Chapter Three
EULALIA WAS A free spirit. She was a strong-willed 18 year old girl, who insisted in going out with her father, the lovable Marko, three times a week to hunt in nearby forests for wild boar and other kinds of meat. They usually came home with an assortment of birds which were more than wild boar, but it was enough to carry them over. The town that lived mostly on free range chicken and a few pigs welcomed any manner of meat that the family caught and traded joyfully with whatever they can afford.
Marko was an understanding man who possessed exceptionally good hunting skills. He remained approachable and loved spending time with the children who frequented their little stall in the middle of town where they sold their catch. Julio believed he could get along well with Marko. His daughter, however, was another story.
Julio frowned unconsciously when he thought about Eulalia. She was more skilled than he was. He once saw her help her father repair their small house. Being an only daughter, she was now frequently seen drinking with her father and his friends, and although that was just one of the things that were not proper in a woman, Julio also admired how she handled those friends when they became drunk.
He recalled an incident that happened just a few nights ago, one he heard from his mother. Eulalia punched one of her father's drinking buddies and knocked him out cold.
He shook his head.
He could never get married to a woman like that, she would just dominate him. Aside from climbing trees and getting lost in the woods, he never had any real skills to be proud of. The occasional help he lent to whoever needed it during harvest season was nothing to boast about; even little girls could manage that.
He admitted to himself that he had probably wasted his life daydreaming and running after mythical stories hoping they were true.
If he were to marry, it should be with someone who could not outmatch him in anything.
Marcela naturally came to mind.
As he rounded the final bend that would take him to where the well was located, he examined his chances with Marcela.
She was the only woman in town, 22 years old already, who probably had not had a job for the rest of her life. The only daughter of Narcisso and Yesenia, the town's only poultry and livestock supplier, Marcela had it good.
Though their business was not that big, it was enough for the town. Her father Narcisso was one of the few in town who could boast of his trips to nearby towns. He went out of town once a month to buy goods and came back to sell them at twice the price. He also took on requests to sell the other townsfolk's goods for a commission. Although he could only afford to slaughter one adult pig every month, the entire town looked forward to it. Other households only had one or two of them and were usually saving them up for occasions like birthdays and fiestas.
Marcela was fair. In a town of brown people, mostly of the darker sort, Marcela, who never had to do any work her entire life, stood out. Her skin was fairer than everyone else's. Before she was born, her mother was the fairest in the entire town but now, even her mother paled in comparison.
Unfortunately, she was also spoiled.
Though her beauty was known all throughout even to the neighboring barrios, her tantrums were also legendary.
Never mind the two overprotective brothers, Julio thought, beware of the witch!
He chuckled to himself with that thought and made light of fact that he was no wiser now about how to get himself a wife than when he first started thinking about it.
He was almost at the well now, five minutes more. He busied himself with the view.
He was at the side of Bright Mountain, halfway up, and this part offered him a view of the trees that made up much of the forest that stretched as far as his eyes could see.
In his own estimation, he had been to about half of the forest already before he gave up his illusions and decided to grow up.
Julio remembered being in the forest by himself for the first time.
He was 16. Everything he saw was new. The trees were the most awe-inspiring things he saw, towering above the forest floor with limbs wider than both of his arms outstretched. The sweet smell of highly fertile soil had assaulted his nostrils, it was truly a great experience.
Perhaps it was because he was still looking for traces of the Magaram, hoping he could see them, maybe even live with them as the stories suggested.
But now, even with unenthusiastic eyes, he was still in awe of the power that the forest held. It hosted a plethora of life, supported by its own rules, and isolated itself from the harsh weather patterns.
It seemed to him that the forest itself was one, big, self sufficient individual. One that not even the changing seasons could disrupt.
As he saw the well, he remembered the reason why he was doing this daily trek -- it was summer and the season he hated the most. Because of the heat, people stayed indoors, and those that found comfort under the shade of the trees either did not want to share or did not want to be bothered.
The folks who tended to the rice fields also did not like to engage in banter of any kind. Julio found that the heat caused people to be irritable. If only it was as simple as just cooling off in a bath.
But the stream, located only 50 paces from the edge of the town and was their main source of water, dried up during summer seasons. Absence of rain also made it hard for the townsfolk to stock up on water, so everyone flocked to the well during the mornings and late afternoons when the sun was tolerable.
Julio did not like going there in the mornings or late afternoons -- the time spent lining up and waiting for one's turn was time wasted for him. He preferred going there close to noon -- no lining up, no unnecessary talking, and no reprimanding if he took a quick nap since no one was behind him.
His destination was one of the two wells drilled by the Americans. From the stories he had heard from the town elders, the well he was heading for was the first one built, just before the First World War broke out. Julio was born two years before the said war had ended, he was 21 now, and the well still worked.
The other well was located inside the small army base that now housed around 10 American soldiers. He heard that before, during the war, there were more than five times more men stationed near the well he was headed to. Even though the town's location was remote, the location of the well had directly faced another strategic point for the American forces -- their main base, and access to the open sea from where their forces initially arrived.
It was two days worth of marching to get there, or so he had been told, the straight line of sight provided a clear, uninterrupted view of whatever signals they would be sending either through flares at night or through radio.
After the war ended the Americans set up a base closer to the town and left just a few garrisoned soldiers there, rotating every two or three months.
Julio never much cared for soldiers; even their fancy radio which he had been told could communicate with anyone many miles away did not impress him.
The same could not be said about his father, Francisco. He and his older brother Fidel were both orphans under the care of a priest in the island of Surigao. They both took a chance in stowing away on an American ship when Fidel was just eight, and Francisco was six.
They were discovered halfway on the trip, and when the ship docked in Hawaii, they were given to the care of a local jail warden while waiting for the next ship to take them back home.
Having been mercilessly tutored by priests at a young age in subjects that made them proficient in both English and Spanish, the two brothers soon found themselves in the favor of the warden.
The warden could not deny the uniqueness and the intelligence of the two and he soon adopted them.