The Calling

Part I

I wasn't sure when I started staring past the glass window in my room at midnight, but it had become an addiction of mine these past few years.

My mother said marriage is a difficult promise to keep. I can still hear her raspy voice. Memories of her came like the waves tonight. Her breasts were rampaging up and down like a raging billow, desperate to meet the shore as she was desperate to chase her breath. She was sobbing her farewells as she held my cheek with her careful hands. I remember her pain; it felt almost the same as mine, and I remember the clear tears in her glittery blue eyes. It was lovely, like the glistening waters in front of me.

So is the brown-haired girl sitting nearby with a ring of burning firewood in front of her. I was staring at her while she was staring at the void. A hobby I had no idea when began.

I stood up and leaned against the transparent pane.

Taliah Averllarde is the prettiest girl in Bario Hakim, a small seaside town. It was in my early teenage years when I heard about their insane family history. People in town can't help but talk about it. They said it was a shame that her beauty would be wasted due to some genetic mental illness. They claimed that women of the Averllarde bloodline were cursed to take their own lives by drowning and that those who were left spent the rest of their time staring at the sea like madmen—longing and desperately waiting for those who would never come back. I guessed that was why Taliah was always alone. No one wants to be with her as if she has a contagious disease. Except, of course, a curious new townfolk who just came from the city and doesn't believe in lame rumours. In short, me.

We study at the same school, the University of Azerlathe. My classmates were my neighbours, and the teachers were my grandmother's friends. I was always in my circle. Taliah, on the other hand, had no one. She was never late, sat in the back corner of the room, and always left after everyone else had. My friends are terrified of her, but no one has a clear explanation for why. All they know is that their parents warned them to stay away. Taliah did what she had always been doing to scare them off: nothing.

Well, my father abandoned my mother and me to be with another woman, and my mother drove to a twenty-four-hour-away island only to abandon me here with her parents. I don't have an autocrat to tell me whom I should avoid, and my old guardians don't seem to be like the others in town. Nothing is stopping me from befriending that brown-haired girl with a dramatic narrative. I had no idea what I was getting myself into at first, but I dug deeper into Taliah's catastrophic wonder and researched their terrifying curse, and then I found my answer.

Grandma told me that the curse was never real. Accidents do happen all the time, some people are just unlucky. It was just unfortunate that it happened to Taliah's family more than the rest of the town.

I'd be lying if I said I immediately believed her. I hoped for my grandmother's words to be true, but I have seen things on this island, Azerlathe, that we'd refer to as magic in the city. I'd rather believe her opinion on the matter than accept that the girl I secretly like is doomed to commit a crime against herself due to an ancestral rite that is marked and passed down through their blood to keep nature in balance.

According to what I discovered, they were known as the Babaylans, or "people of spirits", and they were the ancestors of the Averllardes as well as my own, the Lakandulas. My grandfather is a Lakandula.

The fortunate fact, I suppose, is that Taliah and I are not genetically related. The despair is that the curse may be true even if it isn't because of the bloodline. It might be due to a solemn promise made by our ancestors, the Babaylans, the island's founders, to the goddess of the sea, Austhriamin, with the purpose of either maintaining sacred lines between the world and the spirits or saving the future, and for some reason, the curse only directly affects female descendants, and it occurs once every generation.

I don't know much aside from the sleep deprivation I endured reading ancient blue-covered diaries in the archives of a very old library in an abandoned building on the west side of our university's forest. It cost me a lot of my youthful energy and I almost lost my captaincy in our basketball league.

Time after time, I noticed more of her. Taliah. Not because she was different, but because my curiosity was getting the best of me. She always has a straight, serious face. It makes me wonder what it's like to see her happy or see any other emotion aside from the nothingness she offers. She always puts her hair in a bun, and it makes me wonder how long it is. Her eyes were faded black; they resembled my mother's clear blue but in a darker shade. Maybe it's why I find her so attractive. Maybe, I just miss my mom.

Taliah has long eyelashes and fair skin. She can answer all the recitation questions and has never missed an assignment deadline. She knows too much about History and loves English but frowns on Math. She's left-handed and can draw very well. I hope she loves the sun because I believe the sun adores her.

It was when she was chasing after the ball during Physical Education that I decided that I wanted to befriend her. It was as if the sun was highlighting all the marvellous things in the world, seeing how the rays shone on her bare face. The magnificence of life was all in the sparkles in her eyes. Here comes God's favourite and I can't help but think that the actual retarded are the men here around me that listen to their parents' superstitions and have the guts to stay away. They all should grow up, and so should I.