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Alona’s Quest for the Golden Tree
Chapter 20: Journey
BY MID-AFTERNOON, our temperament wasn’t quite as buoyant.
We waited for Brandon, Makisig and Clara for more than two hours. The dark had given way to the lights, and still the three were nowhere to be found.
“They bailed on us!” exclaimed Ate Rachel, very angry.
I grimaced in disappointment.
“It does look like that,” I agreed.
Ate Rachel swore richly, and quite eloquently.
“Should we postpone our trip?” I asked, doubt in my face.
“Why?” Ate Rachel retorted, sour-faced. “We don’t need them. We’ll go, just the two of us!”
Actually, we needed them. They had our tent. And food. But, I thought it wise not to argue against Ate Rachel right now. She looked on edge enough.
So we hiked the mountains, just the two of us. Dead twigs and leaves snapped under our small, though admittedly decisive, steps. Every now and then, we consulted the map.
The terrain had changed so much since Lolo had drawn it.   Â
“Isn’t this supposed to be a river?” muttered Ate Rachel, pointing at the map.
I looked on. There was a positive picture of a river there, complete with waves. I looked at our surroundings. Thick tropical trees formed a dark canopy that shielded the sun from our eyes. One or two tree-climbing monkeys were swinging from tree to tree. Sarcastically “oooh oooh aah aah”-ing at our obvious confusion.
I scratched my head.Â
“Aren’t we here?” I said helpfully, pointing at the thick forest picture lying at the northern part of the map.
Ate Rachel looked at it.
“Nonsense,” she stubbornly insisted, eyes looking shifty, “we’re here. Right here.”
She pointed at the eastern part of the map, where the river, or whatever body of water it was supposed to be, was clearly illustrated.
I looked again. If Ate Rachelle’s logic was correct, then we should have gone through the caves before we arrived at the river. But, we were hiking thick rainforests, as conveniently depicted at the northern part of the map.
Ate Rachel walked on.
I shrugged and followed. Maybe, since the terrain had changed so much, Ate Rachel was right.
We had walked for hours on end, and yet we still can’t find any amazing and supernaturally otherworldly tree.
“Aray!”
Ate Rachel stopped.
“What happened?”
I fell on the ground as I tripped over a big rock. Lying flat on my stomach, I tasted awful dead leaves.
The monkey, following at our wake, laughed annoyingly when it saw me tripped. It stopped its swinging, and like a trained acrobat, hang upside down on its branches. Clutching a banana, it gave out an enormously amused “oooh ooh aah aah” and danced at its branches.
I righted myself.
The wound at my knee was big, and gushing blood. I bit my lips, eyes tearing up.
Ate Rachel bent forward to better inspect the wound.
“Have you any cloth?”
I nodded. Taking from my knapsack my green and star-spangled girl scout kerchief, I handed it to her. I used to wove it around my neck, put in place by a carabao pin. Ate Rachel accepted it. I winced as she brusquely wiped dust and twigs off my wounds.
She used the cloth to clean the wound, tying it around the wound to stop the bleeding. Ignoring hygienic considerations, I realized that the gauze was quite snug.
The monkey kept “ooh ooh aah aah”-ing in the background.
“Shut up!” yelled Ate Rachel, annoyed beyond endurance. “Shoo!”
She picked up a stray branch and chucked it at the stalking monkey.
The animal ducked. In retaliation, it chucked banana peelings back at her.
The monkey was more skilled. The banana peeling hit Ate Rachel’s head perfectly. The monkey yipped happily, dancing at its branches.
Ate Rachel whirled around, swearing.
I looked at the banana longingly.
“I’m starving,” I said.
Believing that Clara would follow through with her words, we did not pack any food. We had no food. We had not eaten for hours on end.
“What?” Distracted, Ate Rachel had not heard what I said.
“I’m starving,” I declared.Â
I said it like it was her fault I’m hurting and starving right now.
She bristled at the tone of my voice.
“Well, I’m not!” she retorted. “I’m not a pesky little princess who cried because I have nothing to eat. I’m not hungry!”
Her stomach made a loud rumbling noise as she said it. She pretended she did not hear that.
Liar, I thought.
“We’re lost, aren’t we?” I said. I did not bother to take the anger out of my voice.
She did not answer. She pressed her lips angrily, though.
“We are,” I declared. “How are we going to get back now? It was because you are such a stubborn know-it-all! I told you you’re leading us wrong!”
“Oh yeah,” retorted Ate Rachel. “The truth is, this map is goddamn useless!”
Angry, she threw the map hard at the ground. The helpless parchment tore as it landed pathetically at the leaf-strewn ground.
“How dare you!” I hurled. “That was my grandfather’s map!”
Ate Rachel snorted in derision.
It annoyed the hell out of me. At that moment, I hated the guts of her.
Something snapped between us. I didn’t think we will ever be able to call each other friends again.
“The truth is –” I said in a lofty voice, wishing with every syllable I speak to wound, “it was your foolishness that brought us here! Golden Tree, ha? Pathetic. It doesn’t even exist! What do you expect to get, a miraculous ticket to get out of your hellish life?”
Ate Rachel growled.Â
“It doesn’t exist!” I hurled. “You want comfort? You want riches? Ask your father to work!”
“You’re one to talk?” shouted Ate Rachel. “Where is your father ha? Gone! He abandoned all of you!”
That did it.
“Get lost!” I shouted.Â
Ate Rachel snorted, stomping out.
She was about to pick up the map when I said in a cold, biting voice. “Leave the map. That’s mine, not yours.”
She stiffened.
Throwing me a dirty look, she walked out. She left me behind, sitting at the rock that had tripped me, my knee swelling in pain. Alone.
I couldn’t stop the hot tears from flowing freely.
This was a pathetic quest from the start, a foolish search for a childish fairy-tale. We were two children who knew absolutely nothing at all. What were we thinking?
I sat there, rocking backward and forward, for hours that seemed like eternity.
For a while, the monkey stayed with me, filling the silence, eating its bananas greedily. Realizing the exciting part was over, it soon grew bored. It swung upward, preparing to go.
My eyes followed its movements.
(c) 2016, Herbel Santiago