past the balete trees that enclose a playground and wooden stage at the center of a wide clearing. After a steady flight out of the rusty metal gates of their educational institution, it finally reaches its target and decks her cousin's nape.

With both hands holding the pasiking over her head to shield herself from the weather, Gunita jogs up to the girl. "You didn't even wait for me!"

Indak shields herself from the rain with one of her pads before picking up the paper bird and reading its message. She looks at her cousin after a long pause. "Visit your house? Why? To let your whole family tree nag at me again?"

Gunita puffs her cheeks. "We miss having you around, Indi. You don't visit much anymore. We're worried."

The corners of Indak's lips lift upwards as she rolls her eyes. "Of course, your tree misses me. No one else to nag at, I suppose."

Gunita Venancio nudges Indak's shoulder forward. "Why do you always complain all the time? That just shows we care about you."

"Well, you don't have to anymore. I'll be going away for the Sinugdanan with a great chance of becoming a balyan anyway. I've already prepared these past few years."

Gunita pouts. "Why are you so sure about becoming balyan? Will you even pass Sinugdanan?"

Indak looks at her from the corner of her eyes. "If you're here to discourage me again, spare me."

The frown on Gunita's face becomes more evident when they pass by a puddle of rain and mud splashes on her ankles. She forgets about it once she hears her cousin's response. "Are you really not scared, Indi? Even when, one day, you can't come home anymore and see me again?"

"Why would I see you again, Tani?" Her cousin lets out an exasperated sigh. "Do you remember? We're only close because our mothers told you to watch me for any signs of rebellion. It's been annoying me for years."

Gunita pouts. "The tree introduced us to support you after what happened to your tribe. That is what's true."

"Whatever. I don't care if you don't want to admit it." Indak's fingers lightly brushes the part of her neck and whips around to face her. "Oh, right. Did you also have a clone show up as some weird and twisted illusion before base assignments were given?"

"So you're curious about me." She locks her cousin's free arm with hers and gives her a toothy grin. She drags her along, urging her to continue moving forward. "I had my brother show up in mine, Indi. He was so pitiful and sad in that illusion. I think he was turning into something weird. He just cried in my arms and said that if I kill him then my parents and everyone else would live. It would solve everything."

"That sounds like a much more complicated scenario than mine." Indak stares at her cousin long and hard. "What did you do?"

"Something...I don't even know if it was me or someone else but..." Gunita bites her lip. "It couldn't be me, right? It felt like I was possessed after a few moments, Indi."

Indak stops in her tracks. "What did you do?"

Gunita halts with her as well. Her lips tremble. "Don't judge me, Indi. I love my brother no matter how much he seems like a pest that's hard to control."

Indak rolls her eyes. "I know you look up to him like some deity, Tani, but what did you do in that illusion?"

She rubs her arms and looks away. "You know what I did."

Her cousin grimaces at her. "No, I don't, so do tell. I promise not to judge you."

"You promised, alright?" Gunita meets her eyes and lets out a long breath. "I killed my parents and then myself, Indi. You keep your promise now."

Indak's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. "That shocks me. What even runs through your head to do just that?"

Gunita pouts. "You promised not to judge. In my opinion, sacrificing my brother to save everyone in Urduja sounds like an awful solution to a problem no one knows where it came from and who even caused in the first place. I don't really get the situation."

Indak snorts. "Me neither. To make you feel better about your deed, I killed you in my illusion. You were very annoying in mine. Don't ask about the details. I hate recalling it, but it's about that stupid massacre. I wish to never have memories of the Six Point Bloodbath at all."

"No fair. You made me explain mine."

Indak shrugs. "Not my problem."

"Speaking of, remember how it's partially Urduja's fault that your tribe went down. How could they not prevent that tragedy?" Gunita tosses her arms in the air, spins around, and skips in front of her cousin. For that, I would rather they die!"

Indak rolls her eyes again. "Very dramatic. You should see our heads on a stake if anyone hears you. Balyan also lurks around here, you know. Just a warning from my mother and your tree."

"If they cared enough about ordinary, powerless, and naive me to overhear. Well, lucky us, Indi. They don't care about children like us that much." Gunita tickles her side. "Right? My little flame! My little flame!"

Indak pulls her arm from the girl's hold and sprints away, but a ghost of a smile remains on her lips. "Go away, Tani! I'm serious!"

The girl continues to chase after her. "Come back, my little flame!"

They race each other past different stores and huts, sidestepping a few sikad and pushing past haggard folks in their village that voiced their irritation through snide remarks. This game of tag went on around the village until Gunita bumps into a tall figure near a pond by the flower stand and halts the cousins' little fun. When Indak no longer hears the bakya of her cousin tailing after her, she stops in her tracks to look behind, only to find her view of her cousin obstructed by a large back.

Gunita looks up and sees a familiar man in a sleeveless cotton robe holding a white parasol that has the letters of the Venancio Tree's tuba business, Amador, sewn across its outline in bold baybayin characters. Her father stares her down with hooded eyes, revealing nothing of his emotions. She lets her pasiking fall to the wet ground as she takes his hand to touch her forehead to his knuckles, greeting him with a mano po.

"Pa, what are you doing here?"

"I answered an order from our tuba business' recent customer in the nearby coffeehouse," her father replies as he hands the parasol to her and picks up her pasiking. "It's time you meet with our tree's elders, Gunita."

Gunita's grip on the parasol tightens. "But I am not ready to meet them yet. Kuya thinks so too."

"Tito Buwan." Indak walks towards the pair and greets her uncle with a mano po. "Did my father send new letters?"

Buwan hands her a white envelope. "Come to the coffeehouse after your trials. If you pass, it's better to seek help there. We will be waiting for you."

Indak examines the envelope in her hands. "Seek help for what, Tito?"

"If you pass Sinugdanan, you know who will be in your way," Buwan answers. "It will all be taken care of in Tandang Mirisi."

"What?" Gunita grabs her father's arm and gives it a harsh shake. "Pa!"

Indak's eyes shimmer as she looks up to her uncle. A smile reaches her eyes as she bows to him a few times. "Thank you, Tito! Thank you!"

Gunita grabs her cousin's arm. "We need to discuss this first, Indi."

Indak pulls herself out of her cousin's hold and rolls her eyes at her. After one last bow of gratitude, she bounces off to the opposite direction with the letter and leaves the father and daughter to their business. Gunita tries to follow her cousin, but her father stops her with a tight grip on her shoulder.

"Gunita, leave your cousin alone. We have our own matters to consider."

The girl surrenders upon hearing the insistence in her father's voice, yet another deep frown settling on her face. She could only choose obedience in front of her father who beckons her towards a line of sikad waiting for passengers on the gravelly road, eastside of the stone house bookstore and public library of the village of Bonifacio.

"It's about the trials," her father says as they step into a vacant sikad. "I believe Teresa is your trial base, just like everyone else in our tree that came before you."

Gunita doesn't respond. She instead crosses her arms and pouts as the sikad paddles away to the direction of their compound. When her father puts her pasiking on her lap and lays his hand on her head, the twelve-year-old girl's insides tighten as dread settles in the pit of her stomach. Like gaining foresight, she predicts future feelings of fright as her father spits out newer words to her that she knows would fill her following days with more nightmares.

"If the elders demand you to be the first one in a long time to serve in the Balyan Hagdan, in honor of our tree, would you accept it?"

—————————————————————————

The kalesa drops Indak in front of Baryo Melchora, around children either all by themselves or with their guardians presently giving them extra money and lunches sealed in banana leaves. The village's convex gates are made of cut fieldstone painted red, and it stretches to the large forest surrounding its stone walls. At the center of the gate opening inwards, the symbols reading 'balyan' is inked three times in baybayin, forming a triangular shape around a giant eye.

Indak pulls on the straps of her pasiking and steps past the entrance, right onto the village's cobblestone streets.

The second pinuno wanted a separate area to develop the balyan of Urduja on proper training grounds, so Melchora was born and built for this purpose. Eventually, the place was divided into three bases, and, in the years to come, became a village with all the necessary buildings and resources to accommodate all balyan.

The senyors dressed in the formal uniforms exclusive for senyor ranks—baro and habol—are the first type of balyan that captures Indak's eyes. The uniforms come in different shades—red, blue, yellow, black, and white—signifying the division the senyor belongs to. Some of them also prefer the kangan style over the baro. Aside from weapons, gold jewelry and anting also hangs on their person. The latter reminds her of her father, who has one of his own too. He says each balyan only has one, something they receive once their third eye opens and they completely unseal their gahum.

In the middle of her wonder, someone pushes her from behind. "Hello, trier!"

Turning around, she sees a boy with a side ponytail, and Indak takes a few steps away from him. "Hey, watch it!"

"Hey, watch it!", the boy mimics her in a high-pitched voice as he leans forward and invades her personal space. "You potential sugdi look and sound the same, definitely. Unlike my batch. We were all unique in some ways. Your batch is too bland. Maybe the results are too, for this year."

She gives him a fake smile. "Thank you for your honest opinion, but I have to go."

"I know, we're amazing," he drags his words, snickering, as he looks past her. "Hey, Puso! Iyo! We got another trier here."

Two figures quickly close in from behind. When she takes a closer look at the three of them, the girl with spiky hair raises a fist in front of her, and she flinches when it stops an inch away from her nose. The girl blows a puff of sand from the hole of her fist and into Indak's face. As she starts coughing, the trio bursts out laughing while the girl ruffles her hair.

While trying to recover her senses, the other person with red paint on their face pinches her cheeks. "She is so cute, Puso! She looks like my little sister!"

"Please, every trier you meet looks like your little sisters to you," Puso says in between her giggles as she slings an arm around Indak's neck. "Oh, I really miss being just a trier. How long has it been? A year now? And now, we're up for Abante Arena. Right, Akin?"

"I doubt Yaman misses it," the boy with the side ponytail scoffs. "He's still such a stuck-up snob after all the time we had. So annoying."

"Yaman is just tired all the time, Akin. Don't be like that," Iyo calls him out. "Besides, he's kind of cute. I think you were busy cleaning up the quarters and packing your things out of the base, but, last night, he went on another one of his tirades about who made his baby brother cry. He's such a fussy brother—"

In between their moments of recollection, Indak pushes the girl off her and attempts to run, but Akin and Puso pull her back in front of them by grabbing hold of her pasiking.

"Hey! Hey! Where are you going?" Iyo pins her in place with a tight grip on her shoulders. "You'll miss our token for the triers this season."

"Let go!" Indak raises her voice, shrugging Iyo's hands off of her. "Let go!"

Iyo pulls out a yakal wood from their pocket and dangles it in front of her face. "We just want to give you your trier number."

Amidst Indak's speechless disbelief, Akin and Puso finally let go of her arms as Iyo takes the opportunity to shove the wood in her hands. She hurries to catch them out of reflex as the trio laughs at her again.

"Don't be shy!" Akin pushes her out of their circle with a force that almost made her stumble. "And remember our faces well for we are your trial base's most successful graduates! We are basically your base ancestors!"

She briefly inspects the wood where 128-N is written. When she looks up again, the annoying trio already left her alone and had another trier caught in whatever else they have up their sleeves. Discarding the wood in her pasiking, she starts looking for a sikad while avoiding other groups attempting to corner other triers. She hears someone call for help as she passes some of them, but she ignores them, choosing not to get involved in the web of strange balyan again.

When she failed to find a sikad anywhere, Indak stumbles after a man with third degree burns on his neck, casually walking down the street and chugging a bottle of alcohol. "Excuse me, where can I find a sikad?"

The man only gives her a glance as he snickers past her. "Sikad? This is Melchora. You always travel by foot."

She calls after him in exasperation. "Then can you point me to Nieves Base, at least?"

"You'll see the Oasis Balyan below a forked road if you run straight." The man's voice grows smaller as he speaks while continuing to walk down the road without looking back at her. He waves his bottle to the east. "Anyway, take the right because that way leads to Nieves. There's already a sign on the left road, but just to remind you not to run there. That's reserved quarters for medical staff."

Indak runs.

Following his instructions, she rushes past stone houses with open ventilation and elevated apartments on the way to the limestone structure of the Oasis Balyan. Several streetfood stalls stationed across random places on the streets also catches her eye while running to Nieves, along with a weapon store below the uphill roads where balyan continuously enter and leave with a sack of armor. Oddly, she also encounters a tamaraw with icy blue eyes galloping past her and an older balyan chasing after it while threatening to cut off its legs. They almost made her lose her balance and confuse her track.

These encounters, along with every balyan around whose eyes follow her every move, motivated her to run to Nieves Base faster.

She sighs in relief when she spots a crowd of a hundred other children her age filling the front of a large brass gate. A graffiti mess covers the entrance's shine with large baybayin characters of 'Nieves' and some smaller words not visible from where she stands. Tayabak grow past the walls of the base, overlapping with each other and cascading down the platform where three balyan currently occupy.

She notices a group slip into the back of the crowd, laughing and pushing, and causing the ones they disturbed to stare at them in annoyance. Others whisper to their neighbors in curiosity before returning their attention to the front, just in time for a balyan to blow a tambuli three long times to signal the opening of the trials. A balyan in their youth, with the loudest voice she's ever heard, comes up to the front, head bowed and hands folded above their chest.

"Everyone bow their heads with me for the ode of pride. Great is your hands that have conquered fears, from the walls of greed to the land of peace. Great is my home of unbridled dreams, to my commitments unbent for Bathala and the anito we are bound in duty. Hail to Tala Mayari, first pinuno, founder of Urduja, and hero of resurrection and salvation. Hail to the second pinuno, Habagat Anitun, cultivator of Urduja's balyan and home of its warriors. Hail to the gahum and soul of Pagasa Makiling, the third pinuno and creator of Balyan Hagdan. Though you remain ashes, your legacy lives on. My heart shall forever remember your honors. Guide our souls into all our paths. Bless."

Another balyan steps forward to sing the hymn of Urduja, and everyone follows with confidence, having memorized it throughout their stay in the Akademya.

Oh, Urduja, gift of peace Fearless sun of selfless deeds. Honor, justice, truth--- this we bring with the youth. Live and serve, forevermore, From flesh and when I turn to bone. Live and serve, forevermore.

A gust of wind speeds through the open area after the song, a ghost of a laughter following it as it parts the crowd and collects rubble into the air. Indak's hair whips to her face when it passes her, and she jolts to the side in surprise. Once this strange energy reveals itself, she sees a bald man in his fifties at the front of the crowd, sporting wounds on his scalp and a twisted leg. With his head held high, he smiles down at them with his crooked teeth.

"GREETINGS, FUTURE SUGDI!"

His gaze sweeps through the crowd as he rights his leg with a quick pull, the loud popping sound too audible for comfort. "Although that's not all of you. A hundred gathered for greatness, but only a few are the best. I will tell you right now that the hagdan will hone your lives with the best of its ability for Urduja. The horrors are things you decide if you can handle."

He flashes his sharp teeth at them. "Annually, only thirty-six of you are to top the tests, and the rest go back to the Akademya and one day evolve to serve Urduja in a different manner. It is still an honor, and kids like you should remember that."

A few children groan and boo at his beliefs.

Indak knew this. Her history maestro in the Akademya told them that only twelve people in each base can pass the trials. No one knows the workings of the trials since the post-triers say it's different for each base and it changes every year, depending on the respective host for the batch. It could be a mentally challenging trial or physical combat. It could also be something psychologically triggering, like the first Sinugdanan that ended up being a test on who can last longer than an hour sitting still in a white room.

Maybe that's why some people went insane after the trials, as what the spreading rumours say. On the other hand, her history maestro mentioned Oasis Balyan provides therapy and treatment to the triers before sending them back to their guardians.

From the front right, a boy raises his hand, and the bald senyor nods at him in acknowledgment. "Are the trials written this time, Senyor? Or do we have to retrieve a missing card again like what my brother did last year?"

If it ends up being written then Indak would curse their village's library that won't let them borrow books unless they've graduated from the Akademya or become balyan. While she doesn't open her books and bury her nose in them like her cousin, she can still collect enough patience for it if it means passing the trials.

Be satisfied with the books the Akademya provides for you. They're the most appropriate for your year, Indak remembers the librarian say.

Another person raises a question. "Will it kill us?"

"Who cares? We all know the majority of the passers would come from Luna again," one trier says to her friend. "It pays to have a powerful tribe that pampers their people to perfection. That's what's true. For the rest of us, we'll be left to rot. If it kills us, that's a relief. At least you don't have to worry what jobs could give grace to a mere Akademya graduate."

"Resources. If you have powerful connections, you always win."

One Luna folk overhears this conversation and turns to the speaker. "Or maybe you just perform poorly as an individual. How about admit that instead of blaming us for not being good enough yourself?"

"Yeah! It's not about blood and birthplace, stink. It's just you!", someone backs them up.

The friend scoffs. "Oh, tribe trash wants to fight."

While more triers exchange heated gazes and insults, Indak hears the thunder and notices the clouds shifting above them and blending their shadows. After her lids begin to feel heavy and her body sways to the side, two soft words caress her ear and make the hairs on her nape stand up.

"Good luck."

0 notes

yangsoeuvre · 2 months ago

Text

Chapter I: Indak Agui

To our ancestor,

Your stories are buried but never dead.

"What a sorry devotion for people I don't remember and gods I've never met."

A grimace crosses the twelve-year-old girl's features as she skips and spins barefoot along a circular path, trying to keep up with taper candles on both hands. With a swing of her head, the Panalangin commences with the candle's flame lighting a part of Indak Agui's hair. Despite the trouble, she whips her singed strands away from the fire and continues to mimic the person in front of her as they dance outside the spaces barricaded with bamboo fences.

Candlelit jars hang above the streets of Baryo Bonifacio, illuminating Indak's skin like fire-gold on the nineteenth takna. From the sides, a band of dabakan and kulintang play a tune similar to wind chimes and heavy rain, the sounds blending rhythmically as the people frisk and sway in sync to the melody. At the center of their ritual stands a balyan dressed in layers of okir-designed malong and kamagi necklaces ornamented with blue glass beads.

The balyan takes a bolo knife and butchers three pigs on a wooden cutting board. Blood pours on the taotao representing their land's nature spirits and deities, spilling down the large table and trailing on broken cement. Under the lights of the ball lanterns wrapped around balete trees, its crimson color casts a vibrant hue. As the music ends and the dancers slow to a stop, the balyan squeezes the remaining blood in a coconut bowl and lifts it to the sky.

"We offer to Tala Mayari, our first pinuno, for the purged eleven years ago that they may rest peacefully in Maka. To the tribes of Agui, Arimaonga, Dalikmata, Ipamahandi, Maya, and Sisina: himoa nga mamaayo ang imong mga samad sa tubig nga imong giagian, paanura ang imong kalag sa mainit nga paggakos sa mga nangamatay nga una kanimo." (Let your wounds heal in the water you walk through, drown your soul in the warm embrace of those who died before you.)

"We offer to our supreme deity, Bathala, for a peaceful welcome in this new year and for the previous pinuno, whom responsible for such crime, receive punishment accordingly in Kasanaan and hope no darker soul may ever cross this land again. We offer to all our deities and ancestors for this year's batch of future balyan as they take the Sinugdanan two days from now: obedience and service to Urduja forevermore."

The balyan dips their hand in the bowl and slides their blood-soaked fingers on the faces of the people circling them. Indak Agui holds her breath when her turn comes, and her eyebrows twitch as the balyan's fingers unintentionally poke her eyelids. It took everything in her to not turn her head away as the metallic stench of mammalian blood overpowers the reek of tuba from drunken old people playing cards in store corners.

The celebration concludes with everyone touching their foreheads to the floor. Once the crowd disperses after a few more whispers of oaths and prayers, the ritual ends with jolly, soulful music embracing the night. At this moment, calloused fingers grab her by the shoulders and urges her to turn around.

The girl jumps in surprise at the sudden touch. Realizing it was only her mother, she sighs in relief and glares at the older woman. "A little notice of your arrival would help, Ma. Though I don't really mind spending the new year in the next life, maybe as someone more relevant like the Mayari."

"Don't talk like that, Indak." Chada Venancio, her mother, gives her daughter a reprimanding stare as she palms the dirt and blood off her shirt. She drops the girl's abaca slippers next to her feet and gestures her to wear them. "Now, did you receive the prayers with a clear mind? Remember, you cannot be blessed by your ancestors if you muddy your thoughts with grudges."

Indak snorts as she puts on her slippers. "Grudges? I barely remember them enough for a deep mourning. I don't think I could cultivate vengeance for people that are practically strangers to me, if that's what you're worrying about."

This blessing ritual—the Panalangin—meant to celebrate the new year with a tribute to the purge that annihilated six tribes of Urduja, their nation, eleven years ago, and layer another curse to the pinuno that sentenced those tribes to death. It has been this way for the last ten years of Panalangin. In all honesty, Indak Agui genuinely does not feel any strong emotions for the passing of her tribe for they were exterminated long before she could build relationships with them. Even so, she does think that, for such a gruesome part of their history, the prayers meant for the victims sound more like an afterthought than sincere lamentation for the dead.

She might have maintained ignorance for most of her little life, but ever since last year, this day permanently marked her thoughts with stories of how her tribe crashed along with the rest of the victims of such a horrific event. Amidst her relatives' constant retelling of those times, her continuing existence became her only consolation, the result of her parents hiding away with her before the tragedy could reach her.

"But, Ma, don't you also think that the circumstances of the Six Point Bloodbath should have been a separate rite?", Indak murmurs. "Why would they just merge it with the blessing ritual? If they cared enough about the less influential tribes, there would have been a week long holiday."

Still, the thirty-seven year old woman's eyes widen, startled by her words. She briefly sweeps her gaze around them before pinching her daughter's blood-marked cheek. "Indak Agui!"

A scowl takes over Indak's face as she pulls away from her. "What? It's a decent observation, Ma."

"Indak, of course Urduja cares about every soul in its land. Your tribe and all the other tribes' circumstances were truly devastating, but look around. All these people gathered here today have all of their hearts laid out for you. Even your teachers in the Akademya give you lesser punishment whenever you seek trouble with the other children. They understand our grief and how much of it changes us," Chada whispers, her voice transforming into a soothing tone. "Now, focus on praying for their souls to sail to Maka in peace. Avoid reflecting on less consequential things. The amount of presence and solidarity when in grief means more than these rites."

Indak steps back. "All the mentors in the Akademya only act like that so I don't suddenly decide to become a bloodthirsty avenger each time they forget my name and what my tribe does, Ma. Plus, I'm not the one seeking trouble. Those other children constantly pester me, so I just give them what they want."

Chada combs a hand through Indak's chestnut hair. "Ginoo ko, Indak Agui. What have you been up to recently that you have learned to cultivate these absurd thoughts? Your father is still not home, so it's best you stay out of suspicion as best as you can."

Suspicion?

Indak sighs, ducking out of her mother's hold. "Are we done? We're running out of meat."

Before Chada could say another word, the girl steals the basket in her hand and bounces off to the space that hosted the ritual.

She joins the rest of the children gathered around to help their guardians stack parts of the pig in nito baskets. In the midst of carrying a large chop of bloodied meat, her thoughts wander to her room, envisioning the stitching on silk of fiery gates and a flaming field stuck on the wall across her bed.

For all the ghastly things this blessing ritual reminds her of, at least that one work of art remains a wonderful distraction that her father gave her as a new year's gift before his departure yesterday.

"Our fire burns the brightest, little flame, an inferno unbridled by those who hold authority over our afterlife. With enough power, it could birth a blazing hamlet, and only then we would be free."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Specks of light warm the classrooms through the open windows as uncontrolled volumes of speaking tones entangle with a few whispers.

From the front row chairs, Indak Agui leans on the table with her arms folded under her chin. She stares at the large board in front of her, memorizing its chalk-smeared areas and rectangular shape as dust falls on gritty concrete.

Beside her, Gunita, her cousin, crafts her usual paper birds and blows them through the windows. The rest of the children present with them cure their boredom by prattling about the upcoming trials, with some singing nursery rhymes as they point at their classmates.

"Si-nug-da-nan, which death do you like to go?" A group of friends behind them start to clap to the tune. "Magdalena, why do you watch me secretly before you take my soul? Teresa, judge me not for my grave sins, and don't you ever linger too long. Please, Nieves, break through my fatal fantasies and let me go."

Three girls from their row also join in.

"Si-nug-da-nan, which death do you like to go? Magdalena, keep your eyes. Teresa, run, don't hide. Nieves, save your life."

As Gunita hums and taps her desk with the rest of the class, Indak mentally blocks the noise and continues to examine the board.

The Akademya is a place of education open for everyone who wants to learn. All are required to complete their studies, strictly starting at the age of six and finishing at age sixteen. The subjects to be encountered during these years include anatomy, calisthenics, carpentry, cultural arts, martial arts, mathematics, history, literacy, and agriculture. After completion, they become eligible for work and able to earn money to support themselves or their families.

However, Indak has other things in mind than just enrolling in the Akademya for another three years.

The Sinugdanan annually offers thirteen year olds—or about to turn thirteen—a once in a lifetime opportunity to be out of the Akademya earlier and take on an even greater job than possible after completion. If she passes the annual trials, she may leave their village to become a balyan—the best service of their nation—with great pay and people praising her name.

"I'm so looking forward to it. Remember that my crush from the year above us passed and trained under Senyor Sagana Idianale, right?"

"Aren't they up for Abante Arena this year? I really want to see that one!"

"Dream on. You have to be balyan or some influential tribe to be able to see them, remember?"

"Papa thinks joining the Balyan Hagdan is dangerous," Gunita interrupts the group excitedly talking beside her. "And my older brother tells me about the hagdan a lot. They send children like us to die for a nonsense problem all the time."

The group falls silent.

They look at each other before erupting into a fit of giggles.

"Please." Indak lets out a small laugh at her cousin's interjections and leans back on her chair. "All your brother does is scare you, Tani. He's just a coward, and he's passing his fears on to you."

"Everyone should be afraid of it. Didn't you know that they make you solve problems that are not your fault? That's what my brother always told me," Gunita says as she ties her curls into twin braids. "Think of it as a math problem, Indi. Our maestro likes to give us problems like: If Agua angers ten wolves and needs to bring them two lambs each to appease them, how many lambs should you bring them? You have to think about it. Why does my maestro want me to solve what Agua angered? Why can't she do it herself since it's her fault they're angry? Why do we need to kill innocent lambs who had nothing to do with the wolves' anger? And where is this Agua? When you solve the problem and get it right, Agua doesn't show up and say thank you. If you get it wrong, you'd get closer to dropping your education. All because our maestro wants me to solve Agua's problem."

Indak looks at her cousin for a long time. "No, I don't understand whatever you're saying, but thank you for sharing."

Her cousin tilts her head, one eyebrow raised in confusion. "You're welcome? You really should listen to my tree, Indi. They tell me it's better that we don't ever dwell in the hagdan. Otherwise, we will meet our ancestors too soon."

Indak snorts, earning a questioning glance from her cousin.

Her mother once told her about her tribe's alliance tree, the Venancio. The tree faithfully abides by their ancestors' passed down philosophy of never drowning themselves in Urduja's business in this form.

Alliance trees form when a family, lineage, or community born with no third eye, unlike tribes, chooses to become followers of the anito a tribe serves. They form bonds with the tribe and exchange access to each other's economic ties and resources. This setup also made arranged marriages easier to discuss. Though tribe-tribe allegiance meant more power, the dynamic would gain unwanted internal competition when maintaining the contracts. With a tribe-tree allegiance, the terms of agreement become better settled. Additionally, a tribe can contract more than one tree without issue.

But Indak's tribe is dead, and so she wonders why the tree still sticks around. Though Indak genuinely finds Gunita Venancio's company better than being bothered by some children her age, or older, who had found fun in irritating other people during break, she's also the reason why her mother knows too much of her educational activities. If she ranks lower than her previous rank, her mother waits at the front door of their home, a dirty rag in one hand, ready to interrogate her.

For as long as Gunita exists, her mother has no need for the Akademya's counseling regarding her academic performance.

"That'd be nice, right? Meeting our ancestors." Indak nods. "While on the way, I'd bring them back from the dead too so you and your tree will have new people to nag at."

Before the other girl could reply, a crumpled paper lands in a barely audible thump on Gunita's desk.

Their attention shift to the object, the conversation between them halting as Indak turns to discover one Isog Magbabaya, all in his lanky state and unkempt hair, crossing his legs and smirking up at the cousins with arms folded against his chest. His chapped lips mouth off the word 'stupid' before his group of friends guffaw along with him.

Isog has been on her hair ever since that time in agriculture, back when they were seven, when she accidentally stepped on and ruined his favorite bakya. She found no time for apologies as Isog tackled her to the muddy ground with such speed, sparing her no second to breathe. Soon enough, they rolled like heaps of what seemed to be synonymous with pigs.

Isog never wore the sandals again.

No matter.

Indak thinks they're old enough to forget grudges from their childhood, and the time she spares for apologies is as much as his kindness towards her after that scuffle. And, of course, with a petty ride in the Akademya with Isog and his friends constantly bothering her, she learned to fight back and defend herself like any other threatened person. However, that ended with all of them in the Akademya's infirmaries more often than not, their guardians on their ears.

Indak snatches the paper from Gunita's fingers and hauls it back to Isog. The object grazes the boy's forehead and slides down the bridge of his nose before ending up back on his table. Witnessing this, his friends look between Indak and Isog as they push their chairs back a little farther away from him when they notice their friend claw his table and stand up.

The scene lifts the corners of her lips. She lingers to witness the boy's smirk disappear before turning back to her cousin whose wide eyes seem to remain glued behind them.

Indak Agui lets out a little laugh at her cousin's expression. "What? Feeling sorry for him?"

Without movement nor warning from anyone or anything around her, the boy flashes beside her and roughly snatches her by the collar of her shirt, lifting her off the chair and above the ground until her bakya could barely touch the hardwood floor. Isog's menacing eyes greet her line of vision, scorching barely concealed anger. When she tries to squirm her head out of his hold, he clutches her neck even tighter.

Indak chokes.

The eerie silence rings in her ears when she searches for anyone from her peripheral but detects no other sign of life. At the strange sight of emptied chairs and closed windows, her mind destroys any curiosity for the dark state of their room as her instincts take over, screaming for her to save herself. Tears form in her eyes as she tries with all her might to peel off the bony hands that wrap around her throat and kick the boy away from her.

No air.

Indak blinks.

She sits up, gasping for air in the next second. She grasps for her throat and feels the lingering grip of someone that wanted to end her life. Looking around, she still finds herself safe in her seat, the familiar noises from before Isog tried to choke her to death still present just as it was. She turns to the person beside her, and her cousin continues to blabber about the hagdan while throwing her paper birds out the window.

"What?" Indak mumbles to herself. She whirls around to where Isog sits and finds him still laughing with his friends.

Her forehead creases. "What?"

Nothing seems out of place, but when her classmates begin to chant the nursery rhymes, the eerie tune that took over the song slowly drives her nauseous. Groaning, she cradles her head in her arms as the singing continues to climb an octave each time they repeat the rhymes.

She wants to throw up.

"Si-nug-da-nan, which death do you like to go?" The same three girls join in the singing, repeating the same lines over and over. "Magdalena, keep your eyes. Teresa, run, don't hide. Nieves, save your life."

Indak falls back into a slump on her desk. "Stop! Stop!"

The singing stops.

Gunita hums and taps her desk. "Look at the board, Agui."

Indak snaps up from her seat when she hears the distorted voice of her cousin. She whips an open palm towards her, but stops it a hair away from the side of her neck.

With trembling hands, she presses her hand to her skin more, threatening to strike her carotid artery. "Who are you? What are you? What do you want?—"

A sharp pain shoots through her head. Her hand drops from the fake Gunita's neck and comes up to her scalp in a fist.

The unnatural clone of Gunita does not answer.

Instead, it elegantly folds another paper bird and hauls it to the direction of the board. Indak follows its route with her eyes but regrets it a minute later when the object passes through the glistening surface and transforms the board into a whirlpool of portrayals that piece together a horrifying massacre. Inside this imagery, the bird travels through bloody stone walls until it cleanly slices the head of a man desperately running for his life while tumbling over a sea of corpses.

Blood spurts out of the man's neck, his head rolling forward and toppling out of the whirlpool. The decapitated body spins like a top on the floor until it lands right by Indak Agui's feet. When she makes eye contact with the dead man's dilated eyes, all the blood drained out of her face. Simultaneously, its jaw falls open as well.

She lets out a piercing scream.

Indak holds her head and backs up into a wall. She chases her breath as her heart beats faster. "Is this a joke? Am I asleep?"

A knife zips past the side of her head, blowing a few strands of her hair. Indak releases a shaky breath when she hears the sharp object embed through the window frame, the thumping sound sealing all wandering thoughts as it penetrates through wood. With her small fingers, she pulls the knife out and keeps it close to her chest.

Despite her trembling stance, she still musters up the courage to face the girl across her. "Who are you? What have you done to me?"

Clone Gunita stands and pulls out a knife of hers as well. "Come, Agui. We are not yet finished."

"What are you talking about?"

The classroom easily falls away as if done with brittle carpentry.

Loud chants and screams barge through the windows and walls, shaking its foundation and demanding death. Masked people invade through the sliding doors and roofs, ripping apart the curtains and piles of scrolls and codex in bookshelves. They drag bodies of tribesmen around, lifeless or still screaming, mutilating them part by part in front of Indak Agui until all that's left are disfigured and unrecognizable lumps of meat of what these people used to be. The armed men spit on the bodies, cackling until their saliva mixes with the blood flooding the room and drowning her feet.

The killers lift their bolo knives into the air and put their palms together. "To god and glory!"

The girl watches, frozen in place and unable to come to her senses enough to look away.

The clone flashes in front of her and grabs her hand in a tight grip. "Run."

She lets the clone drag her away, resistance becoming futile as the strength from her legs gets sucked out by the previous scene.

Once they bypass the large forms of the murderers, the clone urges her to run through the narrow halls of an unfamiliar building and into another dark room. When she hears the heavy footsteps following the both of them, she pulls herself out of the clone's hold and races to the sliding door to hurriedly double knot the rope handles shut into a lock.

Indak Agui mumbles her mother and father's names in incomprehensible prayers of help once she hears the chants again, and she near wishes the real Gunita and her tree comes to save her life.

"Agui." The clone prowls towards her. "Do you want to live?"

"Back off." Indak recalls the knife in her hand and points it at the clone. "I don't exactly know what's going on, but I know this is your doing. Maybe you're an intruder, an assassin sent to eliminate Urduja."

The clone takes a hesitant step back to quietly observe her with arms crossed over its chest. "I don't understand. You don't seem to remember the Six Point Bloodbath. You're one of its survivors so you're meant to recognize some highlights of that massacre."

"What?" Indak grits her teeth. "I was two when that happened. Naturally, I don't recognize anything from that event. What are you even expecting from this?"

The clone looks her up and down. "You're apathetic. I don't know what to make of it."

Indak crawls forward and uses her remaining defiance to grab the clone by the legs. Despite her trembling body that continues to react to an almost realistic reimagining of the cold massacre, she still tries to ignore whatever chaos consumes the scenes behind the sliding door. And, after attaining little but poor balance, she finally manages to hold the clone by its shoulders and tip its head up by dragging a knife to its neck.

"Let me out."

The fake Gunita points the tip of its own knife to where Indak's heart rests. "To remove oneself from the colonizer's path, one must provide proof of loyalty to the nation."

"Can you, for once, talk like I'm not your age?" Indak crumples the collar of its shirt. "It makes me want to strangle you alive—"

The sliding door slams open.

She whips her head around to see the intruder, but she only registers another wave of bafflement when the figures that walk through transform into the familiar statures of her parents. Their clothes are soaked in blood and parts of their faces throb purple like prunes. Chada Venancio covers her mouth in dread when she points a bolo knife at her, and her father gazes at her with lifeless eyes and a mouth stretched into a thin line.

When she returns her gaze to the one in her hold, her cousin's clone quickly becomes a wailing little girl struggling in her hold. She cries for her father as her chubby fingers scratch her knuckles and her short legs attempt to kick her away.

From behind the little girl, the clone emerges, shaking its head. She holds up a mirror in front of Indak and watches the twelve-year-old's expression morph into complete and utter confusion.

Sharp nose. Long hair. Curled lashes. Cleft chin. Tribal tattoos on cheeks. Charmer of a face.

"What is the point this time?" Indak looks into the mirror to move her head side to side for confirmation. "Why does my reflection look like the paintings and stitches of the sixth pinuno now?"

"This is the night of the bloodbath and what specifically happened to you and your family during these moments. You may not remember, but we pieced together this much from your parents' recollection of the incident. I guess they never told the whole story to you," the clone explains. "Right now, you are the colonized soul of the sixth pinuno. The next step you take will determine your trial base."

"My trial base? For the Sinugdanan?" Indak glares at the clone. "Are you kidding me? This situation does not determine anything. It doesn't even make sense."

"From your point of view, no," the clone hums. "Since you are the murderer at the moment, you must seek what is important to do in this situation in order to save the people of this land and show where your loyalties lie. Behind you, your parents seek to assassinate you while you seek to assassinate your childhood self. Unless you seek to be eliminated by authorities such as me, you will seek the answer to this puzzle."

"Seek this, seek that." Indak shakes the knife out of her hand. When she realizes that it refuses to come off the little girl's throat, she lets out a sarcastic laugh. "I don't know what that puzzle means, but I do know that the only options you're giving me is death. If I don't choose one, you'll end me. Doesn't that imply that it does not matter what I choose for I die either way? This situation has no relation to anything whatsoever."

"If you prefer to perceive it that way, yes. This generation is undeniably narrow-minded, so I do not expect much conception." The clone throws the mirror on the ground and crushes it under its bakya. It grabs a piece of the broken glass and points it at her neck. "Nevertheless, I'll be here waiting for your answer."

Indak Agui meets the clone's eyes. "If I kill my parents—"

"Could you bear it?" The clone raises an eyebrow as it cuts her off.

She looks away. "Well, they're not real, right—"

"Could you bear it, Agui?"

"No," Indak mumbles. "No, I can't do it. You're right."

"This illusion does not end unless something ends." The clone paces the room. "Since all of us lack the guts to kill a little girl nor are we capable of going home, face our guardians, and bear the memory of slaying them in this imagined scenery, the choices are down to two: you let your parents kill you or...you kill yourself. Pull the knife off the little girl and stick it to yours. If you're the sixth pinuno at the moment, the right answer is obvious."

"You want me to go suicide route to conquer evil?" Indak chortles. "No, I can't bear to kill myself too, and I am not actually the sixth pinuno. You're the one that put me in that situation. I'm sorry, but this is confusing me way too much. What even is the moral of this story? That I should kill myself if I become something bloodthirsty? Thanks, but that's insane, and I guarantee that will never happen in my life, so I don't see the point of this."

The clone flashes in front of her, baring its teeth, and she jolts in surprise at the sudden threat and proximity. "You watch your next words, Agui. I am the master of your fate right now, and whatever you choose to say or do next will be recorded. Do not juggle your chances."

In that short moment, something dark and sinister clouds her mind and takes over her consciousness. Something constricting like vines wrapping around her chest and boiling hot water raining on her cold body makes her head heat up and her heart palpitate. Unknown voices within her thoughts invade from every direction, and she struggles to drive them out of her senses. They cry and plead for one thing as her mouth begins to water at the thought of letting it all die, die, die—

"To god and glory."

Indak lets go of the little girl.

"What—"

She pulls back and slashes the clone's neck with her knife.

Its skin tears apart, just like the headless man from the whirlpool, and its head slowly comes off its body with blood splattering across the walls and bamboo mats. Only then did she realize what she had done when it splashes on her face and clothes. She backs away, eyes widening and body quivering as the knife falls out of her hand. The clone's head—one strikingly similar to her cousin's—rolls to her feet, meeting her petrified gaze with eyes lacking visible irises. Despite decapitation, its jaw still manages to move to speak to her one last time in that same high-pitched and distorted voice.

"Agui, you dare court death!"

Indak screams.

She stomps on the head in an attempt to break its horrific voice and destroy its terrifying presence. Once it becomes nothing but fragments of blood and bones, the scene finally lifts in a whirlwind. As everything shifts back to reality, she falls to her knees and grips the front of her wrinkled shirt. Her heart continues to thump hard in her chest as sweat lines the sides of her head.

"Indi!" Gunita, the real one, pulls her by her elbows and supports her back to her chair. She massages small circles on her back. "It's okay, you're okay. It's not real, Indi. It's not real."

Once she recovered, Indak blinks a few times to take in the new figure that marched into their room. All pondering thoughts sway to a stop when Indak realizes she can't see them even with the awareness of their presence—like a fog obstructing a part of her brain. She tries to move her body, but it goes numb. She tries to lift a finger, but it remains paralyzed.

Not another one of these.

"You kids are too excited," the stranger says, monotonously. "Just by this room alone, most of you I have already observed as failures. Children back in our days were so much wiser and far more intelligent. Now, the lot of you are just snot-nosed birdbrains."

Let's hope it's not worse.

"The Sinugdanan is an annual exam for Year Eight students," the stranger continues. "Those who truly wish to join the balyan ranks of the Balyan Hagdan can give their best efforts to pass and serve Urduja. It is required for all of you to participate in such. Those who refuse to take the trials will undergo interrogation. If you so desperately want to open your third eye and reach the senyor rank, then pass the trials and fight your way up the hagdan."

The pressure surrounding Indak's head subsides. It tilts downwards enough so she could see her pad of parchments on top of her table as it flips open to a clean space. Narrowing her eyes, she adjusts her sight so she could see the ink staining the blank paper with bold characters.

"Thank you for the little show presented to me. I have successfully determined the base you would be trying in."

After those words, her consciousness returns to their classroom that now holds a serene atmosphere once the stranger disappeared. For the first time in Indak's years in the Akademya, the place is absent from the noise.

Gunita Venancio does not ask her any questions, Isog Magbabaya does not fight her for silly little things, and she forgets everything but the pad before her.

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