The Sea Is Ours (3 page)

Fundamental to this spirituality was the concept of sacrifice, a virtue that the friars themselves fostered and propagated in ostensible emulation of Christ.

—Reynaldo Ileto, “Pasyon and Revolution,” 1979

~*~

I was sixteen when I finally earned my wings.

“There is nothing more I can teach you,” Papa said. “All that is left is for you to undergo your biñag, the rite of passage that we all must undertake before initiation into the Cofradia.

“But you need to be ready.”

He sat down beside me and held my hand.

“There is a reason, you see, why so few are accepted into our ranks. Understand that, if I guide you on this path, you may not like what you discover. And there is no turning back, for both of us. Are you prepared for that?”

I did not hesitate. I nodded my assent.

“Very well, then. Tomorrow we travel to Mount Taal.”

~*~

Little is known about the Philippine “sky whales” (Clarias volantis) or butanding, as they are called in the common tongue, other than that they are unique among the fauna of the world as they are the only animal yet discovered to have successfully made the developmental leap from an aquatic to an almost purely airborne lifecycle.

We also know that the creatures owe this singular existence to their heavy consumption of gravidium, which they scrape off the mountainside as a rodent would nibble on tree bark.

It is no wonder then that the butanding's habitat is severely limited almost exclusively to the island of Luzon, where the only known stores of naturally-occurring gravidium were a closely guarded secret of the Spanish government.

—John Foreman, FRGS, “The Philippine Islands,” 1905

~*~

I had never been so far away from home before.

It was a pleasure watching the green countryside pass below us as the coach made its way through the rural arrabales of Cavite.

The conductor was very pleasant, a thin man with a well-groomed moustache, dressed in a formal barong.

“I wish I could take you farther, but you know that the civil government is very strict here,” he said as we alighted.

“Don't worry, capatid, I know,” Papa said, offering a tip to the gentleman.

“There's no need for that,” the conductor said, smiling as he doffed his hat.

“Mag-yngat po cila,” he told Papa.

“Yes, we'll take care. Maraming salamat,” my father replied, shaking his hand.

He nodded to us again just as the porter dropped off our things.

With this, the conductor turned to the coach's attendant ensemble, raised his baton, and signaled for takeoff.

We watched as the vehicle rose up and away, leaving us alone by the roadside.

Papa's rank in the Cofradia meant that we had little trouble with the guardia civil on duty at the government checkpoint. The soldiers snapped to attention, saluting him as we passed.

Packs in hand, we made our way up to Tagaytay. It was a long trek uphill, with tall forest growth. Houses were few and far between.

Every so often, we would come across abandoned bathalani mines. And indeed, in these parts, gravidium ore was so plentiful that you could sometimes pick up shards off the ground.

But it was only when we reached Tagaytay Ridge that I understood why.

I had heard stories about it before, but seeing it for myself for the first time left me dumbfounded.

There, in the distance, was the majestic Mount Taal. It floated serenely in the distance like a mirage, an imposing island in the sky.

Rivers flowed from its peak down meandering streams to waterfalls that fed the wide lake below. All manner of birds flitted about the thick forests along its slopes.

There were plenty of sky whales there, too, flying about the island singing in a ceaseless cacophony.

And with each flutter and flurry, the entire underside of the immense mountain glowed a faint blue.

So the stories were true: Taal was the world's largest single known deposit of gravidium ore.

~*~

Since its discovery in ancient times, gravidium has found a wide range of uses apart from Levitation, particularly in the battlefield. Without a doubt, gravidium has proven to be an expensive but certainly durable long-term alternative to gunpowder and other projectile propulsion systems.

One need look no further than the fabled armaments of Panday Pira, for example, whose brass lantakas featured gravidium-infused breeches that proved to be cleaner and easier to load than their European counterparts.

So effective was the design that it is still in use today as the weapon of choice on Spanish naval decks.

—Austin Craig (ed.), “The Former Philippines Thru Foreign Eyes,” 1916

~*~

Ba-whooooooooooooooommmm!

From the north came a butanding herd. A handful of white-bellied females and their calves, closely guarded by two or three black-striped young males, flying in a tight formation that wended its way across the sky towards Taal.

Ahead of the group was a large gray and white bull, its ivory sound horn shining brightly as it caught the sun's rays. It was a large one, certainly no less than a quarter of a legua in length.

The bull arched its back slowly, majestically, effortlessly gliding through the air despite its massive size.

Such a full herd was a rare sight on the plains away from their breeding grounds on the slopes of Mount Taal.

They were going to make a pass over the ridge, and we would have to hitch a ride with them if we wanted to make it to the mountain at all.

I fastened our harnesses to one of my arrows and aimed squarely at the belly of one of the trailing calves.

I pursed my lips and hummed.

It flew true, lodging firmly into the whale's thick hide, just at the base of its right fin.

This did little harm to the creature, which seemed only mildly surprised at the tiny creatures trailing down its side.

For a moment, it seemed to want to brush us off as a carabao might shrug off errant flies. But it just turned its eye to us, shrugged, and went on its way.

We clambered up the rope and onto the whale's fin. From there, it was a steep climb to its broad back.

I reached down and patted the gentle creature, thanking it for allowing us to join it on its flight.

Its skin felt warm and moist in the midday sun. I could feel its heartbeat under my hand.

The ground moved fast and far beneath us. In the distance floated great Taal, lush with life and forests, and rivers that streamed down its sides in great gushing waterfalls.

Our ride slowed as it approached its home, banking gently as it circled the mountain.

Papa turned to me. A wistful look came over him.

He pursed his lips and whistled an unfamiliar tune.

“That was a song my mother used to sing to me. It was the song I kept in my head during my own biñag.”

“It's beautiful.”

He smiled sadly.

“It's time for your biñag.”

Balancing himself upright, he drew a long knife from his pack and placed it in my hands.

He indicated a point on the sky whale's hide.

“This is the base of its main nerve system. Any blow to this spot will render it mostly paralyzed, stopping its higher functions. The rest is easy: basic instincts will kick in, gliding it in to land.

“You see, anyone can learn an instrument and pilot a ship,” he said. “But a Navigator's skill commands only the most sensitive and precise of musical instruments. So it demands no less than the finest bathalani, purified and concentrated deep in the body of a butanding.

“This is the Cofradia's greatest secret, one I am sworn to keep at all costs, should you fail.”

Papa moved up behind me. I saw the shadow of his blade, raised high above my head.

“I'm sorry, my love. It is a price I hope I do not have to pay.”

My heart raced in my chest.

Papa leaned in and whispered in my ear.

“Remember all that I taught you,” he said. “Trust the music. Find your own song, and keep it in your head. Listen to it. Let it guide you.”

I closed my eyes and tried to remember the sounds of home, of the life I cherished within the Wall.

I thought back to the little girl high up on the balcony that fateful day so very long ago. The chanting in the streets, the music in the skies. The plaintive cries of a lost sky whale. The laughter of a child dreaming of flight.

Papa was right: there is no turning back.

I tensed myself in preparation for the inevitable.

The blade came down, singing as it fell.

Marilag Angway

The cracks grew wider beneath the ground, dispelling red, boiling liquid out in rage-like spurts. At any moment, the lava would spew into a violent eruption, and not even the magma suits would be able to protect the crew if they didn't act quickly.

Caliso barked orders as loud as she could, though this was done on reflex, not so much to tell her crew what to do. Volcano chasing was in their blood, and her crew members had remained with Caliso for so long that they could easily extract the earth's energy with their eyes closed and their hands guided by constant practice.

It would have been the third time in eight years that Bulkang Mayon erupted, covering the nearby areas with ash for weeks on end, the surrounding perimeter a gray and dismal bleakness. Yet even with nothing nearby, people flocked towards Mayon, some obsessed with studying it, others perceiving their journey as a pilgrimage to their raging God. Caliso had even spotted settlers at Legazpi, just south of the mountain itself, their village doomed from the moment the eruption clouds and earthquakes pervaded through the area.

The mountain itself was a symbol of natural perfection, a cone of aesthetic symmetry that pierced the sky in the middle of Luzon. It was a special volcano, a constant and volatile presence in the northern wastes of the Philippines.

To the crew of the Amihan, however, Bulkang Mayon's grandeur was nothing to be impressed about. It was like any other active volcano; it emitted a great deal of volcanic gas.

A hot rock whizzed past Caliso's helmet, her head just missing the grueling impact of volcanic debris smashing onto her clear and bendable malambaso visor. She ducked when another one followed, refusing to think how close she had gotten to a smashed and burnt face. Her gloved hands remained planted upon the rungs of a retractable metallic tube, its end fashioned into a syringe, all the better to suck out the gas from the softening earth. She hurried, knowing that at any minute, the gases would escape, and the floor below would be nothing but bursting magma and melting crew members.

“Casim's down!” the man beside her shouted. Caliso grunted to acknowledge her first mate's statement. Dato
would
be the one to worry. She, on the other hand, did not worry about Casim. Worry only led to distraction, and she needed her focus then and there.

“Hold her steady,” she replied. Again, the ground rumbled, more rocks spewing from the pressure below. She heard two more screams behind her, but again she pushed her worries away. She believed in her crew.

The syringe made impact, and Caliso pushed. She felt the pressure almost as though the siphon had been a part of her body. She heard the suction and felt the slow vibrations of gas traveling along the tube that reached toward her ship. Below her, the unstable ground lost its violent nature, the angry welts of lava around her cooled and receded. What once had been energy seeking for escape had been lost, and Bulkang Mayon went from a burgeoning Strombolian tantrum to a half-hearted protest against a rock ceiling.

The flare went up above her. A second one followed, alerting her that they had company. Dato had seen it, too, and together, Caliso and her first mate spun the valves on the side of the tube, allowing some of the gas to dispel into the air, like rising steam in a hot bath. Caliso released her hold on the rungs, removed the steel bolts between the needle and the tube. She gave the hand signal to her crew, and they pulled.

“Come on, come on,” Caliso murmured, her eyes following the tube's journey away from the needle and up toward the ship. Beside her, Dato motioned for two others to bring the siphon needle back with them.

When it was clear that the tube had made it safely toward the Amihan, Caliso let out a sigh of relief. The most difficult part had been over. Now it was just a matter of heading back, checking her losses, and hightailing it out of the volcano.

She climbed aboard her ship.

The floor that the volcano chasers had stood on below was swallowed up by the slow yet constant spew of magma. It was as though the rock had waited to retaliate only after Caliso and her team had evacuated the premises. Yet what was slow-moving magma to a crew with an airship? Bulkang Mayon would not explode with a degree of violence, but it was clear to the captain of the Amihan that her team had not siphoned nearly enough energy to render the volcano completely harmless.