Among the Metacarpals
Trust but sleep armed
The sigil from the Dark Cave took time to place. It matched the emblem of a silat school in the Minangkabau highlands, a perguruan old enough to have no written records. That is where I went.
In the interim, you went quiet. That is unlike you.
***
West Sumatra
Padang from the air is a city pressed against a green wall of mountains and the sea. I did not linger. Bukittinggi is two hours north and three thousand feet higher, cooler, ringed by volcanic lakes and the terraced rice paddies of the Minangkabau highlands.
The school I was looking for was not in Bukittinggi. The last stretch was by ojek, a motorbike taxi, the only vehicle the roads would admit. I rode for an hour pressed against a stranger’s back, wearing a loaner helmet that smelled of the sweat of the hundreds before me. I would have preferred to drive myself, but no signs pointed there.
The driver left me at the edge of the village and turned back. The houses were built in the old style, their roofs sweeping upward to sharp points at each end. By the time I had walked fifty feet, I had acquired a small following of children who assaulted me with questions in Minangkabau too fast to parse. I said “perguruan” and they pointed me down the path. At the end of it, a young man stopped me. Strangers were unwelcome, female ones especially.
I said that word. You know the one. The one that started all this.
He stepped aside.
***
The guru did not offer pleasantries. I showed him the piece. He looked at it for a while, then held out his hand.
I gave it to him. Does it surprise you that I gave it up so easily? It surprised me. He kept it overnight. On a mat on the floor of the school I lay listening to things moving in the trees, a knife palmed, not sleeping well.
He returned it in the morning and thanked me, saying his ilmu was established with one such object, on a small unnamed island, long since uninhabited.
***
The Island
It was missing from most charts and unremarkable from the water. I hired a boat and a boatman to pilot it.
The temple ruins showed above the trees. The jungle had been working on it for a long time and had made significant progress, some of which I undid with a machete.
The last keeper was still there, or his bones at least. Undisturbed.
Among the metacarpals I found what I came for. Larger than the last.
***
No point following my trail on this one. There is nothing left on the island. Did you find a path of your own? Keep your secrets. I have sources closer than you know.
— N.
Pencak silat is the collective term for the martial arts of the Malay Archipelago, practiced across Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore; the Minangkabau form, silek, is among the oldest surviving lineages. Ilmu, or knowledge, refers within these traditions to esoteric capability cultivated through ascetic practice, ritual, or sacred objects.
