We See a Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Speculative Fiction Anthology (28 page)

When the young ones ask me where their father is, I have no words to give them. What do I tell the children when we are gathered around the fire at night?

Through the porthole, Gemma could see the green curve that was New Cordillera.

Six hundred and twenty leaps from their first jump spot—a convoluted journey made to throw off any possible pursuers.

Gemma took a deep breath and smoothed out the pages of the journal she was reading.

“So you won’t forget,” her grandmother had said. “I know you have heard us tell it over and over again, and perhaps you don’t wish to read of it as well. But there is no one else to whom I can trust this record of what our tribe has endured.”

In the end, she had taken it with her. It was not a large book and, like those who were on the ship with her, she had taken only bare necessities and small mementos of the life she’d left behind.

New life was what waited for them on New Cordillera. A new land given to them by the great god Kabunyan—a country shaped in the image of the one they’d left behind. Green and rich with promise—a world beyond the reach of the Once-masters. A place nurtured by the goddess who had placed them in the wombs of their birth-mothers.

“Go,” her mother had said when Gemma told her of the invitation she’d received. “I am too old to break with this old Earth, but you are young. You must not think of what you are leaving behind, Gemma.”

“All the young ones are going,” Gemma’s grandmother said. “As one of the eldest, the burden of history will be on your shoulders.”

“I don’t see why,” Gemma said. “We’re going to build a new life. Why do we need to take the memory of bitter things with us?”

Her grandmother sighed.

“Do you only choose to see the benevolence of the Once-masters?” she said. “Do you wish to forget that their kindness is locked up, as is the heart of the god whom they keep behind the white doors of their steepled houses?”

Gemma did not reply. She knew very well what her grandmother spoke of. Had she not known it herself that first day at school when she stood up and gave more correct answers than the children of the Once-masters?

“You are clever for a little sister,” they had said to her afterwards. “But cleverness will never hide the fact that you came from Ficandula.”

They came to our village carrying weapons like none we had seen before. Their leader was a man they called “Captain”.

“Captain,” they said. “This and this and that and that.”

They pointed with their fingers at the boys who were sharpening their arrows in preparation for the big hunt.

We smiled and offered them our hands. We tried to tell them we were their friends.

Our chief’s eldest son was there. He was the tallest among the boys, but he was shorter even than the shortest of the men in Captain’s company.

“Line them up,” Captain said.

And he started counting the boys.

They stood straight with their chins held high, shoulders held back. Oh, we were so very proud of them.

Gemma had always been the fastest in the races they held at the village. When the school announced that there would a be a grand race at the end of the school year, she had raised her hand and begged to join the runners on the list.

There had been some murmuring among the teachers, but Gemma’s class adviser said there was no reason why one from Ficandula could not join the race.

Perhaps it was because she had come to school much later than the others, but she didn’t understand the cautionary words her village mates spoke to her when they heard of her participation in the race.

“You give us pride,” they said. “But you must be careful not to win.”

“I will win,” she said. “You will see it, big sisters. I will win and Ficandula will bring home the winner’s flag.”

There had been fear as well as hope in the eyes of the elder girls, but she had thought it was nothing more than a fear that she would lose.

At the starting line, the children of the Once-masters stared at her bare feet with contempt.

“You cannot win,” they said.

She had simply raised her chin and smiled as she walked to the start block.

“What is it?” Apo Unying asked.

“Maybe it is a test,” Manang Lunag said.

It was getting late in the morning and the boys were starting to get restless, but they did not move because Captain said they must stand still in that long line.

Soon, Captain’s companions came peering through the doors of our huts.

“Where are they?” they asked. “The fathers? Old man, Lakay? Where is Lakay?”

They pulled the grandfathers from their hammocks and harangued them.

“Where are the men?”

“They are preparing the hunt,” Manang Bagwis said. Manang was one of the Aunties and she spoke the words of the white ones as well as your father did.

“They have gone up ahead,” Manang Bagwis continued. “But they will return.”

“We will wait,” Captain said.

He walked the line. The Apos were made to stand beside the boys.

“But grandfather is old,” Manang Bagwis said. “Surely, you will allow him the courtesy of resting. He has earned his rest, for he hunted well enough for the tribe when he was young.”

Captain stared down at Manang Bagwis. His white face was splotched with red, and his big nose seemed to grow bigger still.

“Silence,” he thundered. “This woman. So noisy. Like a Parakeet.”

Manang Bagwis retreated.

Captain stared around at all of us. His big eyes bulging, a horrendous, inhospitable blue that seemed to grow until it filled the sky.

We trembled at his look. Perhaps he was indeed kindred to the gods we had heard of. Perhaps he was descended from the foreign gods we did not know.

We waited and we waited and we waited.

The men would come when the young boys did not appear. They should have been in Tuguinay where their fathers were waiting for them. Instead, they were here—sweating in the hot sun—standing straight as they could with their chins held high.

Even as she broke through the ribbon, Gemma could hear a murmur rising from the grandstand. She raised her hands in victory, but no one came to greet her. She stared in bewilderment as the students crowded around the boy who had come in behind her.

“I was first,” she shouted as they hoisted the boy on their shoulders and flung the colors of the school around his shoulders.

“You ran in bare feet,” a white-haired man said to her. He looked her up and down through his gold-rimmed spectacles and sniffed. “I wonder what the Governor must be thinking to allow savages like you among our children.”

She stared at her bare feet. She always ran fastest this way. The leather shoes the school required felt like bricks around her feet. She walked to the sidelines where the girls of her village were watching.

“It’s all right,” they said. “You ran well.”

Their arms embraced her, and their voices whispered love in the tongue the school forbade them to speak.

“Come,” her adviser said. “You must put on your shoes. You were disqualified, but you did well. Don’t tell anyone, but I am proudest of you.”

In spite of her teacher’s kind words, Gemma could only see that her teacher’s skin was the color of cream speckled with red—the same as the boy with flame-colored hair who stuck out his tongue at her and carelessly waved the winner’s flag above his head.

The men came in at noon. There was your father, Wigan. Slow and patient and wise, that was your father. There was Namolngo. He was my younger brother. He was fond of laughing and he loved to drink rice wine. There was old Cayabyab. He should not have been in the hunt, but he was the best when it came to tracking wild boar. There was the father of the beautiful twins—he was also your uncle. The uncle of Paola, Paola’s father, the fathers of your cousins, and there were my cousins and the big cousins of your baby cousins.

They were all there because it was the time of that hunt when the young ones join the ranks of men. They were laughing as they came up and your uncle was making a joke about young sons who refuse to grow into men.

They did not mind Captain and his men at first. After all, these white ones tramped about the mountains every now and then. They liked to make funny noises and they pretended to understand our language. They tried to make us wear their clothes, and they gave us funny-tasting food.

They bumbled about like giant children. They knew nothing about the world and they did not understand the ways of the gods. They were very foolish, and among ourselves we called them the Giant Orangutang.

“Oh, they are here again,” your father said. “These giant Orangutang who have nothing to do but walk and walk all day, swinging their long hairy arms and their long hairy selves, smelling of meat and sour sweat.”

“They have lined up the boys,” Manang Bagwis said. “And they made even the oldest Apo stand in the heat of the sun. They have no respect.”

“That is because their bodies are so large they have no brains,” Papa Manyok said.

We all laughed and our tension eased.

The fathers were here, the men were here.

“Make them go, Wigan,” Manang Bagwis said. “Send them away. They are scaring the children, and they stink so much we cannot eat.”

“I will speak with them,” your father said.

He was a very wise man, your father. He spoke the words of the white ones and was not quick to anger as some men are.

She learned to keep to the background as her elder sisters did. She obeyed the rules. She learned to smile with her lips, and not to laugh out loud. She never ran a race at school again.

“Gemma,” her cousin’s voice brought her out of her memories.

“I’ll be right there,” she said. She folded the journal into the blanket her mother had woven for her. Through the porthole, she had a clear view of mountain tops and green fields.

“We are waiting for you in the great hall,” her cousin said. “We’ll be landing soon.”

“How many more hours?” Gemma asked.

She tucked the blanket and the journal into her carry-all.

“Hours?” her cousin’s voice was breathless with laughter. “More like minutes.”

There are no more men in Ficandula and there never will be. It is a rule the white ones have made. They took the baby boys away after the men disappeared.

“They will be fostered well,” they said. “Boys need fathers and there are none in this village.”

Even though we pleaded with them, they never brought back our boys. Perhaps they thought the absence of men would mean the death of all Ficandula. They forget the gods who love us, for how else do you think you and your sisters and your younger cousins came to be?

The white ones have built their places in these mountains, and they think that makes them one of us.

How funny they are to think that way. They tell us we cannot talk to our gods because our gods are deaf and dumb. They tell us our gods have no eyes to see and no wisdom to impart.

They sit inside their square houses, they paint their houses white. White, white, all white. Just like their skins.

They have no respect for the dwelling places of the spirits, nor do they honor the resting place of the dead. Let them trespass at will, because the spirits wreak their vengeance for us, my child. There is nothing their science can do to disprove that.

Ampual came to them in the place called the Sole of Maknungan. Gemma recognized him from the images the blind carver called Silwan had made of him. The god of the fourth Skyworld had long black hair braided through with threads of many colors. His skin was smooth and dark as the bark of the kamagong and he wore a belt made from the spine of the giant alligator called Timpalak.

He was beautiful to look at, lovelier than the white ones who strutted about in suits that made them look as if they were ready to be stuffed into a burial urn.

“So you are the children of my sibling’s thought,” he said.

And he laughed loud and long before he embraced them one by one.

“What do you mean?” Gemma’s cousin asked. “And why have you summoned us to meet you here?”

“Today, I am only a messenger who serves the purpose of my sibling,” he said. “But if you are brave enough to board my ship, I will take you to that place prepared for you.”

“Is this sibling greater than you are?” Gemma asked.

He leaned towards her, his nose almost touching hers and then he smiled.

“Sometimes she is my sister, and sometimes she is my brother. When she is giving new life, I call her elder sister. At other times, she is something else. It is a power granted to very few, for not all gods may change according to their will. Is that enough for you, inquisitive child?”

Gemma flushed under his look and he threw his braids over his shoulder and winked in the way girls did when they wished to kiss and to embrace.

“It will be different where I am supposed to take you,” he said. “It is my elder sister’s place, and she has never been one to abide by rules created by the minds of mortal men. If you choose to journey with me, I will return to this place when the light of the Skyworld falls on Ficandula.”

When Captain saw your father, he spat on the ground. He opened his mouth very wide and started shouting loud words.

I will not repeat them because they are blasphemous words that only an ignorant Orangutang would speak. Captain would soon pay for his blasphemy, but he did not know it just yet.

He blew on a whistle and his men came running and they pulled all the men to where the boys and the Apos were lined-up.

Your father tried to reason with Captain, but Captain was caught up in madness. Perhaps he had been bitten by a wild dog. He was salivating at the mouth, and you know it is never wise to cross the mad dog when it is on a rampage.