The Moon over the Turtle’s Back
Several shafts of firelight pierced the bamboo walls of my heavily decorated room. Alerted by urgent footsteps and restless flickering of torches carried by several men, my eyes flew open while keeping still as I could manage. I may not be allowed to participate in defending our kingdom but I can still listen to the sentries and gather what information I can from their hushed voices.
Then came fear. An unwanted feeling that I am extremely familiar with. Wars amongst tribes was the only constant occurrence as I was growing up that it instilled in me this fear I know too well.
After listening for a while, loud footsteps overwhelmed the violent current from the nearby river. The voice of my father giving my servants stern instructions somehow calms me down. Although I’ve never seen his face, I know his voice too well. Our conversations were always formal and professional, between a Datu and a binukot, strictly done with a partition separating us. That definite rule, a law that only my kin dared to implement, made me the most valuable treasure in the kingdom and among the tribes.
What I look like, only Mother knows. I was immediately hidden from everyone after I was born; even my father and my brothers hadn’t laid eyes on me even once. Other kingdoms give their priests special permissions to correspond with their living scribes but ours do not. Performing my predestined obligation granted my noble family the highest honor and prestige. Even the citizens are willing to fight on my command. It’s a pleasure, knowing the significance of my existence.
“Mother, last night. . .”
Mother lifted her head and her eyes confirmed that what I heard, Father’s urgent voice and the angry clash of metal against metal, was indeed real. The Sultan’s troops took advantage of the storm last night and many more lives were sacrificed to protect the kingdom.
“Kinnara, have you ever dreamt of watching the sea?” she asked, refocusing on her weaving. Her slender fingers expertly tackled the stubborn threads. Loneliness seemed to grip her voice and I understand because we share the same fate. She too was a Binukot but Father granted her the warmth of the sun and the freedom to see the world until sixteen years ago when she had to stay with me and raise me by herself. I wonder if she ever regretted giving birth me.
“Mother, I am contented with this life I know. I do not wish to be anyone I am not and I do not want anything that is not meant for me.”
If she’s testing me, I’m confident that I passed. I wish my answer makes her happy. Happy, contented, loneliness; I knew all these words but really, I’m not too sure I understood what they actually meant. And although I knew what curiosity is supposed to be like, I am not interested. Knowing nothing about the normal world except from my mother’s stories is not a problem a problem in my standpoint. Weaving and doing my duty as a living scribe by memorizing epics and songs certainly would not be a burden to me.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Banog,” I call one of my servants, my eldest brother, who was standing guard outside my room. “Summon the Datu.”
Without a word, Banog leaves and Bukaw took over his post. I watched their shadows move and disappear. Mother silently continued her weaving and maybe, her prayers, because I am praying too. Desperately. We’re in the middle of a crisis after all.
After a while, Banog returned to inform me that Father was currently negotiating with the hostile tribe. There was a hint of worry in his voice but his concerns to me were insignificant.
“Do you know that the sea is salty?” Mother asked me again. Something was definitely troubling her and it's affecting me in a way that is both disturbing and upsetting. I stared at her intently.
“Do you hate me, Mother?” I asked her those things but inside my chest was a tangled ball of white threads. “I do not appreciate you messing with my resolve.”
Hate. These words spilling from my mouth were ideas borrowed from those epic tales that I’d memorized. The realization that I might never had an emotion of my own relieved me.
She shook her head crying but I couldn't sympathize with her. I’ve never cried. I have nothing to cry about. Maybe those tears were the evidence of her hate because that emotion was believed to weigh heavily on the heart. She must have been suffering.
She embraced me and whispered to my ear the most terrifying fate that awaited me. My mind went blank and all I heard was the creaking of the bamboo floor and the murmurs of the nearby river. The boiled bananas I ate for snack almost escaped me.
“I am too late after all,” I whispered but it sounded more like a croak. I was aware of the possibility but I could never believe my father went ahead for the final resort. He severed the thread and sacrificed me.
He sold me. He betrayed me.
I heaved a sigh to rid myself of the unfamiliar dark-colored emotions entangling with the plain white threads that I believed was my heart. Then I smiled, carefully wiping away my mother’s tears with the hem of my skirt.
Fearing for my own is an act of selfishness. I was not raised so I could live for my sake. The Heavens blessed me with this beauty for the benefit of our kingdom. My only option was to save the lives of my people.
“I will submit to the Sultan. It is the right thing to do,” I declared. I shivered at the thought but decided that from now on, I must talk of the Sultan in the most respectable manner. My future depends on him and to adore my future husband is going to become my sole duty.
Mother violently shakes her head with her fingers digging on my shoulders and her eyes so wide with unsung pleas. It’s strange, as if she’s a different person. She was supposed to be the most sophisticated woman in the tribe but I don't see a trace of that right now. Only the eyes of a frightened woman unable to say the things she wanted to say, silenced by her own upbringing.
“You are the treasure of our tribe, Kinnara. I cannot allow that monster to taint and enslave you!”
“He’s going to wipe us out. A farming tribe cannot stand for too long against a tribe that breathes war.”
I am the objective all along, anyway. Father chose to keep the reason hidden but I eventually realized the truth. I am privileged with the abundance of time to think and ponder things over.
The Sultan's warriors killed our people and burned down their houses. Even the domesticated animals were not spared. There was no looting involved, only a clear message left for us to consider. The wars existed because the Sultan wants the most valuable Binukot among the kingdoms. Obtaining me meant their kingdom's illegibility to be granted the greatest political power in all of Kalupaan. The remaining kingdoms will surrender and kneel under one supreme ruler.
It spells the worst possible future for the kingdoms, but who am I to challenge the inevitable?
“Mother, I am afraid too, but I will cast it aside. I will let you bear these fears for both of us.”
I hoped it was the end of my mother’s protests. I know she’s worried because of what I am but the Sultan recognizes that fact and still wants me. That gives me hope.
*
Strange noises –
I realize I fell asleep. I found myself inside my largest palanquin and Mother was nowhere near. I called for her and I called Bukaw’s name. Only the cicadas replied.
I’m not naturally curious of what lies beyond the walls the confine me. Every time I am transported, peeking doesn’t even occur to me. People could be executed just by looking at me so I figured I’d also discipline myself by completely accepting my seclusion. It is only fair.
But the strangeness of those sounds prompted me to take a little look.
I gasped.
I see the moon! And it’s better than the one I saw during the harvest ritual. Is it a different one? A bigger, brighter and prettier moon? A mother moon, maybe?
I wish Mother could give me answers.
“Where am I?” I whispered. Normally, I would just sit and wait but my common sense tells me that there is no one around to do my bidding. I gingerly touch the wall of my palanquin and my hand immediately retracted. The sighs and shivers startling me so much that I ended up speechless.
The walls were breathing and shivering. Really shivering, like a living being that is soft and warm to the touch.
“Get out,” says a deep, rusty voice that conjured in my mind images of a no good vagrant, or maybe a drunkard. Right then the walls collapsed and rippled beneath me that I bolt upright, almost touching the earth with my bare feet.
“I can’t!” I shout, repulsed by the thought of losing my status to mere dirt.
“Get out or I’ll kick you, brat!” the voice rumbled and the wood beneath my feet rippled again, more violently this time, and tossed me out off its wooden floor. While I struggled to get up, the palanquin reassembles itself, but not before slamming on my back and knocking me off-balance. It ran off toward the dark forest, laughing madly.
I stared at the darkness for a long time. It dawned on me that my worth just disintegrated along with my status and my whole life has been such a pitiful waste. Just because I stepped on the ground with my own two feet.
And I am all alone. I’m on the ground, barefooted, and for some reason; my palanquin is alive and shamelessly kicked me out. If I’m not dreaming then maybe the gods or the jealous diwatas are playing a trick on me. No wonder none of them answered my prayers.
They were jealous of the beauty that drove kingdoms into years of violent wars, I thought, feeling dark threads wrapped tightly around my throat.
Almost cursing out loud, I paused upon remembering the beautiful moon. I looked up once again, appreciating the fact that no trees obscured my view. The strange sounds came from the direction of the moon, so maybe mortals can hear the moon when it’s that close and big. I took one careful step, and then another, wincing as tiny sharp rocks cut the soles of my soft feet.
“I can never be who I was,” occupied my mind as I struggled forward. Walking is awfully exhausting, especially since the path was sloping and the rocks were getting sharper. I stopped to tie my hair on my back and then gathered up my flowy garb to avoid tripping on them accidentally.
The moon kept on getting farther away whenever I believed that I’m getting really close. I ran uphill where a single boulder carved it's silhouette right in front of the moon. I might catch it if I go a little bit faster.
“One can never run fast enough to catch the moon.” It’s a man’s voice. “Especially one as clumsy and slow as you.”
I panicked.
Someone, a person, saw me!
I cocked my head to the direction where the voice came from. I can’t believe I didn’t notice him. I thought he was a boulder from down the hill but now that I'm standing next to him, he’s a man with a huge stone bilao covering the entirety of his hunched back. His view was fixed on the faraway void so he looked kind of sleepy.
He took my breath away, just like how the moon did earlier.
“What are you?” I asked, breathless. I am not ignorant, I know that there are different kinds of people. But I haven’t heard of a person with a large stone stuck on his back. It looked bumpy, with flowering crystal spikes in the middle, but the edges were rounded, smooth and shiny.
“You’re a rude fellow,” the man points out, his voice sounded sleepy too. He didn’t even glance in my direction. Was he afraid of the consequences of looking at a binukot?
“I’m sorry,” I say because I really was. It might be an illness that I’m not aware of. I puffed my cheeks. Can't he see that I'm barefoot? Nothing will happen even if he stares at me because I am no longer pure.
But he was still fussing over the thin bamboo stick he’s holding, pulling it up and dropping the line again.
The cold wind blew and I shivered. The air smelled tangy but not unpleasant, like fish broth. “What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Fishing,” he answered, pointing at the vast rice field below our hill that expanded far beyond, reflecting the brightest moon I have ever seen.
“Fishing?! In a rice field?”
He laughed, his eyes closed and wrinkled at the sides. I found myself smiling too, because he made it seem so easy.
Beneath us, the strange booming sounded clearer than when I heard it from afar. What I believed to be a rice field was in fact something else, mirroring the light of the moon like the inside of a clamshell.
“So it’s the first time you’ve seen the sea?”
I nodded but realizing that he isn’t paying attention, I said, “Yes.”
“No wonder he's dancing more beautifully than usual.”
“It was the sea calling out to me.” I breathe. It was the strange noise, her song, that beckoned me to her.
“Sometimes, the sea wants an audience, especially when the moon dances on her surface. Then, a wish is born.”
I listened to his bizarre stories. My throat itched because of the cold and his sleepy voice made me drowsy but the tales he told me were so fun and mesmerizing. The people in it and the places he described were unlike the images I saw in the epic chants that I memorized.
Strong winds blew right past us that I worried I might topple over and plunge to my death but the man seemed unaffected by the elements and continued talking in his own pace. He would occasionally pull his fishing line and then throw it back downagain.
He’s a peculiar man, although I don’t know the extent of his peculiarity because I didn’t have anybody to compare him with. Unlike my mother, he talks like everything around us is alive and familiar.
In the end, he didn’t catch any fish. Instead, he easily hauled the largest clam I have ever seen, filled with shiny pearls of assorted sizes that looked like eggs of different birds. He tossed the largest one to me and I catched it with both hands.
“Thank you,” I told him. The pearl was surprisingly warm that I pressed it to my cold cheek. At last, he stood up, leaving the thin bamboo pole on the rough ground. He staggered and seemed surprised by it.
“Oops, it’s gotten heavier,” he says.
"What is?"
"My shell," he answered, slowly turning to show me his back and I waited patiently for him to face me again.
“What happens if it gets too heavy for you to carry?”
He stared at me for the first time and shrugged. His eyes were black and shining, like the surface of the calm sea.
“I will probably turn into a rock. Or maybe I will turn into nothing.”
Something stirred inside my chest, like a tug and the threads started moving and recoiling. It made me queasy.
“Why would you like that?” I asked him. It was late when I noticed the accusatory tone in my voice.
“I don’t like it. But I can’t help caring for people, so I can’t escape my fate. We are the same, bound to our curses.” He walked away, like an upright, lazy turtle. I remember I saw a turtle once.
