Philippine Speculative Fiction Read Free Page A

back to the village across the great river with the anticipation of the besotted.
    A few days later, the two animals make their return from Maayuput’s village, in the surprising company of four small hornbill-bearcats, waddling around their parents with furry wings.
    The sight delights me, and I write to Maayuput of my surprise. “I did not expect your hornbill and my bearcat to have in mind this unusual union!” I write.
    “Makatagad is like family to me,” Maayuput writes back. “For this, I shall consider Makahagad family as well.”
    I write to Maayuput of similar affectionate considerations, and it feels for a moment that there is no great river to divide us. I dream afterwards of village music by the bonfire where Maayaput
and I can dance to the rhythm of
ganzas
. In my dream, the details of her face slips in and out of a haze—and yet I know, with the sincerity of a quiet heart, that it is she. I wake
sometimes with a curious throb on my right foot I cannot shake off.
    In the mornings when I wake from such dreams, I find myself crossing the banana thicket from the village, through the forest, to get to a small lip of rock that drops with precarious grace into
the great river. From the top of that small protrusion of rock, I could see the glorious top of the great banana plant growing in the distance, somehow still inching its way like a beautiful giant
towards the reaches of sky. I could see its gigantic heart pumping away in the full knowledge of its blooming. I catch my breath, and feel my own heart pumping with it.
    I behold as well the raging waters of the great river before me, and I think of the delirious nothingness of air and distance. But distance, most of all.
    ONE NIGHT, I find myself still awake even as the moon nears its terminal point across the sky. The day is already threatening to invade with its furtive lighter shades of
blue. I find my hands caressing the smooth bamboo slats of my
banig
. I think of my Maayuput’s hair when I hear the crash.
    It is sudden and loud. For the moments it takes for the sound to last, the earth shudders with it. The crash strikes me like a long groan, which is followed by the sound of a slap, like an
object fallen face-wise on water.
    And then there is silence.
    The curious, risen now from sleep, hurry to the great river. I run with them. When we cross the banana thicket, we soon notice the absence of the great banana plant from edges of the brightening
sky. From where it had grown in the middle of the banana thicket, we see instead its great stalk uprooted, the ground around it churlish in the sudden violation.
    “The great banana plant has fallen to its side!” I hear people shout.
    “What happened?” some cry.
    “It was the banana heart,” the mangkukulam finally says. “It had grown too large.”
    We race to the great river, tracing the length of the gigantic banana plant all the way, across the forest, to the edges of the river. When we reach the great river’s banks, we find to our
amazement that the length of the fallen banana plant still seems to surge away from where we were, straight on into the distance, into the horizon. And in the middle of what had been once the
river’s depths, the banana heart lay sleeping on muddy soil—once the river’s unmeasured bottom—pumping still, gorging in the waters of the great river.
    It has drank away our distance.
    Maayuput
, I think suddenly.
    I run back to my hut to look for an arrowtip and an empty bamboo slate. Beside me, Makahagad waits in anticipation as I write.
    Maayuput,
    It seems the gods wish for us to bear separation no longer. The river between our villages has gone, swallowed by your gift of a pumping banana heart. I shall visit you and
     Makatagad and her offsprings—and your people, of course—with your agreement. I cannot bear the excitement any longer.
     
    Magpanabang
    My
binturong
snatches the bamboo slate as soon as I finish, quickly crossing the branches of the trees with