Ang Huling Tikbalang

Chapter 3: Ang Mananambal

"Ano ba talaga ang kailangan mo sa akin?"

I asked the question again, though I was no longer sure I was prepared to hear the answer to it. It's way passed midnight, I could tell from the color of the sky, it's now tinge with gray and blue. Like the first time I was with him, time seemed to have warped. When I looked back at him, his itak is already up in the air, and in the next moment he had thrust it down in a smooth sweeping motion as if to strike at something, though I didn't see anything there; Clank! It struck metal. Suddenly, the airship became less translucent, like a projected image coming into focus. He stepped into it with his head bent; apparently, to clear a low doorway; he disappeared into the blurriness. After a moment, an arm came into focus again and motioned me to follow.

When I watch horror flicks, I rail at characters who put themselves in situations where it is obvious that they would likely be chopped, burned or eaten alive. Idiots, I'd say to them, you deserve your fate. If this is such a movie, this is the best time to walk away. I could almost hear the audience-- Stupid, get out of there! Now, I'm not fearless and I'm not stupid either. I am standing on what seems to be a doorway. Either I walk away right now or I jumped right in. Still contemplating my options, I extended my hand beyond the surface of what could be a door. Immediately, my hand blurred out of focus. I could now only perceive the vaguest impression of my hand beyond the doorway, my wrist ending as abruptly as that of an amputee. I felt no pain though. That's good. I pulled back my hand, it came back into focus. That's good, too.

What the heck, I stepped in.

I stepped into a vacuum-- a vortex of silence that sucked all the sounds from my ears. All the sounds of the night dissolved.

He was already sitting on a wire frame chair in front of what looked like a cockpit full of mechanical dials and levers. He had put on an ornate barbute with a retractable visor that when extended gave him the profile of a horse. Again he raised his itak and thrust it unto a slot; then he pulled at it like a lever and the whole airship shook as if being unhinged from a clamp. Then he tossed what looked like glowing embers unto a metal cylinder that dominated the center of the airship. He closed the lid. Then, he flicked a switch to activate a mechanism that whined like a fan. He sat, his back turned on me, with a beam of light shining upon the golden spine on his nape. I inched forward to take a closer look until he is within arm's reach, I reached out. The skin on the tip of my forefinger felt separately alive as I did so, and my skin tingled. I couldn't understand it, but it was how I felt. Just then the airship shuddered and threw me off balanced. I fell back. We're floating up. I grabbed on to a hand rail. Small green leaves hang down from above, it smelt reminiscent of spicy mint, but not quite that, with a hint suggestive of a heady mix of freshly mowed grass after a drizzle of rain and a trace of coconut oil, but not quite any of those things, either.

Then I noticed that the wall is actually a woody-stemmed series of branches, a living vine-- probably some kind of orchid, trailing on the metal frame of the airship like a trellis of bamboo and wire Dada used to guide the growth of a row of Ampalaya plants we used to have back in Frisco. A bunch of fireflies flew in through the gaps between the branches and the titanium mesh. Then a head of a tuko came out, its mouth half open, a firefly's wing hanging out from it; the wing disappeared after a quick jerk of the tuko's head, the tuko blinked its eyes, licked its chops then withdrew into the cover of the leaves. The airship is a living and breathing ecosystem!

Every gear and mechanical device is multi-functional; streams of pinhole sized blue light streaked across and around me, flooding the capsule with an unnatural luminance. I looked around, there's barely enough room for two normal sized people.

"... pero saan ka natutulog dito?"

"Hindi ko kailangang matulog."

"... 'di ka natutulog? Kahit kailan...?"

"Hindi."

Vials with vari-colored liquids in them lined the wall, farther back is a ledge that served as a desk, rolls of parchment paper and a stack of books-- dog-eared ancient books, were scattered on it. One book particularly caught my attention, it's bound in leather with what appear as Arabic script printed on its cover. He said it's the only existing copy of the "Book of Ingenious Devices"; a book commissioned by the Abassid Caliph of Baghdad, Abu Jafar al-Ma'mun ibn Harun, credited as a work of the Banu Musa brothers and first published in 850 A.D. He said most of the automatas illustrated on the book were invented by them when they still freely roamed the Earth, stolen by Greek scholars, and from whom the Banu Musa brothers merely copied from. He said they destroyed all the other copies because it contained, among others, a blueprint of the airship.

My eyes were then drawn to an intricate gold locket that hung on a makeshift altar, I opened it and inside was a faded photograph of a woman, a very plain-featured kayumanggi, with nothing in her looks that would merit a second look, her long black slightly wavy hair brushed back from her plain face more as a practical convenience rather than for style.

He swung around to face me.

"Kilala ko ang lolo ng lola mo. Isa siyang Mananambal sa Isla del Fuego."

You knew Dada's grandfather? I vaguely knew Dada was a Bisaya, but I did not know that she hailed from the Visayan island of Siquijor. I realized then that I knew very little about Dada.

More dials are turned, a lever or two pulled here and there, then a tug on a chain attached to a pulley, magically the floor and walls of the airship expanded to double its breadth-- the airship is a huge Hoberman sphere, a hybrid geodesic dome that could be expanded and folded down to a fraction of its size by the scissor-like action of its joints. The gaps on the mesh have become bigger, too; I could now see the steeple of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral and the dark gray dome of the Araneta Coliseum on the horizon, I figured we are about two hundred feet up in the air. I've read somewhere that the horizon, as seen by a five foot tall man standing at sea level on a clear day, is four kilometers away. From this height, I could probably see as far away as ninety kilometers all around me. I've never been on a mountain or on a plane before, never as high up as this; the sight is simply overwhelming. The headlights on Highway 54 twinkled like stars, tree tops gently swayed with the wind as if they are dancing in the moonlight. I felt insignificant compared to the rest of the universe.

He stood up and tore off the armor plates-- the bejewelled spaulders on his broad and sinewy shoulders and equally bejewelled rerebraces on his upper arms, and showed me a deep nasty scar that ran from his right arm to his upper chest, the healed flesh a grim testimony to old violence. He had survived a mortal wound only because my great grandfather attended to him. In gratitude, he shared his own pharmacopoeia and taught my great grandfather the ancient knowledge of concocting medicine from plants, rare herbs, minerals and animal parts that were then abundant in the islands. Not long after that, he said my great grandfather became a well known and sought after mananambal. He reminisced that as he convalesce from his wound, he and my great grandfather went for long walks in search of materials and ingredients in the woods and mountains of Siquijor; and since some of the plants they needed were not endemic to the islands, they secretly planted, and farmed, these exotic plants in hidden nooks and crannies that they only knew. Most of these plants only sprout or blossom or bear fruit only once a year-- exactly seven Fridays after Ash Wednesday. And thus the quest for ingredients coincides with the Cuaresma and culminates on the eve of their Summer Equinox Gathering when the ingredients are then subjected to pangangadlip or pagpapagong and made into minasa-- a yearly quest for ingredients that was eventually ritualized by second and third generation mananambals and other followers and is now known in Siquijor as Pangangalap.

His voice then went down to a whisper-- as if wary that somebody else might hear, and said that he also taught my great grandfather the secret science of extracting esoteric ores from the deepest bowels of the Earth. He said that my great grandfather further improved on the metallurgical processes that were taught him and it wasn't long before my great grandfather was able to extract the elemental essences of these metals and minerals with the use of crucibles; and developing alternative ways to further purify these extracts.

"... iyon ang dahilan kaya ako nandito."


itutuloy...

The Plight of the Tiger Moth

In 2000, I learned to fly model airplanes. Scale model aviation is not something you pick up and go. There are a million and one things to learn. And until the late 90s, the costs of the hobby soared higher than the planes. Thanks to Chinese bootleggers-- exploiting its bloated, cheap labor force to mass produce knock-offs of well established brands, the hobby became accessible to ordinary mortals like me.

My first basher plane was a "Swallow". My first attempt at remote controlled flight was a disaster; the second was no better; and after about thirty or so more crashes, I got the hang of it and eventually earned my wings. Three months into the hobby, I thought it was time to move up. No more overgrown dragonflies. I want to fly a model plane that actually looked like a plane. And so I got myself a Tiger Moth kit: semi-scale pre-painted foam ARF of the 1931 classic British double-winged two-seater Havilland trainer.

While I have experience as a static scale modeler, it was my first build for an model plane. It took me the better part of two weeks-- working nights, mostly figuring out a work around. For one, the glue that came with the kit wasn't good enough; I experimented and came up with a home brew of Epoxy mixed with ethyl alcohol and baking soda (-- the baking soda made the mix bubble up, making it lighter and was a good filler, too). For another, the parts did not mate true to specs; some even a bit twisted. Another hurdle was keeping the dihedral of the upper wing within recommended specs; it was a challenge by itself. But, overall it looked promising. With all the parts glued together, it began to look like a decent model plane. From there, it was just a matter of putting in the two mini servos and a 2Amp ESC, and the Moth will be ready for flight.

I chose a calm late afternoon for its maiden flight. I drove out to the Global City where High Street is now. The Moth is classed as a ITF Park Flier which meant it had a small motor; flies only at slow speed and is better off flown indoors. I chose to R.O.G the Moth for its maiden flight, it veered to the right then lifted three feet off the ground. I put in too much up elevator and it lost its lift. It stalled and crashed on some thicket, damaging its flimsy landing gear. I trimmed the rudder by dialing an offset to the left. Throwing caution to the wind, I revved up the motor and hand launched the Moth; it flew straight; then it lifted. I pulled in too much elevator again, the plane started to go on a stall again. But, before it did, I pushed the elevator down a bit. It recovered. It twitched to the right. I let go of the sticks. The wing dihedral did it job and the plane corrected. I pulled in a bit more up elevator. Slowly it climbed up to about 20 feet cruising majestically at less than 8 kph.

The damn bitch was flying!

It was a great day. It was followed by more glorious days.

RC flight offered an escape from my demons. Maybe, I think, if I can focus on controlling a model plane, I’d have respite from the things that went wrong with my life. Besides, it seemed to be a great idea having control for once… of course, I was wrong (again). You don’t. You listen and feel model planes. You adjust to its mood and idiosyncrasies; and the will of the wind-- much like this wretched life; and beg the mercy of wind gods for gentler gusts, minimum down draft, less rain, more sunlight; more clouds and a forgiving sun so you could have a second more of that magical moment… nay a communion, with the Big Guy up there who is truly in full control.

I’m still here, you bastards…
-- Papillon, the movie; Steve McQueen as Henri Charrière