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.
Your father was reasoning, still. His voice rose above the noise of the men as he tried to tame the madness in the heart of Captain’s voice.
Captain stopped shouting. He clenched his fist and closed his eyes, and then he opened his eyes again and his fist shot out.
We all fell silent.
Truly, this was madness, and we didn’t know any more what to do.
“Line up! Line up!” Captain shouted.
And his men pulled all of the fathers and the uncles and the cousins until they were standing three rows deep with their sons behind them.
He barked an order to one of the men and they went to where the horses and their cart were standing. They pulled the cart until it was in the center of the village. Flies were buzzing in the back of the cart, and there was dried blood. I thought they must have butchered a carabao or maybe a pig, or maybe they had gone hunting.
“This,” Captain shouted. “This!”
His madness was on him again. And he threw back the sacks that hid what was in the back of the cart.
Perhaps it was true what Ampual said. Perhaps the one called Maknongan looked down from the Skyworld and saw the sufferings of those who dwelt in Ficandula. By the time Gemma completed the required schooling, there were rumors of new mandates being handed down from the offices led by the Once-Masters.
Ficandula was a disgrace, one of the reports read. A village filled with rebellious and insurgent women. A hotbed of unrest, and no one knew what vipers were coddled there. The women must have loose morals, for even in the absence of men, there were always young children about—young girls with skin the color of earth, and eyes as dark as the night. Some pamphlets spoke of them as subversives, and it took Gemma the longest time to understand that they were writing of her and her cousins and the elder sisters who walked barefooted and bareheaded in Ficandula.
“They are not content to have taken our boys,” Gemma’s aunt complained. “Now, there are rumors that during the next visitation we will lose our girls.”
“So it has come to this,” Gemma’s grandmother said. “They truly mean to erase the memory of us from the face of the Earth.”
And so it was that when Ampual returned they were waiting for him. As many as had strength in their bones, for there was no telling what use the Once-Masters would have for the young when they got their hands on them, and there was no knowing what evils awaited the older ones as well.
“I hear they are very kind,” cousin Zurina said.
“Kind?” Ilyana’s voice was filled with contempt. “I have heard their kindness is such that they willingly gift women with big bellies even if the women do not ask for it.”
“What’s so bad about that?” Zurina asked. “After all, we would never have been if our mothers did not bear us?”
“But we were given as gifts to our mothers,” Gemma said. “We were answers to the prayers they offered at the altar of the goddess Ubing.”
“It is she, is it not,” Ilyana said. “It is she who summons us through Ampual.”
We knew at once that it was the work of the gods. The heads of these men were on the cart beside their bodies. Their eyes were closed, as if they were sleeping, and we thought the gods must have been merciful to them because sometimes a man’s head will be chopped off when he is awake and there is a look of terror on it. These men looked as if they were at peace.
We nodded our heads and said our commiserations to Captain. It was not his fault that the gods had slain these men.
Where were they found? What had they done that the gods should be so angered as to take their heads?
“Ficandula,” Captain shouted.
And he made gestures with his hands.
“This village is closest to Ficandula. There is no one else. Tell me who did it and I will spare you.”
Our men looked at each other. They stared at the bodies in the cart and they looked at Captain, not understanding what it was that he wanted.
The gods had killed those men. This is what they said to Captain.
“I wove a blanket for you,” her mother said. “And in your carry-all, you will find the colors of our tribe and the symbols that belong only to Ficandula.”
“You will not change your mind,” Gemma said.
“I cannot,” her mother said. “Your grandmother is on her deathbed, and I cannot leave her.”
Her mother’s arms enclosed her for one final embrace, and their tears mingled as they pressed their cheeks to one another.
“I will keep your memory alive,” Gemma said. “And I will keep the histories fresh in the minds of my tribe sisters.”
You would think an intelligent man would understand. How hard is it to comprehend the ways of the gods. They slept in the longhouse of the god of war, and for their trespass, he took their heads.
“A lie,” the Captain said. “A lie. A lie. A lie.”
He made a gesture with his hands and his men crowded us into carts and told us to leave. All of us women with our little girls and with our babies.
“Where are we to go?” Manang Bagwis asked.
“Go,” one of the men said. “Just go away.”
“What about our men? Our sons? Our fathers?”
The man who looked younger than any of the others stared at us with miserable eyes. His eyes were a fallow brown, and there was sadness in it and hopelessness and despair.
“Just go,” he said.
Their voices echoed within the belly of the ship as one by one they recited the names of the men who had been taken from their tribe. Fathers and sons, uncles and brothers, and more recently, the names of the boys who had been taken away.
Gemma recited along with them, and to the names of the men, they added the names of their mothers and their grandmothers.
“These names, we will always remember,” they said. “Because of them, we can dream and look towards a different future.”
And it seemed to Gemma that the ship shivered as they made this oath.
When we returned to our village, there was a sea of blood. We looked and we looked but we did not find any of the men. We called and we shouted, but nobody answered.
You would think the blood would smell. That is what we thought as well. That night we did not sleep in the village, but we went into the forest and slept there as our forefathers did before us.
In the forest, a dream came to all of us. In this dream, your father was standing with his cousins and his brothers. He was standing with all the uncles and all the other men of our tribe. Around their necks were the teeth of the great boar and they carried bright shields and machetes in their hands.
“We have gone to hunt,” they said. “We will take the heads of the Orangutang and offer them up to the gods. You will see what you will see.”
And we heard the sound of the gongs and the echo of their voices as they wandered away from us towards Ficandula.
“My sister waits,” Ampual said.
From the portholes, they could see green stretched out below them.
“I have other journeys to make,” Ampual said. “There are other children who must be visited.”
“Will they come to New Cordillera as well?” Gemma asked.
“There are other places on this world that will be home to others just like you,” Ampual said. “Only time will tell if your paths will cross with the paths of those others who are the thought of my other siblings.”
“Will we see you again?” It was Gemma’s cousin who asked.
Ampual smiled.
“Perhaps you will see me, perhaps you will not. But if you build a house for Ampual of the fourth Skyworld, I will come and rest my head there when my travels allow.”
As he spoke the walls of the ship turned transparent, and they could see out into the rich green of the world that lay beyond. Below them was green valley. A sparkling river run through it and circling the valley were mountain terraces all planted with young rice.
“Welcome to your home,” Ampual said. “Welcome to New Cordillera.”
His words fell into the wind, and then the ship was gone and they were standing at the edge of a mountain, the breeze blowing through their hair, tears standing in their eyes, and there walking towards them was a woman with eyes that shone like stars in the night sky and arms stretched out in welcome.
“My children,” she cried. “As I desired, Ampual has brought you to me.”
There are sounds that haunt our dreams even now. They are like to the sounds we sometimes hear in the mountains when it is very late at night. There are those who would send the Once-masters away, and we have seen those marked as the beloved of our gods as they run and hide from the hand of those who now rule over us.
We have no men or boys to send out for the great hunt. But we remember everything.
Here is your father’s belt. Here is your father’s blanket. Here are the skulls of the ones he hunted.
This is how a warrior carries his spear, and this is how he bears his shield. We have woven charms into the sheath of your machete. We have baptized your armbands with our tears.
We will beat the gongs and we will offer up our prayers. Hunt well, young ones. We will wait for you on the road to Ficandula.
Skulls line the entrance to New Cordillera. On Gemma’s fiftieth birthday, the white ones came through the portal above their new home.
When they landed, the women lured them into the village. They feted them with rice wine, with songs and with dances. Then, when the men fell asleep, the women took up their machetes.
Upon Ampual’s visit, he found the longhouse the women had built for him. Its walls were decorated with the bones of their enemies, and its floors were lined with skins—dried and stitched together.
“You have taught them well,” he said to his sibling.
“Not I,” Ubing replied. “History has taught them all they ever need to know.”
Author’s note. This story is loosely inspired by a little known incident in Hungduan (Ifugao) during the early part of the American occupation of the Philippines. Two archeologists who had violated a sacred granary were beheaded by tribesmen, and the Americans inflicted reprisals upon the men of the village.