Plot

1901, Balangiga. Eight-year-old Kulas flees town with his grandfather and their carabao to escape General Smith's Kill and Burn order. He finds a toddler amid a sea of corpses and together, the two boys struggle to survive the American occupation.

   Plot 2

Balangiga, 1901. Eight-year-old Kulas and his grandfather Apoy Buroy flee town on the eve of the massacre, bringing with them a carabao, a chicken, and various provisions. Though they stick to the outskirts to avoid the Americans wreaking vengeance on the town, they find carnage wherever they go, eventually discovering a toddler screaming beside the bodies of his dead parents. Kulas ignores his grandfather’s refusal to take the child with them and names him Bola (“Ball”, the only word that the child could identify and speak).

Misfortune after misfortune befall the traveling group. Their chicken dies, Kulas’ grandfather succumbs to a snake bite, and not long after Kulas buries his grandfather, an American ambushes the two children, killing their carabao and forcing them into servitude. Kulas and Bola escape with what little is left of their provisions. They meet a kindly couple who take them in but the next day, the children find the couple have left, taking with them all of the children’s food.

Kulas and Bola live off the forest as best as they can, but Bola grows weak from disease and malnutrition. Bola dies. Kulas makes as many balls out of leaves as he can and buries Bola in them. He continues his journey weaker, sadder, less interested in making it out of town alive. But as he stood tired and starving in the forest, thinking of just curling up and waiting for death to come take him too, he sees their dead carabao, Melchora, flying. He runs after it. Rain begins to fall. Kulas drinks, dancing in joy as he plunges after Melchora who flies across the sky like a star, leading him deeper and deeper into the forest.

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