I think my newfound powers gave me a lengthened life span, for I noticed that people entering the forest brought more advanced weaponry and machinery with them and the natives wore more and more Hispanized clothing. Continually turning into different animals and learning how to move like them gave me their strength, as well.
I began some dangerous experiments soon enough. If I could stop the transformation halfway through the process, couldn’t I contain the transformation to just one or two parts of me? I made myself grow twice my height and shrink to a child’s size. I started hiding in trees and changing my skin to match the leaves and branches, the way I’d seen kapre from other forests do. My gauge for success was being spotted or not by passersby.
But the day came when my skin wouldn’t lose its arboreal colors, and I couldn’t return to my true height. I couldn’t change a thing about myself for a long time, and there was nothing even the diwata of the mountain could do about that. She had to start visiting me in my tree-ish hiding holes. Eventually, the power to transform returned to me, but I could never hold a new form for long. Even when I learned to change back into my human appearance, I could feel my old skin covering me like an ill-fitting suit. It was no longer who I was; I was stuck as an ugly tree giant, and it was all my fault.
The diwata claimed she didn’t care how I looked. I wished I could believe her. I truly hated what I’d become, and I allowed that hate to overpower her voice. My only defense, albeit a flimsy one, is how keeping up my human appearance whenever we were together took up the energy that should’ve gone to listening and understanding her words.
And then one day, I hid myself from the diwata, knowing that her finding me was no easy task, given that I wasn’t born on or around the mountain. I took up residence in a mango tree relatively near the town, knowing that she wouldn’t dare go near. The town was now the territory of another god, after all.
I heard a rumor many years later that the diwata had taken to wandering the forest as a human woman and calling out a name—mine. I’d missed the diwata ever since, but it was this news that finally tugged my guilt free of the mire of my self-absorption. I left my tree in search of her.
And when I finally found the diwata, it was the moment before the cliff rocks crumbled beneath her feet. Even that moment was too late.
I’ve been trying to atone for my stupidity ever since.
VI
It’s early in October, and you are sifting through a pile of lacy mantillas in the santol grove when you find a book. You are so engrossed in your reading that you don’t notice I’ve just returned from an afternoon of intimidating humans who wish to sleep, eat, pray, or make love under my tree. I squat so that my shadow doesn’t fall over the pages like your hair does.
When the diwata and I first met many years ago, it was me in the grass, exhausted, hungry, bleeding, and her standing over me, fresh as sunshine. That night is now literally lifetimes ago, and seeing the way we are now, I ache for it.
When you finally let out a short laugh, that’s when I ask you what’s so funny.
You jump. The book falls to the grass. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough,” I say. “So what’s so funny?”
You pick up the book and flip to the page you were last reading. There is a drawing at the top of the page of a boy bending over a crab. The rest of the page is a block of squiggly, flourished text. I frown at it, vaguely remembering it from when I first flipped through the pages. This book was left on a boulder down the path from my tree a few years back.
“You think a boy and a crab are funny?”
You giggle. “It’s just so stupid! A lazy boy buys a crab from the market and then tells it to go back to his house so that he can take a nap!”
“Huh? That really is stupid.”
You’re growing more and more confused, and I begin to realize my mistake. “Haven’t you read this before?”
When I don’t answer, you can only say, “Oh.”
A week later, I am walking past your grove when you sprint out and nearly collide with my back. I turn around; you wave a book frantically in my face. “Let me teach you how to read, señor!”
My mouth twists to one side. I’m doubtful. “Why would I need to learn to read?”
“How can you not? You’ve got so many books in here!” You gesture at the calachuchi trees. “I found five in there, alone! Many of them are religious, but not all! It’d be a waste!”
I tell you a half-truth. “I just like looking at the pictures, ’neng.”
You whack my arm with the book you’re holding. I flinch, but do nothing. You seem to be getting comfortable with me, at least. “Not all books have pictures—definitely not all the books you’ve collected. Señor, I think you’d enjoy them more if you could read them!”
Your passion amuses me, impresses me, even, but I really don’t want to do this. “’Neng, I have better things to do with my time.”
Your eyebrows almost disappear into your hairline. “Like what?”
I turn away with a smirk. “Smoke.”
That night, you’re not in your grove. You’re not in any of the tunnels or caverns we frequent. You’re not even outside my tree.
My hand creeps up to the pendant of my cowrie shell necklace. The power within the pendant allows me to see anyone I wish no matter when it is or where they are. But when you were born, I swore that I would use it to check in on you only once a year, on your birthday, for the last twenty years.
This is how I know that you have good parents, as they always strive to teach you something new on your birthday—like when your father taught you to plow your fields with the family carabao when you turned three and when your mother taught you to prune and water flowers to sell at the market when you turned four. During the years when there was a little money saved up, they bought you something new, like slippers with embroidered roses when you turned fifteen or perhaps something novel and tasty, like that large jar of ube jam when you turned sixteen. On your last birthday, earlier this year, your parents gave you a new baro and a checkered saya—the same ones you were wearing when you came to me. You embraced them, happier than I’ve ever seen you. I thought then that if you’re that happy, then I should be happy, too.
I have so far kept my promise, but I’m frazzled enough about your disappearance to break it just this once. Luckily, Delonix whacks my shoulder before I do.
Odd and Ugly by Reyna Rochin
Calm down, she says. She fell asleep in the bamboo grove south of here.
I’m ready to run there the moment I receive the explanation. “What’s Maria doing there?”
She’s been gathering all the books she can find in the groves.
“What for?”
Isn’t it obvious? She’s building a place just for books. She’s determined to teach you to read.
I find you in the grove Delonix described. You are lying on your side in such a way that I deduce you fell asleep sitting down and then toppled. A book pillows your cheek and a line of drool runs down the same cheek. Your fingers are squeezed in between the pages of another book while two firefly orbs float above you. A third orb reveals that more books are scattered around you in piles half my height. Have I really picked up that many books from the forest? Why are humans forever losing books in there?
I lift you. You’re heavier than I expected, but not all that much trouble to carry. In your grove, I cover you in a worn, time-stained blanket and put a thin pillow under your head, its fluff all but gone. How have I let you sleep in such conditions?
The next night, I sneak into town disguised as a stray dog because I don’t want to have to expend precious energy fighting people who see me as a monster. In my true form, I steal a whole four-poster bed from some rich young mestiza while she’s out visiting her lover. I take some of her dresses and shoes for good measure, too, so that you don’t wear out
the clothes you arrived in. It’s not easy, avoiding the Guardia Civil’s night patrol with heavy furniture in tow, but I manage it with a few more disguises. I hide the bed and the clothes in the forest and return to the town, long enough to watch the mestiza enter her house just a little after dawn and scream for the Guardia Civil from her bedroom window.
I let you think that the bed is just one more abandoned thing I picked up in the forest, partially because I have fun teasing you that rats have made their home in there. I even threw in two weeks’ worth of fruits from the trees beyond my tree. You’re grateful anyway, though you point out that I could’ve given you this bed and those clothes when you first began living here.
Over the next few days, you alter the dresses to fit you, and they fit you well, indeed. When the fruits I got you run out, you still go out and gather your food from the outside world. Yet you look more well-fed and well-rested somehow. Funny how much difference a good bed makes.
When you show me the bamboo-turned-book grove and ask me if you could teach me how to read, I don’t refuse you.
VII
You ask me after one of our reading lessons in November why I collect so much junk. I’m taken aback; I’ve never said my reasons aloud before. The flowers aren’t interested—they complain that the junk takes up space meant for themselves—and Delonix doesn’t question me about it.
I begin by pointing at a clock here, digging out a handkerchief there. The words come out in a trickle at first, and then like a river released from a rocky spring. I explain that all these things have stories, whether I witnessed them or not: that a mud-caked set of letters were left by a young woman in the hollow of my tree, where they went undiscovered by her lover for years; that a golden funeral mask was part of the loot some thief buried in a clay pot at the roots of my tree; that a noose was left behind when I scared away several Guardia Civil who were going to execute a poor farmer suspected of sedition and insurrection. And that was just a sampling of the objects I found on and around my tree. I’ve found countless other things in my jaunts around the forest and the mountain it surrounds, things I invent the stories for: pipes, picnic baskets, slippers with broken straps, salakots, rifles, swords, jewelry, coins, bouquets long since dried out, blankets, rosaries, furniture, food. Sometimes I find these bloody, sometimes muddy, sometimes torn, sometimes whole and new.
You hang on to my every word, rapt, hands clasped on your lap. Sooner or later, you’ll ask about my necklace, and when you do, I surprise myself with the ease with which I tell the story. “It was my mother’s. It was the only thing she got to bring out of her homeland.”
You are sitting on your ankles when you hear this. You redistribute your weight, straighten your back. “You mean, you didn’t always live in this tree?”
“No. And I wasn’t always a kapre, either,” I say. I imagine my smile is bitter. “I wasn’t even born in this land.”
“Where were you born?”
“Portuguesa. España’s rival nation. I was lucky to be brought up by my mother, but I was eventually sold from Lusitano to Lusitano, from Portuguesa to Brasil and back—and then finally to a conquistador de Castile headed for the Filipinas. Not long after we landed here, he made me help build the walls of Intramuros in Manila. And that’s when I ran from him.”
“I see.”
“Do you, now?” I squat to your level on the grass. “Kapre. Tree giant. Cafre. African slave. Kafir. One who does not believe in Allah. The meaning changes depending on who says it and where it’s said. I am all three things, ’neng.”
“And how did you end up like this?”
I feel my smile grow wider. “I asked for this.”
Your round eyes go rounder. “You …?”
“And I don’t regret it. Or at least, I don’t regret it now. Before, I owned nothing. Now, I own more than I’ll ever need. There is nothing to return to in my former life.”
Your gaze doesn’t waver from mine. “What do you regret, then, señor?”
I almost topple backward. “What?”
“Everyone has something they regret. You were human once; I don’t think you’re an exception to that.”
Images of a ground abruptly tapering into sky, a wisp of hair, a flash of white hem, and outstretched fingers race through my mind, suddenly free from the prison I’d locked them in. You reach up to touch my cheek. The gesture is so sudden, so very much like the way you used to do in the past.
“I’m sorry,” you say. Your eyes brim with pity. “It’s just, you looked like you were about to cry.”
The breath I take is sharp. Your touch, the memories—it’s all too much. I stand up, which knocks your hand out of the way.
I excuse myself to smoke outside my tree. I know the excuse is a poor one and that I’ve never cared where I smoked before now, and that I just came back from a trip outside. But you looked so confused and so sorry, when it’s I who should be begging you for forgiveness. I can’t stand here a moment longer.
Why are you here? I’m not ready. I don’t know if I’ll ever be.
VIII
I avoid you with an astounding single-mindedness for the next few days. I’m always smoking outside now; whenever you climb out to get your food and water, I conceal myself even higher up the branches of my tree.
However, that doesn’t mean I don’t watch you. To your credit, you don’t try to get my attention. You don’t even force me to take up reading lessons again. You simply go about your day in mechanical fashion: you wash old clothes and polish the rust off old metal, you water the flowers and listen to their problems, you eat and drink, but you’re not really focused on whatever task you have at hand. Twice, tears slide from your eyes. You wipe these away with vehemence. Was this really my doing?
No, you idiot, not everything is about you, Delonix snaps when I ask her. Maria misses her parents.
Ah. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? You must feel deeply alone here, despite the company you keep. I’ve certainly been no help.
I make a decision then and there. I find you in the calachuchi grove, folding handkerchiefs.
“Maria!” I call.
You lift your head, your mouth slightly open. You rise to your feet as if you will totter and fall if you don’t move with a deliberate slowness. “What did you call me?”
For some reason, I want to run away. I press my toes into the dirt, however, and grit my teeth as if my soul will escape through my mouth. “Your name. Maria.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you say it.” You sound like you’re floating.
Abashed, I soldier on and enter the grove. “I want to give you something. Hold out your hand.”
Your eyebrows furrow in suspicion, but you do as I say. I unclasp my necklace and drop it on your palm. Your suspicion is gone, replaced by confusion.
“This necklace is magic,” I explain. You look at me, blank and yet wondering. “If you think about the person or people you most want to see while wearing it, it will show you exactly where they are and what they’re doing.”
It’s a good thing you don’t ask me whom I’ve been seeing with it.
You go very still. Even your breathing is subtle. Your gaze probes me from head to toe, as if you’ll find some dark motives writ on my body. I shift my weight from foot to foot. I’m about to leave when you finally say, “Thank you.” The necklace circles your neck, your hands lost in your thick hair while you struggle with the clasps. Soon, you add, “I’m sorry, señor. Will you help me put this on?”
I want to help you and don’t at the same time. Yet you’ve never specifically requested my help before, and the truth is, despite how much I duck and hide and run, I want to give you everything you want. I grunt my assent, and you give me the necklace. I move to stand behind you. You’re so small that I have to bend my knees to level my gaze with the clasp. You part your silken hair and smooth the waves over you
r shoulders, allowing the scent of coconut milk and calachuchi to waft in my direction. You used to smell like that, long ago. It fills me with a longing that accidentally comes out in a sigh.
“Señor, is there any reason you’re tickling my neck?” you ask. I almost drop the necklace. I can’t read your tone, and I have no idea what expression you’re making. I fight the urge to turn you around.
“I’m sorry,” I grunt as I slide the necklace around your neck once again. It’s confounding, how much easier it is to put this necklace on myself instead of someone else—or maybe it’s just you. I’m trying so hard to focus on the clasp instead of the places where I used to kiss you. I’m trying so hard not to touch your skin, but the clasp is ridiculously small and my fingers ridiculously large. Unavoidably, they brush against your smooth nape. Mercifully, you say nothing.
The moment the clasp is fixed in place, you spin around, and I back away half a step. Your eyes are downcast as you pull your hair behind your shoulders.
“Thank you,” you say. Then you lift your head, and there is this look you have that I can’t read—rather, that I don’t dare read. If I read it, I feel as if hope will seep into me, and I already know that that will be too painful to bear.
I gesture at the shell pendant. “Go on. Try it.”
Your fingers wrap around the cowrie shell. You don’t need to close your eyes, but you do. Nothing happens for a moment, and then all of a sudden, you are squinching your closed eyes and grinding your teeth. Your cheeks are wet with tears. If you pull on the shell anymore, you will give yourself burn marks.
“Tatay! Nanay!” you cry. So much anguish is packed in those two words. As your legs buckle beneath you, I grab your shoulders. In my hands, they seem so thin and fragile. As gently as I can, I shake you. “Maria, Maria! What’s wrong?”
Your eyes open. More pearlescent tears fall. You grasp my wrists with what feels like all your strength.