The Sea Is Ours

by Jaymee Goh

  Poison.

  ~*~

  The Amihan felt peaceful, so much so that Caliso had not realized she was awake until she remembered the events that transpired before.

  She tried to sit up, but found that she was too weak to do so.

  “What…”

  She heard someone move beside her, felt the cool touch of a hand on her forehead. “Fever, but it will pass.”

  Dato.

  “What…” she repeated again.

  Her first mate helped her up to a sitting position, and she grimaced when he lifted a cup of warm ginger-water to her mouth. Once she finished drinking, he sat back down. He leaned forward, shaking his head. “Jellyfish. The stupid things got to your suit. You must have missed the holes on your magma suit from your last inspection.”

  “I…I don’t think that—” And then she remembered. The slip and fall, the way her hands flailed, scraping upon rock in the hope of getting hold of something, anything… “I slipped. Must have…torn my sleeve struggling.”

  “Nasty slip, that,” Dato said, rubbing his nose and leaning back. “Esta and the Prinsesa told me the whole story. You got lucky. Esta recognized the symptoms right away. She’d seen people succumb to jellyfish stings quickly, but you must have had little enough dose that we managed to stop the poison from spreading.”

  “How?” Caliso had had no poison expert on the ship. There had been no reason to keep one. Except now.

  He shrugged. “The Prinsesa asked the passengers for aid. One of them happened to be an expert.”

  “In poison?”

  “In jellyfish.”

  The two lapsed into silence. Dato shifted. “We’re hovering above the Hills now. Gogg’s seeing to the landing. You and Esta managed to siphon enough gases to stop the volcano from sinking the coast. Well, long enough for us to refuel, that is. Likely the rest of the land in that part will sink to give way to a rising volcano. But that doesn’t seem to matter now. The Prinsesa wants a word with you.”

  She inclined her head. “Not to deliver thanks, I hope?”

  “Perhaps that. Perhaps more.” Dato stood. “I better check on the engines, just to be sure.” He headed to the door, stopped mid-exit, turned around. “Cali?”

  She nodded, urging him to speak.

  “No risk is worth more than your life. Never do that again.”

  Caliso watched him go, surprised at his words. Of all her crew members, she had not expected Dato to be the one to tell her to leave Mixa in the water. She sighed onto her pillow, her eyes roving the captain’s room in order to stay awake.

  The New Manila princess entered soon after Dato left. She had changed back to her baro’t saya, her hair re-braided into one side, neat and clean. She had looked almost like the young woman who had traipsed in near Bulkang Mayon to proffer a deal. Smooth-skinned and pale, unblemished by nature. Almost.

  Mixa caught Caliso’s gaze upon her marked face and arms, upon the tattoo of the carabao, which had been boiled out of existence. The princess forced a smile to her face. “Dato says you call them trophies.” She placed a hand reflexively on a peeling patch of skin on her upper arm and winced. “Your medic could only do so much to soften the blow, but I suppose there was still going to be some pain.”

  “The burns are a sign of respect,” Caliso said. “The more unevenly colored your skin, the more telling your life.”

  “Then I will bear it proudly,” Mixa said. She remained standing by the doorway. Some moments of silence ensued, then, “Why?”

  The rest of the question was easy to guess. Caliso looked at Mixa, at the princess worth a hefty Cebuano ransom. Why indeed? Mixa had only been on the Amihan for less than a day, and yet she stood there as casually as though she’d been part of the crew for years.

  She belonged on the Amihan.

  Easy now, think it through, her inner voice said. But a captain did not have room for doubt. She did not answer Mixa’s question. Instead, “I have a proposal for you.”

  Mixa nodded, walking inside, her hands resting upon the back of a high chair.

  “You left out a few things about your work on your brother’s ship.”

  “Sadly yes,” Mixa admitted. “It is the curse of being the only daughter of a royal line. I am meant to be wed, not to learn tricks. Father wanted me to be aware of volcanoes, yes, but I did so in the safety of Kuya Raksan’s cabins. I spent most of my time with the strategists and engineers. I most near lived in the boiler rooms where I heard stories of how kuya’s crew siphoned gases from exploding mountains. I helped with some of the designs myself. But that does not seem terribly important anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “As you can see,” the princess crooked half her mouth in a small smile. “I’ve left Kuya Raksan’s care. I chose to help the settlers rebuild, to start a life beyond the one Cebu City offered northerners. My tatay and kuyas all believe that to beat the Cebuanos, one must retain the power of the volcanoes. It is why the Kalibutan chases eruptions so doggedly across the north. One day, they will amass the power they want. Perhaps they might even regain their rightful place as monarchs.”

  “But you don’t believe this?”

  The New Manila princess shrugged. “I think they forget how many people there are still trying to make ends meet. Not everyone lives in cities and airships. The Legazpi settlers have taught me that.” Mixa removed her hands from the chair and sat. “They’re back on the Hills now, and I’ve already said my goodbyes. So you can collect your fee any which way you want.”

  Caliso raised an eyebrow. Mixa must have known what she’d planned to do all along. “Did Dato tell you?”

  “No,” Mixa said. “But it was easy enough to guess. Everyone knows how much it costs to harbor northern royalty. It would be stupid not to hand me over. That was your proposal, wasn’t it?”

  It had seemed so long since Caliso’s last good laugh. The sound had been hoarse, a result from the poison that had just been recently purged out of her system. But she laughed, much to Mixa’s consternation. When she finally stopped, she wiped her tears with her thin covering.

  “I’m so glad you find this amusing,” Mixa said drily.

  “I do,” Caliso said. She smiled at the woman. “I’m here to offer you a job.”

  The sentence seemed to jar Mixa, to the point where she almost fell over backward on the chair. She stopped herself by touching the bedside table, and stared. “But I—you’re not—what?”

  “Your brother’s loss is my gain.” Her body still throbbed, but she knew the pain would go away eventually. She supposed she’d come out lucky in that regard. Normally, the only way to get rid of jellyfish poison was a quick slice of the infected body part. She could have lost an arm, but thanks to Mixa’s rapport with the settlers, she didn’t. “I could use a quick study like you, and I meant what I said about Gogg wanting to know about this filtering system you have. Work with me.”

  Mixa shook her head. “I…no. My work is for the settlers.”

  “And how do you figure you can go about helping them? Did you plan to forever risk your well-being by hitchhiking to every volcanized region as soon as an explosion hits? We’d get there faster, and you have seen how quickly we can mobilize. Take the job, Prinsesa.”

  “Mixa,” she said, low and timid, as though she’d said it for the first time. “If you’re going to be my superior, you had best call me Mixa.”

  Caliso grinned. “Welcome aboard, Mixa.”

  The two shared a smile, and the New Manila princess stood to leave. She reached the door and turned when she heard Caliso chuckle. To answer her questioning gaze, Caliso’s grin widened. “Dato is going to kick himself sore. He’s wanted to change my mind this whole time, and I told him it would be as futile as moving a mountain.”

  The young woman seemed to understand the joke, and she grinned, too. “Mountains move all the time in the Pinas. You just have to know where to look.”

  Ordained

  L.L. Hill

  Between a creased a
nd callused thumb and forefinger, Preecha held the butterfly thorax. Three times he turned the legs in a full circle, hearing the gears grind the spring taut. With palms flat, he held his arms straight out at eye level. Stretched wings and poised legs faced the verdant green clad hills across the river. With a gentle brush of a thumb on a lever, the butterfly sprang away. From the base of his tongue, a solemn mantra followed the iridescent blue and green spotted insect into the retreating bosom of dawn.

  Rapid wing flaps lifted the creature above the hills that stepped through mist above the brown slug of the Mekong. Energy run down spread wings spun in a gentle, glittering glide back to a perch on a polished ball of Pong Kham with other insects. Under the elephant head sized clear crystal sea of frozen vegetation, the black and red pits of another rock were magnified in their sealed sanctuary.

  From his lotus on a bare grey rock set in a grassy meadow on a bluff over the river, Preecha selected a dragonfly from the orb and wound it. With wings clear, brown and ochre, it climbed furiously before sweeping down over his ochre robes to alight on the crystal.

  An imperious toot preceded a small sailing paddle wheeler that thrashed the brown to white froth as it rounded a river bend. Not dropped, the sail billowed backwards in five cream waves. Pennants of yellow and blue marched in the rigging. Humid air stirred from lethargy by the impatient vigor entwined the smells of fruit orchards, forest and muddy water.

  A spread legged man stood at the bow dressed in a European black suit under a tan pith helmet. Behind him, two attendants, also in stiff thick clothes, stumbled as the boat bumped into a short wooden pier.

  Hands behind his back under short tails, the man stepped past scurrying crew onto the wharf and strode up on it. At the dark red patch in the rest trail leading up the steep embankment, he stopped and turned to his minions who scrambled off the boat and dashed past carrying a small wood bridge that they laid at their master’s feet. A colorfully-clad woman hawking dried bark, roots and leaves from a canvas tarp next to the trail weied deeply and was ignored.

  The trail disappeared into the foliage of a bamboo grove as did the black garbed man and his servants. As if alarmed by his energy, a gap appeared as the leafage parted above his passage.

  Preecha deftly lifted the yellow and white butterfly from the frozen ocean and wound it for release to a clear sky. From the calluses raised during its making, the insect launched. Bright wings batted and flipped to a sweeping spiral glide over his shaved pate to dance stiff -legged on the hard sea.

  A plaintive hum was left to step away on the green peaks of the giant staircase across the river as Preecha ended his morning ritual in meditation. Still cool damp air filled his lungs, slowly, each air molecule rejoicing to enter his sponges and meet with his blood.

  Behind closed lids, energy spun and lifted him high above the brown artery that pulsed below. In his transcendental meditation, the worlds of myth and reality blended into one. Sinuous silver green nagas coiled and roiled near the Siam shore. Hanuman sat near the washed away chedi foundation, pale hands applauding another day; dog’s face cheering, brown tail curled around his hairy rump. Brass greaves sparkling, a kinaree flew a low patrol on the shore line, blue wings alternating a beat and glide, gold eyes inspecting everything.

  “Preecha.”

  In his name was command and condemnation. Breath bucked out of him in surprise. Jarred by the annoyance, his scant arm hair rose from their roots and prickles ran up his neck to the base of his bare head. Features impassive, he turned to regard the speaker.

  Globules of sweat dripped from beneath the spiked black hair of the man in the tailored black suit as he stood with his pith helmet off. Irritated by Preecha’s obvious indifference to the effort made to be present on the Mekong, Prasert exerted himself to maintain self-control and gain the cooperation of his brother. Behind him stood two acolytes who had abandoned their board game with pale and dark chips of wood at the trail junction and stood in flat faced silence.

  “Prasert. Older brother. How are mother and sister?”

  Prasert wiped sweat with one hand from his brow and flicked the drops away from long nails at the end of his pale fingers. In light tunics and short pants, the acolytes stood straighter and thinned their lips in disapproval. Prasert’s thick lips split in a white toothed grin.

  “Little brother, forgive the Western manners that our mother wished me to learn in Paris, and the medical training that our father wished me to protect the Thai people with. You have perhaps a drink of water for weary travelers?”

  The acolytes waited for Preecha to give assent. The scent worn by Prasert began to overpower the musty odor of damp, decaying plant matter that coated the earth under the trees that encircled the meadow. A large black fly buzzed between the quietly standing men, and then flew to Prasert. Like a working saw it flew in and out around his head until an angry fist slapped it.

  Morning heat radiated up from the bare blackened rock on which he stood with toes spread. In the afternoon, it would be too hot to walk on the weather-sculpted rocks and Preecha would retreat to study in his hermit’s cave. Prasert would be gone by then. With a finger’s twitch, one man turned stiffly away to a trail that ran beside a trickling brook and climbed higher into the clearing.

  Prasert followed, his leather soled shoes slipping and clicking. With eyes straight ahead, Preecha walked the trail, weighing and feeling each step. Yellow and green grass stems swayed and swirled as he passed. One man was left as a figurative gatekeeper to this holy site. At a clear pool, fed by a welling spring and a tumbling waterfall, Prasert accepted the ladle of water.

  Now in the shade of the foliage, relaxed after the exertion of his climb, near pool water that had quenched his thirst, Prasert’s brown eyes gleamed at the rotating watermill. Held in a wood and metal brace, a hollow teak orb spun in the current that flowed from the waterfall. Inside the open frame, a hollow bamboo ball danced on the bubbling resurgence. Mist hovered over the rippling water, embracing the large green leaves that overhung the pool to escape dissipation by the sun.

  Prasert started and dropped the bamboo scoop as his servant pair staggered up to the pool. They weied first and deeply to Preecha before doing so to Prasert. On their knees they pleaded with nearly dry skin and bowed heads to drink. Preecha nodded to his acolyte and turned away. Cold water splashed on his ankles.

  Preecha turned off onto a faint side trail, used only by him. Between his toes squeezed mud, pebbles and grass. Behind him, Prasert stumbled and muttered about mud on his shoes.

  The trail ended in a clearing of bare rock. Wrapped in ochre, the light brown veins and sinews of a gargantuan Bodhi tree towered over to footprints left by the Lord Buddha when he had stopped to admire the giant staircase across the river. Preecha knelt and prayed before the sacred relics. Each mud-caked indentation left would have cradled his lean and graceful body.

  Prasert shuffled impatiently. “What is this?” he cracked like resin popping in burning pine.

  “Can you see nothing?”

  “I can see an ordained tree, one that has stood watch for years over two hollows that would be safe in anonymity if you hadn’t followed your curiosity up from the river to worship its spirits.”

  Hand-sized wasps burred up and settled on spots ringed in black pebbles around the footprint. Each cleaned a long, coiled drill with yellow and black front legs. Then the amber drills unwound and began to bore through the rock. First one way, building momentum with speed then changing direction, until all the potential energy had been used. A novice scrambled around, winding the airborne digging crew. With meticulous precision, not one of the painted bamboo legs touched the pebble ring. One rectangular hole was nearly ready, the wasp miners drilling at their maximum reach and snapping the final pieces free.

  Preecha wondered if Prasert was right: did he do this to bring honor to himself, or to the Lord Buddha? When he saw Prasert’s smug smile, he knew that his left hand had been flexing spread fingers as he always had when a boy and faced wi
th a moral conundrum.

  Surely the skin that had sloughed off of the revered Buddha’s feet needed to be saved, as he had very slowly been doing each morning while the novice worked the wasps around him. Each curl had been reverently placed in a brass tube and taken to his cave for safekeeping. Preecha knelt and cleaned the hole of debris before he slipped a bumpy stone out of a waist pouch and placed it in the center of the freshly finished excavation.

  Prasert snorted loudly, a sound that he’d always made that combined a boar’s snort with a bull’s bellow. He knew that Preecha had reached a point of rationalization with himself.

  “I know why I’m here, but why are you here?” Preecha asked in a slow, low voice.

  “Since father died, Mother asked me to speak with you. With one son a doctor at the Rattanokosin court of his Majesty King Rama V, she wished to have her other son there as a monk, or as a courtier.” Prasert’s eyes slid to the side, and looked at the garlands on the tree behind Preecha’s bare shoulder.

  “A messenger would’ve been appropriate as well. Surely you’re needed at court.” Preecha resigned himself to having the truth about Prasert’s needs and wants evaded by inspecting the work of the wasps. Each hole was filled with a hundred others.

  “Your skills and knowledge of Issan herbs and healing has come to the Palace ears. The Abbott wishes you to teach skills to novices.” With a mulish pout of resentment at almost telling the truth while excluding a fair segment of it, Prasert glared at his calm sibling.

  Preecha sighed and walked away. It would be too much to ask Prasert or his mother to ever tell a complete truth. They appeared to only attain a state of near enlightenment if part of the truth was withheld or warped in some way.

  A second novice rubbed a stele that a small crew of wasps also sanded and polished. Prasert barely paused to inspect the stone marker, concentrating solely on Preecha. He realized that he needed a stronger argument to make a convincing effort to recruit Preecha. Clearly, his younger brother was near entrenched in his emotional citadel. On the hillside ahead, the top of a cave mouth peeked above the roof of the novices hut.