Isa
Knowledge arrives on the shores of an isolated island, and bedims the wisdom of its inhabitants
Daughter, our islands are disappearing. Once, there were two: two proud pieces of rock rearing high above the waves. Our islands had always existed: they were the two arms of Laon, who slumbered in the caldera beneath us. Around us were rings of hard and soft corals, and in the cave-like spaces of these corals lived an abundance of animals: snakes and eels and starfish and seahorses and clams. Surrounded by such abundance, we seldom knew hunger, or sickness.
You and your sisters were born on these islands; until today, no one had ever left. But you don’t care anymore; your eyes look only to the silver bird that will bear you far away. Remember, your island is Isa. Isa, the first, the mother of all.
Remember your mother, Raymunda, she who was the only person brave enough to swim underneath the blue water we call Pangarap, the only one to see the bowl of the volcano Laon that lies deep beneath the water, the volcano that birthed us all. Remember the names of the fishes and birds. Remember the beings of the sea, the beings of the air. Remember how you fell asleep each night, listening to your mother’s crooning and to the sound of the waves.
Five families lived on Isa. At first, there was a way to walk on the ground between the houses. But gradually the water rose and that was when we began to use the rope bridges. We wondered, occasionally, about other beings, the ones we guessed must inhabit the world. The world that was so far away we couldn’t smell or taste it.
Because we couldn’t imagine that other world, we decided to think only about things we could smell or taste or hear ourselves. Smells like what was cooking in each other’s houses. Tastes like the opaque, soft, peppery insides of mollusks and snails, or the juice we sucked from the bones of fish.
We knew how to pray. Every year, the storms came. We shut our windows and waited.
During one storm, the one we called Insiang, the house at the opposite end of Isa was swept away. That was the house of Ligaya and her five sisters. When the wind died down and we opened our windows, we didn’t recognize the world. And gradually we realized it was because a house was missing. Far away, we saw a pointed shape, bobbing on the waves.
Soon, several of us fell prey to a strange sickness. The first victim was Vina, who was only 15. She was forever staring at the silver bird men, and at one in particular whose hair was burnished and light, the color of the sun.
A few of the men took out boats and rowed to the wreckage. When they reached it, they saw Ligaya’s body, floating on its back, her face already purple and swollen. They knew her because of the scar above her right eyebrow; we all remembered the day, 10 years earlier, when she had been clambering over the slippery rocks and fell. Hers was the only body to be recovered.
Your mother said it was Urdo’s fault. He should have built a stronger house, one that could withstand the lash of wind and waves. He was the father; he should have known. In a house with six women, the men grow weak, your mother said.
Your mother’s voice grew rough and hard, and you and your sisters stopped listening to her. One day we discovered that she had shouted herself out of her body. She was sitting at the kitchen table, as always, but we could tell it was merely the shape of her that remained. Her soul had escaped to somewhere far beyond our reach.
Naturally, we looked high and low: under the eaves of all the houses, in the storage rooms and even in the caves beneath the rocks. But her soul was truly gone. Behind your mother’s eyes now was a still darkness, and her skin became soft and papery.
Once we caught you jabbing at her forearm with the serrated edge of a clamshell. Tears were running down your face. Insistently you called out to her, demanded a response. That was when I took your mother’s form and put her in the wooden box that I had kept in readiness all these years.
Once she was in it, it floated gently on the waves. I pushed it as hard as I could, and the current bore it away. You remained watching the sea for hours.
