The Fireworks of Apo Namalyari

“Eat the fruit.” Her father stopped walking and said it.

Through the gaps in the red-bead tree leaves, Apo saw Pinatubo, spewing dark red clouds, lit up by the morning sun. This was their first trip down the mountain since the mountain god grew angry—perhaps the last.

Apo Quino opened her fist and looked hesitantly at the four wild olives in her palm.

“Eat them,” her father repeated, swaying impatiently.

Apo called out an invitation in every direction to share the good food. After making sure no one else was there, she slowly ate the fruit. On the way down she had found an olive tree. Her father told her to thank the mountain god Apo Namalyari for the gift and to promise to sow the seeds somewhere else, then picked fifteen green olives for her. The fruit was sweet and sour and delicious, but Apo couldn’t eat all of it. She had wanted to sneak some back to her mother.

“Carry highland fruit to the lowlands and you’ll go lame until the day you die,” her father said. “Every Aeta knows that, idiot.”

Apo buried the olive pits in the soil. Her father parted the weeds with his bow and walked ahead, and she hurried to catch up.

The Quino were the tribe living highest on the east side of Mount Pinatubo, two hours’ walk from the nearest Aeta village. They rarely went down the mountain, except to Sapang Bato village at its foot to trade monkey skins with the lowlanders for salt, arrowheads, and cloth.

“The Quino are guarded by Apo Namalyari, ruler of the eight rivers. We don’t need any Catholic God or Spaniards,” her father often said. Over the years, many Aeta villagers had converted to Catholicism. The priests helped them build rainproof shelters and brick houses. They began wearing brightly colored synthetic clothes, stopped hunting, and sold crude wood carvings to tourists for money. In the eyes of the Quino tribe, this was a pitiful degeneration.

“Apo Namalyari will get angry. He’ll send Grandfather Pinatubo to bring punishment down on those fools.” On many nights, in the wavering torchlight and the stink of bat droppings that filled the cave, her father said this while tending his bowstring, and the men of the other families would chime in.

The Quino’s cave was a treasure they were proud of. For hundreds of years, they had relied on this bottomless cave to hide from wild beasts, mosquitoes, and storms. In her father’s words, they were lodging inside the body of the mountain god Apo Namalyari.

Until the day the mountain god grew angry.

Apo remembered it was the fourth night after the full moon. The weather was very hot. During the day the men had caught two fat bitatawa monitor lizards, so dinner’s stew was especially rich.

After dinner, the men gathered and talked big. A few hunting dogs gnawed on the lizard bones. Her mother heated a stone knife in the fire and went on with the unfinished tattoo on Apo’s back. The rough blade split the skin, and Apo bit her lip. The wounds from the last tattooing had only just scabbed over, which made now the best time to reinforce the pattern. Repeat this three times, and the picture would be branded deep into the skin and never fade for the rest of her life.

“Your name is Apo. It’s a name we borrowed from Apo Namalyari,” her mother said, flicking the beads of blood from the knife into the fire pit. “Mountain god, please smell the smoke we offer you. Protect us from the drenching rain, and bless our damp feet.”

“Thank you, Lord Mountain God and Grandfather Pinatubo.” Apo bowed her head toward the flames.

Just then a low rumble came from deep inside the rock, and several dogs pricked up their ears at the same time. Someone said, “Did a rock roll into the ravine? If the water turns muddy, we can’t fish tomorrow.”

“I saw lots of monkeys in the woods below Eagle Rock. We can go catch monkeys,” someone else said.

After a grumbling from the heart of the earth, something somewhere overhead suddenly exploded. The hunting dogs howled and bolted out of the cave, the sky rolled and rumbled, and countless bats poured out of the depths of the cave, blotting out the torchlight.

Apo stumbled outside with everyone else and saw the towering Pinatubo shrouded in a blood-red cloud. The cloud writhed like guts and gave off an acrid smell. The moon was warped, and the sky had turned into something she didn’t recognize.

The people knelt to the mountain god. Not even the oldest man in the tribe had ever seen a sight like this. Her mother hugged Apo to her chest and told her not to be afraid—the mountain god was only angry at the lowlanders and the Aeta who had changed their faith. But Apo could feel her mother trembling harder than she was. Her father touched his forehead to the ground, praising the name of the generous Apo Namalyari over and over, and promised a month of monkey meat, bananas, and rice bran in exchange for the god’s pity. But the mountain answered with a scorching low growl, looking down on the shivering crowd through blood-colored clouds.

No one could sleep easy that night. When the dawn light lit the low wall at the mouth of the cave, people poked their heads out to look. The mountains hadn’t changed, and the sky was back to normal. Only a ring of red smoke circled Pinatubo, like the hydrangea garlands used in sacrifices.

The Quino tribe began the day’s work on edge, and people soon noticed something was off. The wild animals had fled these hills before dawn. The monkeys, wild boars, and peacocks were all gone; even the bats that lived deep in the cave had vanished without a trace. The fish in the streams had thinned out too, and the skilled hunters came home empty-handed. But the women who went out gathering were amazed to find that many fruit trees had flowered and borne fruit overnight. It took them only half a day to fill every basket.

Was this the mountain god’s wrath, or some kind of gift? When night came, the men lit cigarettes traded from the lowlanders and discussed Apo Namalyari’s will in awe, but no one could come up with an answer. Her mother stopped tattooing Apo, afraid that this was what had angered the mountain god. After a dinner of rice, dried monkey meat, and melon, Apo lay down with her back to the adults and touched the cool rock with the tip of her nose.

Her sleeping spot was at the back of the cave. A crack in the rock beside it led deeper in, to where the bats lived, a forbidden place the Quino never explored. Apo didn’t like joining in the adults’ discussions. She didn’t like the way her father talked, and she didn’t like the pain her mother gave her. She liked talking to herself at the rock, pretending she could hear Apo Namalyari answer.

She had been talking to herself for ten years, ever since she learned to speak. That night, a miracle happened.

“Mountain god, mountain god, why are you angry?” she said, pressing her ear tight against the rock.

“…Who are you?”

A voice came from deep inside the rock. Apo had never heard a voice like it, so deep, so low, so hollow. She jolted upright and stared at the adults’ backs, flickering in the firelight. “…Mama, was that you talking?”

Her mother glanced at her. “I’m sewing clothes. Nobody’s talking to you. Go to sleep, Apo.”

Apo pressed a hand to her thumping chest and lay back down close to the rock. “I’m Apo ah. Apo of the Quino tribe of the Aeta, Apo who’s fourteen this year,” she whispered. “Is that Lord Mountain God talking?”

“…Can you hear me?” The voice came through the granite, through the peaks, through the body of Apo Namalyari.

“I can, I can, I hear you.” Apo covered her mouth. “Apo has been talking and talking to you, Lord Mountain God. Could you hear me all along?”

“…Apo.” The voice seemed to think for a while. “…Where are you?”

The girl answered, “I’m on the mountainside east of Grandfather Pinatubo, where four streams meet, inside the Quino tribe’s cave.”

“…I don’t know that place.” The voice sounded puzzled. “I’m somewhere near the boundary. It’s getting very cold here, and very light. I don’t know where to go.”

“Is Lord Mountain God angry?” Apo asked. “Because the lowlanders are cutting down the trees, and the Aeta who believe in the Catholic God don’t pray to you anymore…”

“I’m not angry. I’m afraid.”

“Lord Mountain God gets afraid too? What are you afraid of?”

“Of being left behind.”

“Left behind by who?”

“By my companions. I slept for a long time, and when I woke up, my companions were all gone. There’s only me left.”

“Where did they go? If they went hunting, they’ll definitely come back.”

“But…”

The ground shook. Pinatubo let out a belch, the Quino in the cave cried out all at once, and the voice from the heart of the earth was gone.

“Lord Mountain God?” Apo cupped her hands into a circle against the stone and called softly into it. “Lord Mountain God, are you still there? Are you leaving?”

Amid the panicked footsteps and sighs, her father’s big feet appeared in front of her eyes. “What are you doing?”

His voice boomed. “Don’t disturb Apo Namalyari. Go to sleep! If you don’t behave, a rock from the mountain will smash you on the head tomorrow.”

Apo curled up and pretended to sleep. “Lord Mountain God?” She kept calling to the silent rock until dawn.

A few days later, her father decided to make a trip down the mountain. Besides restocking the tribe’s salt and cigarettes, he meant to ask the lowlanders for news of Pinatubo while he was at it. Apo hugged his leg and begged to come along. She loved the lowlanders’ stuff; those things called television, cars, and Coca-Cola were just the best. Her father wasn’t willing. Apo’s first elder brother had been bitten by a king cobra on a trip down the mountain and died before they could get him to town. Her second elder brother had seen the world below and never wanted to come back. Sister Fondevilla had taken him in, and he had settled in the civilized world.

To the Quino, “going down the mountain” was a curse.

In the end her father gave in, because he was already forty-two, nearly the oldest man in the tribe, and Apo was now his only child.

They spent six hours coming down and reached Sapang Bato before noon. At the sight of the little red-brick houses and the satellite dishes on the roofs, her father’s brow furrowed deeply. He set down his bow, arrows, and spear, straightened the cloth he wore, and put on his amulets and earrings. “I’ll go ask the nun for news, then sell these monkey skins. Don’t wander off.”

He said, “Don’t eat anything strange, even if they call everyone over to share the way the Aeta do. Got it?”

“Got it.” Apo nodded hard. She knew her father would first go see the son who had been driven out of the family.

They tramped through the mud into the village. Aeta in loud T-shirts greeted them from the roadside, but her father held his head high and ignored them. A few tourists raised their cameras, and he warned them off with an icy glare and a gob of spit. “Pah! Stay away from me!”

“Mira aquí!” The tourists burst out laughing and waved their arms.

Translator’s note: Spanish for “Look over here!”

They came to a red-brick building with a cross on it. “Sister Fondevilla!” her father shouted from outside the door. “The Quino have come from Grandfather Pinatubo.”

The nun appeared in the doorway. She was the whitest person Apo had ever seen, white as the light of a full moon.

“I know why you’ve come,” the fifty-year-old nun said. “Come have a cup of tea, and I’ll tell you what’s happened. How are you, Apo? Your brother is fine. He rode out to Iba City yesterday. Half of Sapang Bato has already left.”

“She has no brother,” her father said, stone-faced. “I don’t drink tea.”

The nun said, “Several Aeta tribes have moved down to the lowlands too. You have to go as well. A week ago, red smoke started appearing on Mount Pinatubo. I reported it to the government in Manila, and the volcanologist Dr. Punongbayan led a survey team to the summit. They measured more than 200 tremors in a single day. Listen, the volcano is going to erupt, and soon. Government messengers are on their way to notify every Aeta tribe.”

Her father’s eyebrows twitched. “Grandfather Pinatubo is not a volcano.”

“It is a volcano.”

“It has never erupted.”

“Not in five hundred years, but that doesn’t mean it won’t in the future.”

Her father said loudly, “Apo Namalyari is merciful to the twenty thousand Aeta!”

“God loves the world. Disaster will come, but God gives his promise to those who rely on him. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain,” the nun answered. “We should face suffering with courage.”

“Your god is not my god. We’re going!” Her father spat on the nun’s robe and stormed out of the church. They left the village and set off back home. Apo hadn’t gotten to see a car or a television, let alone drink a Coca-Cola. She didn’t dare say a word to her father. She had never seen him this angry.

Only when they reached the wild olive tree again did her father stop and let the panting Apo catch up.

“You’re not to tell anyone what the nun said.” The man threw the monkey skins into the bushes and spoke sternly to his daughter. “Or Apo Namalyari will get angry. Understand?”

Apo nodded, holding back tears. In truth, she hadn’t figured out what had happened at all.

The next day it rained. A man in khaki came to the mouth of the cave, claiming to be a messenger from the government in Manila. Her father and several men drove him off with spears, saying his papers were fake, and he wore a cross around his neck besides. He was obviously a spy sent by the Catholics to lead people astray.

That day the hunters brought back nothing at all. There wasn’t much rice left in the cave, and the women came back from picking fruit sick with worry. The strange fruit had grown big and sweet, but one after another they were rotting on the branches, as if a whole rainy season had passed in a few days.

That night it was pitch-black outside. The rain beat on the banana leaves, and the adults sat in silence by the fire pit, smoking. Apo spoke to the rock again. “Lord Mountain God, Lord Mountain God, are you there?”

The answer she hadn’t heard in so long came back. “Who are you?”

“I’m Apo of the Quino ah.” The girl covered her mouth in happy surprise. “Where did you go? Are you okay?”

“I’m moving toward a colder, lighter place,” the voice said. “I can’t tell which way is which, but a force is pushing me there. I think my companions left the same way.”

“I heard you’re going to bring down punishment with a ‘volcano.’ Is that right, Lord Mountain God?” Apo couldn’t help asking. “Are we going to die? What about the other Aeta? And the lowlanders?”

The voice paused for a while.

“I don’t understand,” it answered, sounding a little lost. “I’ve always lived here. In one direction it’s very hot and very heavy, and the closer I get, the thicker everything around me becomes, even hard. In the other direction it’s very cold and very light, and if I go deep into it, I feel like I’m coming unbound. There’s a boundary in the cold direction. I’ve never leapt across that boundary, but my companions have all disappeared. I think they went to the other side.”

“Like the world down the mountain. Is where you’re going Manila?” Apo said. “I heard they have everything there.”

“I don’t know. I’m very lonely, and very afraid.”

“Don’t be afraid.” Apo opened her hand and warmed the rock with her palm. “I’m here with Lord Mountain God.”

“I’m almost at the boundary. Am I going the right way?”

“Papa says Apo Namalyari is always right.”

The earthquake began. Bat droppings rained down from the roof of the cave, the ground split open and spurted muddy spring water, and the terrified Quino grabbed clay pots, rattan baskets, and strips of meat and fled the cave, shivering in the dark. Her father shielded the fire embers with his body and broke down crying in the rain. “Ruler of the eight rivers, most high Apo Namalyari, are you abandoning us? Will you no longer enjoy the smoke and fire, the fruit and rice bran we offer you? Will you no longer keep our feet from getting wet in the rain?”

Translator’s note: 烟火 (yan1 huo3), the word in the title, means fireworks, but also the smoke and fire of burnt offerings like these.

The rain soaked Apo’s cloth, and the wounds on her back began to ache. She knelt in the mud and tried to talk to the mountain god, but the heavens shook and the earth quaked, the world was loud and cold, and she couldn’t hear a single answer anymore.

At last the morning sun rose again, and the earthquake stopped. The exhausted Quino were amazed to find that Mount Pinatubo had calmed down. The blood-red clouds were gone, and they could clearly see the shining dark gray rock on the summit. Her father blew the dying embers back to life, lit an oil-soaked torch, and raised both arms to the sky. “Apo Namalyari’s anger is soothed!” he shouted with all his might. “The mountain god has forgiven us! Grandfather Pinatubo won’t spit fire anymore!”

“Apo Namalyari!” The people bowed down to Pinatubo, bowed down to the mountain god, and scattered the last of their rice and dried meat into the flames. They believed the smoke would carry the offerings to the gods, because fire was the passage between the two worlds.

After the celebrating, the Quino tidied up the cave and lay down in the soft straw to sleep sweetly. Apo fell asleep in her mother’s arms. She didn’t know how long it had been when a burst of urgent voices woke her. She sat up and rubbed her eyes and found it was nearly dusk. Most of the Quino hadn’t woken up yet. A few people stood outside the cave arguing, among them the government messenger in yellow and an old white man in hunting gear.

Apo slowly walked outside and heard her father say, “Even if you’re some doctor the nun talked about, that doesn’t mean everything you say is right!”

The white man answered even louder. “I am the volcanologist Dr. Punongbayan, and I’ll repeat myself. You must come down the mountain right now and move somewhere safe. Scientists from Washington have already arrived in Manila. They believe the Pinatubo eruption will be on a scale no smaller than the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, one of the most destructive disasters in history. You’re going to die! All of you!”

“Fool! Look!” her father sneered. “Grandfather Pinatubo isn’t angry anymore!”

The doctor pointed at the peak. “This unusual quiet means the volcano’s energy can’t escape smoothly. It’s building up, brewing an enormous eruption. That stink you smell is the sulfur dioxide in the magma, which means the magma has already risen to the surface and could erupt at any moment!”

“Don’t point your dirty finger at Grandfather Pinatubo!” several Quino shouted at once. Her father swung his spear and struck the back of the doctor’s hand, and the old man yelped and staggered back a few steps. The messenger in yellow pulled a pistol from inside his coat. “They’re going to attack us!” Her father instantly let out a war cry. Many hunters who had just woken up charged out, drawing their bows and nocking arrows, the poisoned arrowheads glinting in the setting sun.

The doctor clutched his left hand and shook his head. “There’s no time. Two more Aeta tribes are waiting to be saved. Put the gun away, we’re going. Have the helicopter stand by in Sapang Bato. The moment Washington gives the signal, evacuate!”

The man in yellow swallowed his anger and put away the revolver. A Quino hunter let go of his bowstring, and the sharp arrow stabbed into the ground right by the messenger’s trouser leg. The doctor and the messenger ran stumbling down the slope.

“Ho!” The Quino burst into roaring laughter and whooped in victory. “Catholic white pigs, get back to Manila! Get lost!”

Apo said softly, “I heard Lord Mountain God’s voice. He said he was going to the other side of the boundary…”

No one cared what the girl said. In the middle of the crowd, her father was crowing smugly. “That white man said the earth is a ball. There’s a core inside and a skin outside, the core is hot and heavy, the skin is soft and light, the magma goes up from underneath and sprays out and becomes a volcano. Listen to that, he doesn’t even know about the mountain god! How would he know that Apo Namalyari holds up ten thousand peaks in his hands, keeping the whole world in balance…”

The men and women chimed in, loudly mocking the ignorant Catholics. Apo went back into the cave alone, lay down by the rock wall, and stroked the stone. It didn’t feel cold anymore. It held a strange kind of body warmth.

Night fell and the rain started again. The people slept deeply, and the mountain god’s voice finally came.

“I’ve reached the other side of the boundary. It’s… very strange here. But it’s still the same world. I have to go farther.”

Apo pressed her cheek against the stone wall. “Did you find your companions?”

“No. They’ve already left. Left this world for another world.”

“Then what will you do?”

“I’ll go there too. We were all sleeping, and then we woke up one by one. I slept too long, so I forgot the way home. Now I think I understand.”

“Going to another world… Are you scared?”

“Scared to death. The road will take a very long time, and I’ll be lonely for a long, long time. I’m afraid that when I wake up again, I’ll still be all alone.”

“You can talk to me.”

“If… I can.”

“Of course you can.”

They talked for a long time.

They had nothing at all in common, yet their hearts were connected. The night grew deeper, and the rock grew hotter and hotter. The sleeping Quino danced with the mountain god in their dreams, but Apo knew a certain moment was about to come.

“Who are you? I should remember your name.”

“I’m Apo, fourteen, from the Quino, and someday I’m going to go see Manila. What about you?”

“I don’t have a name that can be told in words.”

“No, your name is Apo Namalyari, Lord Mountain God.”

“…I am the ancient Apo Namalyari from the heart of the earth, and now I’m going to go see the universe.”

“Where’s the heart of the earth, and what’s the universe?”

“The heart of the earth is the center of the world you and I live in. The universe is another heaven and earth, the place my companions went. My home is there.”

“Did you hear Grandfather Pinatubo sigh?”

“That’s to welcome my coming.”

“Will you bring disaster?”

“I don’t understand what disaster is. If it makes you sad, I’m sorry.”

“What’s sad?”

“Sad is… never being able to see each other again.”

“Then I’ll be sad.”

“Then I’m sorry.”

“The Aeta don’t say sorry, because we are one whole. There’s no you and me.”

“Then don’t die, Apo. Hide, and watch me.”

“Goodbye, Lord Mountain God.”

“Goodbye, Apo.”

The rock was already too hot to touch, and the mountain god’s voice was gone. Apo shook her father and mother awake and begged them to hide, but all the adults could do was stare at the red sky outside the cave and pray in terror.

Apo squeezed into the crack at the end of the cave and walked deeper in over the soft bat droppings. The hot darkness wrapped around her. She didn’t know how long she walked, or in what direction. Suddenly the whole world began to shake, and an unimaginably huge noise came from every side. Apo was wrapped up in bat droppings, tossed up and down as if riding a boat, and every breath felt like it was steeped in boiling oil. At that moment she had a dream. She dreamed that someone both young and ancient took her hand and led her dancing lightly on top of Grandfather Pinatubo’s head.

The cave collapsed. Scorching gas from deep in the cave blasted the bat droppings out, and the next instant, the rain-soaked mountainside turned into a mudslide and buried the cave completely. Hot rain washed the mud off her face. Apo opened her eyes and saw the orange-red night sky burning. Grandfather Pinatubo had changed shape. The mountain forest had vanished without a trace, bright red rivers were flowing slowly down from the summit, and everything around her was on fire.

“Apo Namalyari…” she called softly.

Fire gushed out. In the red blaze that covered the sky, a silver line shot out of the crater and pierced the heavens like a sharp arrow. A few seconds later, a piercing shriek poured down onto the earth. Apo clapped her hands over her ears. Even after craning her neck until it hurt, she could no longer see that flash of silver light that had vanished in an instant. She knew it was the trail Apo Namalyari had left. The mountain god had set out for the place where his companions were, and he would never come back to this world.

Billowing smoke rose high into the sky, and the scalding rain swept down with gray ash. Apo leaned on a tree to push herself up and fell into a violent fit of coughing. The sound of a helicopter droned in the distance. In that moment, Apo suddenly understood what sad felt like. She was sad for her brother who had disappeared into civilized society, for her papa and mama who had disappeared in the torrent, for her friend who had disappeared into the starry sky.

But at the same time she felt joy, because she understood that what had brought the disaster wasn’t the anger of the mountain god Apo Namalyari, but the nirvana of another kind of life.

The world was far bigger than she had imagined. Beyond the Quino, beyond Sapang Bato, beyond Manila, beyond this little island called Luzon, there were farther places to go. At the end of the mountains and across the sea, there were people and things that had never appeared even in her dreams. The boundaries her father had drawn didn’t exist. Maybe one day, she too could go among the stars to take a look, and search for Apo Namalyari and his companions.

She would never be lonely again.

Notes:

1. This is a story in the “Cocoon” universe. A “Cocoon” is an iron-based life-form that breeds in the earth’s core. It spends long ages in cocoon form in the core and mantle, wakes on instructions from the universe, rises to the crust along a mantle plume, and flies into space during a volcanic eruption, heading for the destination imprinted in its genes.

2. The story is based on the following real background: Mount Pinatubo is on Luzon in the Philippines. Its explosive eruption on June 15, 1991, was one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the world in the twentieth century. The Aeta are the indigenous people of Luzon and have lived around Mount Pinatubo for generations. Before the eruption, Sister Fondevilla noticed something was wrong and informed Dr. Punongbayan, who told the government to evacuate the residents, which kept the disaster to a minimum.