Mari is cradling her right wrist and I can see the skin is pink and sore-looking. Kidlat is on his knees, panting, and I feel a sudden rush of heat. My heart punches at my chest as I throw down the broken oar. Kidlat flinches into Mari.
‘Ami, what—’ Mari starts.
‘You . . . you broke the oar.’
‘I couldn’t get it free in time. We have a spare.’
‘You broke the oar and now we have no sail!’ My shout shocks me as much as her. I cannot remember the last time my voice scraped my throat like this, the last time my hands balled into fists. The last time I wanted to hurt someone. ‘You stupid, stupid—’ I round on Kidlat. ‘And you! Couldn’t you have just shouted? Couldn’t you have warned us? You’re not a baby any more, use your stupid mouth!’
‘Ami!’ Mari stands, moving Kidlat behind her. ‘Stop it!’
‘You said to trust you and look. Look! We’re never going to get there—’
‘It wasn’t anyone’s fault—’
‘You’re useless, both of you. Useless. Look at you—’
Mari shoves me, hard. I fall backwards, hitting my grazed hand. The sharp shock of the pain brings all the heat rushing to it, flushing out the anger and making it shrink into shame.
‘Mari, I—’
‘Never talk to me like that again.’ Mari brings her face down level with mine. There are hot patches of red on her pale cheeks, and the high midday sun glares through her hair, turning it into a halo. She looks like a terrible angel. ‘Never.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Tears scald my cheeks. ‘I don’t know why . . .’
Mari pulls me towards her and for a moment I think she is going to hit me, but instead she hugs me, harder than she shoved me. After a few moments Kidlat shuffles over and the three of us sit in a tight huddle until I feel water begin to seep up my legs.
‘We’d better bail,’ says Mari, and reaches for the bucket. Kidlat holds out his hands for it but Mari shakes her head. ‘I think Ami should do it, to say sorry.’
Mari and Kidlat take down the remnants of the sail and rip through my gashes so the sheets are in half. They set to retying the layers together while I scoop out the calf-high water. I am glad of the task. The words I said seem to have left grazes on my tongue. It feels swollen and poisonous, and my stomach churns with points of cooling anger, like shards of glass. I spoke like Mr Zamora would, or how San did that first day. I bail faster, so my arms ache and my head spins. I will never speak like that again.
We row over the rest of the reef, with Kidlat in front pointing out the safest path. The coral has punctured some holes in the bottom of the boat but we escaped the worst of it. My words have done the most damage. Though Mari is trying not to seem angry with me, I can feel a cool distance stretch between us as we navigate into open water again.
When we are clear, I help Kidlat tie the smaller sail to the mast and it billows feebly. We begin to move again, far slower than before, but Culion’s tooth-like hills are closer than ever. Coron is out of sight beyond the horizon behind us. I take up the oars and help the sail guide us shoreward.
‘You don’t have to do that, Ami,’ says Mari. ‘You should rest.’
But I do have to do it. I’m not done saying sorry yet.
THE FOREST
S
omehow, it is always dusk when you approach.
That’s what Nanay always told me, and now twilight is falling when I see the lights, strung out against the forest like rosary beads. Like a necklace. The Sano port, glinting ahead and to the right. My arms shake but my head fills with a strange lightness.
I have had to row since the hills started to tower and shrink the wind until the sail emptied entirely. Mari and Kidlat are curled up asleep and I am glad Mari’s eyes are closed so I cannot see the hurt in them any more. There is a boat hunched in the harbour but there doesn’t seem to be anyone around.
The tide seems to be carrying us in, and I guide the boat as best I can towards a small cove to the left of the harbour. The necklace winks out of sight as the scraping of rocks jerk Mari and Kidlat awake. Mari looks around. Beyond the rocky beach, the forest sways darkly.
‘Ami, you did it.’ Mari looks at me and smiles. The knot in my chest unravels.
We take up our pillowcases and splosh into the shallows. It is not quite so shallow for Kidlat and he clings to Mari’s legs until we reach the beach. The solid ground feels tricksy under my feet, untethered as though it were the ocean. We sit a moment to steady ourselves. My mouth is dry and the orange segment Mari offers sings over my tongue. I watch the narrow shape of our boat bobbing against the rocks. The tide will take it out, unless it sinks without anyone to bail. Perhaps someone else will find it and fix it all over again.
‘Goodbye, Lihim,’ I murmur.
‘We’d better go,’ says Mari.
Walking in the dark should feel like an adventure, but all I can think about is how big the forest is and how small we are in it. The rains will be here soon, the clouds thickening and spilling, washing the air clean. For now, the night sky feels heavy above us, our breath thick.
We cross the road that brought Kidlat and me to the harbour and keep to the shadows so we can go uphill if we hear anyone coming. It should be easy enough to follow the road from a safe distance. The road that goes all the way to Culion Town. The forested hills loom above us, muffled and watchful. The ground is firm and branch-covered, and it would be impossible to see a snake in the shadows. Rosita used to say to let matters be, and the things that matter will take care of themselves. It seems a silly thing to think and I’m not sure I believe her, but it is rude to think ill of the dead so I decide to stop worrying about what is snake and what is shadow.
Mari and I are silent until we reach the river. Kidlat is too, but he is always silent. I remember the river crossing the path close to the end of our cart ride, and feel a fluttering in my stomach. We are moving so much slower than I’d imagined. A day instead of a couple of hours for the crossing, and how many more hours to reach here? The trees are set back so the moon beams down strong and silver. I untie the basin from my back and use it to collect water so we can drink. The taste of garlic and shrimp has still not entirely faded. The forest is motionless around us, but not quiet. We can hear frogs, the faint bubble of fish in the water, insects clicking at each other.
‘We should have brought a net,’ I say. ‘Or some lines.’
‘I have something better. My party trick. I’ll show you I’m not useless.’ Mari holds up her limp hand and wiggles her eyebrows so I can tell she’s teasing, but it still sends shame lancing through me. ‘Grab that.’ She points to a flat stone nearby. ‘Hold it up. And be ready.’
I don’t ask what for. She lies on her belly by the low bank, and lets her hand dangle in the current. Kidlat leans in to watch too. For a long while nothing happens, but I don’t interrupt. Her gaze has a beam-like focus. Then, something glints by her fingers. It begins to nibble at the skin. I suck in my breath, but Mari doesn’t flinch.
More tiny fish begin to gather, but it is only when a larger silver-green tilapia begins to pick them off that Mari brings her other hand down fast, scooping under the fish and flipping it out of the water, on to the bank. The fish lands two yards away from me, flapping and gasping.
‘Get it, Ami!’
I mean to, but I’ve never killed something like this. I’ve only ever collected meat already parcelled in brown paper from Rosita’s, or dropped crabs into oil and not had to watch.
‘Ami!’
The fish is flopping its way closer to the water, its panic taking it up in great arcs around my ankles. Mari stands up and grabs the stone from me. I hold on to it a little longer than I should, hoping that the fish will make it back to the water . . .
The stone falls and Mari rolls her eyes at me as she kicks it away from the fish. ‘We almost lost it.’
The underside of the stone has a dark smear and I don’t want to look at the fish, but can see it at the corner of my vision, twitch
ing limply in Mari’s hand. She has picked it up by the tail and hits it against the stone and the twitching stops. I feel as if I’m about to cry. Kidlat is already sniffling.
‘Did you have to do that?’ I say, and my voice is angrier than I want it to be.
‘What?’
‘Hit it again!’
Mari hooks her finger under the gill and tilts her head at me like a quizzical bird. ‘It was dying. It was in pain. I meant to kill it with the stone, first time. It’s kinder that way.’
I sniff. Something is dripping from the fish, making a dull splatting noise on the stone.
Mari holds it out to me apologetically. ‘I can’t prepare this on my own, Ami. Can you help me?’
Her face is so worried and so kind that I feel embarrassed. I nod firmly. ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I don’t know—’
‘No, I’m sorry. I thought you’d have seen that before. It’s – it’s just food, Ami. It’s because we need food.’
‘I know that,’ I say, flushing.
‘There’s going to be more blood, when we gut it.’
‘It’s not the blood,’ I say. And it’s not. It’s the death.
She smiles hesitantly, then kneels and begins to rinse the fish in the quick-moving water. When she holds it out to me it looks as clean as when it came out of the river alive. It looks like the fish Nanay used to buy from Bondoc, that I helped her prepare a hundred times before. My throat feels a little less dry. I wash the dark stain off the stone and take the cold, firm body in both hands. I place it on the flat surface while Kidlat and Mari shift through the stones at the bank, searching for one that has not been smoothed by the water.
Kidlat hands me a sharp oblong stone, and, holding the fish steady by its tail I run the edge up its side. The scales come off like tiny mirrors, speckling the rock and making my fingers glint. I slice the fins off and lay them to one side. Then, hooking my finger through a gill I split the belly, running the flint down so it opens and I can scoop out the insides. Mari looks away at this bit, and I’m surprised, seeing as she was so brisk with the stone.
The flint isn’t sharp enough to fillet the tilapia neatly, so once I’ve rinsed the fleshy inside we take turns stripping the meat from the bones with our fingers. It’s fresh enough to be eaten raw, though it doesn’t taste very good. I try not to let my mind wander to the meal on the beach with Nanay, or even Luko’s boiling pot and rice.
As I swallow my last mouthful Mari nudges me. Kidlat is curled up on the ground, fast asleep.
‘We should wake him,’ I say.
‘Couldn’t we let him sleep a moment? I’m too tired to carry him.’
I look down at the tiny frame and sigh. Every moment we waste sleeping is another moment before we get to Nanay. But I can’t bear to wake Kidlat. I look along the river to where it disappears back into the thicket, and wonder if I should suggest I go on alone. But the darkness is suddenly terrifying.
‘A couple of hours won’t hurt,’ I say, and suddenly my legs begin to ache as if they have only just realized how much walking they have done. Mari nods and curls up too, her back against Kidlat’s. I lie down on his other side, facing the river. The water whispers over the rocks; the insects click.
THE HORSES
M
ari is standing before me, but something is wrong. Her hair is shining too brightly, her eyes are too large.
Mari, I say, but my voice comes out in bubbles through the air. She holds out her arms to me.
Ami, can you help me?
Two limp fish are growing from her wrists, their eyes flat and dead in the moonlight. I back away as she advances. Suddenly she fades and Nanay is there, waist-high in fast-flowing water. Her mouth opens and closes out of time with her words.
Ami, can you help me?
I can’t get to her in time. The river is rising and as I reach out all I scoop up is water, and I’m calling her . . .
Ami, can you hear me?
Mari’s voice is back, and Nanay is fading into a slow light.
‘Ami, can you hear me?’
I am beginning to feel my body again, drawing itself up around me as if through mud. Nanay is gone.
‘Ami, wake up!’
I open my eyes and Mari is there, really there, in a colourless, uncertain morning light, nudging me. My hand is trailing in the river, numb with cold. I pull it out and sit up, shaking my head to rid it of the images.
‘You were having a bad dream,’ she says. Kidlat is clinging to her tunic, his eyes frightened.
‘It’s all right. I was asleep,’ I say, more to myself than to him. ‘It was just a dream.’
But it felt true, in the way that horrible dreams do, though I can see for myself that Nanay is not there and Mari has one hand that looks like mine, and another that is nothing like a fish.
‘We should go,’ she says, holding out a piece of jackfruit. The sweetness hits my nostrils and turns my stomach but my mouth is horribly dry. I take it and eat as Mari pockets the fish-gutting flint and brings me the basin to re-tie on my back. As I do so the vision of Nanay waist-deep in water rises and clings to my skin, and it must show in my face because Mari pulls Kidlat along in my wake without another word.
The heat is increasing every minute, the air full of that thickness that means the rains are another day closer. The sky is a smooth grey through the trees above us, the sun’s light flattened across the tops of the clouds that formed in the night. I focus on the river, the way it is flowing from Culion Town, and how every step upriver is a step closer to Nanay. I try very hard not to think of her in pain, in the hospital, surrounded by strangers from the Places Outside.
‘Ami, can we slow down a bit?’
I turn around and see Mari and Kidlat far behind. I thought I had only walked a short way, but I can no longer see the clearing where we slept, only more and more branches and trunks and beams of sunlight pushing down like fingers through the shade. I stop and take a few deep gulps of air as they catch up.
My body feels tight, and my hands are shaking. I bunch them into fists so Mari won’t see, but of course she notices. I liked her watchfulness when I met her, but right now it feels like nosiness. Kidlat seems to have decided she is his new favourite, and something approaching anger wells inside me. When we arrived on Coron it was my hand he reached for. Now Mari is shielding him slightly, as if I’m a snake. She barely knows him. And why did he follow us in the first place? We could be moving far faster without him.
I bite my teeth together hard to stop any of the thoughts coming out, but Mari is looking at me with her light eyes as though she can see inside my head. I turn away without a word and carry on along the river, shortening my stride and feeling angrier with every step. I wish I were alone, I wish I could run ahead without having to worry about a five-year-old keeping up . . .
Stop, I tell myself firmly. It’s not their fault. No one’s to blame except Mr Zamora, who took me away, and the government that sent him, and, more than either of those, it’s what is in my nanay’s blood, in her skin, taking her piece by piece.
I slow my pace a little more and fall into step beside Mari. Kidlat is holding her hand on the other side but she links her arm through mine and squeezes.
‘It’s going to be all right, Ami,’ she says fiercely. ‘We’re going to make good time. We’re not going to be caught. We’re going to make it back.’
She stops there, because she cannot promise how Nanay will be when we arrive. I return the squeeze with the crook of my elbow.
We only stop when Kidlat’s stomach starts to growl loudly enough we can hear it over the river and our footsteps. Mari finds some more jackfruit and we eat one each, the juice dripping down our chins. The flies begin hovering about our faces so we wash them in the river. The water is cool and clean and I think briefly how it is a shame I am only just learning about these forests now, when all I want is to be out of them, back at home.
Kidlat has still not said a word but he seems calmer. He seems to know that it
is important we keep going, as he matches our pace. But as the hours pass and the sun reaches the top of the sky he slows down, and by mid-afternoon we are taking one step to every three of his. His bottom lip begins to tremble and we stop.
‘I could carry him?’ says Mari, looking at my anxious face, but I shake my head. The need to get back to Nanay is mine, and it is my fault we are going so fast. I untie the basin from my back and retie it around Mari, then crouch down for him to climb on to my back. He wraps his arms around my shoulders as Mari begins to sing in a soft, clear voice, a song I’ve never heard before. The tune is gentle but with an undercurrent of sadness, and I don’t understand the words.
‘What language is that?’
‘Spanish. My parents used to sing it to me.’ She smiles sadly. ‘That’s one of the reasons I think they loved me. You don’t sing to someone you don’t love, do you?’
I shake my head. ‘And they taught you fishing and boats. I’m sure your parents loved you. I’m sure they only gave you away because they had no choice.’ Like Nanay had to let me go.
‘I hope so.’ Mari looks away.
‘And it’s a lovely song they left you. What does it mean?’
She smiles at me. ‘If you don’t know what it means, how do you know it’s lovely? I could be singing, “I hate you and you smell” for all you know.’
‘Is that what it means?’
She laughs and shakes her head, then sings it again, in Tagalog this time.
Find me a boat and we’ll float to the sea,
Come, little one, come, there is so much to be.
The Island at the End of Everything Page 12