North Luzon Monitor

North Luzon

The Sand-Gatherer’s Kingdom

George Babsa-ay Jr.
Latest posts by George Babsa-ay Jr. (see all)

In a mountain Kingdom nearest the moon, inside the King’s chambers, once upon a time.

“Son…” the King rasped. “I go to my grave, buried with the burden of Kings before me…”

“Father…”

A gnarled hand, ashen and trembling, raised a hem from silken bed covers. “…while our Kingdom boasts of conquests…” the King rasped on “…riches, the finest minds in all the known Kingdoms, one question puzzles us still…”

“…not knowing where we came from,” the King moaned.

Of quick mind, the Prince grasped the King’s words. “Not ever SEEING where we came from, Father,” he gently corrected, and echoed golden-nugget-turned-marketplace chatter, “Our roots, it’s found … at the end of the Sun’s rays.”

The King nodded and shut his eyes, never to re-open again.

After a month-long of mourning, the young King summoned the Kingdom’s finest minds for one task: To make him SEE where they come from.

In the Great Hall of the Castle, an assembly of Sky-Observers, Builders, Namers-of-Herbs-and-Beasts, Measurers-of-Time-and-Distance and Scribes of all ages soon fidgeted before the young King.

“So – how?” he snarled from the throne, pigeons on the attic’s trusses darting toward the unspoken spaces.

“It’s impossible, our King,” said a Sky-Observer finally. “We’ve gone so far it is impossible to go back.” And added. “Or, to catch a glimpse of it.”

“We have the earth at our disposal,” snapped the young King. “Answers or heads.”

That night, an ancient Sky-Observer put his magic glass down on a flint, seeing the heartbeat of the stars. Then, turning to the moonlit pond before him, he stared at the stars, throbbing, on the still water.

“Mirrors, our King,” the ancient Sky-Observer the next day advised the young King.  “Mirrors all the way up to the highest mountain.”

Soon, the Kingdom was months of moving men and women and mirrors. Dominion – the sea sands, for glass; the granite hills, for silver – one mirror placed, from the Castle to the next mountain, to the next, to the next, until the highest, hoping to reflect the end of the Sun’s rays down to the Great Hall.

A year after, the end of the Sun’s rays was not in sight.

“We need to place one on the moon,” said the ancient Sky-Observer, as he and the young King peered into a mirror and saw only half of the Sun’s rays. “Placed by one who, I’m afraid, will never come back.”

Overhearing their banter, “I’ll go, our King,” offered a sand-gatherer, who tracked with keen interest the plan from the first days unfold.

“No. I’ll go,” insisted the ancient Sky-Observer, seeing youth in the sand-gatherer’s slump and wrinkled brows.

“You won’t stand the travel and toil mounting the mirror,” said the young King. “He goes.”

Alone with the ancient Sky-Observer, the sand-gatherer said. “I see how much this means to you, esteemed old one. So, I promise…before everyone else here, you first.”

“How?”

“I see you own a magic glass,” the sand-gatherer said. “The moment I see It, I’ll etch It on the left side of the moon.”

In one sunny afternoon, on the largest sky lantern ever built, the sand-gatherer lifted off from the mountains, big mirror in tow, toward the moon.

From among the clouds, the sand-gatherer gazed at the oceans, the land and the skies: at all that had flippers, fins, legs, fur, feathers, hiding places, fears, flight, forts. The water in the wind. The green, the yellow, the red. The wind in the dust. It’s beautiful, he sighed.

Then, he gazed at the quirks on the mountain Kingdom. And he saw, like him, all were in search for food, a place of their own.

Soon wide-eyed at the genius of the sky lantern’s makers, he watched the aircraft skitter off the surface of the moon. He got off and quickly set the mirror up on what he thought was marble dust. There was little time left.

As he did, the sand-gatherer saw, on the edge of the mirror: the end of the Sun’s rays. And that which swirled beyond it.

With a bamboo pole he ripped off the sky lantern’s frame – on the agreed spot of this marble dust moon, he grazed the last words:

“In the beginning, ours was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep…”

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