by AA Lee
When the sun had finally dried the dew on the leaves, he and Kenda stood outside the door, ready to depart to Nayon. The whole village seemed to be there to send them off. Most looked anxious that the high priestess was leaving them in the hands of the less powerful.
“Make sure to always have some water with you, High Priestess. Just in case I need to communicate with you.” Datu Goni handed Kenda a black bundle.
Kisig grabbed it instead because Kenda was holding a staff. He supported the bundle with his other hand and felt warm potatoes inside the black cloth.
Kenda raised her arm, and the water came, flat on its top. To Kisig’s surprise, it carried Kenda as if she was stepping onto solid ground. “Come on up.” She gestured with her hand.
Kisig stepped toward the water, not knowing where to step to climb up. The water pulled him upward, and he almost fell facedown.
“Okay, brace yourself. We’re going.”
Kisig was thrown backward, out of balance. For a moment, he thought he would fall and break his bones, but the water circled his feet, holding him in place. The mountains became a blur in his eyes. “Slow down. I’m going to throw up.”
“All right, all right,” Kenda said, looking at him as though he was a coward.
They slowed, but his body was still tilting backward until he grabbed Kenda’s staff and righted himself. They arrived at Nayon before noon, to Kisig’s relief.
“High Priestess.” Datu Hula welcomed Kenda with open arms and bowed. “I’m sorry. We haven’t prepared food. I thought you’d be in Daa for a while.”
“Thanks to your magicians, we were able to leave Daa for an important matter.”
“That’s the shrine.” Kisig pointed. As a datu, he was used to small talk, but that day, he needed to steer away from it and hurry Kenda. “And Priestess Mutya’s hut should be in front of the door.”
Datu Hula squinted in the shrine’s direction. “It’s no longer in use. We haven’t had a gifted woman in years.”
“We only need to find High Priestess Mutya’s house.”
“I haven’t heard of that name, but what can we do to help?”
“We need torches. It will be dark underground, where we need to find clues to free the high priestess who cursed our villages.”
“Wait here.” Datu Hula walked back inside his house. When he came out, he held three unlit torches. Following him were Arnau and four other warriors, each carrying his own torch.
Kisig led the group to the shrine. The thatched roof was still intact, and Kisig thought it must have been replaced in the last twenty years or so. Perhaps the villagers were still waiting for a girl to be born gifted to serve as a priestess.
The shrine was surrounded by shrubs and tree trunks. Clearly, the villagers had cut down the trees to stop the place from turning into a forest.
“Nothing seems left here, aside from the shrine,” Kenda said from behind.
“I think her hut was here.” Kisig stood in front of the shrine. “We just have to find the entrance to the underground.”
“Let’s clear this area first. It would be easier for us to look once the trees and shrubs are gone,” Hula said. The men planted their torches on the ground and started hacking at trunks and shrubs.
Kisig looked at the ground cleared by the men, trying to find any hole, but without any luck. He was starting to think the underground was filled by the soil from the surface, making it impossible for them to go down. What if the underground is completely gone?
They had cleared the shrine’s surroundings during the afternoon, but the underground was nowhere in sight. Kisig wanted to take a rest and get some sleep. His whole body was aching from bouncing with the waves the whole day and then from hacking trees. He longed for a soft pillow like the one at Datu Goni’s house. When he was about to suggest to Kenda that they continue the following day, his eyes caught a big flat rock. In the old time, priestesses cleared the rocks from near the shrine to prevent anyone from tripping. The rock he was looking at wasn’t like any other rocks. The exposed surface was smooth, as though someone had shaved it or removed the upper edges to make it look like it was part of the ground. More than half of it was covered with soil. It looked like a cover for something.
“Can you help me here?” Kisig shouted, trying to control the excitement in his voice. Maybe it wasn’t something special. He didn’t want to create any false hope. Nayon warriors came slowly.
“Let’s clean here, around this rock.”
“Which rock?” Arnau asked.
“This one.” Kisig pointed.
“Oh, that’s odd. I didn’t see it before.” He walked closer with furrowed brows.
“Let’s clear this side here and then push the rock aside. It doesn’t look very heavy because it’s flat.” Kisig dug the soil out of the way and had to cut a few roots in the process. The warriors did the same while being careful of injuring each other with their bolo knives.
“I think that’s enough,” Hula said, excitement in his voice.
Kisig held one side of the stone. “On the count of three. One, two, three!”
They tried to push the stone sideways, but it didn’t budge.
“Again. One, two, three!” Kisig pushed with all his strength but felt no movement.
“Maybe a bigger part of the rock is buried,” Kenda suggested.
“I don’t think that’s the case. I can see the lower part of this rock from this side. It’s only a few inches. Let’s try clearing all sides.” Kisig dug around the rock, making sure the edges were not buried.
“There’s a big root over here. I think it crawled from here to the other side!” Arnau said as he started cutting it.
Kisig estimated where the other end of the root could be and started digging the soil. Sure enough, his knife hit the root. For good measure, they cleared all the sides of the rock and removed all the soil covering it. Then they pushed again. This time, it moved.
“Yes! This is it!” Kisig shouted in triumph as the dark underground entrance was halfway uncovered. The entrance was completely opened on their second push. The stairs were still intact, as if time hadn’t passed at all.
Kisig grabbed his torch, lit from Hula’s burning one, and was preparing to climb down when Kenda’s nervous voice interrupted him.
“Is it safe to go down there? What if there are snakes? It’s so dark, and we don’t know what’s in there.”
“You can stay here and wait for us,” Kisig replied, failing to hide the disappointment in his voice. He couldn’t believe this scared girl was the high priestess who’d battled the evil soul.
“I’m not saying that I’m scared, you know. I mean, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”
“You should go after me, High Priestess.” Hula raised his steel bolo knife. Its curved end reflected the torch lights.
Kisig climbed down under the ground, torch in hand. Hula came after him, followed by Kenda and the rest of the group. Kisig held his torch closer to the walls and was astonished at how the underground didn’t seem to have changed at all in the last four hundred years, as if it was under a spell, destined to last forever. The air was fresh despite the darkness and the rock that covered the entrance, so Kisig was sure that another opening must be somewhere in the forest. He stopped when they finally reached a square big enough to hold about twenty people. Four hundred years before, High Priestess Mutya used the underground for secret meetings. A few stones with etchings lay on the ground, and he picked a flat one. He read the words aloud.
“The war between Nayon and Daa. Hagibis pulled a trick, and many people died.” He stopped reading. He already knew about that. He picked up another stone. It detailed High Priestess Tala changing iron into gold. He finished reading all the writings on the stones, but none spoke of Tala’s imprisonment.
“Here, on the wall. Can you check this out? It looks like drawings and writings together.”
Kisig rushed to where Kenda stood. At first, he could not make out the shapes, but as he held the tor
ch closer, he saw the walls were full of inscriptions. “Too much. There are too many writings. I don’t know how High Priestess Mutya managed to carve all of these.” His eyes moved quickly from bottom to top. High Priestess Mutya’s writings were accompanied by intricate drawings. Kisig concluded that the high priestess might have done it after he was cursed.
“I’m sorry I can’t help. I don’t know how to read,” Kenda said. “But perhaps,” she continued with renewed enthusiasm, “we can try looking at the drawings instead.”
“Right!” Hula agreed. “What symbols are we particularly looking for?”
“Something that has to do with the curse, so let’s narrow it down to the torch and my staff, because Tala was a high priestess. The image of The Great Fall is also related, and maybe Kisig, so...”
“An image of a man wearing a bahag,” Kisig added as he continued reading.
High Priestess Mutya’s writing narrated the village’s poverty. Gold had run out, courtesy of Hagibis, who led a lavish lifestyle. Kisig read backward once he understood the pattern of the high priestess’s writing.
“I have an image of a man here,” Hula called.
Kisig briskly walked to Hula on the other side of the chamber. An image of a man with a spear through his heart greeted him. He read the caption aloud. “Head Warrior Bagsik was murdered on the first full moon of the year. He refused to give his daughter, Diyosa, to Hagibis as a concubine. The girl fled.”
Kisig clenched his fists until his nails dug into his palms. If he had not betrayed Tala, Bagsik would not have suffered such a shameful death. He knew Bagsik would have preferred to die in battle.
“Are you okay?” Kenda touched his back.
Kisig saw no point in regretting the past. He needed to correct it and accept Tala’s wrath once she was freed.
“Yes,” he croaked. “This is not the one we’re looking for. Let’s continue.” He went back to where he’d stopped before Hula called him. He was making fast progress, but there were still too many engravings to cover. He wondered if Priestess Mutya had spent her remaining days carving on stones here.
“I have here what looks like The Great Fall,” Kenda called.
Kisig marked the wall with the black burnt stalk from his torch so as not to waste time when he returned. The drawing was indeed of The Great Fall, but the words below made Kisig’s blood boil with rage.
“What is it?” Kenda asked. “Tell us.”
“You better not hear it.”
“We also want to know the history of the village,” Hula said as he came closer.
Kisig had no choice. In a hoarse voice, he read for everyone to hear. “The river turned red. Countless lives were lost. Hagibis threw all those who were against him down the fall. I kneeled to survive, shame backed into the corner of my mind to tell this story.”
“Who is this Hagibis, and why was he able to play the villagers like fools?”
Kisig hung his head low, not willing to spill his mistake and cowardice, but he thought that Hula, as the current datu, deserved to know. “He was the highest official after me. During the famine, we were going to attack Daa—not like we were out to kill people. We were planning to do a raid, but he concocted an evil plan with Daa officials. While we were in Daa, Daa warriors came here and murdered our people. There were only women in the village when we arrived at Daa, and not a single grain of rice in sight. Tala was the one who exposed his evil deeds through magic, and we locked him up. But when Tala became cruel… she burned people to ashes.” Kisig stopped momentarily as images of the torch lighting the bodies flashed in his mind. “She burned Daa warriors like they were dry grass. She also took control of people’s minds to the point that all they wanted to do was follow her wishes. She did not kill innocent people, not yet anyway, but Priestess Mutya said that day would come, when the greed and power of the torch overtook her completely.”
“So you asked for Hagibis’s help to defeat her, right?” Kenda said, saving Kisig from saying what he didn’t want to say.
He simply nodded.
“But then, what you thought was the solution turned out to be the bigger problem,” she continued as though she’d known all along.
“Not only that, the greatest betrayal was done by me. Priestess Mutya said that the power of the torch weakens when her feelings are strong. What she meant was when she falls in love, so I—”
“You pretended to love her!” When Kisig nodded, Kenda hissed through her teeth. “Stupid, stupid! Can’t you see? Instead of betraying her, you could have used her feelings to neutralize the power of the torch. She could have controlled it instead of it controlling her.”
Kisig looked at Kenda in a new light, and even Hula smiled.
“I thought you would say that I was stupid because I hurt her,” Kisig said.
Chapter 9
Kenda
A small part of Kenda was furious that Kisig had been so blind to the solution that was so obvious to her. Something else inside her protested, as if she could not bear thinking about him and the high priestess together. Am I jealous? Kenda shook her head. She had no time for feelings now. The village needed her, so she steeled herself. She needed to distance herself, because she knew that High Priestess Tala needed to be freed, and when that time came, Kisig needed to be with her.
“I can’t believe that High Priestess Mutya did not see this. But then… priestesses aren’t supposed to marry and fall in love.”
“I guess you were right. If I’d only thought about it before.”
“But we can’t go back to the past and undo it.” Hula answered Kisig this time. “So this isn’t what we’re looking for. Let’s continue looking for clues, then. After all this is done, I would love for these writings to be rewritten using our alphabet so that the new generation will learn about the past and not repeat the same mistakes.”
Hula’s words banished her thoughts, helping her focus on the task at hand. As she looked for clues, her mind wandered to the situation of Daa village, and she hoped the power of the magicians would be enough. She hadn’t come across anything that resembled either the torch, the staff, or The Great Fall for about an hour. Some of the writings were way up the wall, out of her reach. She thought High Priestess Mutya must have been tall, or she could have used magic.
“The drawing here shows the staff bigger than any other elements. Something like a strand of hair was being wound on it.” Arnau tilted his head as though trying to find the best angle to decipher the meaning of the image.
Kenda rushed to the man and waited for Kisig.
Kisig marked his progress first before leaving his position. “This might be important. Do we have something to write on?”
Kenda shook her head, as all they had were torches and bolo knives. Then she smiled as she glanced at Kisig’s white shirt. “Actually, we do have something to write on.”
Kisig shook his head as understanding dawned on him. “No, this is too good to be ruined.”
“That’s our best bet. Most of us are wearing dark colors. We can just wash it later after copying the words on paper.”
“Fine, but you have to wash it. Make it as white as it is now.”
“Fine! Go ahead and read slowly. I’m not a fast writer, so pause every word or so.”
Kenda plucked stalks with burnt edges from one of the torches that had gone out and smoothed Kisig’s shirt at the back. He bent his knees, allowing Kenda to write just below his shoulders. The white shirt was so thin that she might as well have been touching his bare skin. She shook her head to focus.
“Okay, here we go.” Kisig cleared his throat. “I know that I only have a few days left in this world—”
“Stop! You’re going way too fast. I got ‘I know I have a few days.’”
“Left… in… this… world.”
“Got it. Do the same for the rest.” Kenda’s letters were small because she didn’t know how long the priestess’s message would be. Kisig dictated slowly without Kenda needing to interrupt.
/> “Okay. I’m going to read back what I’ve written,” she said after Kisig stopped reading. “‘I know that I only have a few days left in this world. The Bringer of Equality will need help. Instead of leaving my power to scatter in the wind, I will leave it here on the staff, using a strand of my hair, to stay forever or until it serves its purpose. From now on, high priestesses should not be afraid of disappearing into nothing in the afterlife. Know that by this, the destined had only to summon us to help. One touch on each strand of hair.’”
“You got everything.” Kisig stood straight.
“Okay. So that means they can help us, not only through the staff, but their souls can help us!” Kenda squealed like a child.
“That means they can help us defeat the evil soul Romu, right?” Kisig asked.
“Yes! Most of the souls said that they would not interfere with the living because they would vanish forever and they were afraid, or perhaps some just want to see their loved ones who are still alive, but now I can ask for their help. Also, not knowing their names means that I could not see them. Priestess Mutya’s instruction to just touch their strands of hair and summon them is very helpful. Now I know what to do.”
“With their help, you might not need High Priestess Tala,” Hula announced, as though he was the only one not being sucked into digging deeper by these discoveries.
“No. We have to free Tala.” Kisig faced Datu Hula, a sudden shift in his tone, from an easygoing boy to an authoritative leader.
Kenda wondered how commanding he must have been during his reign as the datu.
“I’m almost there,” Kisig said. “Give me a little time to get to the crucial information.”
Kenda followed the rest of them to the wall where Kisig had been standing, but something at the back of her mind bothered her. It was like something she should have remembered yet she couldn’t. Her crude handwriting on Kisig’s back stared back at her. The word summon stood out, then a realization hit her.
