Philippine Speculative Fiction, Volume 10

by Dean Francis Alfar

“I don’t belong up there,” I said.

  “You don’t belong here either!” she snapped.

  “Please, Fatima!”

  I felt the weight on the door lessen, a menacing creak shattering the dawn’s calm as I pushed it open.

  “Ano ba gusto mo?” she asked, her arms folded across her chest.

  “Anong gusto ko?” I said, taking a step forward. Fatima leaned back, furrowing her brow as she bit her lower lip. “Gusto kong – gusto ko lang ng kaibigan. ’Yung makaka – ’yung makakausap ko. ’Yung makikilig – kinig! Sa akin. ’Yung makakaintindi sa akin.”

  “Eh, ’yun lang naman pala, eh,” she said, turning away, her lips jutting toward the ceiling. “Dami diyan sa labas. Sige!”

  “Never pa ako nakaramdam ng ganito,” I said. “Gets mo? ’Yung parang – parang – Ganito kasi – um – Raagh!” I slammed my foot into the nearest wall, and my leg promptly bounced back with equal force, the sudden strain on my muscle sharp and acute. “Ahh!” I yelped, dropping to the floor.

  Fatima’s lips twitched, probably despite herself. Her arms fell to her sides, as she shook her head and sighed. She bent down next to me and took my foot. I watched as she stretched it out, and folded it once more. “Baliw,” she mumbled, loud enough for me to hear.

  I breathed, and then took in a few more breaths, readying my mind for what I wanted to say next. I inhaled, and blew out my lips. Her hair swayed and swung to the side of her face, her eyes blinking as she shook the wind from her face.

  “Ano ba?” she cried.

  “Fatima,” I said. She stopped fussing about her hair and looked at me, her eyes bright and anxious. “I think I finally feel –” I let out a heavy sigh, my body growing lighter as air escaped my lungs. “I feel like I’ve finally come home,” I said, my shoulders suddenly straightening, as though a heavy load had been tossed aside. “I’m home,” I repeated, smiling more to myself than anyone else. It took me a while to understand what Mr. Divinagracia was trying to say. But at that moment, everything became clear.

  Francis Gabriel Concepcion is presently working as a freelance writer and social media content manager, while at the same time trying to build himself up as an authorpreneur. He’s had stories published in Philippine Speculative Fiction volume 6 and A Treat of 100 Short Stories. He is also currently working alongside his brother, self-publishing an online sci-fi graphic novel series titled The Star-Gazers Inn, through their website www.hawkersmag.com.

  Andrew Drilon

  The Last God of Cavite

  IT IS DIFFICULT to remember. There are so many words these days. It’s been more than a century, and I’ve only just begun to truly understand English. I will try to use it as much as I can. Back then, there were less words; less words, and more memories, as the world turned under our feet, stealing the past from our minds. There are things that do not make sense when I think of them. There are holes in my thinking, and the thought frightens me. I have come to the conclusion that if I do not set this down in words, I will forget. So this is what I remember.

  THERE WAS A beach here. Not a blue beach like they have in el Puerto – or la Punta, or Oro Macizo, or whatever it’s called these days – with the light gray sand and the shiny white stones and the glass crabs skittering in and out of finger holes. It’s always bluer when you face an ocean. Not here. Here – where the sea is cupped by land, nestling between el Puerto and Kawit – the water was an emerald green. The sand was a rough, dirty brown, sometimes black. There were rocks everywhere, and from Tierra Alta to where Imus River flows into the bay, you could see hundreds of fishing boats laid out on the sand like beached sharks, waiting for their masters in the salty gloom before dawn.

  This was before every ombri and their nanay decided to put up borders and fish cages, fencing off a slab of sea for themselves and driving out what few siokoy were left in the bay. Even then, there was talk among the sea-folk of migrating to a more peaceful area. The sirena could not sing over the sound of the galleons docked at el Puerto. The ugkoy had trouble finding souls to drown, for the children of puta knew better than to play near the water. And here, past the shore, in Kawit – it must have been called el Viejo back then, or Ca-wi-te – the rest of the old folk were contemplating a change in their lives.

  The kapre spirits were having difficulty holding on to their trees, because the nuns of Magdalene Church kept whispering resa on their walks about town. Dhul Tandaq – the horse-headed tikbalang who posed as a pelyador in Rieta – complained that he couldn’t find a girl to disappear, because the guardia civil were arresting all the prostitutes. The cold kagkag had already moved away, because all the Catholic burials had prevented them from feeding, and the last of them – Lolo Nato, who was a putrid homeless man – could not even find a single dead dog that hadn’t had a sign of the cross made over it.

  Then there was my father, who was a danag – a true danag, from back when our kind were worshipped as gods of the field. More and more, he found it difficult to get pineapple crowns to take root, because the clericia kept blessing the land in the name of their god. We were already peki tao back then, keeping out of Spanish awareness, for the god of the Spaniards had dissolved so many of the old folk since they’d arrived in our land, and we wished to preserve our immortality. We pretended to be an indio family – my father Felipe, my mother Agueda, and myself – simple granjeros who grew fruit in Binakayan for a living. By day, we’d work the fields and sell goods in the market. By night, we’d drink from pigs and avoid the sight of the Holy Ghost.

  I REMEMBER THE night when things began to change. I was here, on the beach, speaking to an ugkoy along the black shoreline. His name was Guglug, I think, or Luglud. We were amigus, and I had brought him a desiccated pig left over from almuesu, as an excuse to go out. He wrapped it in his hairy fishtail, let it sink under the verdigris foam, and told me that the sea-folk were preparing to leave the bay.

  I was about to ask why, when from the corner of my eye, I saw a glow coming from the sea. There was a woman in red, walking barefoot on the water not too far from the shoreline. Her skin was a radiant white, and her cloak shimmered in the night, casting ruby tongues of light across the waves. She was weeping, and each tear that fell from her cheek transmuted the water into blood.

  She didn’t seem to notice us, and we didn’t wait for her to. Guglug, or Luglud, dove back under the waves without a sound. I backed away behind a fishing boat, hoping she wouldn’t see me, and when she passed, I felt the raw heat of her sadness on my skin. I ran away, across the beach, past the trees, through the fields, back to my wood-and-thatch house and the shadowed safety of my room. Later, my mother explained to me that the woman could only have been Maria Magdalena, a Spanish spirit. There was a church named after her in Kawit, beside where I went to school.

  We didn’t know it then, but those were the last years of the Spanish regime. I had my own part to play in the revolution, but it would come a bit later. That night was the last I saw of my ugkoy friend: a shadow knifing the water, away from the crimson light of her sorrow.

  ANOTHER TIME, MY father and I were working the fields, as we did so often – talking to the crops and the trees, telling them to grow strong, to bear fruit – when he stood up suddenly and became very still. Tenebrous roots bloomed from his ears and hung in the wind, like orchids.

  “Tatay,” I said, “someone will see.” I took the tabungaw off my head and lifted it to cover his ears, but he swatted it aside, shushing me.

  “I am listening,” he said, letting his roots sway in the breeze.

  I waited patiently for him to finish, keeping an eye out for any witnesses. My father must have looked like he was trying on some kind of new hat, because the few people who passed in the distance did not give us a second glance.

  Finally, my father spoke: “It is Lolo Nato, the kagkag. He is in trouble. Some woman found him eating a cat. He is in Gregorio, calling for help. There are men beating him up.”

  “We must go to him!” I said.

  “
No,” said my father, his roots wilting. “It is his trouble to endure. Return to your work. Encourage the pinya. They are melancholic.”

  “But, Tatay, he is one of us! What if he is found out?”

  “He has been found out, and he will deal with the consequences. The guardia civil will come, and they will take him to the prisinto, where he will spend a few days behind bars. They will not know what to make of him. His smell will overpower them soon enough, and they will put him back on the streets so that they can breathe. And then he will again be the crazy old man that all of Binakayan imagines he is.”

  “What if they call a padri?” I asked.

  At this, my father looked away. “Then he will die,” he said, “as he should have so long ago, when he decided to be apart from his tribe. Leave him be, Miguel. Do not think any more of it. Return to your work.”

  And so I did, though I could not stop thinking. I never particularly liked Lolo Nato, with all the rotting flesh hanging from his bones, but after the siokoy disappeared, I had begun to be wary for any of the old folk. Wasn’t it our duty to watch out for each other? The Spanish spirits were so strong, and we were so weak. I wanted to go out to Gregorio and hide the last kagkag from the Church.

  Instead, I spent the afternoon with my father, deepening the roots of the mango trees and making rivulets of water in the soil. When we returned to the house, my mother was waiting for me, sitting in the kitchen next to four baskets of pineapple and mango.

  “These have to be delivered by suppertime,” she said. “The Aguinaldos are having a party. They need it for postre.”

  “Nanay, I cannot carry all this,” I said. “It is too far.”

  “You can, anak. Just shift your arms and make them like stone. Like Uzon’s arms, in the story.”

  I continued to protest, but like a talakatak, she would not bend.

  “It is the Aguinaldos,” she said. “I will have a pig ready when you come back.”

  THE REASON THERE were so many of the old folk in Kawit back then was because they were protected by the Aguinaldos. When the Spaniards first conquered the land, they appointed datus, chiefs of the native tribes, leaders of their own domains. The position was known as cabeza de barangay – the smallest of political seats in the Spanish empire, but one that an indio could hold. The Aguinaldos were descended from the first cabeza de barangay in Kawit, who also happened to be one of the old folk.

  As generations passed under the Spanish rule, the aswang aspect in the Aguinaldo bloodline was whittled down to almost nothing, until they could not even be called half-bloods or quarter-bloods. And yet they remembered their affinity with the old folk, such that if one of our kind needed papers signed or documents forged, they would be permitted.

  There were other bloodlines, of course, that were similarly entrenched in the government: the Gimos in Iloilo, who were ultimately massacred in the fifties; the Tagobans in Dumaguete, who disappeared into Siquijor after the Spanish were overthrown; and the Malvars in Batangas, who were danag like myself.

  My father said that he was once tempted to move to one of those places, but when Carlos Aguinaldo was elevated to gobernadorcillo over all of Kawit, this seemed to be the best place for us. Carlos’s son, Emilio, became cabeza de barangay of Binakayan at the tender age of 17, and when he turned 26, he became capitan municipal. I remember this, because it was his party that I went to that night, at their ancestral home along Tirona, which was where I first met León.

  LEÓN MALVAR Y Carpio: handsome, mestizo, bearded and dark-eyed. I was a mere indio delivery boy, carting pineapples through the back door of the Aguinaldo mansion; he was an ilustrado and the capitan municipal of his hometown.

  He left the party to check on his horse; I was at the stables, catching my breath; we caught sight of each other, and the danag aspect flared inside us. His was a pale green: diluted by Spanish blood, but still potent. Mine was deep viridian: as pure a danag as he had ever met.

  Our secret tongues met. Stabbing each other in the neck, we drank as gods. Soon we were in the bush behind the stables, blood flowing freely between us, memories upwelling, our bodies and appearances shifting with each surge of passion.

  To be a danag is to have no gender. We only take on the appearance of male or female in order to pass for human. When we drink, it is not only blood we consume, but memories. I saw León’s graduation in Bauan; the happiness on his parents’ faces, the raw meat served at a banquet, the santelmo that made kulintang music in his name. I shared with him the taste of my first strawberry, and the first night I slept buried in loam. They were meager times compared to the splendor of his world, but he relished each new experience.

  Flowers bloomed all around us, as the leaves of the bush quivered with new energy. We made love like our ancestors, while in the rooms above us, aristocrats dressed in full regalia waltzed and danced pandanggo under candlelit chandeliers.

  WHEN WE WERE done, we rested on a bed of ylang-ylang and tried talking as people. He was slow to understand my chavacano, but after a few more sips he was speaking like a regular kawiteño.

  “Can you feel the world shifting?” he said, leaning into my shoulder. “This used to be called Hinirang. The islands all had different names. The people thought and spoke with more magic. Now it is called Filipinas. Did you notice the change?”

  “It’s always been called that,” I said, recalling my studies. “La Islas Filipinas.”

  “No,” he said. “There was a time it was called Hinirang, and we were known as Dan’ag, and this place was called Kawi’te, the index finger of Uzon. To the north was Ciudad Meiora, and to the south was Palao’an, Rumblon, Diya al Bajao, and all the places of myth. The names changed in the last hundred years. The magic has somehow faded, and the people’s dreams have dimmed.”

  “My father never spoke of this,” I said. “He would have told me.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t notice. It’s as if the Spanish have transformed the land, so that it has always been this way. They are the conquerors, after all. They can rewrite our past.”

  I searched his face for even a hint of humor, but his expression remained grim. “That is a sad thing to say,” I said. “Maybe that’s why the siokoy went away. There is less and less room for our kind in this world.”

  “In Batangas, I am a farmer, too,” he said, meeting my eyes, “but here, the grass is truly greener.” He folded his hands into mine and squeezed gently.

  “Then stay,” I said. “Let us build a garden together. We can name it what we please.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “I’m only here because it’s my duty as capitan municipal to be here. But this has been an unexpected joy, Miguel.”

  “Will you come back?” I asked, naïve as I’ve ever been. “I live not too far from here. My family has a small field, in a wood overlooking the bay. You’ll feel our presence in the trees.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  I didn’t see him again for a few months. When I finally got back home that night, the house was quiet. There was a pig tied to the back door, sleeping in the dirt. I let it be. I was full.

  WHEN I WAS a sapling, my mother told me this story:

  A long time ago, there was a giant called Uzon, who was very unsatisfied. All his life, he had eaten cows and dogs, and he longed to try something new.

  One day, he looked toward the sea, and saw many sparkling fish jumping along the horizon. He thought that they might make a wonderful meal, so he stretched out his long, rocky arm into the water, and formed a hook with his finger. He waited many nights and days, until finally, a fish jumped out of the sea, wriggling at the end of his hook.

  It was a large, white fish with great, round eyes and very sharp teeth. Uzon smiled at the sight of it, for the fish was quite beautiful, and looked very delicious. He tried to pry it from his finger, but it would not let go.

  Slowly and surely, the fish began to consume Uzon. It swallowed his arm, moved up his shoulder, over his head, and down over his whole body, until Uzon was no m
ore.

  Now, we live on the remnants of Uzon’s finger, in the belly of that Spanish fish. That is why our town is called ‘Kawit’, which means ‘hook’.

  Is this story true? Did it really happen long ago, in a time I can no longer recall? Even then, I found it hard to believe.

  IT WAS AUGUST, or September, because we were waiting for the pineapples to sprout, and we hadn’t started preparations for the annual Maytinis Festival. There had been rumblings, from Noveleta to Imus, about a rebel group called the Katipunan, who planned to overthrow the Spanish regime. Fights had broken out in Manila between them and the guardia civil.

  In Binakayan, people were leaving their homes, either to join the revolution or to get away from it. We were warned not to go out after sunset, or we might get arrested. I kept myself to our house and our fields, only venturing out in the daylight. No night deliveries were made, not even for the Aguinaldos.

  One afternoon, my mother came home complaining about the people in the market. “All they ever talk about is revolution,” she said, as we unloaded her baskets in the kitchen, “as if it was a holy word. As if it would fix all the bung malu in the world. Their eyes light up, and they imagine a future that is perfect for them. Ilustrado nonsense. There have been many revolutions. It always ends in tears.”

  “But, Nanay,” I said, “what if this one succeeds?”

  “Then many things will change, and the world will be filled with excitement. But when things settle down – when people grow bored – there will be another revolution.”

  “If it succeeds,” I continued, “if the Spanish leave, then we won’t have to hide anymore. We won’t need another revolution. The people will worship you again, and we’ll be happy.”

  At this, my mother took one long look at me and set her baskets down. She walked over to the table with a mango in her hand, took a seat, and motioned for me to join her. “Anak,” she said, “let me tell you something about people. This is important.”

  I sat down across from her.