Once upon a time, in the dark of the night, there was a hunter who had not found any boar or monkeys. There were also three Sky-women bathing in the river.
Once upon a time, in the dark of the night, there was a hunter who had not found any boar or monkeys. There were also three Sky-women bathing in the river. Then two of the Sky-women flew away and the youngest was left behind. She lost her wings and was crying by the river when my father, the hunter, found her. He told her that since it was already late, she should come with him to his village of Talubin. The night is dangerous in the mountains. For months afterward, she looked every day for her golden wings and my father spent weeks searching but they never found them. At least, that was the story I was always told. My father was good at telling stories.
My mother did not know how to weave when she first came. It was strange to bring in someone from outside of the village, stranger still to marry her. She used to cry about her home and her people in the night or staring up at the stars. That is, until they taught her that is shameful to cry. When she was getting her arm tattoos, as the man pricked the design in her skin with a thorn and rubbed the ash in, she gritted her teeth, though the tears came out. She wanted to look beautiful for my father who had let her into his family. That’s when she started laughing. It was a way to let the emotion out without crying. Her laugh was bitter but as she fell in love with my father and had me, her daughter, it got happier and she stopped looking at the stars so much.
It didn’t matter that the people still stared, both afraid and covetous. Surely, one from the Stars must have strange powers, like the spirits. If they were pleased with you, your rice would grow tall and golden and you would carry away the jawbones of your enemies. But if they grew angry, they could kill your child. So, people kept to polite greetings and nods on the terrace path. It is better to be safe than sorry.
I don’t know what powers Sky-women have, but without her wings, my mother was nothing, just a foreigner with a little gold in her skin and a singing voice that could make your heartache.
But as long as she had me and my father, she seemed alright. She named me Karayan after the river since I was the good thing that came from it.
It was the day I turned ten and I was to learn to weave. That was the day my mother and l learned the truth. I was to start by weaving a belt for my tapis skirt. As my mother taught me how to lean into the backstrap and arrange the threads, she noticed some weeds in the sugarcane in front of our house. That was the day I was left behind.
The sugarcane has grown extremely high this year. I think it gained my mother’s longing for the sky. My father was always tending to it. He said that when I had grown as high as it, he would chop it down and we would make sugar. I would get a stalk to peel and suck out the sweetness while I spit out the fibers. My mother would get something sweet to put in the sticky rice. I wonder if he thought by then, she would love him too much to leave. Or maybe he was lying the whole time. Sugarcane grows higher than little girls ever will.
We should have noticed. It was strange for my father to tend the sugarcane clump when women were supposed to do the farming. The men were only supposed to plow the rice and the camote fields, slogging through the mud behind the carabao (Asian water buffalo). Or when my father never shared his sugarcane with the rest of the village.
Under the sugar cane, my mother found her wings, the golden wings that my father, the hunter, had stolen and hid from her from the beginning. I cannot describe the look on her face. She started crying and then remembered that it was shameful, and started laughing, that too-loud, choking laugh. Her eyes still leaked out feelings but she was smiling. She held her wings like they were her firstborn son that the spirits had restored to her. Then she put them on and flew away.
She promised she would come back. She promised she would come back and take me away with her.
I thought she meant tomorrow. I waited all night. And the next. Three times the moon came and went before I stopped waking at the click of every house lizard and the rustling of the chickens under the house.
It’s been two years now.
My weaving is still not very good. I had to get others to teach me. I still knot up the strings.
I wonder if time is different in the Sky. Perhaps, when she comes back, I will be buried under my husband’s house and my granddaughters will be tending the rice fields we worked together. It’s better than thinking she forgot.
According to tradition, I must move to the women’s house soon with other village girls to learn how to be a woman. Did my mother ever have to do that? She never talked about her place in the sky. My father does not want me to leave yet. He has grown worried whenever I go out to the fields. I think he is afraid someone will steal me away, the way he stole my mother from her sisters. He keeps offering sacrifices to get her back. I wonder if she still loves him. I wonder if she ever looks down from the sky to see us.
I look at the stars and I laugh. I laugh like my mother, too loud and painful, bitter and choking. I wonder if she is coming back to get me. I wonder if she has forgotten me. I wonder why she did not take me with her that sunny day. Was I not good enough to join the Sky-women? Was she ashamed of me? Am I the daughter of my father, the liar who loved, or my mother, the woman who was never supposed to be here at all? Tell me, Mother, where do I belong? Do I belong anywhere at all? I laugh again but the sky is dark and empty. My laugh only echoes in my choking heart. It is too small to reach the stars. The night is too dark and lonely for a half-Star stuck on Earth.
This story was written by Adriana Maxwell. Adriana Maxwell is an artist, a writer, and a traveler. She is thrilled that this story was chosen as the setting (Mountain Province, Philippines) was her home for four years and the feeling of being between two cultures has always been very personal. You can follow her on Instagram @Adriana.K.Maxwell or on Facebook.
This story was inspired by the writing prompt: “Write a story based on the theme of the feelings of ‘belonging’ or ‘home.’” For Reedsy’s curated feed of writing prompts and the chance to enter our prompts-inspired Short Story Contest, HEAD HERE.
