The box that was the carriage shook wildly when Sal awoke. She held on the carriage like an anchor as it rocked back and forth and sped through the road. Sal caught glimpses of orange blocks moving past her then the dizziness and headache took over. As her body disconnected from contact at the carriage seat another speed bump, she vomited all over the floor.  

When the carriage stopped, the floor felt like it was tilted on one side. At the stark silence, Sal peeked out of the window. A cold wall. She eventually crawled out of the carriage where high walls on both sides flanked her.  

The space where the walls end was bright and teeming with people. It must be the main road. Sal sat on the earth, safely tucked away in a distance, as people passed. Men clothed like the Mercantile with their top hats. Women with large, ballooning skirts. Children running around. People carrying buckets of wares as they hollered the same words over and over again. Closed carriages and open ones where the horse poop mingled with the horse’s tail in plain sight of the passenger.  

Sal crouched down on the earth, protected by her hair from the sight and the brightness of the sun. Hours passed by, and she contented herself at being an observer even as the sun beat down hard and the growling in her stomach told her that it was already past lunchtime.  

“Child. Are you hungry?”  

A tall man in a tailored suit and a top hat stood before her. The man was holding a bag of bread. The aroma of warm bread wafted through her nose.  

“Here, have this.” He handed her the whole bag.  

Sal balked at the idea of receiving food from someone not from the Casa or at worst from the Hospicio but her stomach growled in protest.  

The man opened the bag and placed it on Sal’s hand.  

Sal gave up, the bread tasted a bit salty but not too overpowering as she might gag but it was a bit scalding on the tongue so she spit it out.  

“ You don’t like bread, I see. Well I can get you something else. I was told to fetch you.” The man said. He towered over her and his shadow covered Sal entirely. He dusted off the dirt and mud from Sal’s skirt. “ Come with me.”  

It was now that Sal realized he was a Mercantile. One she has not seen yet, but perhaps a colleague of the colleague of the Signor. Sal slowly got up on her feet. His earlier statement sounding more like a command as she ascertained the straightforward tone in his voice. Sal followed as commanded. She lagged behind a respectful two steps behind him, careful as she is not to come too close but not come too far as to appear being disobedient.  

They stopped in front of a building as big as the Casa but looking more like a single block with one too many windows and a signboard. She was pulled inside before she got a chance to read the sign in full. The inside was teeming with one too many constables and a few other strangers.  

Sal looked for a corner to hide in, but she could not do so without being watched by the crowd. She stayed behind the older man as he conversed with the constables. Their voices grew loud.  

Suddenly, Sal found herself, two constables all over her with a woman by their side. The woman took away her panuelo and shook her skirt. Out tumbled a gold-chained watch.  

“I told you, she was a pickpocket! Greens are nothing but trouble.”  

In a minute, they were upon her towering over her like the giants they are to her and took her to a place with bars as its walls. She imagined herself a doll dragged by its cotton, limp arms, tied with red hemp. The place smelled like urine and dust stored in a covered jar for a long time.  

I’ll take you home, the man said. Sal touched the cold, dusty bars. It is not surprising. Her feet were nailed to the ground and her body willed not to move but the longer she looked at the vacant, lonely space, it looked more and more familiar despite the fright it brings.  

“We’d ship her out already? Was the Head Constable-”  

“It was the Fiore man that turned her in. Even the Head Constable does not like to deal with him anymore. “  

The other constable took her by the rope. “You lucky creature.” He tugged at the rope and motioned at her with his head to follow towards a carriage. More box-looking it is and had bars for windows. The box carried Sal on a road. It stopped by a noisy place. Sal peeked outside. From the distance, there was a jumble of lights and a cacophony of people. All jeering like how she imagined a party of goblins would look like.  

“Hey! Get out.” The constable told her.  

He dragged her towards a smaller carriage like the ones Sal is used to seeing. The carriage travelled another few more miles. Sal vomited inside the Casa from the dizziness.  

At last, the carriage stopped in front of a small iron-wrought gate enough to fit a single person that was flanked by concrete walls with overgrown bougainvilleas and other vines.  

“I will be back. Don’t try something stupid” the constable went down of the carriage.  

Sal did as she was told, yet but cannot help as her eyes wandered into the empty garden just beyond the gate. There, in the light of the lamp of the Casa, was the silhouette of a man in a chair. Its form too familiar.  

Sal tripped out of the carriage though her head was still groggy from the travel. Fortunately, she managed to stand and watch the figure from where she stood outside the gate. The gate was not locked so she slipped inside the place. The inside was a vast expanse of grass overlooking a thick grove of trees. It was almost like their Casa.  

The night breeze blew colder when the boy’s face became clear.  

It was Oleon. He sat still on the chair, shoulders slumped like the bored child forced to watch on the side. She stopped herself from calling out to him.  

“Ate?” 

It still sounded strange yet warming to hear. She approached a few steps. He looked different, with the way his loose clothes hung on him. Silence reigned for awhile.  

Sal mustered the words to start a conversation. “Why are you outside at this hour? Aren’t you afraid of the dark?” She waited for a response. He seemed surprised. Mayhap, it was not the right word to say.  

“I’m not a child anymore, ate. Besides” He cleared his throat.”The night breeze is good for my health said the-” he paused. “Who said so?”  

“I just did.” Oleon replied. He held a hand to his chest and talked ever so slowly. It was too slow to Sal’s liking.  

“Are you tired?” Sal asked. She squatted on the grass in front of the teen.  

He shook his head then paused.  

“I’m fine really.” he insisted.  

She angled to look at the boy’s face from below, but he averted his gaze.  

“Ate”  

“I have dirt on my face?”  

“No, I mean just.”  

Sal sat on the cool grass, letting its leaves wrap around her bare feet and the dew on her dusty soles.  

“I’m not a child anymore. I can manage.”  

“Not afraid of frogs anymore too?” Sal held a mound on her hand, perhaps she could see his face light up in surprise like how he did those years ago so she held one to his face.  

“There are no frogs in this grass, Ate.” the boy deadpanned. He sighed, “You should be going. The Signor might see you.”  

Sal curled up onto herself, the question again thrown back at her. “Do you hate me?”  

“I don’t want you to leave but -” he looked around the perimeter of the gate and asked with a whisper. “Please do not tell the Signor I am here.”  

“How could I?” Sal assured him.  

He paused, “He must be looking for you now.”  

She looked into his eyes, how they reflected the same uncertainty back at her. Suddenly, Sal was not sure that the Signor was not there. She looked around her.  

The ride took her back to the Casa. Sal thought at least that much but her hands and feet fell frozen at the thought. The sounds of the night alone warmed her ears. No tapping of a cane at earshot. Yet, the feeling of being watched and surveilled hounded her.  

“Ate?” the teen’s voice trembled. “Did you?” He coughed and wheezed and coughed again. He did not stop coughing as if air was being pulled out of his lungs. The boy fell from his chair.  

Sal stood, paralyzed by doubts. How has she not noticed this earlier? She knelt to help but the boy waved her away.  

A man rushed from the Casa and gave her brother the support she could not give. The man rubbed Oleon’s back and instructed him to breathe. It was a gentle voice, the voice that lured her in. “Quick! Help me get him to his room,” the man ordered.  

And like that, Sal found herself by Ren’s side again and she was melting like paste.  

He led them inside a Casa teeming with people not unlike those in the Hospicio. Sal stood outside of the door where Oleon was laid as Ren spoke comforting and assuring words to her brother and transacted with the caretakers in the place.  

“He will be fine.” Ren told her as he went out.  

Sal stayed on her spot.  

“An extreme case of a coughing fit. It happens from time to time. Probably from a sensitivity to certain elements.”  

“Has he always been sick?”  

Ren nodded.  

Sal wracked her mind, replayed the scenes over for any track or a sign of the sickness surfacing. The paleness, the boniness. Perhaps, she too thought him well and healthy like the Signor insisted he was.  

Ren took the panuelo off her shoulders and rested his hand in them.” It is quite warm inside.”  

Sal’s stomach turned as the man led her through the corridor to the main sala, held her and assisted her by the arm.  

Sal bristled at the sheer openness and exposure of the space. The sala was not as wide as she thought but there were no walls and every corridor can be seen. Worst still, nurses would pass by.  

Ren edged his hand from her shoulder to her hand. Sal shivered.  

“Cold?”  

No. She was not cold. How could he confuse his warmth? She buried her face in her hands.”The Signor might--  

“Hush!” He held a finger to her lips.  

Sal thought her limbs had turned to liquid. The pool of needles in her stomach turned and she saw black.  

“We do not talk of sad things here. Right now, you are in a happy place.”  

Sal has always marveled at the easiness in the smile in his face and how his features all seemed so delicate and gentle like she was staring at the face of a prized statue that was brought to life in flesh. She was awed at his knowledge of plants and birds. He was like a gentle sparrow, untethered to the earth. And for not only once, she considered jumping with him.  

Everything, everyone around her seemed to disappear in a blob like blur. The lights around the sala seemed too bright. Almost as if she’s being in a stage in front of many people watched by too many eyes. And the longer she stayed beside him, the more the feeling of being pulled by an invisible force stayed. She was too acutely aware of his presence.  

“ Oh! My apologies.” Ren interjected. He was talking to the few nurses who had passed by.  

“My! Our angel is now a man.” One of the nurses remarked.  

Sal watched Ren put a shy smile as he apologized for the intrusion and engaged the other nurses with talk before asking her to go outside.  

Sal need not be led by hand, for her body seems to obey him by instinct. They settled in the balcony on the far side of the Casa. Long swaths of small boxes, villages, and houses, stretched on the other side as far as the horizon could reach. Sal would have ran from one side of the balcony to the other, but Ren was by his side. Of course, she had to stay by his side.  

“You see that place? That is the Poblacion of Solpione . There on the right would be Agbaknang. Just outside this blue line over here is Gran Baum after Nan Baum, you cross over to the next district.”  

“Calare?” The words spilled over before she could stop herself.  

Ren paused before speaking. “Well, you will not see Calare from here.”  

Sal stretched her hand towards the horizon. Almost being pulled by a force she swore could almost tip her over the edge of the balcony and pull her under, making her fall. Maybe she’d swim over the darkness, and when she wakes, she will find herself in a neat bed with less scratchier sheets. She stared at the darkness below, until a male face screamed at her. Sal pulled back. It must really be true that darkness makes you see things.  

“When I was little, I was afraid of the dark, so the Signor kept me inside a dark room. To overcome the fear, he said.” Sal clutched her skirt. “ But the strange thing is, as the darkness got too familiar and I began to see a bit of the objects around me, I was still scared.” She spied a glance at the man. “For I knew the Signor was still outside that door.”  

Ren would understand. Ren would not laugh at her. He would never be upset at her. Right?  

“Calare is a long, long way from here. Calare is a long, long way from the Hospicio.” He took her by the hand.” You are a freed bird, my Sal.”  

His hands were warm, yet Sal flinched. How could she? No other man would stare at her like this man does. Yet, when he tried to touch her cheek, all she could notice was how big his hands were that they could almost devour her face. Sal thought it silly, her silly, ugly face.  

“I am ugly. I am cursed.” Sal hid her face in her hands.  

The other man simply tore her hands away from her face and held her by the shoulders as he implored her to look at him. His bright-hazel eyes shone even brighter at the slight light from the Casa spilling to the balcony. Bright eyes so beautiful and unique which were unlike hers, like a rare kind of disease. Green like a mold in a polished wooden floor of mahogany.  

“It does not matter.”  

“But the Signor-”  

“ You matter to me, and that’s all that is important.” The man embraced her tight as he knelt a bit by the level that he could reach her ears. He whispered in a low conspiratorial voice, “Consider the Signor gone for he will not bother you again. Right at this moment, he is not in Calare but rather a jail in Gran Gapoz and if all goes well, he’ll stay there for good.”  

That very same night, Ren took her to the old house. 

 

 

SAL covered herself in the shroud of comforting darkness inside the carriage. She was seated beside Ren, both of them under the shadows. Nary a word was spoken inside the carriage for it was noisy enough in Sal’s mind.  

The day she was brought to the Casa for the first time and was locked at the inner room, all Sal could think was sorrow. The encroaching darkness and how it seemed to crouch its claws on her. You see, seeing less allows the mind to wander, and to fall in rabbit holes it created for itself. A moment was a thousand years for those thousand thoughts.  

“We’re here.” Ren announced.  

The house looked more like something out of the wild, strange dream. It was empty. Blue walls stared back at her for streetlights seemed to have avoided the place with not a light in sight. The gardens where Mercantiles walked was untouched by the breeze.  

“This was our house.” Sal remarked. “Has it always been this cold?”  

“This was your cage.”  

Sal stepped inside the garden. The house loomed big over her. It seemed to eat the moon as the attic reached towards the skies. A wisp of moonlight entered the place, coloring everything in gray.  

It was like that empty castle in her dreams, enchanting with its emptiness, yet it is what it is. Empty. Cold.  

Sal ran her hands across the walls, letting the dust pile up in her small fingers. She tipped a forehead on it. It really is cold. A sunken shell and it looked ugly in its loneliness, like a rusted old box you held onto you at all times.  

“Has this place always been like this?” Sal asked.  

“The Signor Pablo Geasston Cuorre. Built his fortune with the money he did not work for. Expanded his business by buying the lands and owning the docks in the North. ” He glanced at her direction. “Yet all the money he had could not give warmth and brightness to this place. Do not be sorry for such a man. After all, his greed killed an innocent person.”  

Sal stayed on her spot and closed her eyes, remembering the red marks in her fist. In her sleep, she would always run out of the house with her brother in hand. She used to scold herself for always seeing the Signor as that monster in her dreams. Now, the Signor’s face was a blank slate replaced by the face of a cartoon gremlin.  

Sal’ feet pulled her towards her room in the attic. It was gone too. The room she was in for nearly a decade was blank like a shaved flowerfield. Sal brushed her feet against the floorboards and soaked in the sudden blankness of the space. The bookshelf she regretted not fixing earlier and the books she neglected to read and the mattress she lets loose on the floor, she could still point out where they used to sit. Now,there is only four walls.  

She laid flat on the floor with her arms spread on her side. “This is the spot where I used to sleep. The table used to be by that side and-” Sal paused. It was ridiculous. She glanced up at Ren. “I cannot sleep here tonight, can I?”  

Ren crouched by her side. “You must be cold.” He rubbed her hand against his and took off his coat and wrapped them around her shoulders. The light brush of his fingers against her skin lingered.  

Sal labored to look directly at the man’s eyes. But only shadows were there. As he man wrapped his arms around her back,she closed her eyes letting only the outline of his hands remain in her mind. Yet, when she closes her eyes like this, a breathy, mournful voice comes back to whisper to her. He was a Pied Piper.  

He breath ran from under her. Arms and legs went numb as a familiar ache dawdled in her stomach and his embrace went tighter. His hands travelled from her back to her shoulder, to her neck.  

Sal let the feeling wash over her, suffocate, until it makes its name known. She grabbed onto his shirt and leaned onto him even as each touch makes her tremble. The numbness seemed to crawl from her limbs to her face. It was falling into a hole. At first you lose the feeling of the ground on your feet, your arms only feel air. You wait for your bd to feel contact while the ground pulls you into itself. She savored the fall.  

“Sal” Ren gasped. His hands cupped the girl’s face.  

Finally, she can see his eyes. They seem to her like gleaming cat’s eyes. Fascination and fear both.  

“Did I look beautiful when you kissed me?”  

The man tucked a stray hair away from her face before rubbing his forehead onto hers. His words dissolved into small, quick, breaths. “You have always looked beautiful my little bird.If only you trusted me.”  

Sal is set to ruin everything, she never not did. “I’m sorry.”  

Sal reached her hand towards the man like a moth drawn to a flame that will kill him. It did not matter, for at least there was a bit of warmth. His.  

Ren Caressed Sal’s hand across his cheek and planted a kiss on the back of her hand. It lingered as it felt more like a scorching burn than the warmth of the sun.  

“Don’t let go again, please.”  

She stared into her hand. Everything else melted from her sight as she fixated on it.  

“I know you have questions, but for your safety I can only tell you as much.” Ren closed the gap between them. “Please, just trust me.”  

She cannot betray her savior anymore. She searched into his eyes and through the darkness, she can just believe that she can see his face smiling at her, forgiving her.  

“My Ren.”  

The darkness ate away at her sight as Ren kissed her. Sal hung like a limp plant as he devoured her lips like he could suck away all her insides too. Her body pulsed and felt numb. A cloud suffocating her. As Ren kissed her, she fought the urge to scream.