The Sea Is Ours

by Jaymee Goh

“What are you?”

  Not… finished…

  “What are you?”

  The eyes blinked. Shifted.

  Alive. Aware.

  The torso began to tremble again, and Domingo could hear the wood grinding as different sections strove to move in different directions.

  Trapped. Trapped. Tr… ap…

  The voice in Domingo’s head began to fragment, and he winced as a wave of panic and horror washed over him. Behind him, he heard Nur curse.

  “Calm down! Calm down!” He laid a hand against the quivering wood again. “I’m a… a carpenter. I can help you. We can help you.”

  Nur shook her head emphatically as Domingo turned to her. “Oh no, Tagalog. I came here on a mission.”

  “One you never had any intention of fulfilling,” Domingo said, his mind already busy with plans. “Don’t you see? Something like this could change everything. Change…” He stopped, remembering one thing he hadn’t taken into account.

  “We can help you,” he addressed the creature. “But without your help in return, all of us here are doomed, and in short order.”

  The answer came in a term that Domingo was only vageuly familiar with.

  Anito, the creature repeated. We are… were… anito.

  “What does that mean?” asked Nur, leaning down next to Domingo.

  “A guardian,” Domingo said, starting to smile. “One who once watched over those who were born in these islands. And with our help…”

  Clarita’s eyes stared into his, aware but unblinking.

  We will watch over you anew.

  ~*~

  “Let’s build a city.”

  “You were serious about that?”

  “I’m always serious when it comes to building.”

  “But… why a city?”

  “I miss having a home. A place where I belong.”

  “You belong—”

  “I don’t. You don’t either, not really, whatever your brother says. But we’re builders, Dom. If we want something that isn’t there, we make it.”

  ~*~

  August, 1762.

  “Wings?”

  From her seat on the display pedestal, the anito watched with interest as Nur and Domingo reacted to her request. In the days since the Carpenter had brought her to full wakefulness, she had begun to relearn the complexities of human faces. Domingo seemed troubled, Nur merely puzzled. Little Cynthia, from her traditional position slung across Domingo’s chest, merely babbled.

  “They are part of my… natural form,” the anito answered in halting Tagalog. It had been easy enough to learn the common languages of this era, but it had taken a long time to convince the two humans to go to the effort of giving her an audible voice.

  The project, like much of her new body, had been undertaken with a mixture of sound theory and complete guesswork. They’d hollowed out much of the wood that was host to her consciousness, and used the pieces to create elaborate mechanisms, mechanisms that took advantage of the fact that she was able to move individual pieces of the Molaui, with varying degrees of force and agility. The exact nature of the movement varied: for example, she’d been unable to bend her fingers at all until proper joints had been installed, but she was able to blink and rotate her eyes as though she were still a being of flesh and bone.

  Nur and Domingo had finally given her a voice through a combination of artifice and the anito’s control of the Molaui, tubes and elastics complemented by an approximation of a bellows constructed from a continuous shaving of the host wood, which the anito was able to inflate and deflate at will. The human pair argued for days over how to replicate the function of a tongue, but the solution proved impossibly simple: once the Carpenter had hollowed out the anito’s mouth, and carved a tongue distinct from the rest of the mouth, the anito found that she could move it naturally, as if a muscle. She had resisted the urge to test the tongue out to its fullest extent—the human engineers, as they referred to themselves, had been required to make a great many alterations to their world view already—but her wings were non-negotiable.

  “First this self-segmentation business,” Nur said, running a hand across her brow, “and now wings. You’re sure you’re not just taking this opportunity to add a few improvements…”

  Nur trailed off, then tapped a finger against her brass forearm. “We really do need to call you something, anito.”

  “My memory of the past is still… fragmented,” the anito replied. “But I do know that names are important. Whether I recall what I was once called, or settle on another, it must be something that is… natural.”

  “Nothing about any of this is natural,” Nur replied, before feeding Cynthia some lugaw from a pewter pap boat. “What do you think, Tagalog? Maybe repurpose one of the Auto-birds?”

  The Carpenter seemed distracted. “Possible, if the rotation of the…” He stopped, then shook his head once, authoritatively. “No. Never.”

  “What’s gotten into you now?” Nur said.

  “Put on an Auto-bird. On, on…” he gestured toward the anito’s face. The anito had noticed that the Carpenter rarely looked her in the eye any more. “She died, wearing that machine.”

  The anito now knew that there was only one person Domingo referred to in that tone of voice. The human woman whose face she now wore.

  Nur sighed, and massaged the seam where brass met flesh. “It wasn’t the fault of the Auto-bird.”

  “You know that’s not the point.”

  “For someone who went to great lengths to create a replica of his wife,” Nur began, irritation seeping into her tone, “you’ve suddenly become damn allergic to anything that reminds you of her.”

  Domingo grit his teeth and slid his gaze to some unseen horizon, something the Carpenter did when he was being irrationally stubborn. It was something the anito had become familiar with.

  This time though, after a deep breath, Domingo looked straight at her. The pain behind his eyes was muted, but still evident, and something about it made the anito distinctly uncomfortable.

  “I’ll give you your wings,” he said. “In return, you’ll let me erase your face.”

  The workshop was suddenly filled with the sound of wood on wood, the sound of cogs and gears echoing inside the anito’s hollowed out wooden body as she rose to her full height. She wasn’t sure what expression she was making with her borrowed face, but it was enough to make Domingo take a step back.

  “You presume too—” the anito began, but a voice from outside the workshop unified everyone within it in a common panic.

  “You’d better be in there, bunso,” said Dominador Malong. The sound of a group of people traversing the cavern floor began to make its way into the workshop. “You and your little Moro friend.”

  Without even exchanging looks, the anito and the two humans sprung into action. Domingo quickly closed the anito’s torso plate, which they’d had open for maintenance. The anito quickly took a standing position atop the pedestal, resuming the repose of the Carpenter’s original carving. Still, to play it safe, Nur threw an opaque canvas over the anito’s form, as some of their alterations to the wood would become immediately apparent from up close.

  Dominador Malong seldom came down to the workshop, but she’d heard enough from beneath her flimsy camouflage to agree with Domingo’s decision to keep her existence a secret, at least until she had been fully restored. From what she’d gathered from Dominador’s visits, the war with the occupiers was not going well, and attempts to recreate the machines of other foreigners had been too costly. Each visit had seen the Carpenter’s brother grow increasingly more agitated and impatient with Domingo’s failure to find a cheaper way to replicate these Newcomen.

  But today, Dominador had not arrived to speak to Domingo.

  “You’re coming with us, Moro,” said Dominador.

  The anito heard the sound of a struggle, and then that of a human crashing into one of the carving benches. Most likely someone who had tried to lay hands on Nur.


  “You’ll need more men, Dominador,” said Nur.

  “Are you insane?” Domingo’s voice was high with outrage. “You’re attacking a Çelebi of the Fleet of Wisdom!”

  “Am I?” Domindaor’s own voice was trembling with anger. “Ah yes, the same Fleet that, according to your friend here, sent word that they would no longer require me to send Pierre-Henri Leschot his granddaughter, as long as she was here to ‘monitor’ you. So imagine my surprise when I received a message from that very same Fleet this morning, telling me that they considered my refusal to return the child and my illegal detention of their Çelebi to be an act of aggression, and further—”

  “Brother,” Domingo began, but Dominador cut him off viciously.

  “—and further, giving me an ultimatum, that if I do not send this child back with their messenger, immediately, the Fleet will give us no aid against the Spanish attack.”

  “Wait, slow down,” said Domingo.

  “What atta—” Nur began to ask, before a loud explosion shook the cavern, sending bits of rock and other debris raining down.

  Dominador cursed loudly. “You three, grab the Moro. Domingo, bring your daughter.”

  “You can’t seriously believe,” Domingo said, in a low, dangerous voice. “That I’m going to bring my daughter out into a fire fight.”

  “You can’t seriously believe I won’t do it myself if I have… oh, by the Spanish God,” Dominador said, as the sound of breaking wood heralded the failure of more of his men. Then the anito heard a strange sound, metal on metal. Cynthia began to wail. “Put down the blade, Nur, or I’ll shoot my brother where he stands.”

  A beat of silence. “Go ahead,” whispered Nur. “Never cared for him anyway.”

  “Don’t insult my intelligence,” replied Dominador. “And don’t take another step. Blade down, I said! This is bigger than you, this is bigger than family. Your mutual stupidity has come at the worst possible time. Yesterday, I received confirmation that my negotiations have borne fruit—the British should be knocking on Manila’s doors in a month. Don’t you see? We can bring about the end of Spanish rule! But if we die here, then the Cause dies with us. And if you don’t think I’d shoot anyone, even my brother, to keep that from happening y—”

  But by then the anito had heard enough. With a lurch, she threw off the canvas, and, as Dominador’s eyes widened in horror, she relieved him of his strange weapon, then hurled him into the cavern wall.

  The anito turned quickly toward Nur, but the woman had already dealt with her two opponents, and was busy claiming their weapons for herself. “Cat’s out of the bag,” she said. “If Leschot has given the Spaniards the location of your little secret base, now’s the time to take Cynthia and run.”

  “You may have another option,” said the anito. She marched purposefully toward Dominador, who cowered away from her as if he saw his death in her wooden eyes.

  “How many humans are in the occupier’s force?”

  “Wh-wha-wha…”

  The anito let her wooden tongue flick out.

  “How. Many. Invaders.”

  “Two… three ships… a-around four… four hundred men each…”

  If they were on ships, the number of men didn’t matter. The anito turned to the Carpenter.

  “Give me my wings.”

  This time, his condition was different.

  “Only if I come with you.”

  ~*~

  “A city.”

  “A city. Our city.”

  “And hers.”

  “And the squiggly grub’s too.”

  “Seems irrational to think about the future when we’re in the middle of a war.”

  “Dom. The future’s the only thing worth going to war for.”

  ~*~

  “On your left.”

  “I have sharper eyes than you, Carpenter. I see them.”

  Anxious as he was over his first flight—his first battle—in over a year, and for the safety of Cynthia and Nur in the workshop far below them, Domingo couldn’t help but marvel at the grace with which the anito operated the Auto-Bird. The anito’s demand that she be able to fly with only her upper torso had cost them precious minutes as Nur jury-rigged the controls to allow solely for hand control, but after a short time acclimatizing herself to the controls, the anito flew better than Domingo ever had. Even better than Clarita had, he was forced to admit.

  When he’d been a child, Domingo had heard stories of the manananggal, of the sort to frighten children—how they were demons that took the form of women, whose torsos flew off at night to devour infants with their monstrous tongues. He wondered how anyone could mistake the anito for a monster. He wondered what had happened, to cause them to inhabit the Molaui.

  “Are you sure these weapons will work?” The anito pointed one of Nur’s prototype rockets worryingly close to her face. Domingo resisted the urge to put some distance between them.

  “If you want to suggest otherwise to Nur, go ahead,” Domingo said. “As for me… there are no guarantees. They haven’t been properly field tested yet, but that’s why we won’t fire them until we’re right on top of our targets. Whatever problems there may be in the propulsion, each is full of old, dependable, gunpowder. Won’t take much to set them off.”

  “You’ll need to explain this ‘powder’ magic to me in more detail.”

  Domingo heard a chorus of cries rise up from the ships. “All you need to know is that ‘powder magic’ is about to shoot twenty-four pound iron balls at us right about… now.”

  Domingo and the anito veered away from each other as they dodged the canon shot, Domingo with a jerking zig-zag, and the anito with an aerial dance that would put eagles to shame. Slowly, but steadily, a smile grew on the anito’s face, Clarita’s face, and Domingo had to bite his lip hard.

  Will you please loosen up? We’re flying, Dom! We’re flying!

  “Quickly, while they’re re-loading,” he said, his voice rough. “I’ll take the leftmost and you take the rightmost.”

  “Wait…”

  “We don’t have time!”

  “Some of the men on those ships look like our people, Carpenter. Brown people.”

  For the first time, Domingo heard suspicion in the anito’s tone. He chose his next words carefully, as Dominador would. “Most of their army is recruited here on the islands. Not all of us wish to be free of the leash, anito. That is their choice. But if they seek to keep the rest of us collared, they are unworthy of mercy.”

  “I’m not sure a warrior’s words suit you, Carpenter.”

  “I’m—”

  But the anito was already diving down toward her target, a strange cry issuing forth from her wooden lips. Domingo wondered how much panic her appearance would cause amongst the men, but he didn’t have the time to watch. He could see that the crew of the ship he’d selected was already well into their reloading regimen. He’d have to survive another barrage before he was close enough to light his rocket.

  Stop worrying so much. I’m here. We’ll watch out for each other.

  For the first time in a year, those remembered words didn’t feel like a broken promise. Domingo cinched the straps of his Auto-Bird and swooped down at the Spanish ship with uncharacteristic abandon. Like the other two the Spanish had deployed against the Malong forces, it was a Rayo-class ship-of-the-line, with eighty guns total, including several of the modified obús that allowed the Spanish to bombard the Malong’s island bases from long range. The ships were still far enough away that if they were sunk, the Spanish and their allies would be unable to continue toward the islands—at least not and be in any shape to fight. This was the time to strike.

  The second barrage of fire shot toward Domingo just as he’d halved the distance between him and the ship. This close, the gap of time between the canon blasts and the arrival of the cannon balls was much shorter, so instead of zig-zagging, he retracted the Auto-Bird’s wings and allowed himself to drop straight down. It was a maneuver that could only be done once
before a wily foe took measures to vary the angles of their canons—but once was all he needed. As the final cannon ball soared over his head, Domingo unfurled the Auto-Bird’s wings, and made his final approach.

  He was within range of normal firearms now, but barring a very lucky—or unlucky—shot, he could take a hit and still continue with his mission. With one hand he took a rocket from its holster—one of two each that he and the anito had taken—and with the other, carefully, took a sulfur stick from a pouch. As he flew over the deck of the ship, Domingo lit the stick, then the fuse, and dropped the rocket straight down.

  Domingo had already moved his attention to the middle ship when the explosion that ripped through his target sent him spiraling out of control. Desperately, he retracted his wings once more, waiting for the shockwave from the blast to wash over him before he again unfolded the delicate membranes. He’d expected Nur’s weapons to be effective… but not quite that effective. If the anito and her wooden body were anywhere near a rocket when it went off…

  As soon as he’d regained his equilibrium, Domingo looked toward the rightmost ship. Like his own target, it was aflame and sinking fast, but he saw no sign of the anito.

  Stop worrying so much.

  Domingo didn’t have time to anyway. With two ships down, the crew of the final ship was taking no chances, varying their rate and angle of fire, and mixing cannonade and musket shots. Domingo managed to duck and weave his way to within striking distance when a bullet hit him in the hip—and more importantly, passed through the pouch containing his sulfur sticks, igniting them instantaneously. Cursing, he managed to fling the pouch into the sea—just as a cannonball struck his left wing.

  Domingo landed hard on the deck of the ship, the frame of his Auto-Bird bearing the brunt of the impact, but also sending sharp pieces and splinters of wood into his flesh. He coughed blood, his ears ringing, struggling to free himself from the remains of the machine before the Spanish forces could finish him off. But his head was spinning, and his body didn’t seem inclined to obey his instructions. He shook his head, trying to clear it, but all he succeeded in doing was blurring his vision as he saw the silhouettes of soldiers approaching him with drawn weapons.