EXILIUM REX

Chapter 7

Angelo and Gemma: A Love Backstory (Part 2)

*

“How long already, Ma’am? More than 3 hours?”

The woman tamely nodded. Gemma surmised – it’s very unlikely that the two would decide to keep their ancestral exploration of the Subanon forest this long. Perhaps, he had gotten his left ankle sprained again. A recurring basketball injury. Poor darling – deeply she sighed – he must already be…

Would the 24-hour rule on missing persons still apply in a place like this?

At the moment, the world seemed to be getting bigger again for Gemma. And again.

 “Ma’am, we’re rangers, not strangers,” the tall one with the slender nose tried to put the young lady at ease. This ranger casually switched his footing to avoid the harsh afternoon radiation and deftly moved to the temporal shade of a fully leafed acacia nearby, under which they – these two rangers – had found Gemma visibly, mortally alone. Her eyes clearly expressed her gratitude for the timeliness of presence of these forest patrols, albeit she appeared aloof to them. Holding a small buho stick she had used to stoke and later on extinguish the barbecue flame hours ago, she drooped her head and made as if she was about to nervously etch something on the ground with her stick.

Setting aside her own aloofness, however, Angelo’s wife instead grappled to welcome such warranted presence and propped her ideally-sculpted chin up. She noticed the shiny badge on the chest of the taller ranger. She promptly inserted the buho stick inside the back pocket of her faded skinny jeans which was covered up front by an unassuming cooking apron.

With a wry smile, the tall one continued with his questions, “Which part of the forest did he say he’ll be hiking?” It now appeared that this wayside encounter was taking a bit of toll on Senior Forester Pete Zacariah’s otherwise dull performance of his rounds today, together with his odd partner. What with the sweet smell of newly-barbecued meat nearby neatly covered (yet the delicious aroma escaping the familiar scent of freshly cut banana leaves) and lovingly laid out on a moderately-sized and slightly elevated spread of soiled buho mats used for camp meals. The steaks. Whew. Prepared and now waited on in isolation by a lone female. And in a camp site surrounded by creatures and insects hungrier than these two rangers. Senior Forester Pete Zacariah could almost taste it from where he was standing. He estimated that the steaks must still be warm. Since the camp fire had been subdued not more than minutes before they came along this trail. In fact, the white sizzles of smoke splendidly spiraling up from the wet ashes in the middle of Gemma’s camp had been the sign which caught their eye earlier in their rounds. All the while, the young woman might have completely regarded the presence of the rangers right now as purely heaven-sent.

The veteran ranger discreetly frowned as he quickly swallowed something in his mouth and sought to focus again on the matter at-hand. He repeated the question.

“Which part of the forest, Ma’am?”

“Uh, I think it’s Ma-bet, Ma-betna…”

At this point, the other ranger who was carrying a double-barreled rifle, a few inconspicuous steps behind the tall and broad-shouldered Pete, entered the conversation’s center stage and, somehow, introduced himself to the young Gemma by taking off his Rayban, intermittently squinting hard at both the lady and at his senior officer.

This sniper had clearly heard what the naïve 28-year old woman was trying to say.

Lai Mabinta-Nong.

Kingdom of the Goddess of the Forest, of the Virgen dela Monte, of the Diwata, deep within the preservation area.

Forbidding, but not truly f*******n.

Pete’s partner took to the senior officer’s side and again squinted at Gemma. This time, he shook his barb-haired head and re-placed his Rayban.

Junior ranger Rorry Tan couldn’t quite understand these people – how these young college students from Manila thought that packing their lunches and doing their thing in the middle of nowhere was supposed to be the better idea of fun. And where’s more fun this time?

Rorry chuckled to himself – maybe between the sheets of a kept woman and the folds of a kept wallet. A very, very fat wallet.

“Should’ve left those parts of the mountain alone, miss. You can never tell what you’re gonna bring down along with you.” Rorry seemed to be the kind of person not that bent to mince any words useless to him and looked prepared to pull the trigger of his tongue at a moment’s notice.

Pete lightly elbowed Rorry on the shoulder, careful not to be that obvious in front of the lady. But the two rangers had already missed their cues.

“What do you mean?” Gemma asked Rorry with the fullest of dead stares.

Rorry could not resist answering, “Strange things happen there, y’know.”

The fine strands of kitten’s hair on the silken-white scruff of Gemma’s neck began to stand more erect and finer than before.

“What do you mean?” She asked Pete this time.

But Rorry was still the one who came up with the same response but, this time, more emphatically. “Strange things!” The junior ranger took a sideward glance at his tall officer who was presently busy, or looking busy, scribbling down with a ballpen some unimportant details on his pocket notebook. Rorry had gotten the feel that Pete was never going to come down with him on this part of the trail. Of whatever story the mountains of Subanon islands  would like to keep to themselves. Or to its legendary guardian. Lai Mabinta-Nong. The Eternal Guardian of the Old Jar buried deep in its forest.

Good woman Gemma struggled to keep her composure and sought to cover a portion of her deep worries and concern now by placing her barren hands over her cheeks. She was in the middle of deciding whether to take out the buho stick from her back pocket or whether to roll both her hands into balls of hard fists, then start pounding the earth until the blood on her hands welled up and dry.

Finally, officer Pete asked her, “Well, I’m sure your husband wouldn’t be up there without a guide, Ma’am? Who is it? An uncle? A nephew? Who’s his guide, Ma’am?”

“Mang Kanor Manlavi.”

“Si Kano?!” 

The two rangers looked at each other with a shared sense of unspoken truth which had inevitably eluded them time and time again. And, in all likelihood, would be slipping through their fingers again.