by Jaymee Goh
Here it comes.
“One would think I was due a bit more courtesy, all things considered. Tell me, brother: Have you visited Cynthia lately?”
Domingo grit his teeth at his daughter’s name. Daughter. He could hardly make sense of a world where he had a daughter, even more than a year after she was born. But then, he could hardly make sense of anything after Clarita’s death. It was why he’d left his daughter’s care to Dominador’s family. It was what was best for her, he told himself.
Hey, I don’t mind taking all the credit for the squiggly little grub. Allah knows I don’t see your breasts being masticated… But she belongs to both of us, Dom. Our greatest creation. Well, until we build her a city. Now why don’t you give us both a kiss, hm?
Domingo shook his head, and realized that his brother was standing beside him, looking down at the pieces on his carving bench.
“Of course you haven’t,” said his brother. It took Domingo some time to realize that Dominador was answering his own question. “You’ve been occupied with… other matters.”
Domingo felt his cheeks heat up. He quickly covered the unfinished figures with a threadbare cloth. They were all in various states of completion, pieces using a wide variety of woods and techniques, but they did share two things in common: the likeness of the model, and the fact that Domingo had given up on each of them. The last thing Domingo wanted was another heart-felt talk about how it was time to move on, how none of this would bring her back…
Dominador placed his hands gently under Domingo’s arms, lifting him to his feet.
“As I said…” The older Malong turned Domingo around. “I come bearing a gift.”
The smug self-satisfaction in his brother’s voice didn’t even register into Domingo’s mind, so enraptured was he by the smooth, almost black, tree trunk that two of Dominador’s men had just deposited on his workshop floor.
Domingo had been carving wood for as long as he could remember. Before he’d learned how to use wood to make men fly and soldiers fall, Domingo had been an accomplished carver, bringing out the beautiful figures that lay dormant beneath the grain.
Of course, some wood was so striking that it seemed sacrilegious to make it seem anything but itself. In his years of working wood, first as a carver, and then as an engineer, Domingo had seen timbers so exquisite—burled molave, spalted ipil, narra with quilting that would put a Buhi weaver to shame—that he had refused to work them. Some beauty was best kept free of human artifice.
But this… What Dominador had brought him was like no wood he had ever seen before. It was a deep, deep brown, the color of banalo at the bottom of a well, or kamagong at moonless midnight. What’s more, it had no fragrance to speak of, even when Domingo let his nose touch the bark. The wood was smooth too, smooth as marble, but retaining the warmth of wood. He could almost feel it breathing.
Domingo wrinkled his nose, then backed away. He circled the trunk warily, an enforced skepticism keeping his wonder at bay. He ran through a catalogue of specimens in his head, both foreign and local, but none of them fit, none of them were right.
“What…?”
“They call it Molaui. This one is out of a forest near Cebu, but it’s something of a legend across the islands, apparently. They’re rare, and as a rule, these trees are left alone because the wood is unusable.”
Domingo placed a palm against the Molaui, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling creeping up his arm. He dug a fingernail into the bark, felt it yield gently. “Seems otherwise to me.”
Dominador nodded toward the Molaui. “You see what this piece resembles of course?”
Domingo said nothing, taking two full steps back from the wood.
“Every piece of Molaui seems to have some inherent… form. The carvers say that if they seek to shape the wood in any other way—to make a fine chest, an elegant oar—it simply falls apart at the next new moon. There have been those who’ve attempted to bring out the native figure, of course, since the legend goes that only then will the wood retain its strength. The carvers I’ve met say that no one’s succeeded thus far. I told them that my brother had yet to try.”
Domingo backed up to his carving bench, his right hand reaching for one of his straight wedges. But the moment he touched the hilt, Dominador’s hand closed around his, holding it fast.
“Shall we say, three days for a working Newcomen scale model?”
Domingo looked at his brother, then at the Molaui trunk, unworked, possibly unworkable. Without even trying, his gaze traced the contours of a woman, strong, regal. It felt like she was looking back at him. It felt like…
Domingo swallowed. “You’ll have them in two.”
Dominador ruffled his youngest brother’s hair. “That’s my boy.”
~*~
The memory of reverence fades.
Existence itself is forgotten.
Then, unfurling, a sound.
Chk. Chk. Chk.
Metal biting into wood.
Chk. Chk. Chk.
A pressure. An itch.
A voice, susuring.
Adoring.
The watcher begins to wake.
~*~
June, 1762.
Domingo didn’t know how long she’d been standing in the doorway to his workshop, a disapproving frown on her face, the fingers of her right hand tapping a staccato rhythm on the left, on the brass of her artificial forearm. Domingo didn’t even know what day it was, or how many hours he’d slept.
But he knew that if Nur bint Jamal Hassim al Maguindanao was paying him a visit, he was in trouble.
“Wipe the spittle from your face, Tagalog.”
Domingo scowled, but complied. He rose to his feet, resisting the urge to massage the small of his back. It was a point of pride on his part not to show weakness in front of Nur. He did, however, check her for weapons as surreptitiously as he could. She wasn’t visibly armed, but Domingo knew that didn’t mean much—if there was one thing Domingo had learned in their time together, it was that when Nur wanted to hurt someone, she’d find a way.
If there was a second thing he’d learned, it was that Nur usually wanted to hurt Domingo. And that had been before he’d gotten her first love killed.
“Haven’t seen you since the funeral,” he said, hardly stumbling over the word this time. He was making progress. “Didn’t really expect to.”
“Believe me, this isn’t my idea.” Nur stepped into the cavern, boots making scuffing noises against the now even floor. Domingo had cleaned his workshop once he’d begun to do work for Dominador again, gotten rid of the bats, and even gone so far as to install some contraptions of his own devising that allowed him to do sophisticated work in this most primitive of locations.
Still, he didn’t expect Nur to be much impressed with what he’d done with the place. Personal issues aside, Nur was a teacher, a Çelebi, on the Fleet of Wisdom, the foremost institution of learning in Asia—if not the planet. Two years ago, Nur, Clarita, and Domingo had been three of their very best engineers. Now, Domingo had heard, Nur was being groomed to take over as head of the War Masters, the school devoted to making mechanical implements of war. If he and Clarita hadn’t left, Domingo supposed they’d be in similar positions in their own schools.
A lot of things would have been different if they hadn’t left… but even he, the least enthusiastic of the Malong clan, had been unable to ignore his father’s dying wish.
And what the old man had wished for was war.
It was not going well.
Now, the Malong forces were hiding in a chain of islands in the Gulf of Lingayen, north of Pangasinan. Dominador had assured everyone repeatedly that he was on the cusp of an important alliance that would turn the war around, but in the meantime, all they could do was lick their wounds, and pray that their location remained a secret from all but their few allies.
Nur spared a glance for some of Domingo’s quarter-scale models, a batch of the earlier modified Nucomen prototypes he’d produced for Domin
ador. If she was at all curious about the modifications he’d installed in each variant, from continuous track “wheels” to several attempts at flight-capable frames, she didn’t let that interest show on her face.
Domingo consciously avoided looking at the work-in-progress at the center of the workshop, the “personal piece” covered by a large water-resistant canvas.
“You’ve put me in something of a difficult situation,” Nur began, her eyes still on the prototypes.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Domingo said. He crossed to a corner of the room, trying to draw Nur’s attention with him.
“I guess not. But I’d hoped that, after Clarita’s death, we’d be through with each other.”
Now Domingo was worried. Nur was usually as indirect as a bullet fired straight down. She didn’t do preambles, or retrospection, or small talk. At least, not when she had a job to do. Which was clearly the case today… so what kind of job would give her pause?
Domingo felt the world sag from under him. “He’s sent you for my daughter.”
Only then did Nur meet his gaze. She gave him a grave nod.
Pierre-Henri Leschot was one of the most influential men in the Qudarat Sultanate, no mean feat for a Frenchman, even if he had converted to Islam. It helped that Pierre-Henri was an automata expert in Jolo, a city obsessed with the mechanical.
“I’ve just been to see your brother,” said Nur, “and I must say that Clarita’s letters understated his degree of… snake-ishness.”
“Cynthia is my daughter,” Domingo said. “Not his.”
“And my message was for your brother, not you,” said Nur. Her expression soured. “The Fleet would like the Malong patriarch to know that it supports Leschot’s claim, and that if I do not leave in possession of the child by the twelfth of the month, there may be a sudden and drastic decrease in the amount of ordinance you’ll be receiving from the Fleet.”
Clarita’s father had studied, not at the Fleet, but in the workshop of the famed Jacques Vaucanson. At Jolo, Pierre-Henri had made a fortune and a reputation replicating Vaucanson’s automata servants for the Sultan and his court. Pierre-Henri had used his position to encourage the Sultanate’s support of the Fleet of Wisdom, a favor which had not gone unnoticed amongst the Çelebi. Pierre-Henri’s influence on the affairs of the Fleet was substantial, if rarely used.
But now it seemed he was calling in every favor he was owed, in order to take custody of his granddaughter.
Domingo balled his hands into fists. “The twelfth… Two days away. How generous of him to give me time to say goodbye.”
“The twelfth was when I was supposed to arrive.” Nur adjusted her kombong fastidiously. “I… made better time than expected, that’s all.”
Domingo stared at her. “Nur. Thank—”
“Don’t. I’m not doing this for you.” Nur opened her mouth, then shut it again, brow furrowing. Finally, she said, “If all you use this time for is a drawn out farewell, you’re a weaker man than even I thought you were.”
Domingo gave her a hard look. Nur was an intimidating woman, even without her brass limb. She had the fit slimness of one who treated exercise as calibration and food as an unfortunate necessity, as well as the bearing of one who surveyed the works of nature and felt that, at best, it was a good start. But Domingo had grown so used to Nur’s harsh judgment and barbed tongue that the insult barely registered, in the face of the message that lay beneath.
She thought he was going to take Cynthia and run.
Domingo sat down heavily on a nearby stool. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
Nur’s jaw slackened.
“I’ve been too busy to attend to her, and if her grandfather is willing to go to these lengths, then I’m certain he’ll spare no expense in—”
“What happened to boldly proclaiming she was your daughter?” Incredulous scorn. “You’d throw out Clarita’s flesh and blood?”
“Too much of that blood has spilled here already!”
“Which is why I have given you a chance at escape!” Nur slammed her brass fist onto the work bench, which gave an audible crack as it buckled beneath the force of the blow.
“Escape? Don’t you see?” Domingo crossed his arms to keep them from shaking. “If I turn aside, if Leschot makes good on his threat, if we lose this war… Then she died for nothing!”
“She did die for nothing Tagalog—she died for you.” The words came out as a growl, heavy with rage and pain. “But when you stopped being a husband, you didn’t stop being a father!”
He didn’t have to listen to this. Brusquely, Domingo pushed past her.
Nur caught his shoulder with her good hand. “We’re not finish—” but before she could finish speaking, Domingo whirled, grabbed her by the opposite shoulder, and flung her away. Nur cursed as her back slammed against the canvas-covered piece.
“You…” Nur growled, but seemed unable to find a strong enough word. Instead, she twisted the wrist of her brass arm, and a long, razor-sharp blade emerged from the forefinger.
“Do it,” challenged Domingo. “She’s not here to stop us anymore.”
Domingo could see the muscles in Nur’s jaw working, but then she lowered her blade, though it remained unsheathed. Nur grabbed a handful of canvas and pulled herself to her feet. “She made her choice long ago. And unlike you, I won’t soil her memory even by erasing her biggest… her…”
Nur stopped as the canvas fell to the floor, uncovering its secret. The woman who had once sunk a Spanish galleon single-handedly began to shake.
Domingo had never before worked with a wood as strange, as… independent, as Molaui. He wasn’t sure how much credence to give the stories of sudden disintegration, but the wood did seem to have a preference, for lack of a better word, in how it was to be worked. When his carving and chipping served to highlight the contours of the woman he saw in the wood, then the Molaui was responsive under his tools, soft and yielding, allowing him nuances and subtleties he’d never before been able to achieve—each visible strand of hair on the carving’s head seemed to distinct, reacting in its own way to an unseen breeze.
Deviate from that form, however, and the Molaui suddenly and inexplicably became hard, or brittle, or began to excrete a malodorous resin that risked marring the entire work. After ruining his third compass saw and fifth gouge, Domingo had given up on attempting to carve clothes on the figure, resigned to a later use of glue and a lesser wood.
But her face… perhaps it was because the muted features of the implied figure, or because Domingo was that much more dogged, but with persistence, patience—and regular tool replacement—he’d coaxed and coerced the Molaui into a visage achingly familiar. It was still unfinished of course, but only in the sense that Domingo wasn’t convinced it was perfect. To the eyes of any other, to someone who knew her, it was simply Clarita Leschot Esteybar reborn.
Nur clutched her chest with her good hand, and made a faint, painful noise.
And then she cut the carving in half.
~*~
The voice has become a beacon.
A cord of birth.
Sustaining. Connecting.
Even as the sound shapes.
Chk. Chk. Chk.
As the sound creates.
Chk. Chk. Chk.
A dream of flight.
Chk. Chk.
Chk.
SHUNK
—separation release—
-identity-
-I-
~*~
Even much later, Domingo wasn’t sure who noticed it first. One moment he and Nur were at each other’s throats, shared pain and loss bringing them together and tearing them apart…
… and in the next, they were staring, speechless, at the upper torso of the severed carving. At the head. The face. Clarita’s face.
Looking.
Blinking.
The scream now, that came from Domingo, as he backpedaled into a shelf of wood samples, toppling codo-long pieces of polo-maria and lanete a
s he scrambled away from the… whatever it was.
“What have you done, Domingo?” Nur placed herself between him and the carving, which was now beginning to jerk and tremble on its own power—not just the upper torso, but its lower half as well. “What jinn has left its mark on you?”
“It’s just a carving,” Domingo hissed, insulted in spite of the situation. “I’m a man of science, not spirits!”
The carving’s lips trembled, and a low rumble issued from the solid wood where its throat would have been.
“You’ll excuse my skepticism here,” Nur said. The War Master held her blade up in a guard position. “That hardly looks like science to me.”
Not…
Both Nur and Domingo were startled when the sounds from the creature began to form into words.
“Does that sound like Tagalog to you?” Domingo asked.
Nur looked at him askance. “It’s clearly Tausug.”
Not… finished…
“‘Not… finished?’” Domingo quoted the creature.
Nur’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not speaking out loud. It’s in our minds.”
Your work… is not… finished… Man…
Nur’s eyebrows rose. “It’s speaking to you, apparently. Perhaps I should leave the two of you alone?”
Domingo hushed Nur distractedly as he moved forward. “It’s not Clarita,” he said, his voice husky with relief.
With the initial shock fading, and certain that he had not somehow done something unspeakable, Domingo found himself absolutely fascinated by what he was seeing. His mind rapidly proposed and rejected hypothesis after hypothesis as he slowly approached the upper torso.
“Have a care, Domingo.”
He motioned for Nur to keep her distance. Domingo knelt down beside the carving’s head, unable to keep a shiver from running up his spine as the unpainted wooden eyes moved, impossibly, up and right, tracking his movements.
He steeled himself, then grabbed the torso by the shoulders. He almost dropped it—the Molaui was warm to the touch, not quite flesh, but something quite other than dead organic matter. He set it down carefully on the stump of its waist, and knelt down before it so that he and the carving were roughly eye to eye.