Chapter Forty-Two

In the time before

The pressure on my chest left me gasping. Gravity weighted my lungs like mountains, and every tiny movement left me breathless. I’d fallen like a star, flung to the earth by Omu herself. The Heavens were one harsh bright note, but the earth brimmed with hues I had never known and could not name. Even time felt different in Arawan. I could feel it slipping through my fingers like a cold stream.

I wanted this, I reminded myself and tried to sit up. I was not banished but chosen from all of Omu’s children and sent here.

Beside me rested the boy who saved me from drowning. He sprawled on the dark earth beside the waterfall, and his warm brown eyes watched mine. His clothes and curly hair clung sodden to his body, and yet I could tell he was beautiful.

“Omu has answered my prayers.” He looked at me as though I were a magnificent statue; something to be guarded or worshiped. My heart sank, for if he knew my true purpose, he would curse me instead.

I struggled to my feet, and he helped me up with gentle hands, but he remained on his knees.

“You are the leader of this island, the one called Datu Ressa?” My voice sounded softer and younger than I expected. “Stand, Datu, for I am only a humble servant of the Diwata. Omu has been pleased by your supplications.”

If he had reservations, they did not show in his face. His expression betrayed only reverence. Though I saw no desire reflected in his gaze, he was warm and solid at my side. This was more than the Heavens ever offered, and for that alone I was grateful. I was to be his wife, and I thought that perhaps it would not be too unpleasant. Perhaps one day I might even love him, but such things even Omu could not guarantee, and the secrets I kept already felt like a wedge between us.

We passed between rice paddies, and I glimpsed my reflection. I appeared a short young human woman. Clothes that had been woven from threads of starlight sat dull upon my skin, much like the pineapple cloth that I’d seen the humans weave, but the brown face that stared back was familiar. I touched my mouth and my eyes. They were stiff and firm, like the ground beneath me. I remained myself, just… diminished.

We climbed a terraced mountain, past plodding carabao laden with baskets, clustered nipa huts on stilts, and farmers laying rice to dry on packed dirt roads. People turned when we passed and came to greet their young Datu. I delighted, because their curious eyes turned to me, not because I looked different, but because I was a stranger. When he told them what I was, that warmth changed to fear.

I smiled through my teeth, and greeted them kindly, but their wariness remained. They were right to do so, even though Ressa did not worry. I wondered if perhaps he was a little bit the fool, because Omu’s favors always came with conditions.

A yapping dog broke free of its tether, and I tumbled over as it jumped up to greet me. To my surprise, small gashes split the skin of my knees and red liquid wept out of them smelling faintly of iron.

How delicate… I thought. What soft flesh I must build Omu’s army from.

“Sorry, po!” A child chased the dog away and one helped me to my feet. They all looked the same to me. She? He? They? I had never paid much attention to humans before. They laughed and poked and prodded.

“But what do the Heavens smell like?”

“And what is your favorite food?”

“Do the Diwata have parties in the sky? My mother once told me that shooting stars—”

I had only opened my mouth to answer when Ressa came along; he shooed them away. The worry on his face was too much.

“It’s nothing.” I shrugged, already disappointed that my laughing friends were gone. At least the children didn’t fear me.

“It is not nothing.” He frowned and picked me up to carry me in his arms like a bride, despite my protests.

A large wooden building sat above the edge of the village. Palace would be too gracious a word for the nipa roofed dwelling, but this was the place Omu described would be my new home. It was bright and open, with banig on the floor for seating. Large windows looked over Ina-Ko, the archipelago’s largest city. The city was little more than several clusters of villages, but it was the most beautiful of them all. Beyond the city shone the deep emerald of the forest, and the bright sapphire of the ocean. This far below the Heavens, Omu’s presence was softened by the land and its shadows. I was still her servant, but I’d never felt so free.

“Welcome home,” he set me down gently in his private rooms and went about washing the wound on my knee. Ressa’s personal space was piled high with bamboo scrolls. His pulse raced as he carefully bound my little scratch, as if he were afraid I might crack into pieces like a clay dish. I looked at the beautiful young man before me and swallowed.

“Datu Ressa.” I took his chin in my hands, and he trembled as he looked up at me. He was younger than I expected of a ruler, no more than eighteen or nineteen in human years. “You still have a choice. You can send me away. You need not accept Omu’s bargain.”

“I will do whatever Omu wishes of me,” he said.

That needle of worry returned and sewed my gut up in knots. I dropped his chin and stepped back. “She demands obedience,” I said. “You prayed for knowledge and the power to change the world for the better.” But Omu would decide what was best, not he. “If you make your life hers, the power of the Heavens will be yours. I shall teach your people magic and how to hear the Diwata speak. You shall unite the seven islands and rule them all. We shall create my mother’s empire together. But…you do not have to do this…”

“My life is hers. Whatever price must be paid, I will pay it. As they lay dying, I promised my parents that I would be the greatest ruler there ever was. I would bring peace to our land.” It was the sky he stared into, instead of my eyes, and I realized there would be no reasoning with him. Even if I warned him, he would never change course, because he trusted in Omu’s will. He would have his peace, but I feared he didn’t understand the cost. “What shall I call you, po?”

My tongue fumbled as I tried to form my immortal name into human shape. “My name is Astar.”