The Color of My Fears [COMPLETE]

Chapter 5 - The Tinhab [#18]

During the milling season, usually the sky was clear, a canvass of black sprinkled with brilliant specks of light, like diamonds on display. And I could see the stars; they looked like one was the same as the rest. If you saw one, you had seen them all. Later, I knew each star is different, each distinct, heralding its existence to an observer who has the power to tell the difference. From a book of stars borrowed from the village school, I was able to identify many bright stars and the shapes they form in the sky. The Milky Way with its unique signature at whose center lies the black hole named Sagittarius A, devouring anything in its path, that not even light could escape. The end of existence. I wondered then whether it was a dragon (bakunawa) that could not be satiated. The Orion and its belt of three stars: Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, said to be the template for the three huge pyramids of Giza in Egypt. As above so below. I knew where to look for the Big Dipper. The myth about it I learned to love so much. Polaris the north star in Ursa Minor. And I could not miss Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens. I could name all the planets in the solar system, in order of increasing distance from the sun, when Pluto was still a bona fide planet (now relegated to the status of a planetoid or dwarf planet). Venus when visible becomes the evening and the morning star, and so named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. I could trace clearly the shape of the different constellations hanging in the cosmos, the zodiac even. I knew I was born under the influence of Aquarius. And sometimes, I had the fortune to witness the bright path of a falling star (bulalakaw) blazing across the night sky. And often I made a wish. But not the kind of wish I wished I had had about the tinhab.

Standing there under the evening sky, I saw Father's face, silhouetted against the light coming from a sputtering oil lamp in the balcony. The hacienda transformed him into a silent laborer, more like a prisoner in the cane fields. During the milling season when school days were over, Father would wake me up in the wee hours of the morning to ride with him to the cane fields. There, I saw his body strained as he shouldered the heavy bundles of canes and loaded them into a waiting cart (karo) fastened to the carabao's neck. I would feed the animal fresh hay (kumpay) cut from the upper stalks of sugar canes, to keep it still while Father did his back-breaking labor. His was a life I knew was hard, for we were a family; we shared in the hardships of hacienda life. However, during that time, I hadn't put much thought to it, nor put emotion into the description of cane labor. I could hardly imagine that time that his dreams were unfulfilled, his protests silent, but his faith was in God and his happiness in the family.

But even then, as I remembered it, his haggard face exuded a sense of confidence born out of a long struggle of hauling canes in the field. It made him looked strong and firm, at least he was to the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy. I hadn't seen him squirm in pain, much less cry, not even once, and if he did, perhaps he cried silently, keeping the pain inside of him. But on the outside his visage betrayed the suffering and the sacrifices: The wavy lines and the wrinkles, the black dots and the skin the color of bronze, they showed them all. The sheer will to survive, feed a family and live the next day all combined to shake the fears away from his life. I wondered if Father kept a bottle with his fears trapped inside. And it would be a gift of hindsight to know what colors his fears displayed.

Father turned and stared back at me. "Fear lurks in the heart of every man. You must have courage to face it. You must remember that, my boy." Father tapped my head, mumbled something about fear and the tinhab, turned around, paused as if he had something more to say, changed his mind, then went back inside the house. I wondered when he's going to tell the story he promised. How could I know when I'm ready, if I'm ready at all?

I wanted to follow him and asked another question but decided against it. The story might be about the tinhab. Was there a story of how it came to be? Could the enchanted bird grant wishes, like in that story I read about a certain genie of the lamp? What if you wish to banish all your fears away? If what they said about the bird is true, then it could be done. As an afterthought, an idea slowly crept into my mind, took shape and begged to be carried out.

-ooo-