by Wayne Santos
The Tikbalang neighed again, this time a loud, echoing cry of anger and despair, and broke into a gallop.
And this was it; here we go, ride ’em cowboy and all that other Western shit, it was starting now…
Maria had one arm firmly around the Tikbalang’s neck, and the other on the lasso, pulling at it and trying—with spectacularly poor results—to rein him in. The Tikbalang was building up speed, his arms pumping, alternately trying to shake her off by twisting his neck around, and smacking her face with his hands, or trying to pry her arms off. Both of them were failing at what they were trying to do, an amazing combination of two people doing things simultaneously badly, and making great progress at it.
Then the Tikbalang took things up a notch—or really, just took things up—by taking a step into the air, followed by another step. And another. And another. And this was fine, because it was a dream and all, but it was nauseating to be in the sky under someone else’s power. Especially when that someone was still trying to toss her off.
It was as if the Tikbalang was tearing up an invisible flight of stairs, straight for the clouds, punctuated by the occasional blow to Maria’s face. Maria retaliated by pulling on the lasso, trying to choke him without killing him, and tightening her grip with the other arm. For a guy so unbelievably muscular, he sure didn’t seem to need a lot of air. Maybe aerobicizing worked differently for demon horses.
He bucked and tossed himself around, par for the course considering what was happening, and all Maria could do was hold on. They continued their ascent, Maria alternating between bashing her nose on the back of his skull and sputtering and gasping as his musky mane brushed against her teeth.
All of this felt vaguely, unpleasantly familiar, like remembering the steps to a dance that she wasn’t especially fond of, but had been forced to take lessons for as a kid.
On some weird level, she actually admired that the Tikbalang was still putting up a fight. Time and again, they had gone through this struggle, and time again, he had lost. Even now, she knew that if she just kept at this, forcing him to expend his energy, eventually she would tire him out and then pull out the three golden hairs from his mane that she needed to force him back into servitude. But in the same way that she almost wanted to take the Tikbalang out for a drink for showing so much moxie, she felt more and more like when she’d shown up on this dream plain unprovoked, the Imperial Theme from The Empire Strikes Back should have been playing.
She kept telling herself she needed to do this to save Tate, but now she couldn’t help but wonder at all those bad guys in movies and anime who were always spouting noble stuff like that just before they did horrible things.
She was angry at the Tikbalang for resisting, but he was just frightened and angry.
She pulled hard at the lasso and he half-shrieked, half-neighed at her, and piled on the speed, heading for the clouds, breaking through the line of them and out under the expansive bowl of stars that curved all around them, the aurora oscillating to a rhythm of its own light.
“God, I hate you so fucking much,” the Tikbalang gasped, and it was a sign. His energy flagged, the blows and the rapid ascent tapering off. He was tiring.
“I know. I’m sorry,” she said.
“Never sorry enough to stop,” he said.
And for whatever reason, that penetrated. She felt like the higher they climbed, the more tired he became, and the closer to breaking him Maria got, the deeper the pit of loathing inside her grew. She really did not like the person that was doing this to the Tikbalang. Was it really worth it to become this person to save Tate? She’d been so sure of it until now.
She loosened her grip. It took the Tikbalang several more seconds of wild bucking before he finally realized there was no resistance. He kept up his running, however, though they stopped gaining altitude and started descending back towards the clouds.
When he wasn’t trying to toss her off, this whole thing was actually… kind of… nice.
“Wait. What are we doing now?” he asked. “Is this where you pull out some new 20th century trick like putting a gun to my head?”
“No,” Maria said. “I’m not going to put a gun to your head.”
“Figuratively?”
“No, not even that.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to figure this shit out.”
“Is this the kind of figuring that involves medical treatment and recovery time?”
“No, this is different.”
He galloped in silence for a few moments, getting closer to the clouds, which now looked like a vast, white plain of cotton, or snow. “Can I ask why?”
“Sure. We’re going to talk about it as soon as you come to a stop.”
“Okay, then we’re stopping now. This is going off-script.”
He landed on the cloud, then turned and looked back at Maria. “Go on, let go. You’ll be fine.”
She half expected herself to plummet straight through the cloud, which wouldn’t have been entirely undeserved at this point, but she didn’t. The ground, such as it was, felt a little bit moist, like dewy grass, but as soft as a dream.
“We’re having a conversation in the clouds…” she said to no one in particular.
“I hope that’s what it is,” the Tikbalang said. “It would make a nice change of pace.”
And maybe that’s exactly what was needed right now. Maybe this didn’t strictly have to be about guilt or decency, even though those two factors sure as hell counted for something.
Maybe it was time to try something different.
Chapter Six
EQUITABLE TERMS
MARIA SAT DOWN. On a cloud. Just one more holy-fucking-shit moment in a string of them today.
The clouds parted slightly under her, and she couldn’t suppress the giggle. She looked up at the Tikbalang, who was absolutely towering over her at this point. Unfortunately, now that she was sitting down, that wasn’t the only thing that was towering. The Tikbalang was, after all, without pants, a fact that was impossible to ignore right now.
She reminded herself that they were, after all, in a dream state. That made a lot of things possible, including emergency measures. She concentrated, holding out her hands in anticipation, and the thing she visualized appeared; an industrial-sized and -strength loincloth. She handed it over to the Tikbalang. “Could you just do me a favor and wear that, please?”
The Tikbalang smiled. Or Maria told herself it was a smile, as she saw all the teeth revealed. “Want to keep things restrained so that you don’t lose control to your wild, animal passions, huh?”
Maria made a face and held out the cloth. “Let’s just agree that it’s distracting. I’m trying to take this seriously, extending an olive branch and all that shit. I’m just asking you to cover up. If you really don’t want to do it, I guess I’ll deal.”
The Tikbalang put his hands on his hips and looked down at her, and that wasn’t distracting at all… no-sirree-Bob…
“Fine,” he said at last and bent down to pick up the cloth. It took him a minute of fiddling to find a way to tie it around himself that looked comfortable, but in the end, Maria got her concession. No more completely naked, alarmingly ‘gifted’ horse-demon thing standing in front of her. Instead, she got a Mr. Universe competitor with the most convincing horse head she’d ever seen glued between his shoulders.
He gave a very horsey snort and settled down as well, tucking his legs into what looked like a diabolically painful, anatomically impossible lotus position that made him look, from the bottom half, like a palomino pretzel.
“I’m amazed you can do that.”
“Thanks, I worked at it,” he said. He raised his hand and ran it through his mane, feeling up and down. “Shit. They’re all still there.”
Maria held her hands up. “I didn’t rip out any of the golden hairs. You’re still the master of your own destiny.”
“In some ways, this is even more disturbing than the usual song
and dance shit we do,” he said. “I… I don’t actually know what to do next. What happens now? Usually, you break me in half, we run around with you calling the shots, and then at some point, we take on your fucking psychotic admirers and get our asses handed to us.”
Maria’s hand gripped hard at the clouds when the Tikbalang mentioned the admirers.
Aurelio. Mateo.
She heaved her shoulders and sighed. “There is some seriously fucked up karmic cycle at work there.”
“And I usually get roped into it. Literally.” He moved his hands as if he were drumming a riff.
“Things are different this time.”
“They sure are for me. So what happened to you?”
“Well, I mean, you know that I found Tate.”
“Is that what his name is this time?”
She nodded. “He’s half-British now.”
“Well, look at you, little miss progressive, dating out of your lane.”
“Hey, I’m not racist.”
“You mean you’re not now. But do go on.”
She stopped and had a thought. “Wait. Was I racist?”
“You’ve been a pretty hardcore Filipina Catholic through most of your recent incarnations. Do the math.” He did that freaky thing with showing the teeth and Maria was pretty sure it was a grin. “I have to admit this is so weird, me having to explain this stuff to you. But… refreshing! How come you don’t remember everything?”
“Because Tate’s still alive.”
The Tikbalang snorted. “Of course he’s alive. Every time you come in here, it’s because you need me as your fucking cavalry to come charging in to keep him from getting killed. And then we fail, and he dies.”
“Yeah, but he was dying. The car hit him. Then the Duwende tried to finish him off.” She told the rest of the story, and the Tikbalang’s eyes got bigger and bigger as she got into more detail.
“Wait, so… you took the hit for him? You actually tried to put yourself in harm’s way?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because… you’re a girl.”
She stood up. “So?”
He raised his hands up. “Whoa, whoa there… I’m not saying that’s wrong. I’m saying… well, that would have been your excuse to not do anything in the past. I mean, your boys, what are their names this time?”
“What boys?”
“The ones you’re going out with.”
“I’m not going out with anyone else, only Tate.”
The Tikbalang’s eyes bugged out. “Wait, what? You’re not even going out with the other two?”
“You mean Aurelio and Mateo?”
“Oh, they went old-school, back to their original names this time? How tacky. Yeah, I mean at least one of them is rich, right?”
“Aurelio heads the Everyware Toronto studio. I work there.”
“Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, that’s him? And you?”
Now it was Maria’s turn to go bug-eyed. “You know Everyware?”
“Your games were so good ten years ago! What the hell happened? Now it’s all this Executioner’s Code open-world shit with so many icons I can’t even read the map.”
“You know those games?”
“Yeah, with all that running and killing and historical periods and jumping back into the pres—” he stopped and stared, first at Maria and then at the sky in wonderment. “This explains so much…” He returned his gaze to Maria. “When the fuck are we getting a Past Benevolence & Malignance sequel, that was your best series, look at the averages!”
Maria held her palm up. “We are not getting into a Metacritic debate.”
“I’m frankly amazed that the possibility exists. But okay, let’s move on. My big thing here, the one that’s freaking me out, is you work with one of your boys, and he’s rich, and somehow you’re not going out with him? What about the other?”
“Mateo’s a personal trainer at a gym.”
“So… he’s hot?”
Maria didn’t answer, her eyes drilling straight into the ground. Her face felt warm, though.
“Gonna’ take that as a big fucking yes,” the Tikbalang said. “And you’re not going out with him either?”
“No! God, why would you even think that?”
“You usually do. Or at least, I get that impression from the way you’ve previously bitched about them as we gallop off to another spectacular crash-and-burn.”
“These two are horrible, creepy people! Maybe they were just nicer in past lives?”
“These aren’t new lives for them; they don’t reincarnate, because they don’t die. You’re the one that always goes and forgets everything, because you’re trying to create a new life at the right age to find and fall in love with your boy again. Those two just keep following you around generation after generation, with new names, but the same old assholery.”
Maria redirected her stare at the ground, not really seeing it but putting things in her head together. “So… usually at this point, I remember everything?”
“Yeah. The full Makiling.”
“And I’m mad?”
“Pissed off to galactic entropy levels, yeah. You are Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds, hell-hath-no-fury and shit.” He tilted his head, which looked mildly disturbing on a horse. “Only this time, you’re not.”
“I’m not mad. Not super mad, like that. I mean… maybe I was… a little bit. I wanted to save Tate, I still do. But I’m not mad about doing it. It’s just something I want to do.”
“And you don’t remember.”
“Not everything. I know I’m Maria Malihan, I know I’m Maria Makiling; but I feel like Maria who knows about Makiling, like some relative that only shows up at Christmas. I’m not going out with Aurelio or Mateo. Well, I did, but that ended up being a bad idea, so I called it off. And then I met Tate, and I thought he might be the one. And then one day, I knew he was the one.”
“And that’s when I see you,” the Tikbalang said. “Every time you fall in love with him, some part of you knows he’s going to die soon, and that you’ll need me to try to fix it. So you always come looking for me, just so you know where you can start tying the leash down.”
“Only none of that is happening now. We’re just sitting down and talking.”
“And how fucking weird is that? I mean, it is, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Why are you even doing this?”
“Because I didn’t want to feel like shit,” she said. “I mean, I know you’re the closest thing I’ve got to having any chance in hell of actually doing something about those two and heading off this mess. Every single time, Aurelio and Mateo try to make me fall in love with one of them, and every time, if I find Tate, they lose their shit and then kill him off, to take him away from me. And every time I just wipe and restart, exiting this plane and reentering to try and find him again and make it work.”
“And it never does.”
“And it never does,” she agreed. “So maybe instead of replaying the same old, broken, four-hundred-year-old cycle... Maybe we try something new. You’ve got what I need. And I…” She sighed. Wow. This was really hard. She looked him in the eye. “And I just keep taking it. I always assume that because I need it, I can’t risk not having it, so I tame you. I break you. I take your power by force. The same way Aurelio and Mateo try to take my heart. Then they take my Tate.” She threw up her hands. “And I was doing the same thing. To you.” Deep breath. Then two more. “So, I’m sorry.”
The Tikbalang’s mouth dropped open and stayed that way.
Maria waited for a response.
She didn’t get one. The Tikbalang wasn’t even blinking, it was like someone had pushed the pause button on him.
When he did finally speak, a full minute later, it was to stutter out, “Wa… w-was that… an apology?”
“It was.” She placed her hands together, almost as if in prayer. “And I am asking you. If you could, if you want, to do me a favor. I am asking you to help me.”
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“And if I say no?”
She shrugged. “I’ll try something else. Maybe it’s about time I did. I’m not so angry and scared that the only thought in my head is I have to break you. I can think beyond that. Maybe because I’m not in furious goddess mode right now; more like anxiety-stricken-girlfriend-going-over-her-options mode. Which I honestly didn’t think would be more advantageous, but hey, the world can still surprise me.” She stood up, stretched, and took a few steps forward. “This is a nice place you found,” she said, looking down at the cloud, then at the moon up above, and the dancing auroras overhead. “I can see why you run here.”
“There are cooler places,” he said. “But yeah, I like this one a lot.” He stood up and walked over to her. “I run through lots of different places. Lots of different people. Gives you a perspective on things.” He looked down at Maria. “Maybe being here had something to do with it. This is a pretty progressive place. A space of consent.”
“Oh? Where are we? Who is this person?”
“Some writer. Margaret Atwood.”
Maria could not, even with super-glue and a fork, stop the eye-rolling that occurred at that moment. Of course. Of fucking course. “Well, I guess you picked a good spot, then.”
“Yeah, it worked out.”
“It worked out for you,” Maria said. “I’m still not sure how I’m making out in this situation.”
The Tikbalang rubbed his sizable chin thoughtfully. “Oh yeah, I still haven’t given you an answer, have I?”
She waited.
“What the fuck. You did ask. For once,” he said. “If you can build bridges, I can cross ’em.”
Maria grinned and extended her hand.
He reached out and shook it. Then he squeezed, applying gentle pressure. He smiled.
She smiled back. The pressure started to hurt. She squeezed back, her skin going slightly green, and something in his hand cracked like a wishbone being snapped. Beads of sweat formed on the Tikbalang’s face, but he continued to smile.
Maria kept up the pressure, saw the Tikbalang’s bicep bulging as he increased his own pressure, but she kept it up, both of them standing there, and Maria was pretty sure this was the most insincere grin she’d ever forced her mouth to carry.
