Angela brought the bowl to her lips and scooped the food into her mouth with her fingers, barely chewing as she swallowed. She washed it down with water from her canteen.
Brigida said, “Now tell me what’s going on.”
They sat together on the ground and Angela recounted her morning. At times, she felt like she rambled and confused some events, but her mother didn’t interrupt. Angela finished by asking, “What happend to you?”
Brigida told her a story about taking the chickens to the market, only to find that no one was there. Father Agliplay and his men had stormed the Yanqui garrison in town. So residents stayed at home, and market-sellers fled into the fields and forest. The Yanquis, though, with their rifles, repelled the attack. Brigida arrived to see countless men – men who worked the tobacco fields, fished the sea, or grew rice in the terraces – limp out of town, wounded and in desperate need of care. So she went with them, helping those she could as they retreated into the hills.
She said, “Listen carefully, Angela: Father Aglipay is a charismatic man, but he should be leading prayers, not battles. They think they have God on their side, even if they don’t have enough rifles. Now he says he believes your kapfre story?” She shook her head. “Angela, dear, it is not safe here. You must go home.”
“But Mama, I can help.” As she said these words, she felt like the young girl she was, powerless and afraid.
“I know, of course, but you see Father Aglipay has angered the Yanquis. They want to get him, so being here is not safe. Our tiny barangay? They do not care about it. You can go home, cook rice, and eat. You can even buy some chicken or fish from Auntie Dungo. Do not ask for it; buy it. Money is hidden in a wooden box inside the rice jar. If you leave now, you will be home long before dark. You must go, my sweet, sweet Angela.”
They embraced again, quicker this time.
Her mother wrapped more rice and dried fish in leaves and gave it to Angela. Then she straightened out her hat, the shoulder strap of her canteen, and the leather belt that held the bolo in its sheath at her waist. “Look at you, my little soldier. You came to rescue me, and my heart feels rescued, my strong warrior.”
Angela slid the food into a pocket. Together, they walked through the encampment, as men with shirts on inside-out hurried to and fro.
* * *
Alone in the forest, Angela stopped walking when she smelled cigar smoke. “Señor Kapfre?”
He laughed low and deep. The tree shook. Leaves rustled. Then there he stood, a giant with a lit cigar clamped between his lips, one eye squinting to keep out smoke.
“Angela, you have to see this.” He scooped her up again and set her on his shoulder. Together, they seemed to levitate to the top of the tree, where they swayed without falling. He pointed with pursed lips to a rolling cloud of smoke in the distance.
She asked, “Another fire?”
In response, he leapt from tree to tree to get closer. The air whooshed about her ears until they stopped atop a tree that stood high on a hill and afforded them a clearer view of the rolling clouds. It was dust kicked up from the march of men, mules and horses on a dirt road.
“Is this war?” he asked.
She didn’t say anything at first. She saw two men on horseback, wide-brimmed hats shielding their faces, brass buttons glinting in the late-morning sun. With their straight backs, they appeared taller than any Filipino she had ever seen. Behind them, through the dust, she saw mules laden with canvas sacks and wooden boxes being led by men on foot in white shirt-sleeves, wide suspenders and dark trousers tucked into high, leather boots.
She said, “Those are Yanquis.”
“In my forest?”
She remembered the map. “I think they’re bringing supplies to the Yanquis who cut down your trees.”
“My trees?” He sighed, weary and ancient. He looked away from the Yanquis, his deep eyes dark and contemplative.
She followed his gaze to the scar cut into his forest. She hadn’t realized how close they were to it, or how wide it was, or how deeply it penetrated the woods. The Yanquis would soon march past a dark, narrow track that led into the scar, which was pockmarked by the stumps of once-magnificent balete trees. She now knew that these Yanquis were the next mission, the ambush. But the Yanquis carried rifles. Every one of them. She had seen very few rifles among Father’s men. Most wielded spears or bolo knives like the one at her side.
She said, “We must do something.”
“We?” her kapfre said.
She sighed. “You. You must trick them. Make them get lost in the scar.”
He laughed with a depth she had never heard before, a low chuckle mixed with a thin, echoing wheeze. It shot a dark tingle of fear up her spine that spread across the back of her neck. The chill deepened when she realized she, too, was laughing: “Heh, heh, heh.”
Her kapfre raised his hands to his mouth and made a knocking noise, like a woodpecker at work. Then he lifted his hands in the air and waved them in circles. A gust of strong wind blew down the road, clearing the dust long enough for her to see the paleness of the skin on the Yanquis’ faces. The wind kicked up, and the Yanquis raised their hands to screen their eyes.
Her kapfre’s hands kept moving. Leaves rustled and the impossible happened: the trees danced. High branches twirled in air like dancers’ hands, while the trees swayed and sashayed in quick, short, rhythmic steps, changing the shape of the forest.
The wind settled. What was once road was now forest; the once-narrow track now a wide road leading into the scar. The forest all around had become thicker, darker and seemingly impenetrable, as if all the trees had crowded together to see what would happen next.
She said, “You did it!” She wrapped her thin arms around the kapfre’s thick neck, feeling the scratches from his bristly beard and inhaling cigar smoke and something deeper, a wild-animal scent.
“So I did.” He nodded.
She released him. “Now we have to go back, back to the rebels.”
He didn’t answer right away; she saw something different in his eyes, a more-intense light but also a new kind of weariness, or maybe even pain. Had his magic worn him out?
She said, “Señor, are you all right?”
His eyes stayed on the Yanqui horse riders as they wiped wind-blown dust from their eyes. He said, “We can’t miss the best part: when they realize they are lost.”
“Por favor?“
He looked from the approaching men and mules to her. A sadness lingered in his gaze.
She said, “Please?”
This time, he smiled and said, “Hold on!” He shoved his cigar back between his lips and leapt backward with such force and speed that she shrieked as she wrapped her arms tight around his neck again. The air roared in her ears, and she lost all focus on what was tree, earth, and sky. She tried to speak, but gusts filled her mouth and silenced her. Then everything stopped. He smiled, winked and – in a blink – she found herself standing on tree roots again.
She shouted up to him: “Wait for me!”
He responded with a cloud of cigar smoke.
* * *
“You again?” The soldier from before stood there again, rifle at the ready.
“They’re going the wrong way,” she said.
He said, “What?”
She dodged around him and ran back along the path that led past the wounded men in one clearing and into the second. This time, though, the clearing was filled with men standing with spears or bolos in hand, waiting. A handful of men sat atop horses. She caught a flash of black of Father Agliplay’s cassock and horse. She ran toward him, ignoring the men who called out “Hey!” or “What are you doing?” or “Stop!”
She shouted, “Padre! Padre!”
The priest looked down at her. His placid face showed no recognition at first, then his eyes widened. His horse whinnied and pulled, but the priest reined it in. He said, “To what do I owe the pleasure, young lady?”
She paused. She felt small, looking up at the p
riest on his horse. She shouted: “You won’t find the Yanquis where you expect!”
“What?”
She repeated herself, this time louder. The priest’s horse even turned its massive head in her direction. She said, “¡Hola, Señor caballo!’
The priest said, “Your kapfre said this?”
“I saw them myself,” she shouted, wishing her kapfre would just show up and explain it all. She noticed the dark skin of the priest’s neck in the spot where the white of his collar should’ve been. She didn’t see the buttons of his cassock or his cross. He wore his vestments inside out.
She said, “I can point on the map. They aren’t on the road anymore.”
The priest just stared at her.
She aimed her mouth toward the treetops and shouted, “Señor Kapfre!”
Then she heard her mother. “Angela?”
The girl spun around. A crowd of silent, grim-faced men holding blades stared at her.
“Angela?” Brigida called again and then once more before she pushed through the men and stood there, shorter than the men, but with lips pressed tight together, brows furrowed, the skin on her face red.
Angela felt the heat of her mother’s anger as she hovered over her.
“I told you to go home.”
“Mama…” Angela began.
“These men,” Brigida said, gesturing with laundry-wet arms to those around her, “don’t need you in the way.”
“But…” She looked around, watched a dirty, calloused hand tightening its grip on a bolo handle, then loosening it and tightening it again. She thought of her father and how these men were ready to die.
Her mother knelt before her, wrapped her in her wet arms and whispered, “You silly, silly girl.”
She held her mother tight. Tears welled in her eyes. This felt more real to her than anything at all. Had everything been some kind of mad dream? What if her kapfre had never been real at all? She wanted to stay in her mother’s embrace.
A rider galloped into the clearing, shouting, “Padre! Padre! The Yanquis aren’t there!”
The priest slid gracefully from his saddle and said, “Please excuse me, Mama.” He set his hand behind Angela’s back. “Now, child, you will show me on the map.” They quick-stepped into the tent, where she told him and the other men all she had seen.
* * *
She watched from her kapfre’s shoulder high in a tree as Yanquis shouted at the animals and each other with harsh, angry voices, and stubborn mules brayed and cried and stood their ground. Some Yanquis even whipped the mules to get them to turn around, while other men and mules continued to march forward, tripping and stumbling over roots and stumps.
Even though she knew what Father Aglipay and his men were going to do, she still gasped as they stepped out of the dark forest and into the clearing. The change from their non-presence to presence was so sudden and so complete that they seemed to appear as if peeled from the bark of tree trunks.
Some Yanquis gasped, too. Others let out startled moans. Some stepped back from the forest’s edge. Most went silent. None raised a weapon. None had time. In an instant, the tall, well-armed Yanquis had become surrounded, trapped by a group of rebels in tattered clothes wielding farm and fishing tools.
The most startling image of all, though, was of Father Aglipay astride his huge, black horse. With sword pointed, he slow-walked his mount toward a Yanqui officer. The blade extending from his arm was pointed like an accusatory finger.
The Yanqui showed neither fear nor surprise. Instead, he kept his cold, hard eyes on the approaching blade as he took one hand off his reins and lifted a whistle to his lips. He blew three shrill blasts. The Yanquis quieted; some of the mules still brayed, though most – no longer being herded – had quieted, too.
The Yanqui said something to the priest.
Father responded with a shout: “Viva la Independencia Filipina!”
A deafening roar rose up from the rebels. They took the Yanquis’ rifles, whips, pistols, bayonets and swords. The exhausted, defeated Yanquis didn’t raise a hand.
The Filipinos shouted and cheered again.
A warmth spread through her body.
“Ha! Ha!” her kapfre laughed. “Got them!”
Again, the kapfre called to the trees, waved his hands, and rustled up a strong, swift breeze. The men in the scar – Yanquis and Filipinos alike – covered their eyes at the sudden swirls of twigs, leaves, and dust. They didn’t see the trees dancing again as they opened a path back to the encampment. When the wind calmed, Father Agiplay shouted his orders and led men, mules and prisoners through the just-created track.
Her kapfre said, “Look, my Angela! The war is leaving our forest.”
She smiled.
“Now we can live in peace, yes? Ha! Ha!”
The thrilling charge of victory filled her with a heady lightness. Even she couldn’t believe what had just happened, what she had done.
Her kapfre couldn’t contain his delight. A giddy laughter spread through him; his entire body quaked. He said, “Now I will make a home for you in the trees!”
“Oh, Señor,” she said. “You know I must return to my mama.”
He frowned and his shoulders drooped into a slouch. In that gesture, she saw this magical creature as nothing more than a spoiled boy.
“I belong with my mama, with my people.”
He didn’t say anything for a while. He closed his eyes, and his breathing slowed and deepened. Though she had once taken comfort in his deep, steady breaths, and even though his silence seemed petulant, she couldn’t help but feel a wave of heartbreaking sadness.
He opened his ancient eyes and stared at her.
She saw something unexpected beyond the reflection of herself staring at him, a flicker of light and mirth.
She had never felt so important or so complete. Then he smiled and winked and she was left standing at the base of a balete tree, a fresh breeze scented by the sweet familiarity of cigar smoke nudging her away, back toward her mother.
Art by Sasha Gallagher
The Colts
by Benjamin Parzybok
* * *
1514
Hungary
It was a warm April Saturday. We sat on the top rail of a fence overlooking the king’s pasture, where the new colts were trying out their legs. Andrzej, Istvan, and I were dead veterans of the kuruc revolt (or was it the kuruc crusades?), buried a week or so earlier, risen up only recently.
“Do you think the brown will live the season?” I asked.
“No,” Istvan spat and left an earthy-red stain on the grass. “Its knees – no – too weak. It has the fever.”
In a vague gesture, Andrzej held his big hand out toward it and paused, as if searching for the perfect word. How it makes one’s heart tender, to see such fragile things. “Gar,” he said finally.
We watched the filly in silence as it struggled to its knees. One leg collapsed under it and it went to the ground, panting. It made me sad, to watch it struggle so.
I wanted the horse to live. I felt like I had a stake in it. She was a soft thing and I was half-tempted to walk out and bring her to her feet. But we’d learned we had an effect on animals. Best to keep my distance, for her sake.
“That new girl,” I said. “She’s a master with the sick horses. Like witchcraft. She’ll come.”
“No,” Istvan said, and then said it again. “She won’t be able to do anything for it.”
We sat and watched a bit more and I thought of Anelie, my sister-in-law. Though I was unsure what relation she was to me now.
She would be at home in the village, mourning, perhaps mourning me. The longing to see her burned in me like some unnatural flame. They had taken my niece and nephew, burned my brother at the stake after his conversion, and my father had followed my mother into the grave, his heart unable to take the blows dealt it.
Anelie was the only family I had left, and she and I had taken refuge in each other. The memory of a single night was
wedged in me still, like a chunk of stone in my chest.
The field had greened seemingly overnight. When I’d died, the world had been brown with the remnants of winter, and now in this strange return it too was reborn into spring.
To my right Andrzej began humming György’s battle march, and we all joined in:
Over the fields
They’re ours again!
Through the woods
We claim as ours!
Castles we storm
Throw the devils out!
Kuruc come see
Your shining country!
It was about here I realized I was the only one really singing the words. Istvan sang: No the fields, no no! And Andrzej, with his wonderfully deep singing voice, sang what sounded like: rah gna gra, gah nu rah! I began to lower my voice, conscious of the racket we were making and a little embarrassed for them, and they elbowed me to keep going. I redoubled my efforts but then stared into the grass afterwards, unsure of what to say. We awkwardly chose separate areas of the field to study. My friends, they were not well.
After a while Istvan cleared his throat and said “Oh no,” and Andrzej pointed across the field and made a soft sound, like the monkey I’d seen in Transylvania.
The horse trainers were coming in. Too far away to worry about much, but I noted the gleam of armor. One of them was not a kuruc. We watched him eagerly.
I patted each of their knees – not liking much the way my hands looked, to be honest, so pale they were nearly blue, the wounds I’d been given there unhealed – and moved to the opposite side of the fence. When we were settled Andrzej grunted in a soft, thoughtful way and I understood what he meant. If there was eating to be had, a nobleman would make a fitting target.
It came to me with suddenness what we were. I’d spent near my whole life, twenty-four years, in the smith trade, under tutelage of my father, but in the last year I’d been so many different things I could hardly keep track. Soldier, rebel, consort, criminal, martyr, and now? A hunter.
Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History Page 20