by Maggie Allen
There were two things Rela loved most when it came to being a delivery girl.
The first was the opportunity for travel, mostly travel out of the city and back without being constantly pursued by government-folk who thought she was "trouble." Government-folk believed northerners to be "trouble," and she was as northern as she could get, with her dark, sun-kissed skin and her drab, homespun clothing (though she was only half-northern, as her father was so very much a southerner). But she was a child. Even government-folk were lenient with children. She was also a delivery girl. There was some respect given to Rela's job, because delivery boys and girls took risks most soft city-dwellers would never take on a regular basis.
She went outside the city borders and survived. Every time.
Travel was less frightening to a young girl of eleven, and with Rela, well… Rela was fearless. She knew exactly what she wanted out of being a delivery girl, knew what she would get in return.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, her mother always said. Rela took those words to heart.
Which led to the second thing she loved as a delivery girl: her bright pink hoverbike, Iring.
Rela loved her hoverbike as much as she loved the feel of the wind whipping at her hair as she sped through the countryside. She loved it as much as she loved the taste of freshly-harvested mangosteen, a rarity even in Cebu City, with its lackluster farms and poor soil quality. Iring had taken Rela many places by her sixth month as a delivery girl, and everyone who'd seen the bright pink contraption would know which girl had come to give them the goods.
Her father called Iring a monstrosity, though he supposed a girl like Rela would like the color pink. ("And why not? It's a bright color that you can see from kilometers away," she'd told him.) Her mother had wrinkled her nose and commented on the smell, saying nothing about whether or not it was fitting for her daughter. Her mother did not like the contraption, either.
Neither parent, however, stopped her from using it to bring goods to villages outside Cebu City's borders. She loved them both for not judging her too harshly. She hated that she was not interested in growing up as they wanted her to, but that was how it was with Rela.
Aim for something great, her father always said. Rela also took those words to heart.
It was the thought of her parents that made her remember how far away she was from the city. It was the immediate thought of being far away and stranded that made her frown at one of the things she loved about her job.
Rela wiped her arm across her face, dragging the soot and grime and grease as she did. Sweat poured off her forehead, a combination of heat and hard work setting the downward turn of her brow. She grumbled and reached, stretched and mechanicked.
She kicked the hoverbike once, then twice for good measure.
"Silly thing," she muttered, tired.
As much as Rela loved her hoverbike, it had its sheer amount of wear and tear. Iring was a hand-me-down, passed to her from the last delivery girl who'd grown too old and too cautious to make the journey north. When Rela had been given the bike, the first thing she'd done was repair it. Iring was a volcanic gas-guzzler, and it took a great deal of time to finally get it running to Rela's tastes. She'd painted it pink as a sign of victory. She'd named it Iring for the way it purred like an overgrown, monstrous cat with a large toothy smile and a puffy coat of white.
Unfortunately, not even Rela's mechanicking skills could have prepared her for Iring's constant moaning and sputtering, groaning and keeling over. This had been the third time it had happened since she'd begun her journey north. She could only imagine her week's ride back.
She reached a hand between the hover plates, her other hand tapping the tool-belt that was always strapped to her waist. She tried to figure out what had gone wrong this time. She hoped it was fixable. Especially when she was stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Rela was farther north than her regular routes normally took her. Not many Cebu City-dwellers paid to have things delivered so far, especially when most of the southern city folk tended to stay in the south. The north had plenty of its own dangers, like poisonous sea-creatures, volcano-mining bandits, and erupting volcanoes. Most delivery girls and boys did not take on north-bound jobs for this reason.
The job was a favor to her mother, who had a friend living in a village on a large island near the coast of Masbate. It had been an urgent one and something her mother could only entrust to Rela.
If she'd known Iring was going to strand her in the middle of nowhere, though, Rela would have thought better of it. She kicked her hoverbike again and began tightening the bike's pistons. She was sure that was what had been giving her the problem.
Rela squinted as the sun peeked out of the ash-gray clouds. It was a little past noon, and she was thirsty. She took a small swig from her last bottle of water, too little to quench her thirst but too big a drain on her resources. She had a mind to turn back, but it was a long travel south, and her water would not last. Her chances were better if she found the village, and soon.
The engine whirred, and Rela stepped back to admire her handiwork. "Hala! Back in business!"
She wiped her hands clean and placed the tools back in her belt. With one final inspection and a gentle, loving kick, she got on Iring, pulled the pedal, and hovered toward the horizon.
The village was empty.
This annoyed Rela more than it surprised her. She'd left her hoverbike parked on the outskirts, thinking she had to be considerate of the people who got nervous around volcano-tech. Most people knew about volcano-tech, of course, and likely some knew how to operate the hoverbikes. But that didn't stop the more superstitious bunch from hurling curses at her and gesturing the sign of the cross whenever she passed by. Rela wasn't very religious, but seeing the villagers' scared faces made her uncomfortable.
She wasn't a demon. She wasn't evil. She was just a delivery girl.
She should have known that northern villagers tended to live a nomadic life, moving from one place to another in search of fertile, farmable land. While the south had plenty such land, the north contained promises of even better crops amidst the danger. Likely the villagers had scarpered off, leaving empty shells of houses in their wake.
Rela sniffed the air and touched the soil. She stood still for long moments, feeling the warm wind on her arms and the humid draft stuffing her nose. She sneezed once. Twice. Wiped the tears that leaked out of her eyes.
Farther into the village, she could see the deep-grooved tracks on the muddy road. Carabao, she thought. They dragged wagons and wagons of heavy loads. She noticed the tracks had been overused, as though the carabao made several trips back and forth to carry things up.
Up?
"There was a plank," Rela said aloud, touching the ground again, her hand rubbing at the long, rectangular recess that began right where the muddy tracks stopped. "Here. They were boarding a ship. They were in a hurry."
There were a few reasons for villages to empty out. There was the possibility that the land was not fertile enough, the soil too poor or the waters too poisonous. There was the possibility that the whole village was a settlement of escaped Cebu City convicts, forever hunted, forever moving away, away, away. There was the possibility that it was the time of the season where villagers moved on because it was the natural thing to do.
But the land was not infertile. As Rela continued to walk farther into the village, she noticed the farms behind the houses. She saw the trenches of rice paddies, the plots of rambutan trees mounted on higher, hillier terraces. She saw the way the area had been carefully cultivated, and she knew that no nomad or settler would have given up so quickly on the land. She knew the people who lived there were not criminals. Criminals did not have the time to grow trees.
There was something else that made the people leave. Scared them enough to abandon the ripe fruits that littered the ground.
She didn't think the reasons mattered now. The only problem she saw was that nobody was there for her to deliver to
.
"Matikason," she groaned. Deceitful. "How do I explain this to Nanay?"
Rela sighed and moved on. She plucked the unopened though overripe rambutans off the ground, pocketing a few. There would be no use in fiddling with the rice paddies, because she would have no time to sift through rice, let alone boil it.
She drew some comfort from the fact that she'd finally come across a functional water pump. Rela tasted the water—cold and fresh, soothing to a parched throat—and began to fill her water bottles one at a time.
It hadn't occurred to her that there was another reason the villagers had disappeared, why it looked as though everyone had been eager to leave their houses and their farms. Why, not even the carabao were left behind.
It hadn't occurred to her because she'd never been this far north. Whatever stories she'd heard about Northern Pinas she'd gotten from the old tigsugilon who visited the Cebu City taverns. He had many tales to recount, and often Rela had listened intently to them. Her favorite was always the tale of the ancient northerners and how they had stolen their god's treasures from the mountains. For that they had been punished, and most of the north had been destroyed as a result.
Memory of the tigsugilon's latest story brought Rela to attention, but it was the tremor in the ground that had shaken her out of her remembering. It was the heat and the smell of smoke and sulfur that made her jump away from the pump, that made her drop her third water bottle, its contents spilling onto the soil beneath her feet.
The ground quaked again, and she looked for the tell-tale signs of smoke. She saw it past the first mountain at the northeastern side of the village. It made her realize the exact reason why the villagers left.
An active volcano was about to erupt.
She ran.
At first she ran back to the rice paddies and the rambutan fruits. When she realized that she'd been running the opposite direction of her hoverbike, Rela turned herself around and ran back to the other side of the village.
The ground shook again, and she knew that the mountain before her would soon be covered by fire and flame and spewing rocks. Rela did not want to be within a kilometer of the village when the lava began to flow. Lava was a slow-moving fluid, but it would not be the lava that would ultimately kill her.
The sulfur would suffocate her first.
Rela found her hoverbike and revved the engine. Iring sputtered once, twice, and—Rela held her breath because she did not have the time to fix the darned pistons again—jumped off the ground.
"Go, go, go!" Rela coaxed. "Go!"
The hoverbike sped off, its loud rumble muted in comparison to the great, booming grumble of the mountain behind her. It was like listening to the sound of thunder, only in this case, the oncoming storm would not bring rain, wet and warm, clear and welcome. Volcanic rain would be hard and scorching hot, merciless red and deep-black ash.
Iring continued to speed through unpaved roads that Rela had just passed some half hour ago. The hoverbike did not stop, not with Rela controlling the helm.
Not until she saw the airship docking perilously by the craggy hillside.
When Rela turned six, she had asked for an airship as a birthday present. At least, that's what her father had told her years later. He'd laughed it off the first time she'd asked, but when it looked like she was completely serious, he'd recanted his amusement.
"You'd need a lot of people to help you fly one," her father had said. "More than the friends you have now."
"You and Nanay can help," she'd said. "And Paolo and Promil."
Paolo and Promil were two of the dogs her mother kept in the kennel. Her parents were dog-breeders and often sold their litters of pups to city-folk who wanted a dog of their own. Only Paolo and Promil remained in the household, which Rela was fine with.
"Paolo and Promil are too old," her father had said. "Besides, they don't really think like you and I do. They think like dogs, and dogs don't like airships."
That had not stopped Rela from wanting an airship the year after that and the year after that. She had continued to ask for one up until her mother decided enough was enough and dissuaded her from asking with one simple phrase.
"Build yourself one then."
That had opened up a whole new world of possibility. But Rela knew she was beaten. For the moment.
The sight of the airship was not something Rela had expected in an area that was about to give way to a natural disaster. She knew only two types of folk who neared places primed for volcanic eruption: government-sanctioned volcano chasers and non-government-sanctioned volcano chasers (the bandits her father had warned her about).
She hoped against hope that these were not bandits.
Rela looked behind her and saw the volcano's rising smoke. She gulped and looked up again at the airship that stood resolute and grand, the dark gray sky in turmoil behind it. It was then that she decided something.
She wanted to be on that ship.
With one last look behind her, she revved the engine again, and she took her hoverbike higher and higher, toward the airship's gangplank.
Towards a crew she desperately hoped weren't bandits.
She was wrong. It was known to happen.
"What in Maria Makiling are you doing on my ship?"
The woman had growled it. Rela was not so much threatened as impressed. She did not know how many female captains there were out in the Pinas, but she was sure it was only a handful of them. And by the way the woman had been scarred, Rela knew she wasn't one of the Cebu City folk, either.
Yep, Rela thought. Definitely bandits.
Which meant the ship wasn't the best place to be as a half-southerner.
"There's an exploding volcano," Rela said, pointing to the direction of the smoke.
The woman narrowed her eyes. "That is obvious."
"Then why are you still docked?"
The woman did not reply. Instead, she turned to the man next to her, who looked as equally shocked that a girl Rela's age would even find her way on board their ship.
She was sure, though, it wasn't her age the captain had taken issue with. It might have been the hoverbike she'd almost crashed onto the ship. It might also have been the way Rela had jumped off the hoverbike—while it was in the middle of docking—walked straight toward the woman, and asked to join her crew.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
"That isn't really a girl's business," the woman said. She turned away, rasping sharply at the man next to her. "I've got no time for this. Throw her—"
Rela didn't know where exactly the woman had planned to throw her, because it was then that everyone felt the airship move. No, not move. Rela knew the ground had been the one doing the moving. Because the ground was likely to crack around them, especially with a volcano nearby bursting to its limit.
The woman never finished the sentence. Her eyes focused on the horizon, toward the direction of the smoke and fire-spewing rocks. She'd forgotten there was a girl attempting to stow away on her ship.
Yet the man remembered, for he glanced her way.
"What do we do with this one, then?" the man said, jerking his head toward Rela.
The woman looked at Rela again and frowned. "How much time before we can get the thrusters repaired?"
The man shrugged, bit his lip. Rela didn't really understand much of what he'd said, but she did know that something needed fixing and that they were having trouble getting it done quickly enough.
Rela may have been young and small, but she did know how to fix things.
"I can do it," she said.
The man and woman turned to look at her. It was the woman who raised an eyebrow and spoke. "Do what?"
"I can fix it. I know how."
"So can many of my other crew members. What makes you special?"
What did make her special? She wasn't. Not really. She knew how to put things together, knew how to take them apart. She'd learned these things by watching and listening, by skulking in corners of repair shops an
d dallying in places where people chased her whenever she got caught.
She watched fingers at work with a focus that could rival the most meditative of priests. She paid attention to parts that made things move and work, and she pieced things together. She learned a lot just by keeping herself as small as possible, by using her eyes and observing, observing, observing.
She was small and useful, and she knew people always overlooked the small and useful.
"I can help," she said resolutely. Almost petulantly.
The woman remained silent, and below them, the ship moved again. This time, the shaking earth was followed by a distant rumble and a shout of warning. The man sprang to action, yelling and waving his arms to the crew below. The woman did the same, though she glanced back at Rela and tilted her head. "Kid, get yourself up towards the northeast thruster. Fix what's broken, and I might think about your request."
It was motivation enough, and Rela beamed at the woman, even as she worried what her next step would be.
She went straight for Iring, got on again, and flew toward the northeast corner of the ship.
Rela got to work.
At first it had been more difficult persuading the engineers to let her help. But it had become clear to them that perhaps she could, after all, and they gave way to her as she pressed her hands to the side of the cylindrical thruster to feel her way down to the broken parts.
Having small and steady fingers certainly helped. Having the brains to tell a piston from a bolt, a screw, and a cog clinched the deal. While Rela wasn't sure how the mechanics of airship thrust worked, the engineers around her were more than happy to give her some help as she started feeling the pieces with her hand.
Eventually, she found the problem. A stray piece had lodged itself into the cogs that turned and churned and allowed the volcanic gas to ignite into fire and flame. Taking it off required precision tools and small fingers. Without wasting any time, Rela used one hand to grab at her belt, releasing the small tongs. She reached toward the thrusters again.
