Fate In Ink

-special chapter 1-

A young girl laid on the tiled floor, holding a big hardbound book in her little fair hands. She sat up, dropping the book on the floor with a thud. She looked at her mother and sisters, tall and mighty as they circled the dining table, preparing all sorts of food for the fiesta. 

"I don't get it," the girl sighed. 

"Get what, Kate?" Her eldest sister, Analise, peered down at her. She wiped her forehead with her forearm, avoiding her flour-caked hands. 

"This." Little Catherine pointed a selection from the book she was reading, her face contorted to a frown. 

Analise approached her youngest sister, crouching beside her. She scanned the paragraph, a cartooned photo of a man tied elbow-to-elbow as he fell to his death, bullets rushing at him. She gulped and glanced to Catherine. 

She flipped some of the pages of the book with her pinky. "Isn't this lesson too early for you? Why don't you read something else? Like, um, *Lapu-Lapu?"

Catherine shook her head. "Teacher told us to study Rizal," she said. 

"Oh." Analise crossed her legs together and sat beside her sister. "So? What are you confused about?"

Catherine looked at her with strong, fiery eyes, a million questions hidden deep behind her intense stare. "Sister, why did he have to die?"

Analise wanted to bury herself into the ground. Of all the things her baby sister could have asked, it just had to be the hardest question - a riddle even she could not begin to imagine the answer could be. 

Their father turned the television on, and both the sisters flinched at the reverberating sound of cackling. Analise glared at the direction of her father, but said nothing. Instead, she leaned closer to Catherine, and pointed at the picture beside the paragraph. 

"He allowed himself to be sacrificed like that so that the people around him," Analise traced a circle around the picture, "would realize just how cruel the Spaniards were to them."

"Can't he do it through talking? Are all the Spaniards bad?" she asked, hints of curiosity sparkling in her eyes.

Analise nibbled at her lip. She envied how innocently her sister looked at the world and how pure her thoughts were. She wrapped Catherine in a tight hug, relishing in the feeling of squeezing her adorable sister. 

"Not all of them." Analise leaned onto Catherine's head. "But a lot of foreign priests and government officials didn't exactly do what they should. Then the people fought back."

"But I thought priests are good?" 

"Well... it's complicated."

Catherine grew quiet, staring at the book before her. Her eyes stayed glued on the book, and Analise could only wonder how many questions flew inside her sister's head. 

"Why didn't the Filipinos accept them then?"

Analise was taken aback by the question. She was amazed at how easy the question sounded in when it came from the lips of a child. But Catherine knew nothing of cruelty and foreign oppression. Not now, at least. 

Breaking free from the hug, Analise folded her hands on her lap. "Imagine our neighbor Harry," she said. Catherine raised her brow and turned to face her sister. "One day, Harry breaks through our gate and suddenly says he will live here."

"Uh-huh?"

"And then he starts telling us to do things his own way. He'll take all your toys, eat all our food. Then he'll burn our books-"