Chapter 3

//La Provincia de la Laguna de Bay, May, 1700//

Lucas sits on a bench beside his father.

     His father, to him is strict, but composed, a quiet reader inside their house.

     In front of them were bags woven from dried Pandan leaves. Inside those bags were various vegetables and garlands made from Arabian Jasmine. The cart’s wheels rattle as the horse slowly pulls it along the path, away from Luke’s home.

     Away – 'away' – something about this word makes Luke feel a bit uneasy.

     Lucas is eight. He is a bright little boy. He is small and very agile; he has begged his mother’s ear off to be able to come with his father to the market in the city until his father finally said yes. They own a small amount of land where they plant various vegetables and half of that land is filled with Arabian Jasmine. Twice a year, his father makes a trip to the city to be able to sell those Arabian Jasmine. Today, Lucas came along with him. For the first time, Luke will be leaving Laguna.

     He looks back at his mother, sewing under a Jamaican Cherry tree just outside their house. They round the bend and slowly his mother disappears from sight. The village seem to pass along, the houses, the fields and trees, people hanging their clothes and tending to their garden.

     As if time hasn’t passed, he and his father reach the end of the village – the farthest Lucas has ever gone before. The cart hits a bump in the path and bounces making his heart feel even more uneasy. As they reach the indicator that the village property has ended, he closes his eyes expecting some sort of barrier to prevent him from going out.

     However, there is no barrier, no shield, no rope to hold him back. The cart keeps moving forward and Lucas feels lightheaded and scared. He looks back and looks at the shrinking town of Biñan, which until now was her only world.

     It was a day’s ride to the city. The walk was easily executed with the woven baskets and his father’s company. They had cheese and bread to fill themselves up, a typical poor-man’s meal, and his father’s cheesy laugh and large body was enough to shelter under the baking summer sun.

     At home, his father was a very different man. He is a very committed reader while daily tending to their crops and other flora. When he’s on the road, however, he opens like a book. Telling stories like how a traveler gathers his stories and shares them with others.

     “Hey bud, I have something to tell you…” He would start before sliding into stories which included myths and monsters. He will not remember these stories, but he will remember the way his father shares them. The words flow as smooth as silk dangling down his skin; he wonders if his father tells his horse these stories as well when he is alone or are they especially crafted just for him. Oh, how he wishes he could write them down.

     Afterwards, his father will teach him symbols and letters. His mother will be infuriated when she finds out and accuse him of teaching his son another way to waste the hours of the day; but today, it is the only two of them together and Lucas has all his time in the world to listen and learn.

     The countryside passes along them. A filled canvas of what he already knows. The fields are just fields. The trees seem to grow randomly to make a forest, a river which shows the reflection of the village where he has been before. He’s getting bored, he’s wondering if the outside world is as boring as his daily life in the village.

     Suddenly, the towering buildings of the city come to sight. There were no gates but there were more people – almost ten times the number of people compared to Biñan. He closes his eyes as the cart goes through the crowd of people. They seem to be creating a path for the cart on their own, without his father having to scream for them.

     His father guides the horse towards what seem to look like a square. This square is a big as a giant’s room. The ground can barely be seen in sight as it was filled with carts and feet as far as the eye could see. He stands on the cart looks around seeing people and carts as far as his little eyes can see; his nose being filled with the scent of freshly baked bread, and the scent of burnt wood. He felt confused and scared among the city of strangers – all of them seemed unfamiliar – talking with an unfamiliar language, with unfamiliar voices, with unfamiliar people.

     His father sits beside the cart and calls people who pass by. He lays out the vegetables per group and bundles them. As for the garland of flowers, he hangs them along his finger each carrying a big bundle of garland every second finger. He grabs the remaining loose flowers and threads them into Manila Hemp fibers with a silver needle.

     Lucas always liked seeing his father work. He seems to look peaceful while doing so. His father’s outputs are always so beautiful. The garlands look so soft even though the hands that made them were wounded and rough.

     Lucas never got to keep any of his father’s work. He tried to, one time, but it was only a small bracelet of flowers dried and pinned inside the book. His father, however, gave him a birthday gift before, when he turned seven years old. It was a ring. He wears it on a cheap string around his neck. It was a metal ring, dark blue in color, and it shined as light reflected upon it. His father bought it as a protection, a symbol of his mother and father’s love for their only son. He treated it as his own personal deity – a deity crafted from his parents’ love; a divine shield that would protect him from any form of harm.

     By the end of their day, all of their produce and flowers are gone. His father gives him a small amount of money and says that he may spend that any way he wishes. He checks from stall to stall, observing all of the pastries, next he checks the clothing stalls, and then the stall with the toys, but in the end, he decided to buy a small journal. It has a brown leather cover, the parchment bound with waxy and thread. The idea of the emptiness of the paper excites him – I could fill this with anything I wish, he thought.

     He could not afford to buy a pen and ink to go with it, but his father already bought him a bundle of black sticks. He says that they are charcoal and he showed him how to write with them on the parchment. His father showed him his drawing skills and drew the head of the horse on the first page of the journal. Curiosity got the best of him and he decides to copy what his father drew at the next page.

     His father decides to pack up while he was trying to copy the scribbled artwork.

     They will spend the night at a local inn – for the first time in his life, Lucas will be sleeping and awaken in a bed different than what he is used to. He will wake up to foreign smells; there will be a brief time when he wakes up wherein, he won’t know where he is and he will be filled with fear until he can remember the memory of what happened from the night before.

     By the time that they arrive back to Biñan, he will be a different version from the one before they left.