There was once a child named Edgardo. He was small and quiet and preferred to read books instead of playing with the other children. Books were hard to get in his small mountain community and he treasured the moments when he would go to the city, watch his father exchange the gold they mined for money and buy the books he wanted.
One day he was approached by Faustino, a boy who would usually avoid him. It was one thing to be different, but to be different in a community of a few hundred people made Edgardo feel like he was under a microscope.
“Can I sit here?” Faustino asked him.
“Sure, no one’s stopping you,” Edgardo replied.
“Did you hear about what happened?” Faustino tried to look him in the eye but only succeeded at putting his head down and staring at his shuffling feet.
“Didn’t everyone?” Edgardo said without moving his eyes away from the page he was reading.
“With Veronica that makes 3 since February.” Faustino sat beside him.
It wasn’t uncommon for children to go missing up in the mountains. Danger was everywhere. One moment of absentmindedness could cost you dearly.
The mines were also an issue. Too often their fathers or brothers would just not come home and the mining companies would send their condolences – for whatever that was worth.
“They say someone is taking the children away.” Faustino, again, tried and failed to look him in the eye.
Edgardo put down his book and replied, “Who would possibly want to take the children? If it was for money then wouldn’t they have sent a note? It’s rainy season, people walk around the mountain and don’t come back. Just leave it be.”
“No.” Faustino put his hands on Edgardo’s shoulders. “This is different from that, I can feel it. We have to stick together. I asked Melinda, Pepito and Belen. The five of us can watch what happens with each other.”
“You’ll be safe with us,” Faustino says with a smile.
Edgardo frowns. “If you say so.”
This wasn’t the first time someone made that promise. He thought back to his elder brother. Those nights when they went to the caves together to find gold for themselves. That one time he wasn’t careful. Things would happen and you just had to let them be.
One night Edgardo was awakened by the whispers of another child.
“Edgardo —- psssst —— wake up, it’s important,” the voice said.
It took a few minutes for Edgardo to snap back into reality. The dream that he had was so vivid: a house filled with books all to himself. He was lucid in his dream and he swore that one day it would come true.
“Belen?!”
“Sshhhhhh—don’t let anyone hear you.” She put her hand over his mouth.
“What are you doing here?” he managed to say through her fingers.
“It’s Faustino.” Her face was grim. “He’s missing.”
“Are you sure?” Edgardo was quieter this time, “maybe he just went out for a walk?”
“It’s the middle of the night! He’s not in his house. Come with me. Pepito and Melinda are by the big tree near Faustino’s house. We need to find him.”
Edgardo rubbed his eyes and yawned again. “Fine, might as well.”
Melinda and Pepito were where Belen said they would be, the fireflies giving the tree an eerie aura.
“I think I found a trail,” Pepito said. “There are footprints leading to the caves over by the hills.”
The children all grimaced. Those caves were near the mines and they were dangerous enough for adults, much less a group of four children.
“We have to go,” Belen said, “he’d do the same for us.”
“What are we going to do when we find him? There must be something responsible for the disappearances. How do we fight it?” Melinda was close to tears.
“We don’t need to fight it, we just have to find Faustino and bring him back here, where it’s safe,” Pepito said.
They all looked at each other and put their hands together.
Each had a resolve to find their friend, Edgardo less so. He was still enraptured by his dream.
They followed the trail as best as they could, scraping their skins against the rocks and the roots. And as soon as they were about to fall from exhaustion, they reached their destination, a nondescript cave that they knew was an entrance to a network of tunnels they might not return from.
Belen lead the group. She had taken a lamp from her parents and her siblings had taken her to the caves once. Leadership was not her strength, but she had to make sure the others had a guide. She had to do it, for Faustino.
Melinda was the first.
She didn’t even scream. One moment Belen was shining the lamp on the entrance to another tunnel and the next, when she called out for the names of her companions. She had never feared silence until that moment, it was one she would remember for the rest of her life.
Pepito tried to stay the course. They all held hands and Belen could feel his shaking. She tried to console him.
“It will be alright. We’ll find both of them, I promise.”
Pepito tried to hold back tears as he nodded, yet fear had overtaken him.
“No!” He shouted. “We have to go back home!”
Edgardo tried his best to hold him down.
“Pepito, we have to stay together, it’s the only way we can make it out of here!”
He didn’t listen, he pushed Edgardo off him and ran into the darkness.
The silence weighed heavy on the remaining two.
“I was so stupid to think this would work.” Belen’s breath started to become rapid and she put the lantern down. “We should have stayed together. Now it’s not just Faustino. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry Melinda, Pepito! We have to go back, maybe if we tell our families they can go here and we can all search for them. We’ll find them. We have to find them.”
Edgardo took the lantern and said, “come with me”.
Belen had no other choice but to follow her new friend.
The light from the lantern was slowly fading and the path was getting more slippery as they went along. She tried to grab the wall to balance, but she found that it was damp as well.
She finally saw what it was when Edgardo handed her the lantern.
It was red everywhere. It stained her hands and clothes and drops fell from the ceiling.
“I don’t understand—-” Belen tried to say.
But another light glowed by Edgardo, illuminating a creature carrying a hefty bag of gold.
“You should have listened to them. If you did maybe it would have just been Faustino.”
“I—-I—-” Belen was paralyzed, she tried to scream as the creature carried her deeper into the tunnel.
And as the daylight shined on Edgardo as he cleaned himself in the river, he thought:
“I wonder how many books I can get with this.”
Written by Karl Gaverza
Copyright © Karl Gaverza
Inspired by the Sagay description in Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology. Ramos. 1971.
Sagay Illustration by Christian Bitao
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