‘Sarawak Folklore’ Gold Winner (Adult) – Ivy Lau Chien Jie

Wong Nai Siong Memorial Park, Sibu.

The Crimson Covenant

The water of the Seduan stream was not always the colour of rusted iron and sunset clay. In the spring of 1901, when the first pioneers stepped off the steamers into the humid embrace of Sibu, the river was a clear mirror reflecting the colour of dark tea.

My grandfather told me of a man named Lau, a pioneer whose hands were mapped by the calluses of failed harvests in the old country, who carried the heavy promise of a new life in the mud of Sarawak.

Lau was a man of iron, but the jungle was made of something older and more stubborn. For months, the pioneers struck their hoes against the earth, only to have the tropical rains wash their efforts back into the silt. The belian wood notched their axes and the fever thinned their numbers. By the second monsoon, the settlers spoke of retreat. They whispered of returning to the winter winds across the sea as men who had been swallowed by the green.

One evening, Lau stood alone at the bank of the Seduan. He looked at the clear water and saw his own reflection—gaunt, exhausted, and a stranger to the soil beneath his feet.
He dropped to his knees and struck the earth with his bare hands, a cry tearing from his throat that the jungle birds had never heard.

“We have given you our sweat,” Lau whispered to the dark bank. “We have given you our brothers. What more do you demand before you let us stay?”

The river did not remain silent. A deep vibration rose from the silt, a rhythmic pulse that travelled through the soles of his feet. Beneath the surface, a shadow shifted, too massive for a fish and too deliberate for a sunken log. The water trembled, tiny ripples turning in a tight circle around Lau’s reflection. It was the waking presence of the mud itself: the ancient guardian of the laterite clay.

“You walk upon my back like ghosts,” came a sound like grinding stones murmuring from the depths. “You take the fruit, but do not bleed for the root. To stay, you must cease being guests and become the clay.”

Lau understood. The land did not ask for prayers or sudden miracles. It demanded a piece of the men themselves.

He took his iron hoe, the last unbroken tool he owned, and struck the steep bank with a primal fury. He dug until the skin of the earth tore open, revealing the deep, bleeding crimson of the clay beneath. The jagged edge of the hoe caught his palm. He did not pull away. He pressed his torn hand into the open red earth and held it there, his warm blood seeping into the cool, damp clay.

The tropical sky cracked open and a violent downpour hammered the bank. The rain washed the red earth and Lau’s blood down into the Seduan. One by one, the other men emerged from the treeline, drawn by the sound of the rain and the sight of their brother. They did not offer words. They offered their resolve. They took up their tools and tore into the red earth, working through the storm until the clear stream ran thick and crimson.

By morning, the Seduan had changed. It was no longer a mirror for a foreign sky. It was a river of rust and fire.

When I walk through Sungai Merah today, past the Wong Nai Siong Memorial Park, I see Lau’s handprint in every ripple. I see a history that refused to be washed away by the tides.

The Rejang still flows, carrying the memory of that evening when a man stopped being a traveller and rooted himself into the soil of Sarawak. I sit by the bank and watch a young child dip their hand into the water, pulling it back to find their fingers stained a pale red that will not wash away. They laugh, unaware of the price. The river moves on, quiet with the weight of our belonging, a covenant signed in the colour of the earth. — DayakDaily

Ivy Lau Chien Jie.

A native of Sibu, 31-year-old Ivy Lau Chien Jie brings her sharp attention to detail from the banking sector into her creative writing. Beyond her professional life, her absolute favourite pastime is baking traditional Sarawak local delicacies.