 
Usok Volume No. 1, Issue No. 1

Published by Rocket Kapre Books

an imprint of Eight Ray Sun Publishing Inc.

http://rocketkapre.com

Copyright © 2009 by Eight Ray Sun Publishing Inc.

All rights reserved

Produced in the Republic of the Philippines

First Smashwords Edition: December 2009

All events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.

Cover art (base) by Kevin Lapeña © 2009 by Eight Ray Sun Publishing Inc.

Cover design by Paolo Chikiamco © 2009 by Eight Ray Sun Publishing Inc.

"The Startbox"© 2009 by Crystal Koo

"The Saint of Elsewhere: A Mystery" © 2007/2009 by chiles samaniego. First appeared in _The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories_ _Volume 1, Issue 2_ , edited by Kenneth Yu (Kenneth Yu: Philippines).

"Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing" © 2009 by Kenneth Yu

"The Coming of the Anak-Araw" © 2009 by Celestine Trinidad

"The Child Abandoned"© 2006/2009 by Yvette Tan. First appeared in _Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 2_ edited by Dean Alfar (Kestrel IMC: Philippines). Subsequently published in _Waking the Dead and Other Horror Stories_ (Anvil: Manila).

Introduction and Compilation © 2009 by Eight Ray Sun Publishing Inc.

Rocket Kapre, Rocket Kapre Books, Usok are © 2009 by Eight Ray Sun Publishing Inc.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

* Introduction *

* The Startbox by Crystal Koo *

* The Saint of Elsewhere: A Mystery by chiles samaniego *

* Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing by Kenneth Yu *

* The Coming of the Anak-Araw by Celestine Trinidad *

* The Child Abandoned by Yvette Tan *

* Contributor Bios *
INTRODUCTION

When I was a child, short stories did not exist.

I don't mean that literally--short stories have probably been around as long as story-telling has (I doubt that the first spinner of tales concocted Iliad-length narratives from the get-go). What I mean is that when I was a voracious young reader growing up in suburban Manila, I rarely gave any story that was less than 300 pages the time of day--and then, only if it was part of a series. What I loved, what I needed, from my fiction was that it serve as a gateway to another world-- and at the time, the thicker the tome, the larger the gate.

When I was a child, I couldn't find a single modern-day work of Fantasy or Science Fiction by a Filipino.

This was not to say that they did not exist, but they were beyond the sphere of awareness of a ten year old boy of the pre-Internet age. If I wanted my fill of genre stories (I didn't hear of the "Speculative" umbrella until much later) then I had no recourse other than the SFF books that sold well in the West, which books were the only ones that made it to these shores, to our National Bookstores. Don't get me wrong--it's the work of Eddings and Card and Gemmell and Goodkind and the like that made me fall in love with Speculative Fiction, but I couldn't help thinking about why there were no stories about aliens landing in New Manila instead of New York.

Now? While I still devour novels and trilogies (and will eventually get around to whatever it is the Wheel of Time is now) there are few things which I admire more than a well made short story. There's something about the economy, the efficiency of a short story that makes it easier to identify and appreciate elements of good writing.

As for Philippine Speculative Fiction, works of the fantastic penned by Filipinos are making their way into local bookstores and international publications, and gaining accolades in the process. Online distribution (written and audio) also provides an opportunity for a story to reach a wider audience than has ever before been possible.

It's a good time to be a Filipino Spec Fic author... and that makes it a good time to start a Filipino Spec Fic Magazine.

Usok is my attempt to provide a home for quality short fiction, quality speculative fiction, quality Filipino fiction. Thank you for joining me for the beginning of what I hope will be a long, joyous, journey. That's also the loose theme of our first issue--beginnings.

New issues come out first on http://www.rocketkapre.com/usok/, and you can head over there to leave comments, and find supplemental content such as reader's guides and a larger, clean image of our cover. We'll also have interviews with some of our authors at http://www.rocketkapre.com

So without further ado: _Kwentuhan na._ **\- Paolo Gabriel V. Chikiamco**

THE STARTBOX

by Crystal Koo

THE LAUS CLOSED DOWN their electronics shop and moved out of Nicanor Street one summer. Everyone was surprised. The shop had been doing so well there didn't seem to be any reason to throw it all away. This was what everyone was thinking at the closing-down sale but no one asked the Laus. The family had hired people to look after the shop and never made much of an appearance, unlike all the other proprietors that ran the shops that lined Nicanor Street. When the Laus left, the speculation became rampant. A family emergency. They didn't like the neighborhood. The balding man who owned the photocopying place on the next block said he had heard rumors that they were immigrating to Hong Kong, but he couldn't be sure. With the Handover so close, it didn't seem right. Why not, my father interrupted. There'd be business with the Chinese mainlanders, lots of them. No need to swim over the Shenzhen River now to start a new life.

No one could confirm or deny any of these. I was twelve years old at the time, only a boy that my father thought could still be distracted by the jingle of an ice cream cart. I didn't have the courage to tell him what I knew about Ricky Lau.

The Laus had lived across from us, in an apartment above their electronics shop. A disused air shaft, where kids dropped candy wrappers between the grates, was all that separated them from my father's turpentine-odored hardware store below our own apartment. Lau Electronics drew the younger crowd with the cellular phones and CD players they sold. We had mostly older men dropping by the hardware store, drinking tea and playing mahjong with my father while my mother bustled in and out with a kettle. During summers, when I had to look after the store with my father, I would watch the teenagers going into the Laus' air-conditioned shop and I'd try to make out the objects inside the pink plastic bags they carried when they returned to the street. Then my father would rap me on the knuckles for not paying attention to the pliers I was supposed to be counting and tell me to turn the fan a level lower to save electricity.

Ricky Lau and I went to the same class in school. He had a slightly oily face and a messy patch of hair, a reedy-looking kid who always disappeared quickly into his building after classes. Everyday, when I played with the neighborhood kids, I could see his face between the blinds of the window of his room on the second floor. The general consensus among us children was that Ricky Lau felt he was too good for us. Further conversation regarding Ricky Lau was usually cut short at that point by the beginning of our regular water-gun game.

We didn't have much to do with Ricky in school either. He got good grades seemingly without effort and his self-sufficiency simply smacked of snobbery as far as we were concerned. While everyone else stalled as long as possible when the teachers, before giving out our exam papers, ordered us to lay our notebooks on the floor, all he did was click his pen again and again, which made everyone even more nervous.  
The teachers started off liking him because he scored very well, but Ricky never raised his hand when the teachers asked questions, although we were sure he knew what the answer was. In our more ungenerous moments, we played dumb with the teacher just to see if Ricky would rise to the occasion for us, but he never took the bait.

So when Ms. Rafael paired me with Ricky for the science project, I had very mixed feelings. Ricky was a charmed creature when it came to schoolwork and I planned to let him do nearly all of it by himself. On the other hand, I knew I was going to get flak for being stuck with him, a ritual which began immediately after science class when Ricky came to my desk just as I was about to head to the cafeteria with my friends. Alvin and Carl muttered something about waiting for me outside and left, slapping each other's shoulders in exaggeratedly-restrained laughter on their way to the door.

Hi Jameson, Ricky said, looking at me straight in the eye. I have an idea for the project.

I answered, Yeah, OK, what is it? Through the jalousies, Alvin was making circles with his hands and putting them around his eyes, the traditional sign made to symbolize a nerd, except Ricky didn't wear glasses.

Ricky said it was too complicated to explain without the thing itself. I asked what the "thing" was and Ricky timidly said that the project was already done so I didn't have to worry about it because it was going to knock the socks off Ms. Rafael anyway. This irritated me, more so because Alvin and Carl had gotten tired of waiting and had left without me, and I asked him when I could see it.

Ricky gave me a beatific smile. You can take a look at it at my place after dinner, he said.

I found Alvin and Carl afterward lounging by the water fountain, sharing a pack of french fries. They nudged me and asked how it had gone. I told them that Ricky and I were making a mouse maze.

That night, my father drew the aluminum roll-up gate halfway down to let some of the night air in, then he sat on a small stool, printing figures on a ledger and eating from the plate of steaming pork-and-chives dumplings my mother had set on the table. The night was warm. My father had both electric fans at their highest speeds but from my position near the tool racks I could still see the sheen of sweat on his caterpillar moustache.

My father was an aggressive salesman who got his customers to laugh and drink tea before eventually buying a bucket of paint that he'd recommended without much talk about the paint itself. There was only: Your family was from Guangdong too? That calls for a special price then! We could have been living in neighboring villages! If the customer was Filipino, my father would bring out his makeshift Tagalog to rattle off comradely complaints about gas prices. All that exuberance would disappear when he started doing his numbers in the evening, only returning the next day when his first customer walked in.

My mother was watching a Taiwanese soap opera that evening, the TV producing screams and bombastic musical cues every ten minutes. When I finished locking the glass rack holding the screwdrivers and was about to sit down next to my father, he tapped the little teacup next to the dumplings with the end of his chopsticks and asked for more soy sauce. After I went to the kitchen and returned with a full teacup, I told my father I was going to Ricky Lau's house after dinner.

He frowned. What for? What about your homework?

I told him it was for homework. I was about to explain how Ms. Rafael had paired Ricky and me together but my father stood up and went to the altarpieces nailed to the wall. He lit the candles before the statuettes of red-faced Guan-yu with his sword and helmet and the curly-haired Santo Niño. Don't break anything while you're there, he said. I don't want to have to pay for something that we would never buy anyway.

I nodded but he didn't see me, so I started on the dumplings alone. My father was muttering prayers to the altarpieces and as always I could never tell his prayers apart. They made up a wall of droning little noises, repetitive like Ricky's pen-clicking, and I always felt awkward whenever he started. I was never sure if it was supposed to be a private moment between him and his gods, or some kind of business routine that I would one day have to mimic. I had learned to drown it out, and that night I listened to someone nearby practicing The Entertainer on the piano, the melody surfacing in between the sputters and whines of the pedicabs.

Ricky himself, dressed in pajamas, opened the door for me, saying he had seen me cross over from his window.

The Laus's living room was filled with huge, packaging boxes exploding with bubblewrap, although I could see a few faux-leather sofas and chairs peeking behind them. Ricky told me that his parents liked collecting strange electronics from all over the world. They bought the occasional antique too, but it seemed like electronic golems and chakras could be worth more in the long run because they were harder to find. I didn't know what Ricky was talking about so I assumed he was making them up.

Ricky went to the refrigerator for a carton of orange juice and asked if I wanted to play video games on his PlayStation. His father was busy in his workshop building a home-made PC and his mother was out for dinner, so Ricky said we could play as long as we wanted.

The strangeness of everything surrounding Ricky, his family, and even his house had begun to make me feel out of place, so I said no, thanks. He shrugged and drank from the carton and led me to his room. On our way there, I looked out the window from which I had so often seen Ricky watching us, and saw that my father had already locked down the roll-up gate.

I remember going into Ricky's room and paying more attention to the fact that the air-conditioning had been left running with no one around rather than to the startbox on his desk. The box didn't look like it was capable of much. It was half the size of a regular shoebox, made of dark, olive-green turtleshell, and I thought it was the sort of lacquered thing that girls used to put their little trinkets in.

Then Ricky opened the lid.

Inside was an exact miniature replica of Ricky's room - the wardrobe, the bed, the desk, his swivel chair, the shelves, all in position. But what sent a frisson up and down my spine were the people in it. Frozen in the box was me, sitting on the bed, and Ricky standing next me with a small box in his hands. I looked closer at the figurines, stunned. My head was a little too big and the colors were somewhat faded, but it had a look of wariness on its face that mirrored my own, and Ricky's figure had that same expression of excitement, as if about to divulge a secret. Ricky—the real one—still had that expression when he covered the box again with the lid.

I suddenly had an image of Ricky spending the afternoons after school watching us from the window and making little miniature houses and people to play with afterward.

That's not a science project, I said, the fear making my throat dry.

He laughed. Wait, you haven't seen the whole thing yet. My parents bought this from Hong Kong. Watch this.

He took the lid off again and moved the miniature swivel chair to the door. When he returned the lid, the chair behind us began rolling across the floor towards the door on its tiny plastic wheels.

I looked at Ricky, my skin covered with goose bumps, and he grinned at me, enjoying my incomprehension. It works wherever you are, he said. You just need four AA batteries and it lasts longer than a Game Boy. It's all wireless too.

Then he fished out a piece of paper that looked like a one-page manual on how to operate a cheap clock, one side in English and the other in Chinese. Ricky started reading it aloud in very ungrammatical English, informing me about the butterfly effect and chaos theory.

I interrupted him. You can move stuff around with it?

He didn't look very pleased with the crudeness of my remark. It's a startbox, he said. Like if you change the things around you, you can make a new starting point in your life. The carton said something like that. I bet they don't sell this anywhere in the Philippines, so we can just memorize all the science stuff about butterflies and tornadoes and Ms. Rafael won't know.

He put the startbox away after that, in a drawer under his desk, and started talking about the PlayStation games he had. We ended up playing a fighting game with bobbing, trash-talking 3D characters, until I realized that it was nearly ten and had to dash out and bang on our roll-up until a neighbor started yelling at me to shut up.

After that night, I couldn't stop thinking about the startbox. I knew if my friends got their hands on it they'd want to pry off the head of a figurine or something equally random just to see what would happen, but that wasn't what fascinated me; it was how everything in the startbox was built for the purpose of deliberate control. I wanted to see more of that, but Ricky seemed more concerned with trying to hang out with me than doing anything related to the "project." Whenever Ms. Rafael would remind the class about our projects, Ricky would pull out the startbox's one-page manual from his breast pocket and wave it from across the room with a meaningful grin. He had given me a photocopy the day after he had shown me the startbox. It was as if the startbox was his attempt to show that Ricky Lau too had the guts to fudge schoolwork, and waving the manual was his way of reminding me about this.

One day after classes, I told Ricky that it would be easier for me to memorize the manual if I could see the startbox again. And to ensure that his quota of fun with me would be filled, I asked him if he would like to join me and my friends that afternoon for water-gun wars. Ricky's face lit up brilliantly.

Ricky owned a water blaster with a large reservoir and air pressure chambers, and when he brought it out I felt more than a few glares sent in my direction. That afternoon's game, however, became a firm lesson in how fantastic weaponry could backfire. It was bad enough that Ricky could never get a clean shot, that it took him too long to refuel his huge reservoir and to pump enough air to be compressed, but Ricky was also unaware that showing off an almighty piece of hardware like that to machismo-saddled, twelve-year-old boys was simply daring them to prove that they would not be cowed. By the time the sun had set and everyone was leaning in exhaustion against the cars parked along the street, there wasn't a dry patch on Ricky's school uniform. One of his ears was red from a direct hit, his shoes squelched as he walked, and his neck itched from the torn bits of leaves that Carl had added to his gun to turn the water itchy.

For a moment I regretted bringing Ricky, who had started to look like a drowned chick. But he beamed at me and half-raised his unwieldy water blaster, as if he had forgotten that our team had lost abysmally because of him, and my regret left quickly.

He was too tired to do anything else after we had changed into fresh sets of clothes and gone into his room. He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, while I put the startbox on his desk and opened the lid with my sweaty hands.

As I stared into the box, I began to realize how beautiful the miniatures were. Everything was replicated to the smallest detail, from the continents and the oceans on the map of the world on Ricky's wall to the little spikes that formed on my hair when it was damp. Looking at the miniatures filled me with a childishly happy emotion. The startbox was a thing primed for action, like a freshly-refueled water-pistol, and as I felt the heaviness of the box against my palm, I longed to see what other miniatures the startbox could create outside Ricky's room.

Can I play with you guys again tomorrow? Ricky asked.

I didn't answer him. Using my little finger, I edged the miniature bed against the wall of the box, making the tiny varnished headboard shudder. When I returned the lid, Ricky's bed mimicked the movement with a loud groan, bumping against the wall hard enough that Ricky fell off from the impact.

I laughed. It was only when Ricky picked himself up that he began to laugh along with me. He sat on the corner of the bed, one hand clutching the edge in case I did something with the bed again, and with the other hand he rubbed his nose. So can I? he asked again, smiling feebly.

I wanted to tell him that if I hadn't talked to the boys before the game, they would have ripped both his ears off. Instead I opened the box again and gazed at the calming beauty of the miniatures. How long have you had this? I asked.

About a month. My parents found it in a small, crowded building where people sold pirated CDs and computer stuff really cheap. My dad said if they couldn't find a fake there, it didn't exist. Cool, right?

I thought it was a coolness that was wasted on someone like Ricky in the same way that the startbox was horribly underused in his care. All he seemed to want to do with it was play house.

I have an idea, I said. Let's bring this to my place.

Okay, he answered uncertainly. What's wrong with here?

Nothing. I just want to see what it looks like in a different place.

When we arrived at the hardware store, my father looked at the clock and then at me and Ricky, asking, What about your homework?

I waved the startbox at him. Then I went to the corner of the shop and plunked it on the table, while Ricky followed, looking at the screwdrivers.

It's really warm here, he said.

I told him to sit down. I opened the lid, and sure enough, there was the hardware store, from the cabinets where the ledgers were kept down to my father's caterpillar moustache. The roof shingles my father had on display made the replica even more intricate and my fingers tingled. Really nice, I said. The folds of Guan-yu's tunic looked like melting trails of multicolored ice cream and the lips of the Santo Niño were delicately turned up in emphasized blessedness.  
I slipped my hand into the box, and with my fingernail I tipped Guan-yu from the altar, followed by his Christian counterpart.

Ricky was about to say something as I returned the lid, but he was interrupted by the crash of the statuettes. My father jumped up in alarm and gave a yelp when he saw what had made the noise. Guan-yu and the Santo Niño were on our green linoleum floor.

As my father rushed over to them, Ricky looked at me, wide-eyed, whatever it was he was going to say forgotten. I felt a sharp sensation in the bottom of my stomach, as if someone had curled a fist in it, before I realized that I was trembling a little. The sound of the crash had been louder than I had thought.

The Santo Niño was made of plastic so it was only a bit scuffed, but Guan-yu was porcelain and his face was smashed. My father swore, setting the Santo Niño aside face down on a glass rack while looking for a box to put Guan-yu's body in. He barely glanced at us.

I waited for my heart to slow down as Ricky gazed mutely at me like a stray dog caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. My father was grumbling about buying new statuettes. When my mother came out, apron around her waist, asking what the noise was about, my father waved Guan-yu at her. She gasped and asked how it had happened. My father shrugged irritably. The wind. Rats. Or maybe ghosts.

Don't say ghosts in this house! she said. How can you be so careless?

I didn't knock them over!

My father's voice was raised, poised for defense. Aware of Ricky, my mother stared helplessly at the pieces of Guan-yu's face on the floor as my father bent to pick them up. The fist in my stomach began to relax and I watched my parents and the statuettes, chess pieces that had been moved around with one flick of a finger. There would be no prayers that night. I imagined the places I could bring the startbox to. The kitchen, the living room, the bedrooms. I turned to Ricky, who was squeezing himself further and further into the corner of the shop, and asked, What do you think would happen if we brought this to school?

Ricky's forehead instantly wrinkled. What was that for? he asked nervously, his eyes darting between my parents and me.

I shrugged. Just a test. You said the startbox could change stuff. Start all over or something, right? I want to see how much. I don't know what all that stuff about the butterflies is about anyway. This is a kind of experiment.

Did it work?

I shrugged again, concealing my triumph, and said, Maybe.

My mother had returned to the kitchen and my father was pulling the roll-up gate down. Guan-yu was safe in an old hammer carton case. Do you want to stay for dinner? my father asked Ricky flatly.

Ricky looked at me and I gave him a blank stare. I think I should leave now, he said. He was about to reach for the startbox when I took it away and told him I'd walk him home.

Outside, we could hear the amateur pianist still practicing the last part of The Entertainer, hitting the wrong keys, and stopping every three seconds to change them. The sound of the keys made me think of a person going down a hill sitting down, his legs trying to slow his descent and making clods of soil tumble and fall, and I realized I wanted to push that person off the hill. There was a pause when the song finally ended, then the piano started from the beginning again. The humidity of the night crept into my lungs, damp and oppressive.

Did you ever use this? I asked Ricky, extending my arm and hitting him with the startbox.

Ricky looked like he didn't know if he should take the startbox or not. Of course, he answered, his eyes flicking around my face. I showed you how.  
You mean roll the chair around, clean your room with it? Fun stuff like that?

He didn't answer but his eyes crinkled the way a baby's eyes would when it's about to get upset.

You said it's supposed to give you a new starting point, I told him. Supposed to change things. If you'd done it, you wouldn't keep watching us from up in your room. You're not following instructions.

I drew the startbox back to me and rested it against my stomach. Though the cotton fabric of my Power Rangers T-shirt, I could feel the smooth coldness of the turtleshell. The sensation was like relief, like an ice cream on a hot summer night.

I'm going to do more experiments with it, I announced.

Ricky was hugging himself, twisting his waist, and biting his lower lip. I thought he looked like he needed to go to the bathroom. What are you gonna do? he mumbled, as if his mouth was full of peanut butter. You shouldn't break your parents' stuff.

Experiments, I repeated a little loudly. I don't want to memorize a bunch of stuff on a piece of paper. I want to understand how to make it work the way it's supposed to because you don't. You have to break stuff sometimes.

Ricky pursed his lips and shifted his weight from one foot to another. I'll let you take it home if we can play water-guns again tomorrow.

I let my fingers glide over the gleaming olive-green turtleshell, feeling the startbox nestle in my palm like a living thing, and I knew that I needed it far more than Ricky ever would.

I'm going to take this and I'll give it back to you soon, okay?

It was the quickest I had ever seen him move. When he dove at me, I nearly lost my balance. Ricky's one hand was on the soft part between my chin and my throat, the other hand reaching for the startbox. But I beat his arms away and yanked myself out of his reach, shoving him with my entire weight. Ricky tottered a few steps before he fell.

In the air around us, the Entertainer stumbled desperately towards the end with bleeding feet. Standing above the air shaft, I grabbed the lid off the startbox to see our part of Nicanor Street mirrored within it - my father's store, the electronics shop, the streetlights, the sidewalk where Ricky had fallen.

Wheezing loudly, Ricky got back to his feet.

I picked his miniature up from the box. When I held it above my head, Ricky lunged at me.

I suppose I can just tell you that it was all his fault, that he knocked it out of my hand; it's the only way I can save myself in this story. The truth is I've never been sure. At that point, with the startbox in my hand, I could have done anything. I could have been thinking of threatening him. I could have been thinking of dropping it.

I could have done anything.

That's why I never told anyone how the miniature fell into the air shaft and disappeared into the gloom of candy wrappers and lost coins and keys and was it triumph or horror or a little bit of both that made me grasp the box so tightly I could have snapped it into pieces? I can never remember clearly, except that the fist in my stomach had returned and I was shaking because the lid gripped under my armpit was too close to the rim of the box I held.

It was Ricky who had to take them away from me with his clammy palms. He did it silently, without looking at me, sliding the startbox out of my arms with the ease of a surgeon who knew exactly what to do with a tumor. Somewhere in an apartment near us, the piano player had stopped. Then Ricky held out his hand to me for the lid.

DAYS LATER, WHEN WE DECIDED to do a mouse maze instead, I worked up enough courage to ask Ricky what he had done with the startbox but he pretended not to hear me. That was our last conversation and it didn't last for more than five minutes. He said he would build the maze himself and I could bring the mice and the pellets on the day the project itself was due. I couldn't have said no even if I had wanted to.

Ms. Rafael gave us a ninety-two for the project. The maze was a rickety affair made of cardboard and felt paper held together with hot melt glue, and the mice climbed over the walls a few times but Ricky made a brilliant report on the things he said we had done together: how we built the maze, how we ran experiments to gauge the time it would take for a mouse to escape the maze without bait, how we arrived at the conclusion that any organism would respond better to a task if there was an incentive. There was only a smattering of applause--most of it had gone over everyone's heads--but it was the most self-assured I had ever seen Ricky in front of a crowd.

School ended soon afterward, and Alvin and Carl were too excited about moving on to high school the next year to remember that I had ever been paired with Ricky. When summer came, the Laus moved out.

I still live in Nicanor Street. I have a degree in business from the local university and I'm partners with my father in the hardware store. Carl, who's in a programming firm, drops by once in a while for coffee; Alvin has left to find work and girls in Singapore. Another family has taken over the Laus' apartment and the electronics shop is now a fastfood restaurant.

Sometimes, when my father begins his prayers, I step out and look for Ricky through the second floor window of the apartment across the way. I imagine how, on that last day, he would have carefully bubblewrapped his PlayStation before placing it in the packing box. I imagine how he would have taken the startbox from his drawer, its batteries pulled out, its turtleshell lid long thrown into his wastebasket and buried in the landfills. Inside the box would have been Nicanor Street, frozen in the sleepiness of dusk, with me standing over the air shaft, my face painted livid, and Ricky nowhere to be found.

THE SAINT OF ELSEWHERE: A MYSTERY

by chiles samaniego

You can, in fact, swim the same river twice.

\- overheard

I MET A GIRL FROM ANOTHER LAND who told me of a place like no other I knew. The old man, he came later, though he was the one who taught me how to get there.

The people, they define the place, the girl said. You can't imagine how warm it is.

We spoke to each other in a common language, the girl and I, native to neither of us but which, were I to be honest, felt more natural to me than the one I was born to. Her speech was as strongly accented as I imagine she thought mine was, and our conversation was broken by stuttering pauses as we stopped to make out what the other had said. But in the end, I think, we understood each other. We understood each other perfectly.

So warm, she said. You could walk around forever, naked, she said; unarmed, she said. It all feels so welcoming, so safe. I had heard those exact same words repeated so many times about the place. Repeated again and again by so many people who didn't know any better. People just like her. No, that can't be right: how could anyone be just like her?

I could have listened to her forever. I could have watched her animate those same words over and over with her pale, gentle lips, even as I tried to persuade her otherwise: no, I said, nowhere's that safe.

Nowhere at all.

Her words broke in abrasive shards of crystalline sugar, and I lapped it all up. I could taste her sweetness melting on my tongue, and it could have gone on forever if my mouth had not gone so quickly and suddenly dry. I heard myself drone on in dull counterpoint to the ringing chime of her words. Whatever I said was inadequate, inappropriate. All wrong. She sang; I croaked:

Let the days pass. Let all my yesterdays and tomorrows become the brief moments between the parting of her lips and their coming back together over her closed teeth. Let my now forever be their dance...

Hours later, I woke alone in the darkness before dawn, sweating beneath the sheets despite the cold, dead air of the hotel room.

By then she had disappeared.

She left the hotel that very night and did not return. The concierge and certain members of the hotel staff swore this to me in their mundane, mannered politeness when I asked them the next day. The previous night our words had danced between us in the darkness: I could still feel them lingering in the air when I came to visit the spot where we had talked. But no, how could they still be there, her words? The shore by daylight was just a beach, white sand, brine, and pallid, lifeless heat. No mystery, no romance. The radiance was just radiation from a sun too far to be relevant.

Still, I persisted in my search, drawing my toes heavily through the sand. Perhaps I had the wrong place? Maybe there, between the twining palm trees, or somewhere beneath the shadows of the white parasols that bloomed profusely like paradoxical mushrooms with the sunrise?

The chatter of the tiresomely exuberant tourists—broken by sharp, graceless laughter—reminded me of her, recalled to my mind the sheer energy and naive sincerity of her stilted, sing-song speech; but they were not her. They were nothing like her.

I kept walking until I felt the sea lapping at my trouser legs. The sandy bottom sucked at my feet, threatening to swallow, digest, absorb me. They worked in concert, the sand and the waves: the waves reached up by inches to pull me down, the sand clambered over my naked feet, grain by precious grain, until it had buried them up to my ankles.

A dead jellyfish baked in the sand, strangled by seaweed, lying just beyond the reach of the water.

No, there was not a trace left of her here. Her words would not have suffered such banality for long.

I, on the other hand, suffered one more night alone in the cold of my hotel room, and flew home the next day, not bothering to ask after her again, certain I would receive nothing more than a polite shake of the head behind a wide, long-toothed smile.

Every year since then (it could have been five, ten, or even a thousand years for all that it mattered to me) I returned to that place, the place where I met her, the girl, looking for her, the girl I never forgot.

Perhaps it was on my third visit, perhaps earlier, perhaps later (it is difficult now to mark out chronology in my memories of the time), that I started truly seeing the rest of the island. I went to all the places I imagined she would have wanted to go, all the beaches, and hilltops, and strange towns (there were three, in addition to the city); always it seemed I would catch the faintest trace of her in the air, an effervescent and no doubt coincidental collision of memory and sensation.

But she was never there. She wasn't anywhere there.

Later, I stopped rummaging through the countryside and started instead to ramble aimlessly through the City.

The City, it is true, was not all that different from the metropolis I was born in, the one where I lived: the same oppressive amber sunlight; the same air, thick and heavy enough to give a syrupy impression of time's passage, so that the petrol-powered rectangular steel boxes, the _jiffies_ that were common to both this place and home seemed to judder along the streets as though captured on a fractured reel of film; the same rain, pouring in hesitant bursts of passion, drowning the world briefly in a morass of indifferent mildew and wetness, only to recede and be replaced again at the earliest possible opportunity by that oppressive amber heat...

Always, however, in that place, it was the people I met who lingered in my mind, though even now I lack the vocabulary to describe them: the street vendors selling sweet cakes like the brightly hued caps of giant mushrooms, or jewelry made from the shards of oyster shells, or small vials of fragrant sand, cork-stoppered bottles of sea salt and all sorts of questionable merchandise; the barkers, belting out strange destinations to fill those hungry, smoke-belching steel boxes, directing the people who pile mechanically in through the posterior orifice of each _jiffy_ and who clamber over each other indifferent to the stick of sweat, polite indignity, and motor-oil slick exhaust fumes; the tourists, their voices always exuberant, always grating like the rubbing together of two coins; the girls, who only seem to join the City at night...

At first, I admit, I refused to see it. Upon their open-faced greetings and characteristic raising of eyebrows, my mind imposed an element of facetiousness: I had convinced myself that behind their brief, unthinking courtesies was a knowledge that I, a stranger to that place, could never know.

How it happened that I began to feel a more sincere warmth in their constant smiles and easy laughter, I cannot say. But I never lost a certain degree of skepticism, a suspicion about the place, the sense of being a stranger there. If I was in any way comfortable, it was only because, at last, I felt not the inquisitiveness behind their courtesy, but saw through to their polite and sincere indifference.

At last, I thought, they've learned to leave me alone.

Every visit I made to the place, whether it lasted one, two or three but never more than five days (and then only because a summer storm had closed the island's only port, stranding all visitors who wished to depart by ship or plane), I would spend one night with a stranger to remember the girl I met, so long ago now, it seemed.

I was a God of Love, I thought, repeating, bestowing with benevolence upon a fortunate City girl the one act that marked my life forever.

For a time, I only chose girls who I believed most reminded me of her, but in the end, I learned none of them could ever _be_ her. No matter that this one had her dark, oriental eyes, that one her skin, like porcelain or fragrant soap; what little difference it made that this one shared her fractured accent, that one her guileless yet graceful laughter. None of them were really anything like her. No, nothing like her at all.

And every morning that followed I would wake again alone, and remember the way the sweat evaporated off my skin into the cold, dead hotel room air that night.

I never stayed much longer after that; after all, that was all I ever came for, the only pretense behind my visits to the City.

It was on my last visit to that place that I met the old man.

It was the morning after what ought to have been my last night in the City: another City girl (not her) come and gone. I drifted out of sleep, opened my eyes to the empty ceiling, and simply stared up at the blankness above me, thinking of her, the original, the first girl who'd ever come and gone for me, the first to have disappeared the way she had from my life, and the only one who has ever remained.

I realized then I could no longer remember her face. I had, in fact, stopped remembering a long time ago. I was no longer even certain I remembered her words correctly.

I was surprised by the calm this realization brought me, even as I wondered what she'd actually said: Warmth? Safety? What was it she found in that place that I, for one, at the time, had never seen for myself?

I called my agent and had her re-book my flight for some time later that day.

I'd like to take a stroll through the City, I said. Maybe the beach, just once more before I go.

Well, that's a surprise. Are you alright?

Yes. I don't expect I'll be coming back.

I rang off, putting the receiver back on the cradle. The numbers leaped off the dial on the telephone and began to swim, to swarm meaninglessly in a warm fuzzy puddle around my head.

I don't know what it was that made me choose the hotel's beachfront over the City. Perhaps it was the pure solitude the calm susurrus that mingled breeze and sea offered, untainted by the jabber of tourists and other visitors who had by then vacated the premises at the end of summer. Perhaps it was the pleasant memory of the way the waves had worked with the sand to swallow my feet, the day after she disappeared.

Perhaps it was because, apart from the people of that place, she loved this beach most of all.

I stopped beside a dead jellyfish in the sand, wrapped like a gift-package with seaweed, baking in the sun just beyond the reach of the waves...But the scene would not last: the sun had begun to set, and the tide was rising.

Find what you were looking for?

The old man, intruding on my solitude as though he'd materialized from thin air. Past the old man's wide, toothless grin, I followed with my eyes the curving trail of his footprints to the other end of the beach, already broken in places where the sea's reach had risen high enough to wipe the impressions away.

You have the look of someone who's leaving, he said. Someone who's saying goodbye.

The sunset confused me; I peered intently at the fading orange glow. Here, in this City, he said, "goodbye" means one of two things: you've found what you're looking for, or you've decided you never will.

The old man seemed made of an unusual number of odd joints that creaked constantly like the wooden beams of a ship, even when he was still. He was a ragged, jagged, fractured thing against the milky smoothness of the purpling sky, a smattering of countless limbs upon the otherwise unblemished skin of the beach, as though someone had stepped on an albino cockroach on a white marble floor. He wore clothes you could tell were once white linen, but were now the texture of crumpled vellum parchment.

He smelled of cheese and almonds, the mildew of old books. His voice, however, had the immediacy, the impetuousness of a young man, or of an old man who had only just discovered his youth. You couldn't find it could you?

No one can find what I'm looking for. I made a mistake, I admit it. I had driven her away so that she would remain hidden forever, when all I wanted was to keep her with me, never have to lose her, forever.

His grin widened, and I felt suddenly embarrassed by my dismissive tone. I looked away, back to the sliver that was all that remained of the setting sun. The first stars had begun to shine, but what did it matter if I made a wish?

Something shifted, I could sense it: the wind, the tide, the angle of the light, all of them changed; but it was something else; something more.

Have you ever considered your potential in the material universe?

I sighed, again dismissive: I'd met my fair share of philosophical old men in my time, old men far too ready to share the so-called wisdom they believed they'd accumulated over a lifetime that had gone on far too long, and I was about to interrupt—

I hesitated. I don't know why. Into my hesitation, he continued:

Imagine a circle.

No, imagine a sphere.

Imagine a sphere around yourself.

(What are you talking about? But I did not say this out loud. Instead I listened, followed his instructions. I don't know why.)

Imagine a sphere the radius of which is the absolute limit, the absolute furthest you could travel at the speed of light within the span of your life, if you'd started traveling in all directions from the moment you were conceived.

Most people, that's about, what, 70, 80, maybe a hundred light years.

(For most people, far too long. But I kept my silence.)

So: a sphere about two hundred light years in diameter, centered on the bed where your dad came inside your mom—accidentally or on purpose, what's the difference—where and when you were conceived.

(A blackness before me, before I was me: even my thoughts were silenced.)

In Einstein's universe, a universe necessarily limited by the speed of light, this is your sphere of influence, established before you were even born, like destiny, at the moment you were conceived—at least in _potential_ terms; in practical, material terms, the sphere means shit, but in reality, in your reality, you'll only ever be able to exercise influence— _material_ influence—over the smallest fraction of the volume of that sphere—a speck really, is all it is—and it gets exponentially smaller with every infinitesimal increment of time you creep closer to death.

(Another blackness, this one coming after.)

Everything you will never physically touch, never have material influence over, everything _else_ , to you, is _Elsewhere_.

Blackness, everywhere. He was losing me, and losing me fast: my mind slipped beyond my power to control it, to keep it in place, and it began to wander back over my life, all my visits to the City; and yet, somehow, even as my mind slipped from me, the old man held me, he held me fixed to that point on that beach, fixed me with his breathless exposition.

The problem, such as it is, he continued, is biology.

Biologically, we've evolved perfectly for filling that tiny fractional niche of each of our potential spheres of influence, so that we can't even imagine what we could do with things that are Elsewhere—our minds are trapped in our brains, and our brains have evolved into a design that is restricted to the material, a design focused on translating or generating thought in order to exert a purely material influence on the universe. But the potential—the mind's potential, or the potential that is the mind—is there.

(My mind raced back in time, sifting through faces, one after the other; some I recognized, most I did not.)

But, here's the thing:

The boundary of your sphere is permeable: as we stand here, your Elsewhere aggregates with mine, our aggregate Elsewhere aggregates with the Elsewheres of everyone living, dying, being born and even _failing_ to be born today; now, move forward and backward in time, because Elsewheres incorporate the temporal as well as the spatial: imagine the aggregate Elsewhere of over 400,000 years of humanity—and that's only considering conventional, four-dimensional spacetime; still just a blip, sure, compared to the breadth of the entire universe, but still: far more than you could possibly manage on your own, yeah?

All at once, all the faces grew still, and there, in the distance, in the distant depths of time or memory or wherever it was my mind was, I found myself homing in on a single face, set apart from the others, and I began to race faster and faster towards it, even as I stood still on the beach, listening to the old man as he continued:

When all that can be is said and done, you see, the Elsewhere, it's all that's left.

The Elsewhere _is_ potential.

But what does that mean, that word, _potential_?

What is potential if there's no way for it to be realized?

There must be some way, mustn't there, don't you think?

And what does that mean, _realizing_ a potential?

What is realization but an act of mind?

So imagine: If you could peer into the Elsewhere, if you could walk into it, what would you find there?

What would you see?

Just think about it.

Imagine.

I found her.

I remembered her face.

My mind slipped, broke; shattered into an infinite number of infinitesimal pieces, scattered like a fine dust over the beach, spread like numbers, ideas in the wind, permeated the air, the sea, the night, the world. Maybe the universe, too, eventually; but someday: not yet.

The old man stopped, interrupting my flight, and his breathing became labored. For a moment, I was afraid he would collapse, fall into an even more chaotic tangle of clothes and limbs that I could not possibly hope to reconstruct into its original old-man shape. But after a fit of coughing, he straightened his spine and fixed my eyes with his. He seemed to have grown taller; he seemed to loom over me, his head reaching up into the overcast night. But his face again broke in a line below his nose, and I remembered the first, candid, toothless grin he had greeted me with.

He shrank, and seemed to retreat.

Here is somewhere else, he said, and somewhere else is always here. Ask yourself: where have you been looking for this thing that you've been looking for?

The old man turned: Look Elsewhere.

As he walked away, retracing the line his footprints made some time ago, the trail now washed away by the sea, I remembered her words: The people define that place; you can't imagine how warm it is.

It all feels so welcoming, so safe.

I never felt welcome. I never felt safe.

Where _had_ I been looking? I laughed: You fool. All this time you never realized: you only _thought_ you were in the same time, the same place; the spatial and temporal geography you thought you shared, in truth you never did, who does? All this time, you kept returning to the same place, over and over; the City, you called it, but it was only ever _your_ City.

It was never where she was; she simply wasn't there.

She wasn't _ever_ anywhere there.

I laughed.

I laughed defiantly into the breeze, and it turned, as if it were my breath and not the earth's, slowly building into a stiff wind, swirling before me, whipping spray into my eyes, brine into my mouth; I was filled with a joy so immense, a joy you could not possibly imagine. I laughed at the thick, endless blanket of clouds that had started to creep from the far horizon, looming over me, extinguishing the stars and threatening to smother the island.

I laughed and stretched my hands out before me, flexing my fingers as though reaching for her, reaching for her face; already I could see her, could feel her, smell her, taste her; I could feel her lips, her cheek, her delicate throat once more at the tips of my fingers.

I would find her and, for as long as I wanted her, she would be mine, when I returned—

And then I realized: Why wait for next year?

POSTSCRIPT: The body of an unidentified young woman of indeterminate race in her early to mid twenties, brown eyes, black hair, fair skin, 172 cm. height, 52 kg. weight, designated Victim Zero, was discovered in an undisclosed location on the outskirts of _____ City in the latter half of the last century. Though exposed to the elements and with no signs of embalmment, the body was astonishingly well-preserved upon discovery and, it is said, remains so to this day. Though kept from the public eye, members of various religious sects, most of which surfaced within a year of Victim Zero's discovery, claim it, the body, to be miraculous: though varying widely in their Christianity-based beliefs, devout from these different sects all agree that, every day, the body exhibits "new signs of stigmata", and that daily examination (by whom, they never say) of the body reveals new patterns of injuries, the only constants being a broken hyoid bone with a shifting pattern of bruises around the neck indicating manual strangulation and signs of forced anal intercourse without any injury, direct or incidental, to the sexual organs, as though the organs had been carefully preserved, serving some unknown occult or ritualistic purpose. Authorities refuse to comment, and all official records pertaining to Victim Zero have been removed from the public record.

MOUTHS TO SPEAK, VOICES TO SING

by Kenneth Yu

MR. HARRY LIU HUI CHIU WAS AT THE BANK when he experienced for the first time—as with a kiss, or a fresh dream—the splendorous wonder of hearing his first vase.

That morning, smiling smugly to himself and thinking of the ten million pesos in his account—not bad at all for a man barely past his thirty-fifth birthday—he had been sauntering to the bank's exit when he heard an unfamiliar voice, one so soft as to be a whisper.

He paused and looked about but he could not ascertain the voice's source. Everyone around him proceeded to move along with their business, unmindful as he stood stock still amid a blur of constant human motion that seemed to move in rhythm to the staccato ruckus of ringing phones and beeping computers.

The voice whispered again; he heard it over the din even if no one else seemed to: a caress along his outer ears, a tickle to his earlobes, a soft penetration of his eardrums. He could not understand the words, but the tone was clear: dulcet, with a hint of music behind it, and not at all unpleasant. His curiosity, now aroused, could not be suppressed, and he began to trace the voice to its source.

He followed the whisper, tracking it by its volume while weaving his way around the bank's patrons, who walked about with serious eyes. "Work! Always work!" their demeanors seemed to say. He wondered if he'd carried that same expression himself all his life. He shook off this momentary bout of reflection and resumed his search, his steps leading him to a corner of the bank where, between two couches set for customers, a one-and-a-half-foot tall vase stood in ornamental splendor upon a darkly varnished table of glinting, reddish rosewood. The image that adorned it was a nature scene, a pond with lilies and other decorative water flora, with colorful fowl abounding, a picture straight out of a well-tended garden.

The vase before him was a phoenix's tail jar—although Mr. Liu did not know it then. It was shaped with a flared mouth that was wider at the rim than a standard vase, bearing a design in the style of the Qing Dynasty during the reign of the Emperor Kangxi, and thus dating back to the l7th or l8th century. Mr. Liu would learn all this after years of reading and time-consuming research, but at the moment his knowledge of this branch of Asian antiquities—any branch of Asian antiquities—was still non-existent.

Mr. Liu brought his hand to the vase's surface with a gentleness he didn't know he had. Porcelain smooth to the skin, and cool despite the direct morning sunlight streaming upon it from a nearby window, he slid his fingertips across its neck and curves, caressing the spirals and wavy patterns that decorated its gentle shoulders. The incomprehensible voice increased in volume, filling his ears with earnest murmurs. In his mind, an image came unbidden: of a domed sky hovering in protection over the earth and the seas. He focused on this, and the voice's murmurs grew in strength, and in its song he recognized the tone of a hymn, or a prayer.

Mr. Liu did not know how long he stood there touching the vase before the bank's security guard nudged him out of his reverie; this gruff interruption made the voice cease, which brought Mr. Liu back, stammering an apology with his own.

Mr. Liu asked most politely to speak to the bank manager, who was, in turn, most accommodating. The manager was in all likelihood aware of the size and growth potential of Mr. Liu's account as he approached. Mr. Liu got right to the point.

"May I have this vase, please?" he asked.

"Excuse me, sir?" The initial perplexity on the manager's face was evident, and an unwanted awkwardness interposed itself between the two men; but the manager smoothed this over right away.

"I...I don't see why not," he said.

"How much?"

"Er..." The manager didn't know what the vase was worth. In fact, he didn't care. Only a man with an instinct for pleasing the best clients rose to his position, and all that mattered to him was keeping Mr. Liu happy. "Take it. Consider it a gift," the manager said, then beamed at Mr. Liu, who smiled back and nodded his thanks.

The guard carried the vase to Mr. Liu's months-old Camry. Mr. Liu instructed him to carefully place it in the backseat and to hem it in with bundles of crumpled newspaper to prevent the vase from rolling and falling. He slipped a crisp, fifty-peso bill into the guard's hand before driving off.

That evening, the vase found its place in Mr. Liu's apartment on the second floor of the two-storey building where he lived, right above his store and office. His househelp had placed the vase in the middle of a spare room, on top of a short wooden table bought just that afternoon from a nearby furniture shop. Mr. Liu stood beside the vase in the dark, his fingertips on its cool shoulders. His eyes were closed, and to anyone who might have caught him this way, it would have seemed that Mr. Liu was listening intently to something only he could hear.

EVEN OVER THE LONG DISTANCE PHONE CALL, Mr. Liu could sense the unspoken questions and the raised eyebrows from those he had been in business with for years.

Over a choppy connection, one contact from Hong Kong said, "Antique Chinese vases? You've brought a lot of things into your country, Harry, from here and all over the world: cellphones, TV's, DVD players, car parts, textiles, cameras, computers. You've asked me to source shoes, perfume, watches, radios, cookware, even cheap rice and spices. But antique Chinese vases?"

Suddenly sheepish, Mr. Liu hesitated and tried to find words to explain. "I...," he said, but he was spared the chore by the relentless nature of the Hong Kong native.

"Harry, you're a commercial trader, not an antiquities dealer. And you've never shown an interest in anything remotely artistic before!"

"I..."

"Remember how when I first met you, I offered you some ceramic sculpture? 'There's no money in that kind of crap in the Philippines,' you said. And you were right. Where's the business in vases in a third world country, Harry?"

Having built his reputation as a practical-minded, no-nonsense trader, Mr. Liu found himself unable to explain that he wanted the vases for himself; it would not only have been uncharacteristic, it might even be damaging. This was business, after all, and there was no room for lapses in judgment. Mr. Liu already sensed veiled mockery behind the other man's words.

And then Mr. Liu realized that no explanation was necessary. "Do you want my business, or not?"

Over the next two months, through contacts both longstanding and newly-made, Mr. Liu purchased two dozen more vases. He spoke to triple that number of people to acquire the antiques. He would have bought even more had his business guile and natural instinct toward prudence not manifested itself at the tail end of his spree, subduing his excitement to buy, buy, buy. Nevertheless, it cost him two million pesos for the vases, and nearly another million more to ship them into the country.

The vases arrived packed in carton boxes stored to the rear of a container van, behind Mr. Liu's shipments of digital cameras, low-end DVD players, computer accessories, and the latest model cellphones. Normally, Mr. Liu would immediately snatch one of the cellphones for his own use, but this time he anxiously fidgeted in place as he waited for his people to unload all the cargo. When the first boxes of vases were carried out into the sunlight, he snapped into action.

The second-storey spare room had been emptied of everything except the first vase. Like a new homeowner with his first set of furniture, Mr. Liu directed the movers, specifying exactly where to place the boxes and insisting that they set them down with care, making it clear that he and only he would perform the unpacking. When a mover briefly lost his balance and stumbled, Mr. Liu's heart skipped a beat; to him, it was as if the air and the light rushed out of the room with a whoosh. Only when the mover righted himself did Mr. Liu succeed at resuming his breathing.

When they were done he made them leave at once, tendering careless instructions to put the rest of the deliveries into the warehouse at the rear of the lot. "Sally will take care of it," he told them, shifting the workload to his assistant, a short, bespectacled, prim and stern woman watching from the doorway. Sally cocked her head at the men, who followed her down the stairs. Mr. Liu waited for the clomp of their footsteps to disappear before he opened the first box.

He chose the smallest one to begin with, and after removing the wads of newspaper and Styrofoam, he pulled out a roundish vase with a small mouth. It was a wedding jar with the Chinese character for "double happiness"--囍\--printed on its front amid swirling blue vines. The seller had assured him that it was an authentic antique from the latter 19th century, but Mr. Liu took only a cursory look at the vase's accompanying papers. The moment his fingers touched the coolness of its surface he heard its voice, deeper than that the first's, and more hollow, but richer, heavier. Despite the differences, he found its song just as lovely.

Before the hour was up he had all the vases out and on display, lined up against the wall. The sight of them overwhelmed him, became almost too much for his eyes to take in. The tallest one stood at five feet, while the shortest barely reached his knee. They were varied in shape, or size; some vases came in but a single color, blue, as with the wedding jar, or perhaps in a subtle green the shade of jade; but the others came in a variety of pastels and hues, bright reds, yellows, cyans, and pinks all mixed together, and two of them owned borders around their images embellished in the metallic sheen of gold and silver; five possessed elaborate carved handles that glistened in the light as if wet; six were globular vases, and Mr. Liu found himself charmed by the hidden balance of their bases, which belied their rounded bodies.

There were plain vases, with no images, perhaps only a running border near their throats; they were beautiful in their minimalist simplicity, but he also marveled at those with drawings: of flora and fauna—natural, like birds, fishes, or horses, and supernatural, like dragons or lions; of landscapes—mountains, forests, streams, cloud-filled skies; of people—farmers, fisherfolk, courtesans, artists.

But more than how they looked, Mr. Liu was held by their sounds. He trained himself to listen, and slowly the whispers turned into full voices. Each time he had pulled a vase from its box he heard and knew them for their individual inflections, and it became clear to him that each vase was known by its own song. He could now identify the music behind their initial murmurs, and it captivated him as nothing else ever had. In careful hurriedness, he lifted and changed the positions of the vases until he found an arrangement that provided the best harmony to his ear.

Awash in their music he stood before his new purchases, and drank in their songs.

"SIR," SALLY SAID ONE AFTERNOON, the worry evident in the lines of her face. "We don't have any more space. And frankly, everyone is afraid to move around in case we accidentally knock over and break a piece of your collection."

Mr. Liu, with a wide Ming Dynasty soup bowl on his left, and a dipping dish—with spoon—to his right, looked up from his desk with alarm.

"What? Break what?" he said.

Sally pressed. "Sir, I'm afraid that it's a matter of 'when' and not 'if' that happens. There's also no more room for more items for your collection...unless you appropriate the warehouse too."

"We're doing well, right?" he asked, lifting aside a small vase to find, then fiddle with, his computer keyboard to bring up the sales spreadsheets.

"Yes. We've been lucky. Orders are steady." In fact, they were better than ever, and Sally attributed this to her boss's new calm. The retailers who ordered from him used to like Mr. Liu for his low prices and, well, nothing else. Now, they liked him for his low prices and his pleasant demeanor. Deep down she felt vindicated; she had always told others that all he needed was a hobby to transform him from a stern, rude, workaholic into a human being.

"Hmm... okay, good."

"Sir?"

"I'll figure something out."

Later that day, Mr. Liu told Sally to expect someone from the bank and to let him in for a private meeting. When the bank manager arrived—the same one who had sold Mr. Liu his first vase, and quite endearing with his leather satchel, his smile, his hello's—she hustled him quickly into Mr. Liu's room. He left two hours later, smiling even more broadly. The following day, Sally handed Mr. Liu a fax detailing a loan for the purchase of the empty lot adjacent to their own. By the following week, Mr. Liu was meeting architects and building contractors. Once, before the door to Mr. Liu's room closed behind them, she noted the words "Liu-six storey schematic" on the folder tucked under the arm of one of the architects.

Within eleven months, the six-storey schematic became an eight-storey building with two basement levels. With great effort Mr. Liu, Sally, and everyone working in the company made it through the construction without their daily operations being hampered, but it took a lot of patience and compromise. The day the building opened was a big relief for all, and for Mr. Liu most especially. Sally noticed the way her boss would surf the web for new vases, then visibly restrain himself from writing an email or picking up the phone by pulling his hands away and placing them to his side.

Sally wasn't asked to call for photographers, or to set up ribbons to be cut, or to prepare for a party on opening day; Mr. Liu had never been the type for fanfare. All that seemed to matter to him was that the time of restraint was finally over.

FIFTEEN YEARS AFTER HE HEARD his first vase, Mr. Liu added the 500th to his collection. It came cheap, but also with no papers, so its authenticity could not be proven without buying it; but the image the seller had emailed him had caught his eye. When he pulled it out of its packing, it was even more alluring than its photo.

The vase had a picture of a pale woman in traditional Chinese garb: flowing robes of white lined with yellow, blue, and green pastel trimmings, and wide sleeves which hid the arms of the woman who wore it. She leaned on what was either an elaborately decorated staff, or a thin-bladed long sword sheathed in its ornamental scabbard. Her long, straight, ebony hair reached down to her hips; she was beautiful, but her beauty was not a soft or a kind one; there was strength held in check behind it. She stood on a trail of clouds, against the distant background of a wide earth and an expansive sky.

"Even more are needed."

Mr. Liu, surprised, nearly dropped the vase. The words had flowed from the vase in a strong, female voice; not in song, but as a statement, the first time this had ever happened. He somehow brought himself to speak.

"More vases? Why?"

"The four pillars that hold up the heavens and protect the world cannot rely solely on the strength of turtle legs, no less the part of the pillar here. They are made stronger when fused with the voice and song of good people, whether they come of moulded clay or not."

Mr. Liu did not understand. He tried to ask the vase more questions, but it did not reply, and stayed mute, the lone silent piece in his collection.

LONG YEARS PASSED and were kind to Mr. Liu and his investments. Where his original office and warehouse once stood, there now rose a sixteen-storey edifice, one which dwarfed the eight-storey structure he had first built. His import business had grown with the turn of each year until he had become one of the top importers and wholesalers of cheaper electronics, machine parts, and appliances in the country. He had expanded into importing Asian décor, furniture, and yes, even antiquities, and he had been pleasantly surprised to find a steady, if small, local market for them.

He had married as well, after which he had moved to a quieter part of the city, not too far from his offices. Mr. Liu's wife had been a good woman who died too soon, but his son and daughter were devoted to him, and his five grandchildren were the image of their grandmother. He had lived a full life, a lucky life; there was little else an old man could ask for.

Mr. Liu knew he had purchased enough when he had bought vase number 1,356. That night, the woman on the vase came to him in his dreams. Goddess, Creator, Savior, Mother and Snake... He knew who she was by then, or at least suspected—it was not difficult to find references to the clues hidden in her words—but she did not acknowledge the name that escaped his lips; in fact, she did not speak at all, but pressed his forehead with a long-nailed finger, smiled, and faded away, leaving only the tingling sensation of her touch.

The vase collection was now stored on the twelfth floor of his new building. He had arranged them in ordered rows on specially-made lacquered shelves, protected by glass, displayed in placements that he himself had directed. Sometimes, he would rearrange them, but not as often and not as radically as when he had been younger, having settled on a harmony he had grown accustomed to. His old-age found him walking often between the shelves, ambling slowly down each aisle. To anyone else, the serene quiet was only disturbed by the soft shuffle of his footsteps, the tap-tap-tap of his cane.

THE TRIP TO TAIPEI WAS A GIFT from his son, Lawrence, who had gone on ahead and was already waiting for him there. When Lawrence had discovered that his father had never been to the National Palace Museum, he had taken it upon himself to bring Mr. Liu.

"Dad, you mean you've never seen their antiquities exhibit?" Both father and son, surprised at this, burst out laughing at the absurd discovery.

Mr. Liu's son was waiting for him as he exited baggage claim. "It's early enough. Would you like to go to the museum now?" Lawrence asked. Mr. Liu nodded.

The taxi driver drove them up the main driveway, and Lawrence helped his father from the taxi. They walked through the wondrous archways that led to the stairs and up to the entrance for visitors and tourists.

The museum contained many ceramics, enough to make Mr. Liu giddy, as well as regretful that he had not visited the museum as a younger man. On display were not only vases, but bowls, pitchers, planters, cups, and washers, each with their own signature voices, each one as captivating as the next. He knew he could spend hours there, days even, and not tire of the sights or sounds.

Then he spied a vase displayed on a table near a section corner, away from the thickest part of the crowd, almost as to be ignored. It took him some time to recognize it; but when he did, his breath was taken away: its identical twin was the very first vase he had bought from his bank so many years ago.

There was the garden which he had memorized over years of tireless scrutiny: there were the egrets and the lotus pond painted over the vase's white glaze, standing out starkly in shades of reds, yellows, greens, blues, and embellished gold; the waterweed, duckweed, and round leaves seemed to ripple in the azure pool they were painted upon; the tender green stems of the plants looked so real as to be swaying in a gentle breeze that blew close to the earth. Mr. Liu marveled once more at the detail, the small butterflies that flitted about the light that struck the blooms in the artist's presentation of a lazy summer's morning, and the lotuses that stood forth all the more unsullied in contrast with the grey-brown soil from which they sprung.

It was an exact replica of his first vase, down to the minutest detail. Yet there was something strange about this one. Amid all the babble of the museum visitors, all the voices and songs of the other ceramics, this vase was silent. This vase did not sing. It was the first vase he had ever encountered without a voice; even the singular vase with the image of the Chinese lady had spoken to him that one time, many years ago. Mr. Liu stepped forward, marveling still at its beauty, though extremely puzzled at the silence, a silence which spoke all the more loudly through a rising clamor that included, strangely, the thump of his excited heartbeat in his ears.

When Mr. Liu stood close enough, he reached out and touched the vase—and the garden scene startled him by coming to life before his eyes. The pool rippled as if the water was real, and the plants trembled delicately as if a slight breeze blew. The wings of the birds and the butterflies moved in grace. He could feel the cool wind on his fingertips, and the hint of sunlight strengthened to an astounding, white brilliance that filled his view. The garden faded into this brightness, overwhelming his vision until the blinding whiteness was all he could see.

"MAYBE IT WAS THE FLIGHT," Lawrence said later. "Maybe he was tired. I should have brought him to the hotel first."

"Maybe it was his time." his sister consoled him. "Maybe you brought him to the museum just in time, before he left us." Lawrence's lips accepted her consolation, but his mind relived his father's last moments once more.

He saw his father walking toward an exhibit that had caught his eye--everything normal, everything fine--reaching out slowly to an old vase. Lawrence had known that this might happen, and made to remind his father that touching was prohibited...when his father stiffened, then crumpled to the floor like a bursting sack of rice.

"Help! Help!" Lawrence had shouted, and rushed as fast as he could to his father's side, but by the time the museum staff arrived, he already knew that his father was gone.

Lawrence had not heard—no one could have, except for the man lying on the floor—but at that moment a new voice, that of one more good person, started to whisper, then sing, from the vase that just before had no song of its own, lending its support to that pillar of the world.

THE COMING OF THE ANAK-ARAW

by Celestine Trinidad

THE YOUNG GIRL WITH THE BABAYLAN WAS SMALL AND THIN, fragile as glass. If Sari had known then the trouble the child would bring, she might have ignored the summons of the chief priestess, but instead she smiled and said, "Come in."

The Babaylan dragged the child inside. This disconcerted Sari, but she dared not comment. Instead, she placed a hand on the child's shoulder. The girl, seemingly unfazed, raised imperious eyes to Sari, and tightened her grip on a long leather sack.

"What's your name?" Sari asked after a few moments of awkward silence. The child pursed her lips in reply. "Don't be shy," Sari prodded her. "I'm here to help you."

"It's not that she does not want to speak," the Babaylan said. "She _can't_."

Sari recoiled from the child. In all her days as a healer, she had encountered illnesses in many forms, but never this. One could not cast spells without a voice, and without spells, how was one to grow crops, catch fish, or talk to the gods and spirits? No one could truly _live_ without a voice.

The Babaylan nodded, as if in agreement with Sari's unspoken sentiment. The chief priestess looked weary--and old, much, much older than the last time Sari had seen her, which could not have been more than three years ago; her hair was now an immaculate white, without any trace of black or gray, a stark contrast to the dark green robes she wore. "We found her in one of the traders' boats some days ago," the old priestess said. "Half-drowned, almost starved to death. We think she came from one of the islands somewhere to the west."

"But what happened to her?"

"We do not know," the Babaylan said. "We fed her and nursed her back to health. We thought at first that she only refused to speak, but...." She shivered, her voice dropping to a whisper. "We fear she is... _unclean._ Cursed. She was probably cast out from her kingdom."

"But why bring her to me?" Sari said, her insides suddenly cold. "Could you not have done the purification rites yourselves?"

The Babaylan shook her head. "We tried. We tried everything," she said. "We performed the _ayo-ayo,_ tried to make a contract with the evil spirits to leave her. She still has not said a word." The Babaylan wrung her hands. "Even Bathala seems not to hear us. It has been happening far too often, these days..."

The old woman's voice trailed off, her expression pensive. She shook herself suddenly, like someone awakening from a dream. "You are the only healer in the island, and we ask for your help, as a last recourse. If you fail—well, we shall have to send her away, lest her illness befall us all."

Sari turned her gaze to her feet. She knew she should refuse. She should have done so the last time the Babaylan came to see her, asking her to heal one of the priestesses. Sari had accepted, confident in her spells and herbs as she followed the Babaylan down a secret route to the temple's inner chambers —and in the end, all she had been able to do was watch as the life slowly left the young priestess' eyes. For a long time, no one could forgive her for the miracle she could not give them.

She did not want that to happen again. She looked up to say no, and in the process met the child's eyes.

"I will heal this child," Sari found herself saying.

"Thank you," the Babaylan said, "for lifting this burden from us."

Before Sari had time to take back her words, the Babaylan was out of the door. The priestess' robes flounced behind her as her parting words rang in Sari's ears.

"May Bathala smile down upon you. If he is still watching."

THE SPELL FAILED. Again.

Sari fought down her frustration; she had been awake long before the sun rose, and for most of the morning had been occupied preparing herbs for the chanting of the new spell she had composed the night before. The spell, meant to imbue a potion with magic, drew on the latent power the herbs contained, summoning the healer spirits to aid her–but as before, the power she was able to gather seemed weak, strangely diluted. She had kept on all morning, but now she had used up the last of her _lagundi_ leaves, and the idea of having to end yet another morning's endeavors with no progress to show was disheartening.

Just then there was a knock on the door, and when Sari saw who had come, she threw the door open, beaming.

"Laodnon!" she said. "Just the man I wanted to see."

The young man looked up at her as he stood by the doorway, twisting his straw hat and satchel in his hands, a peculiar flush on his sun-browned cheeks. There was a small smile on his lips.

"You—you wanted to see me?" Laodnon said.

"You always have such perfect timing," Sari said as she ushered him inside. "I think I need some more _lagundi_ leaves. The potion I made for Maya still feels weak."

As she mentioned the child's name, Maya appeared. The young girl went to Laodnon and embraced him warmly.

Sari smiled, still amazed at the change she had seen in her charge over the past few weeks. The girl had started out cold and aloof, always sitting in one corner of the hut, clutching her leather sack to her heart. All that changed when Sari found her trying to reach for a wet and bedraggled _maya_ bird seeking refuge from the rain under their window sill. Moved to pity, Sari had chanted a drying spell for the _maya_ , and helped care for it; when they released the bird back into the wild, the child smiled at her. It had been sunshine breaking through the storm.

Since then, Sari had felt a growing fondness for the child. As there was no way to discover the girl's name, Sari decided to name her after the bird she seemed to love so much. Maya had seemed pleased.

"Oh. Leaves," Laodnon said. "I see." Sari wondered why he suddenly looked disappointed. "I can get some for you later. And I brought the _ulasiman_ that you asked for."

Maya sat back down on her chair, took a long metallic cylinder tipped with charcoal from her sack, and spread on the table some sheets Sari used for drying herbs. Art was the child's passion, albeit one Sari had no interest in—she knew that Maya's sack contained sheets of old drawings, but Sari had never seen them. It was enough for her to know that when Maya began to scribble on a sheet with the cylinder, eyebrows furrowed, the child was lost in her own world.

"Thank you," Sari said to Laodnon. "Manong Sinaya can finally stop pestering me. Could you get me some _luya_ too?" When he nodded, she added, "I'm glad your garden is still flourishing, Laodnon! You don't seem to be experiencing any difficulty with spells."

Laodnon looked away. "I can manage."

"Maybe we can try making a new spell together?" Sari asked. "You can call on the plant spirits, while I deal with the healer spirits. Our mothers used to do that all the time, when they needed a more powerful spell."

"I—I'll see when I can spare the time. I take it the last spell you were working on still failed?"

"No... well, yes," Sari said ruefully. "But it's not just a cure for Maya, it's—everything." She swallowed. "I'm glad I can still depend on you. As always."

Laodnon flushed. He coughed and when he spoke again, his voice was grave. "You are not the only one having difficulty on the island."

"Then you noticed it too," Sari said. "Maybe Bathala really has forgotten us."

Laodnon shook his head. "I don't know, Sari. But a lot of the people _have_ started to think that way. Even the priestesses." He looked out the window, westward. "But there is still hope, they say. Not from Bathala, but beings far more powerful."

Sari turned to him, her cooking forgotten. "It's not like you to speak blasphemy, Laodnon."

"No, no," he said hastily. "I was merely repeating what I heard from Manong Sinaya."

Sari snorted with ill-disguised scorn. "He's a storyteller," she said. "Those were probably just lies spun from his salt-addled mind. He'd say _anything_ for gold."

"He charged nothing for these tales," Laodnon said in a suddenly quiet voice. "He spoke of meeting these new gods. The _anak-araw,_ he called them, for they had hair the color of the sun, and skin so white they seemed to shine." He looked at her, bafflement in his eyes. "They healed thousands of people, he said, of diseases that the healers had no spells for, even those which prayers to Bathala could not cure. They made stars fall from the sky with a single song, made crops grow again, despite the drought. They replaced the old, failing spells with new magic. Powerful magic."

"I don't believe it," Sari declared, but she heard the trace of doubt in her voice. Then her gaze fell on the child. "Maya? What's wrong?"

Sari's charge was on the floor, her arms around her shoulders. She was shivering, despite the warmth of the day, an expression of pure fright on her face.

Sari chanted a warming spell, which made Maya stop shaking. The girl's expression, however, remained lost, haunted. "Poor child," she whispered to no one in particular. "I _must_ find a cure. What can she do without a voice?"

"You can—" Laodnon interjected, but then he stopped. " All will be well, Sari, I'm sure."

Sari nodded—but what she wanted to say was that no, all would not be well, the new spell would fail, like everything else she had tried. Like everything else was failing.

SARI WAS AWAKENED by a commotion outside her hut. When she was finally able to blink the slumber away from her eyes, she realized Maya was staring out the window. The child pointed into the darkness. Sari joined her and saw a whole crowd of the villagers hurrying in the direction of the temple. She called out to them, but everyone ignored her, save one.

"Sari!" She turned and saw Laodnon, excitement evident on his face. "Come to the temple, quick!"

"What is going on?" Sari said.

"Gods," Laodnon said. "Here on the island." Sari and Maya exchanged glances as he went on, "The _anak-araw._ I heard they're performing miracles right now—"

Maya shot out of the house like an arrow. Sari cried out and followed, with Laodnon at her heels.

When they reached the temple, they found that they had lost Maya entirely in the sea of people. The crowd milled in front of the entrance to the large underground cave that served as the island's temple. Laodnon took Sari's arm, and together they pushed their way through the crowd. Right at the moment they reached the front, there was a strange whistling noise, then a sound that seemed like a thousand voices shrieking... And the moon was engulfed in complete, utter darkness.

There was a moment of stunned silence; then, before anyone could react, an explosion of lights and stars came raining down upon the heads of the assembled, and the _anak-araw_ were revealed.

Sari gasped and stared at the beings now before her, engulfed in light. There were two of them, and they towered over all the people; the smaller was a full foot taller than Laodnon—who was one of the tallest men in the village—dressed in brown robes resembling those the priestesses wore; the taller one stood a little way back, an assortment of swords and axes hanging from his belt, of a kind that Sari had never seen before. He had a stern expression on his face, and Sari soon discovered why.

It was at the feet of the armed _anak-araw_ that they found Maya. She was staring up at him and he stared back at her. The _anak-araw's_ expression turned mildly curious, but Maya's eyes were wide in horror. Before Sari and Laodnon could retrieve the child, a collective shout broke the awestruck silence, and a swell of people pushed past them to reach the _anak-araw_. Sari lost sight of Maya, then of Laodnon... but she had a clear view of the towering visitors.

The one in brown robes grasped a farmers' leg, which had been wounded in an accident a few weeks before. The robed stranger tore open the bandages that concealed the farmer's wound, and before the eyes of all, the still-open wound grew tissue and skin, then closed, the skin unbroken, whole. The farmer jumped up in the air and shouted, "I am healed, praise Bathala!"

"No," the _anak-araw_ said. "Not Bathala." He spoke their language well, although haltingly.

"Yes," his armed companion said, his voice deep and gruff. "Not your god. The Father healed you." He gestured at his robed companion. " _He_ can do what your god cannot."

Sari laid a hand on her mouth; she didn't even remember when it had dropped open. Even when her magic had been at its peak, to heal such a wound would have required a complicated spell and a long period of bargaining with the healing spirits, but the _anak-araw_ had accomplished it in mere seconds—without speaking, without saying a single word...

Maya.

Sari scoured the crowd for any sign of the child, to no avail. It was only when she'd returned home in frustration that she found her charge, sitting with Laodnon by the door to her hut. When Maya raised her face to look at Sari; her eyes were red-rimmed.

Sari cradled her in her arms. "Were you hurt? I'm sorry the villagers treated you so rudely. But I shall take you to the _anak-araw_. They can help, where I have failed—"

The girl shook her head vehemently.

"No, you do not need to fear them," Sari assured her. "I've seen what they can do. If they can't get you to speak again," her eyes shone with hope, "maybe they can teach you how to cast spells, even without a voice."

Maya clutched at her in reply.

"I will be with you the whole time," Sari said. "I will not leave you."

The child only held on to her tighter, as violent shivers rocked her frame.

EACH DAY, BEFORE THE BREAK OF DAWN, a large crowd gathered before the temple entrance, the priestesses enforcing a semblance of order and herding the crowd into a line so the Father could see them one by one.

The sick came for cures and they were healed. Farmers sought relief for their dying crops, and the Father gave them a strange powder that made their plants grow. To the fishermen he gave a liquid that made all the fish float to the surface, ready for catching, and to the breeders he gave grains that fattened their pigs and cows. The old rituals, so faithfully kept by the priestesses and the villagers, were soon forgotten; some even burned the wooden images of the _diwata_ and Bathala; the island's carvers replaced them with statues of the _anak-araw,_ the Father and his Guard.

Sari found herself with less and less work. In truth this did not bother her, for it left her with more time to attempt to see the Father herself. But each day her efforts proved futile—by the time the _anak-araw_ went to rest, she would still be a long way from the front of the line.

It did not help that Maya was so reluctant to go; Sari lost time just trying to coax the child up each morning. Maya seemed more interested in staying in the house and drawing than in a cure for her condition. She shrank away whenever she saw any of the statues of the Father.

Just when Sari was beginning to despair, she finally had her chance. She was just about to go to the end of the line when someone called to her from near the front.

It was Laodnon. "You can take my place," he said.

"But what did you need to talk to the _anak-araw_ for? Can that wait?"

"I didn't really need to see them," he said.

"But then why did you—"

Laodnon left without another glance back at her.

"I swear," she said incredulously, "I shall never understand that man."

Maya sighed.

By mid-morning they were finally at the temple entrance, yet Maya still refused to move when they were called. Annoyed, Sari pulled the girl along with her, and they entered into the dark, damp chill of the temple.

At the entrance to the inner chamber stood the Guard, with the same implacable expression. Maya tried to run again, but Sari held on firmly to her wrist.

A stone statue of the robed _anak-araw_ , a gift from one of the villagers, was placed on a rock that jutted out of one corner of the room. The Father himself sat in the middle, waiting patiently for those who sought him.

"How can I help you, _hija_?" the anak-araw said, as Sari pulled Maya down with her to sit before him. Sari did not recognize the last word the Father used, but it was spoken tenderly, and her heart warmed towards him.

"She cannot speak, my Lord," Sari said. "Please help her."

The Father placed his hands over Maya's throat and started to rub it. "Yes, I see. Beautiful, this child. So beautiful—"

And then Maya screamed.

It was a silent, voiceless scream, and though Sari could hear nothing, the child's expression was one of sheer terror—and, strangely, fury. Before Sari could move from her seat, Maya bit the Father's hand.

He roared, yelling words in his own language, which was musical even in his rage. The Guard ran into the chamber and strode towards Maya. He leapt at her, but missed as she evaded his hands, and he slammed instead into the rock upon which the Father's statue stood. The stone figure tottered for a moment... then fell on the head of the Guard.

There was a flash of crimson, which flowed down from the huge anak-araw's head, and then came the whirling greens of the priestesses' robes—

"What has the child done?"

"It was a mistake to bring her to the healer. The Babaylan should never have taken her in—"

This woke Sari from her stupor. She turned and saw Maya standing a few feet away from them, her head held high, almost regal, with no trace of regret on her features. Sari snapped.

"How could you?" she said. "They were our last hope. _Your_ last hope!"

The child looked at her, her defiant expression melting into one of distress. She pointed to the Guard, but the Father, after waving away the priestesses, had taken the huge _anak-araw_ into another room.

"I treated you like my own child," she cried. "I tried to help you, when no one else wanted to!" She choked down a sob. "Maybe they were right to think of sending you away."

Maya looked as if she had been slapped, her eyes swimming in tears. She moved as if to clutch at Sari, —but then the Father returned, and extended an accusing finger in her direction. Maya suddenly fell to the ground, limp, and then the priestesses took her, sweeping her from Sari's sight.

THE SUN WAS JUST SETTING when Sari found herself walking towards Laodnon's hut. She found him at his garden, cutting _gumamela_ flowers for the temple. Laodnon dropped his knife when he saw her. He moved towards her, took her hand, and then dropped it again, looking away.

"I went to see her," she said without introduction, her voice edged with desperation. "But the priestesses refused to let me in."

It had been the same story since Maya had been taken, days ago. The girl was still in the temple, locked in one of the chambers, and Sari still didn't know what they meant to do to the child. Thankfully, the Guard suffered no permanent harm; perhaps the Father would spare Maya.

"I'm sorry." Laodnon looked thoroughly miserable.

"I should have never said those things." Sari sank to the ground, unable to keep back her tears any longer. "She may have been difficult, yes, but I cannot bear to think of what they will do to her!"

After that, words failed her and she wept. Laodnon sat beside her in silence.

"I'm sorry," she said after her tears were spent. "This is really embarrassing. I mean, I haven't cried in front of you since we were twelve—"

"Thirteen, actually," Laodnon said, smiling tightly. "It's all right. Keep crying if you need to. I'll be here." A moment later, he said, "Maya must know you didn't really mean what you said. She's perceptive that way."

"I still wish I could say sorry." She wiped her tears and stood up. "I need to go back and—" She blinked suddenly and looked around her, surprised. Sari had never been to Laodnon's garden before—it had always been he who came to her—but as she recovered herself, she was struck by the variety and vigor of the crops that surrounded her. "Your garden truly is something, Laodnon. How do you manage, when all magic is failing? You must have used such powerful spells, or somehow won the spirits' favor..."

Laodnon remained silent, so Sari extended her senses to ascertain the source of the garden's beauty and found... nothing.

She stopped, baffled. "I can feel no magic here."

Laodnon looked down at the ground. "Because there is none."

"What—what do you mean?"

"I was afraid you'd notice sooner or later," he said. "The truth is, I never could get the spirits to listen to me. I've had to manage without spellcasting of any sort."

"Then you do everything," Sari said, incredulously, "by _hand_?"

"I always have." His expression was a strange mixture of shame and pride. "I tend to the plants myself. I—I treat them like people, which makes it easier. I give them the best care I can, and—"

"But how do you know what they need, without the spirits to aid you?" Sari said. "I mean, plants can't speak to you, can they?"

Laodnon spread his arms. "I look at them, and I see." He smiled at her. "Some things do not need to be spoken. You'd be surprised at what we can do on our own."

Sari stared at him, a shiver running through her, his words bringing on a realization, an epiphany.

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, making him turn beet-red.

"W-what—"

"Laodnon," she said, "Can I count on you, one more time?"

A LARGE CROWD WAS ALREADY GATHERED when Sari arrived at the temple, a long leather sack clutched tightly in her hands. She slipped past the supplicants and down the route the Babaylan had shown her, what seemed like a lifetime ago. Sari found the Father speaking to the Babaylan within the central chamber, the armed _anak-araw_ nowhere in sight. No one noticed her, not until she whipped a knife from her skirts, steeled herself, and stabbed the Father's right hand.

Things seemed to happen at once: the Father cried for help, the priestesses rushed to his aid, the first of the waiting villagers ran into the chamber. Sari, however, remained focused on her target. The Babaylan shouted orders to bind Sari, but before they could do so, she threw a pouch of _bawang_ powder at the Father's injury, to keep the blood from clotting. The _anak-araw_ placed his left hand over his injury and summoned his power, but for all the light that his magic emitted it was too little, too late: blood flowed freely from his wound, dying the floor a bright scarlet, before quickly fading to black.

"Look, all of you," Sari screamed at her people. "Look, damn it!

All of them turned, except the Babaylan. "He bleeds," Sari said. "Does a god bleed? Can a god's miracles be defeated by my herbs? He is no less human than we are!" She opened the sack and brought out Maya's drawings, held them out for all to see. "This too shall be our fate! Open your eyes!"

On the sheet were drawings of a people not unlike Sari's own. Their clothes, their skin, all were familiar... save for a small group of strange, glowing figures, distinguished by the lack of color in their hair and faces. It was evident from the murmurs of the crowd, as descriptions of the sketches passed verbally through those assembled, that the identity of the strange figures was as obvious to them as it had been for Sari. But it was not the portrayal of the _anak-araw_ that spread like a forest fire through the people... it was the images of what they were doing.

There were drawings of the _anak-araw_ driving the people to slavery, like cattle, forcing them to work while the strangers merely sat and watched, eating the food produced by the captives; pictures of the _anak-araw_ burning and murdering the gods and _diwatas_ ; the likeness of the Father, being crowned by a Babaylan, his hand around her neck.

"It is already happening," Sari said. "Maya saw it, knew it first hand. This is why our magic is failing. Maybe our gods have not abandoned us—not willingly. Maybe this time, it is the gods who need us."

In the uneasy silence, she turned on the Father. "Who are you really? What do you want?"

"To help you," the _anak-araw_ said. He closed his eyes and this time, his wound healed, but it still had a visible scar. The Father opened his arms wide, encircling them all—and to Sari, trapping them within. She wondered why she had never noticed the glint of malice in his eyes.

So did everyone else around her, it seemed. They began to whisper among themselves, shrinking from the Father. Sari alone held her ground, her eyes meeting his, defying him. Soon, however, Sari was joined by another.

The Babaylan did not speak. She only stood silently, breathing heavily, her expression unreadable.

"Leave," she whispered at length, and to everyone's surprise, she was speaking to the Father.

"What power have you over us?" the Father said. "We will not leave. What can you do, without your gods?"

"Bathala will preserve us," the Babaylan said, raising her arms heavenward. The other priestesses started to chant, their hands linked. Sari could feel the power, but it was weak, weaker than even her own spells; after all, their power drew on their faith, something the people no longer had much of.

The Father laughed, then pointed at the Babaylan. For a second Sari was afraid that the priestess would drop, as Maya had, but the _Babaylan_ stood firm—until the Guard pushed Sari aside and grabbed the old woman by the throat, fury rolling off the large _anak-araw_ in waves, palpable and destructive. Without effort he threw the Babaylan to the ground, then raised his sword.

"No!" Sari screamed. The other priestesses flung their magic at the Guard, but the _anak-araw_ merely laughed, and pinned the Babaylan with one armored foot. Desperately, Sari readied a protective spell, calling on her own powers, her own faith... and she knew that it would not be enough.

"Sari!" Laodnon burst through the crowd, Maya clinging to his arm, her eyes wide and frightened; then her gaze met Sari's, and where the healer had expected to see anger and blame, all Sari found was relief...

And faith.

Sari opened herself to Maya, to Laodnon, to the two people who believed in her more than she had ever believed in her gods. She said one final word, and directed the spell at the Babaylan, just as the Guard brought his sword crashing down and—

—the deadly blade bounced off the old woman's chest as if she were made of steel. The Father and his Guard turned as one toward Sari, fear reflected in their eyes.

"Leave," Sari said. "Leave, _now_."

MAYA STOOD at the water's edge, the waves lapping at her feet, still working on the drawing she'd started the night of her rescue. It had been three days since then, and three days since the Babaylan declared that Maya was to stay on the island, despite her condition.

Sari could have asked for no better outcome, yet she still could not shake off the fear that had awoken within her.

"You're still worried," Laodnon said quietly. They were sitting on the beach, their hands clasped.

"I think they will be back," Sari said. "More of them next time." She rested her head on his shoulder. "They were false gods, but their magic was real."

"So is ours," he said.

Sari watched as Maya rolled up her drawing, and placed it in a clay pot. Then to Sari's surprise, the child threw the pot into the sea.

Sari looked at Maya. "I thought those were precious to you?"

The child nodded, but made no move to retrieve her clay messenger, now bobbing up and down, rolling in the waves. Sari looked at the small, fragile thing, then whispered a spell that would keep it afloat, and a prayer to Bathala for protection, for salvation. She wondered if her own message would reach the heavens, and if there would be anyone there to hear if it did.

There was nothing else they could do now; all that was left was to wait in vigilant silence, and, in hope.

THE CHILD ABANDONED

by Yvette Tan

THEY SAY THAT A PERSON knows that she's reached Quiapo by the way it smells. My grandmother—my Lola—described the scent as tentative, as if the air itself was constantly waiting for something to happen. You can see what she means, if you sniff hard enough. The scent of it underlies everything you smell in this city, be it the rich, barbeque odor of isaw cooking in the dingiest of areas, to the clean, sweet scent of the Pasig river—the Ilog Pasig—itself. Entering Quiapo is not a matter of crossing the Jones Bridge anymore, even though that's what the authorities still want to believe. Not that any of them would ever set foot here, anyway. I'm actually surprised that you did, just so you could find me.

They say that Quiapo wasn't always like this. My Lola used to tell us stories about the place we lived in before The Change began. You've heard of The Change, haven't you? I'm sure that stories abound outside this city, if only for the number of people that swarm in during Sta. Teresa's feast day. Even so, I am sure that the tale I am about to tell will sound incredible and made up to you, but it's a story that everyone who grew up here believes.

A long, long time ago—this was how my Lola always began her stories—back when she was a child, the Ilog Pasig had been a dirty, stinking open-air sewer. There had been a time when humans had no regard for the earth they lived in, and so had polluted her with their filth. The Ilog Pasig was not spared. Numerous factories sprang up on her banks, factories that vomited their wastes into the great river until its water was contaminated with all manner of poisons, all of them so vile that the river flowed black, and nothing could live in it. You could smell the river for miles, Lola said, and that alone would make you sick to your stomach. People were not allowed to swim in it because those who did would sicken and die.

But even so, many people still lived by the great river. Its banks, part of which had been cemented long ago, were filled with shanties made of cardboard and galvanized iron, all of them leaning precariously against each other, with windows that looked out onto the Ilog Pasig. Though they did not like living beside such filth, these people had no choice. They were poor and land was scarce in the city. My Lola herself was born and raised by the Ilog Pasig. The whole of her life had been spent by the great river, so much so that she didn't really know what the river smelled like, and only knew that it smelled bad from what other people—people who didn't live near the river—told her.

Lola used to say that essentially, the Quiapo then was very similar to the Quiapo now. People lived in squalor, squashed door to door in little rooms because there were so many of them. Some of them would take shelter in one of the many abandoned buildings that sat in what was then still a district; ghosts of a more prosperous past that stared blindly at crooked streets and crooked lives of the decline that had followed in its wake. Everyone was human back then, something that my Lola missed sometimes. True, she had many friends who migrated from the Other Country, but she couldn't help wanting what she grew up with, I guess.

And like today, you could find anything in Quiapo. The district was filled with little streets that wove in and out of each other, and whose sidewalks were lined with vendors that sold everything from herbal remedies to bicycle screws. Shopkeepers hawked pirated CDs, and they say that the DVDs in Quiapo were the cheapest in the market. Yes, you could find anything here back then, as you still can now. You just have to know where to look and who to look for. You also had to know how to bargain, and how to keep your wallet from being stolen. I guess some things never change.

She also said that every year, there would be a fiesta devoted to the Black Nazarene. It happened around the first month of the year, I think. Men would fill the streets in waves, with everyone hoping to be able to carry the statue of the Black Nazarene or at least touch it, with the hope of being blessed. Sometimes, people would get crushed in the mob, but it death was a small price to pay for the favors of the Savior.

This was the Quiapo that Teresa was born into. Teresa was Lola's younger sister. Lola was sixteen when she was born and had been tasked to care for her since then. Maybe that's why she always thought of Teresa as her child instead of her sibling.

Teresa was born in the middle of the night, during a great storm that made the Ilog Pasig's water level rise so high everyone thought that God had broken his promise and had commanded another flood to drown the world. The river rose so high it flooded the inside of Lola's house, reaching the foot of my great-grandmother's bed so when little Teresa emerged from her mother's womb, the first waters to touch her were the waters of the great river.

Everyone thought that this meant Teresa's death, for how could a newborn babe withstand all the poison in the Ilog Pasig's water? Lola herself watched over the newborn babe but Teresa was as healthy as a child could get. Right then and there, Lola knew that her sister was special.

It was not hard taking care of Teresa, who was a very obedient child. Lola claimed that she never cried, and when she was upset, all one had to do was let her face the river, where the slowly moving black water would sooth her, and its noxious smell would coax her to happiness.

Years later, Lola met and married Lolo, and moved out to live with him. She took Teresa with her because her mother, who had eight other children, couldn't take care of her anymore. At first, Teresa, who was about six then, was upset. But when she learned that Lolo's shack also stood by the river, she did not protest any more.

Lola got pregnant and gave birth to Tiya Lydia. Tiyo Teban came next and after him came Nanay. Tiya Lydia has vague memories of Teresa. She says that Teresa was silent figure who tried as much as possible not to be seen. The only time Teresa ever truly smiled was when she played with Tito Teban, her favorite nephew. Even when she faced the river, Teresa's face always looked sad and her movements were always slow and resigned, as if she knew even then the fate that awaited her.

I asked Tiyo Teban about her once, but he has forgotten her entirely, even though Lola says that he always enjoyed playing with his Tita Tere. Nanay never got to see her at all, because Teresa had died before she was born, and The Change had already begun.

Teresa was a strange child. She was small for her age, with long black hair that ran down her head like the tangled weeds that used to float down the river. Her eyes were big and round, her pupils as dark as the river during the blackest of nights. She had a peculiar way of holding her small button nose high in the air, like she was constantly smelling for something.

Teresa did not like spending time with the other children who lived beside them, even when they tried to make friends with her. Lolo and Lola sent her to school but she would often cut classes so that she could spend the day sitting on the cement wall that enclosed the Ilog Pasig and watch the water flow beneath her. She rarely spoke, though her actions made it clear that she loved Lola and her family. She would help with the household chores and mind the children. Sometimes, she would go to the docks to bring Lolo some lunch that Lola had made. I should take you to the docks sometime. We'd have to commute there, and the gods know how Teresa managed to get there on foot. There are rumors that she didn't use her feet at all, but was carried by a great wave through the Ilog Pasig. Still, for all the strangeness that surrounded her, it seemed that Teresa was happy.

If Lola were telling the story instead of me, this is where her voice would falter and slow to a whisper. Her lips would curl up in a sad smile and her eyes would look as though they were looking out an invisible window. For a moment, she would forget that she was telling a story and that there were other people in the room. And just when people would start to wonder if she was all right, her gaze would shift back to her audience and she would continue as if nothing had happened, though if you listened carefully, you'd notice that a bit of longing had crept into her voice, and it was harder for her to tell people about how what happened to Teresa made her happy.

A few days after Teresa's tenth birthday, she surprised Lola by running into the house in the middle of the day.

"You should be in school!" Lola scolded, but her sister did not seem to hear her. Teresa's face was glowing with excitement.

"It spoke to me, ate!" she said.

"What did?" Lola asked.

"The river, Ate. It told me that it was sad because it was so dirty and that nothing could live in it. Did you know that it was once the greatest river in the island? That a person could dip her hand in at any part of it and come up with a fish? Did you know that its water used to be so clear and blue that you could see up to the bottom?"

This was the most that Teresa had ever spoken at one time. Lola was fascinated. She was happy that her sister was talking like a normal person at last. But – and she couldn't bring herself to admit this then – she was scared, too. She didn't know why but a feeling of dread had welled up inside her, one that was coupled with a strange sort of elation that things in general were going to get better. Right then and there, she understood – though she couldn't explain why – why Teresa almost never smiled, and why she moved the way she did. She wanted to hold her sister, to keep her in her arms and to protect her – but from what, she didn't know.

"You should go back to school," she said instead, even though what she really wanted to do was to keep Teresa home, where she would be safe and where Lola would be able to watch her all the time.

But Teresa never went back to school. Every morning, she would hurry though her chores so that she could run out to spend the day by the water. Whenever Lola, who by then had given up trying to make Teresa go to school, would look outside her window, she would see her sister leaning as far as she could into the river, as if listening for its secrets.

"What does the river tell you?" Lola asked in jest one day.

"I can't tell you," Teresa replied seriously. "I promised that I wouldn't tell anyone."

If Lola thought anything of the reply, she never said. All Lola knew was that Teresa did all her chores and never seemed to get into trouble, that the children loved her, and that Lolo treated her like she was his daughter and not his sister-in-law. And if staying by the river all day made Teresa happy, then Lola saw no harm in it. Until the day she saw Teresa dip her hand into the Ilog and lift the black, contaminated water to her lips.

"Teresa!" she screamed, running to her sister and dragging her away from the river's high tide. But it was too late. When she reached her sister, Teresa had already drunk from the river's waters.

"Drink, and your eyes will be opened," Teresa said. Lola thought that Teresa would surely die then, but when her sister remained healthy, the fear in her began to grow.

She forbade Teresa to go near the river after that, but her sister never listened. Neighbors would tell Lola how they had seen her little sister go up to the river and watch it intently, seeing and talking to things no one else could see or hear. Sometimes, she would talk to the river, her words low and soothing. And when the tide was high enough, she would drink from it.

"She's mad!" the neighbors would exclaim with pity. Yet they did nothing to help poor Lola. Some even made fun of Teresa, even if she had always been kind and helpful to them, though quiet and a bit strange.

Their pity soon turned to fear, for they noticed that the river rose higher and higher, the more attention Teresa paid it. The black water, which threatened to overflow only during storms and high tides, seemed more filled with water, until it looked like it would one day spill into the district.

"She's going to bring the river on us!" they said. "She's going to drown us all!"

And even though only humans walked the earth then, there were a lot of people who remembered stories about the Other Country, that place where diwatas and other spirits of old lived.

"The river has claimed her as its bride!" some said. "She should be dead by now but the river is keeping her alive!"

Lola didn't know what to do. She kept Teresa in by force, ignoring her sister's cries and pleas to go out and play. She did this because she – and Lolo, too – was scared. Teresa was becoming less and less like a human being. She walked around in a daze, as if she was looking for something she had lost. She would never look straight at anyone, or anything. Instead, her eyes would train a bit to the right of the object or person she was focusing on. Tiya Lydia and Tiyo Teban would not go near her. She smelled funny, Tiya Lydia had said, while Tiyo Teban told his mother that he did not want Teresa to take him with her to the river.

Still, Lolo and Lola kept her inside. But they should have known that she wasn't herself anymore, and that nothing could keep her from the great river. It happened during the night before the Feast of the Black Nazarene. Even though the rainy season had long passed, a storm came, one bigger, blacker, and wilder than anyone had ever seen before. PAGASA said that it was the worst storm to hit the country, ever. It raged all through the night. Lolo held Lola and their two children close to him as the wind howled and the rain beat down on their little shack, threatening to blow it into the river. Lola had tried to keep Teresa close to her, but the girl had broken free from her grasp, running to the side of the house that faced the river. This is the one thing that Tiya Lydia remembers well. She said that the family could hear the river lapping against the side of the wall that held it, calling for Teresa. And they could hear Teresa answering the great river, her voice rising above the storm, speaking in a language they did not understand.

The rain slowed to a drizzle at daybreak, and by the time Lola had mustered enough nerve to release her hold on her family and search the shack for her sister, Teresa was long gone, having climbed out a window during the worst of the storm.

Lola wanted to look for her but Lolo said that it was impossible, not on the Feast of the Black Nazarene. The drizzle didn't let up as people filled the streets and the Black Nazarene was brought out of the Quiapo Church. It grew stronger as the statue was carried though the streets, the men moving like waves beneath its bulk

The rain grew harder and harder, and the river's water level rose more and more, until it flowed past the banks and onto the streets, until the floor of the Jones bridge was covered in water and you couldn't tell where the edge of the district ended and the river began anymore. And suddenly, at the point when the statue was nearest the river, a great wave rose up and splashed into the middle of the feast goers, taking the Black Nazarene from their surprised hands, breaking it into pieces so small that some of the men carrying it were left with nothing but fine powder. Many people were hurt, but surprisingly, only one person was killed, but they would not know this until days later.

There was a great uproar over the loss of the statue, for it was something of great religious significance. Some people even wanted to piece it back together, even though in their heart of hearts, everyone knew that this could not be done. They were so preoccupied with the loss of their statue that they almost didn't notice the miracle that was taking place in front of them. The river was coming back to life. The Change had begun.

First the water got lighter and lighter, all the poison leached away until the river flowed a clear bright blue. Then plants started to grow under water, their green leaves shooting out of the river soil, providing food and shelter for the creatures that eventually came to live in it. The river no longer smelled rank, but now had a sweet scent that brought a smile and peace of mind to all that caught its scent. All this took little more than a week.

At first, people thought that the Black Nazarene had performed the miracle. But later, Teresa's body was found tangled among some river reeds, her small form bloated to more than twice its size. Her skin was so black and when they opened her up, her insides were so foul smelling that everyone knew without a doubt that the little girl had taken all the river's sickness into herself and had died from it. For this miracle, she was canonized Sta. Teresa the Child Abandoned, for even though she took care of her very well physically, Lola often berated herself for not giving more thought to her younger sister's mental health. Teresa was cremated, her ashes mixed into the current of the great river. But before she was given over to the fire, Lola cut off a lock of her sister's seaweed-like hair, the only part of her that did not seem to be contaminated. I can show it to you if you like.

Shortly after Teresa was made a saint, the first diwata appeared. Teresa's resurrection of the Ilog Pasig had once again opened the door between their worlds, she said, her green hair glistening in the sun. Lola's sister, she said, had traveled to the Other County, where she had told everyone about the wonders that now lay in the world the diwatas had left so long ago. Somehow, she convinced them that should they decide to reenter it now, they would not be harmed and that they could live side by side with the humans they so feared before. The diwata who told this story was called Marikit. After her, other creatures followed, fragile diwatas and green-haired enkantada, the capres with their ever-burning cigars, tikbalangs, with their horses' heads and human bodies, and many more, making up the Quiapo that we know today.

Why are they all here? Why don't they cross the bridge and seek their fortunes in say, Makati or Ortigas, or get on a plane and fly to the States like a lot of humans do? I don't really know, although Lola has other ideas.

Once, she said, she asked Marikit that same question. The diwata's answer is why Lola, until the day she died, refused to leave her shack by the river, even though devout believers had offered her houses in exclusive subdivisions like Forbes Park and Corinthian Gardens. Marikit said that before she migrated to Quiapo, Teresa had told her that she planned to come back after she had finished her business in the Other Country. That was why no one has left. They were all waiting for her. As all the believers do when they take to the streets on the anniversary of the night she joined the river.

That's how Lola said The Change started. And though it's only been a few generations, people outside Quiapo have either forgotten about it or just brush it off as a religious folk tale, like the ones about wooden statues that cry blood tears. I can tell that you certainly think that way. But then, you weren't born here.

Do I believe it? It's hard to imagine that the river was ever a dirty, stinking sewer, or that Quiapo was ever populated only by humans. But then I remember everything that my Lola has told me and how Teresa's miracle is acknowledged and documented all over the world. And if sometimes, that still fails to convince me, I take out the box that I use to hold the lock of hair that my Lola had taken from her sister's dead body and measure how much it has grown since I last laid eyes on it. That never fails to make me believe in Lola's stories, and to never doubt that soon, very soon, Sta. Teresa will come back to us again.

CONTRIBUTORS:

**Crystal Gail Shangkuan Koo:** _("The Startbox")_ Crystal was born and bred in the Philippines, where she studied for a BA in English Literature. After spending a year in Beijing studying Mandarin, she went to Sydney for a Master's degree in Creative Writing. In 2007, she won a Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature for her short story "Benito Salazar's Last Creation." Currently an English lecturer at the College of International Education of Hong Kong Baptist University, she has been published online and in print in various international venues. Her play, "The Foundling", was performed in Hong Kong by Burnt Mango Theatre Productions in 2009. She will have a short story in the anthology "The Dragon and the Stars" coming out in 2010 from DAW books. You can find more information about Crystal at her author's page on rocketkapre.com.

**chiles samaniego:** _("The Saint of Elsewhere: A Mystery")_ When asked to write author bios about himself, chiles samaniego (of De La Salle Zobel and UP College of Medicine) likes being able to talk about himself in the third person, and use lower cases where most people use uppers. "Easier to make things up that way," he says.

Elsewhere, he favors the handle skinnyblackcladdink, which tells you all you really need to know, though some people seem to think what he used to do is worth another word or two. As a writer of fictions, he wonders if everything he writes might be true, and therefore not to be trusted. He is originally from the Philippines but is currently living in Singapore. You can find him online at Zen in Darkness (http://skinnyblogcladdink2-0.blogspot.com/).

**Kenneth Yu:** _("Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing")_ Whether he admits it or not, Kyu (as he is fondly known) is one of the most prominent figures in Philippine Speculative Fiction. A graduate of Xavier School and the Ateneo de Manila, Kyu is a tennis aficionado and literacy advocate. He's the publisher and editor of the Digest of Philippine Genre Stories, and his fiction has been published in The Town Drunk, the Philippine Graphic and AlienSkin magazine. He also won Fantasy Magazine's 2009 Flash Fiction Halloween contest. The PGS blog is also a daily staple for anyone interested in Philippine Spec Fic. You can read more about Kenneth at his author's page on rocketkapre.com.

**Celestine Trinidad:** _("The Coming of the Anak-Araw")_ Celestine Trinidad is a fourth-year student of Medicine from the University of Santo Tomas, but she still tries to read and write as much as she can in her (now unfortunately very little) free time. Much to her surprise, she won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature for her short story for children "The Storyteller and the Giant". You can read more about Celestine at her author's on rocketkapre.com.

**Yvette Tan:** _("The Child Abandoned")_ Yvette's fiction and non-fiction has appeared in so many venues online and offline that I truly believe she could put together an entire magazine all by her self. Her stories have been recognized by the Palanca Awards, the Philippine Graphic Fiction Awards and the 2008 Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Her first short story collection, "Waking the Dead," was released just last month to stellar reviews. You can find Yvette at her author's page on rocketkapre.com.

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**Kevin Lapeña:** Kevin is the cover artist for Issue #1 of USOK. You can find more of Kevin's work at his personal gallery (http://scarypet.carbonmade.com/) or at deviantart page (http://scarypet.deviantart.com/).

