You may be wondering about the price, as well. Yes, that’s P2,000,000.00. Two million pesos and zero centavos only. If you’ve made it this far, trust me, you may not have the money now, but if you finish till the end and decide that you seriously want this sword, then you’re going to get the P2M somehow. The sword will find a way. Or rather, the sword will enable you to find a way. That’s the way it works. And my lolo, father, and I, we could always use the money.
Why the price, you ask? The sword always comes with a price. What the sword does to unite the people of this land and set things right again always comes with a price. And you, and everyone else, won’t stop paying, even after the P2M is paid to me.
As for how I came up with P2M? It was the first number that came into my head when I had to give an amount. It’s that simple. So there. If that’s good enough for the sword, that’s good enough for me.
Let me tell you what's going to happen: you’re going to suddenly end up in circumstances that will result in you getting your hands on something valuable, something worth P2,000,000. I’ve heard tell that, in the past, someone found some buried treasure that he sold for the right amount, which he then used to buy the sword.
Maybe you’re going to win P2M on some TV game show. Maybe a rich relative will die, and you'll suddenly be P2M richer. Who knows? Who cares? You’re going to get the money, and then you’re going to message me, and then I’m going to tell you how to get here.
By the way, ‘here’ isn’t always here in Pampanga. Right now it is, for the purposes of getting this sword to you, but there’s no guarantee that this will still be here, if you try and make your way back. ‘No return, no exchange’ may be illegal nowadays, but this is our way of saying all sales are final.
I’LL GIVE YOU directions now. You’re going to take the North Luzon Expressway, if you’re coming from Manila. You’re going to take an airplane to the Clark airport, if you’re coming from somewhere else. Don’t worry, the sword will make sure you get transport fare, on top of the 2M.
You’ll end up in the neighborhood of Angeles, Pampanga. Yes, the place with all the girlie and boy bars and such, but you’re just passing through there, don’t stop for a good time, please. Save it. You’re going to have to go deeper into the smaller roads, away from all the noise and action. I’ll send you accurate directions, to a place where the streets get smaller and narrower and lonelier, until they become unnamed.
By that time, you’ll have to step it up and concentrate, and follow my instructions accurately. Turn left when my directions say so. Turn right. Count the number of corners properly, or you’ll be hopelessly lost (but I’m sure you won't get lost, the sword will find a way). Be careful, not all the roads are paved. Or safe, for that matter. But you’ll make it, don’t worry.
When you reach our gate, you’ll pull the rope that’s hanging beside it. The bell will ring. I’ll come down, open the gate, and make sure that you are who you say you are. You pay me, I give you the sword and the written directions to get back out, and you and the sword are on your way.
Oh! You’ll find out that suddenly, in the right hands (yours, not mine), the sword will suddenly be very light. It won’t be the eight- to ten-pound bowling ball it is right now for me. I don’t know why it’s like that, but that’s just the way it is. It’ll feel like a toy in your hands. It’ll still be big and bad-ass, though. How you’ll get around in regular society with it, I don’t know, either. The sword will find a way.
What happens after that, once the sword is with you, and you’ve followed my directions back to where you came from? Damned if I know.
All I know for sure is that, once it’s out there with you, work starts. Maybe you’ll be the one to wield it, and lead the land to unity and hope. What kind of story that’ll be, I also don’t know. It’ll be up to you and the sword.
Or maybe you’re just a temporary wielder, until it gets to another person – you know, you’re just the messenger. That’s possible. Your part is small, just to get the sword back out there, but don’t feel bad about it, because it’s still an honorable task. You’ll still help get the land back to where it should be.
Or maybe you’ll die while using it. It happens. Sometimes. But don’t worry. You’ll have done your part, and the sword will be out there, and it’ll find someone else, and won’t stop finding someone to wield it, until it sets things straight. I’m just sorry about you having to die and all, but that’s the way these things play out on occasion.
Once everything is set straight, the sword will disappear again, and everyone is on their own to make sure that we’re all doing the right thing once more, for everyone’s betterment. The sword will stay unfound – until such time that it’s needed again, and reappears in our sala. Once that happens, then someone from my family will send it out yet again. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be the one to send it out. Or maybe it will be my child or grandchild, that time.
This site will remain up for you, as long as no one has messaged me that they’ve got the P2,000,000 and are ready to pay up. If it’s gone, then someone’s got the sword already. But don’t even try telling me that you’ve got the money, if you don’t. The ‘system’ won’t let you message me, and you might just get kicked out of the site, never to find your way back here. If that happens, well, goodbye. Thanks for trying.
I did say something about swapping, didn’t I? We’re open to that. Lolo said that there were times in the sword’s history where, instead of paying for it in treasure or silver or pearls or whatever they were using for currency at that time, someone would pay for it with something else.
We still have some of those items here in the house, in fact. The complete language of a mountain tribe that was wiped out by disease, more than three hundred years ago, is recorded and stored in a book and special music box, in one of the upstairs rooms. The imagination of a young, artistic genius, who was killed as a boy by the Spaniards when they first arrived, is kept in a hallowed jar somewhere in another room, on a shelf, behind glass, safe from harm. There's also a book in the library, with long-forgotten recipes made from herbs, animals, and plants from the southern part of the land that have long been extinct.
All of these were used to pay for the sword at one time or another. We will accept things like these in exchange for the kampilan. If you think you’ve got anything like this, then you’ll be allowed to message me.
So. If you’ve made it this far, well and good. There are more than one of you who have made it this far right now, and there are more than one of you who’re thinking, with great desire, “I need to buy this kampilan”, and all of you won’t know for sure why, but to you, it’s probably the most important thing in the world right now.
You could be anyone out there: man, woman, boy, girl, everything else, it doesn’t matter. If you're able to read this, then you’re going to be able to buy the sword. I repeat: the sword will find a way. You will find a way.
Okay, you’re at the end. I’m waiting for you to send me the message saying you can pay for the kampilan, and more than that, I’m waiting for you to use the sword to get us – and by ‘us’, I mean everyone living in this problematic land – headed in the right direction again. Get moving.
Click here.
Kenneth Yu is a fiction writer, publisher, and editor residing in San Juan, Philippines. His stories have won awards and been published both in his home country and internationally over the years. He is the founder of Philippine Genre Stories (PGS), a publication devoted to short genre fiction by Pinoy authors. Though PGS is currently on hiatus, he hopes to revive it soon in its online version. A staunch reading advocate, he continues to encourage everyone, especially younger folk, to always devote time to read.
Joel Pablo Salud
The Dollmaker
THE MANOR HAD endured, in its decaying granite and narra splendor, a little over a century, right in the middle of the last of the old-world haciendas, within running distance of the province’s coconut plantations.
A bla
ck, wrought-iron gate the size of two full-grown acacias rested nearly a kilometer from the house. The rust had thickened into a sort of carpet ’round each steel bar; it ate away part of the bolt and knots. The entrance was marked by curlicues and the calligraphy of the original owner’s name on top: Don Gautamo Peréz.
Jorge and his mother Conchita drew near the limestone walls flanking the gate, cautious in their steps. The wistful scent of old churches immediately filled the young boy’s lungs. The sprawl of a manicured lawn and sundry flowers and foliage lent breathtaking color to the otherwise dull surroundings beyond the walls.
They entered the gate, and began their long walk toward the door of the manor.
SMALL-TOWN FOLKLORE said that Don Gautamo Peréz left for Acapulco from Madrid, and then set sail for the Spanish East Indies – now the Philippines – during the tail end of the Galeón de Manila expeditions. As a rich merchant of Chinese silk and embroidered cloth, he was quite well-known in Acapulco and Madrid. He had a most uncanny gift for selling even the most useless of retail supplies.
As a boy growing up in the backstreets of Madrid, he had learned an unusual craft, rarely indulged in by boys his age: doll-making. He had followed in the footsteps of his grandmother, who, by dint of want, fashioned Spanish dolls to make ends meet. The dolls became somewhat of a hit among the rich and famous in the province of Cádiz, Andalusia, southwestern Spain.
The bit of savings his grandmother had thus been able to leave his family offered them the chance to put the boy through school. Upon graduation, Gautamo had promised himself he would never again suffer insufferable poverty.
As his travels became more frequent, he begged his wife Mercedes to take a trip to Manila; the colony would be his final destination, after a year of working in Acapulco. His wife, eager to please, set sail immediately from Madrid to Intramuros. It was as good a time as any to make the journey. A piece of estate had been left for her in the colonies by her father, a colonial officer who had been stricken by cholera.
Perhaps it was in memory of his late grandmother that Don Gautamo, a few months before his planned reunion with Mercedes in Manila, found his attention captured by some rare pig-hair dolls from China, carried by some of the Chinese traders and spice merchants that littered the ports of Acapulco.
Legend had it that anyone who possessed such a doll might wish for anything, and it would be granted. “The legend is true,” a young Chinaman assured him, stressing, in broken Castilian mixed with hand gestures, that he had witnessed it himself, being the son of a merchant that had had a bout with leukemia and was healed.
The doll wore gold-and-black embroidered silk, stood roughly a foot and a half in height, and bore the face of Yen-Lo-Wang, the Chinese god of death. Charmed, Don Gautamo purchased the doll, and, upon his eventual arrival in Manila, handed it over to his wife, as a coming-home present.
Shortly after, Mercedes was afflicted with an unknown malady, an infection so severe that her eye nearly deliquesced from her face, which had previously been fashioned in the image of angels. Months later, despite Don Gautamo’s frantic attempts to recruit anyone, everyone – from Spanish doctors to local spiritualists – to rouse her back to health, Mercedes died.
It was then that he recalled the legend of the doll, Yen-Lo-Wang. Day and night, he prayed that she be resurrected, even offering his riches in return.
Little did Don Gautamo know that his wife had already asked the doll for a favor, upon learning of the legend. She had prayed for a child, as she was barren. No one had told them of the legend’s little-known proviso: that any woman who prayed to the doll would suffer death.
The don sold his wife’s estate and left Intramuros, to settle in San Felipe. He bought an abandoned hacienda, built his manor, and proceeded to manage the plantation. But the years that followed left Don Gautamo alone and without comfort. To ease the pain of isolation, he put up a doll shop, in which all the dolls he fashioned, with his hands, bore the likeness of Mercedes.
A RUSTIC OLD man met mother and son at the door. He had been watching them from a distance, by the sprinklers that watered a patch of pink bougainvillea.
Conchita had noticed him early on. He had been standing there since they arrived, akin to a stone effigy, bruised by time. Nothing about his long, coarse salt-and-pepper hair, graying brows, and trimmed mustache spoke of a sinister bone in his body – not the eyes, gleaming in a light shade of coffee, nor his lips that curved up to his left cheek. His finely-chiseled face spoke of a bloodline that stretched back to the days of colonial Spain.
The old man approached the two without a word of welcome. He neither smiled nor grinned. The bulge beneath his eyes suggested he was a chronic insomniac. His face bore a calm, collected mien to it, which a poker player might have paid good money to possess.
Jorge had noticed his mother combing her hair along the ears with her fingers. She found the old man handsome, Jorge thought, as Conchita began to explain why they had come. The observation struck him as more amusing than alarming, not only due to the obvious thirty-five-year-or-so age difference, but mostly because his mother, who’d been widowed at twenty-two, had yet to be swept off her feet by anyone other than Jorge’s late father, Guillermo.
Beyond the huge door, black space thick with the odor of dust greeted them. Jorge could barely see more than a few inches beyond his own face. The old man plodded slowly toward the wall, and switched on the chandelier lights.
Immediately, a world trapped in the cauldron of a past life appeared. It was as if they had transported back in time, to an era too beautiful not to be noticed.
Along the east and west wings flanking the center aisle, two huge dolls shaped like seraphs stood, wordless in their white ceramic elegance. Six feathered arms covered their naked faces, torsos, and thighs. Their eyes appeared as though they were real – one aglow in cerise, the other a lighter shade of turquoise.
Warm above their heads were a thousand white and amber light bulbs, set in smaller circles ’round the chandelier. The floor, wrought in marble, bore the chiseled crest of the Peréz clan. Right down the middle of all these accoutrements of wealth, a staircase sculpted in dark wood rose up to a life-sized painting of Doña Mercedes Peréz herself.
Jorge freed himself from his mother’s restraining grip, and proceeded to inspect the ceramic angels. He recalled the tales told to him by his father, of angels and demons locked in swordfight.
RUMORS AMONG TOWNFOLK said that Guillermo, as a young man, was once a priest, having vowed, at the foot of the ruins of an old church, to offer his life in the service of God, in exchange for a few years of his mother’s life, as she had been struck by malaria.
His prayer was granted; his mother survived the ordeal. True to his word, shortly after his college commencement rites, and without the consent of his parents, Guillermo left for Manila.
Alas, his decision to join the priesthood broke his mother’s heart. Days later, alone and without her son by her side, she died. His father, weeks later, disappeared, and was never seen again. It was at the wake, where he performed the Mass for his mother, that Guillermo met Conchita.
The details of their tale of folly were all but lost, with the exception of the day Conchita went into childbirth.
This was in her sixth month, when, seconds away from a miscarriage, she sought Guillermo’s attention at the very church where he had become parish priest. At the foot of that altar, bloody and in pain, she gave birth to a stillborn infant.
Guillermo rushed Conchita to a nearby clinic, in the hope that whatever had killed his son would not claim her life as well. At the operating room, the doctors were caught off-guard; Conchita had been carrying twins. As Guillermo had wished, Conchita was spared, and a son was born to them.
It was shortly after this incident that Guillermo gave up his priestly robes, though he and Conchita chose not to wed. Old women said it was another slap in the face of the church. Guillermo blamed the church for the deaths of so many of his family.
In
his later years, Guillermo would become a chronic gambler, and poker would be his poison of choice. But early on, at least, life went forward smoothly enough for the couple at last – save for their son.
In the evenings, he seemed restless, and shaken by an unknown presence. One damp night in August, when Jorge was barely three months old, Conchita heard her son laughing in the dark, as though in conversation with another child. At the stroke of three in the morning, Conchita would be roused, either by crying or chuckling. Often, she would see Jorge reaching out toward empty air, as if for something or someone. His eyes said it all: it was a presence, one only Jorge could see.
She finally had the courage to tell Guillermo, who was sure it was an apparition of Jorge’s lost twin brother. To appease Jorge’s sense of his dead twin, Conchita began buying her son dolls. “Look, Jorge, this is your brother,” she would say, trying to turn his face back from the cold dark.
“WE WOULD LIKE to meet the dollmaker,” Conchita had told the old man, and so mother and son found themselves, eventually, in a craftsman’s workshop, thick with a scattering of wooden tables, chairs, cloth, and ceramic jars.
Strewn along nooks and crannies were unfinished dolls, lacking arms, heads, and torsos. Most hardly reached a foot and a half in height. On a larger, middle table lay strands of hair of varying lengths. By the windows, three old Singer sewing machines and huge rolls of yarn and thread weighed heavily on the wooden floorboards.
The whole room dripped with the musk of dust, webs, and old air. It appeared as though the room had not the pleasure of a fresh breeze or warm sunlight for close to a century. At a wave of the old man’s hand, however, three maidservants now unlatched the panes. A fresh gust tore the flimsy spider webs that lined the thin metal screens.
Conchita, as if drawn by an unseen hand, strolled past the tables and right into a glass encasement, standing top left of the dollmaker’s central table. Inside, the doll of Yen-Lo-Wang, Chinese god of death, stood, much the worse for wear. Time had forced the doll to bend over somewhat, as if it needed a cane to move around. Yet its face still bore a strong resemblance to its original form; the only thing missing was an eye.
Philippine Speculative Fiction, Volume 10 Page 17
