OUTPOURING: Typhoon Yolanda Relief Anthology Page 22

  After a few more minutes—or hours—of walking, they came upon the camp again. She peered inside the sack, and there she saw again three sets of food.

  “So the sack refills itself too,” Maria murmured. “They were kept well-fed all this time.”

  They kept going, and they passed the same camp, over and over. Maria stopped counting at the tenth time they passed it. Juan was right; it was a long walk, a walk that seemed to last for hours, or even days. She was beginning to feel the first signs of fatigue, but she pushed her feelings aside and kept walking.

  Finally, Juan said, “We’re here, love.”

  Maria raised a hand, and the fireflies went on ahead. Maria could see a school up ahead, with several people spilling out of its doors. The fireflies alighted on the sign put up on the gate, so that Maria could read what was written on it: Palo Central School.

  It was no wonder that the walk seemed to last for days, for they were now no longer in the city of Tacloban, and had somehow ended up in Palo.

  A tall young man ran up to meet them. He stopped before Maria, a bit in awe, and hesitated a bit before he bowed before her.

  “Y-you’re Lady Maria Sinukuan, from Arayat,” he said when Maria helped him to stand up. He looked at Juan behind her, who had now changed back into his human form. “And this is—ah, Señor Juan, your—”

  “Assistant,” Maria said hastily, with a glare at Juan, daring him to say anything else, and he thus only smiled and shrugged.

  “Y-yes,” The young man said. “Thank you, my Lady and Señor Juan, for coming here. Some of the volunteers from your town came to us this morning too. We are honored to have you visit us too, but it is quite late, you need not have bothered, my Lady.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, as the young man ushered her inside. There, another man smoking a cigar stood guard at a desk beside the door, but he hastily put out the cigar when Maria entered.

  “Actually, I came here too because I was looking for a family. A family named Aguelo, from Leyte. Are they among the refugees here?”

  The young man looked at the other man. “Teban here keeps a list of the refugees,” he said.

  The other man nodded and brought out several sheets of papers from the desk. “Ah, yes. Emilio, Jacinta, and Rosa Aguelo. I’ll take you to them. Right this way, my Lady.”

  They walked among the hundreds of refugees sleeping on straw mats and old blankets laid out on the floor. Some of the children clutched muddy dolls to their hearts, while others sobbed themselves to sleep in the arms of their mothers and fathers. In the corner, a boy sang a lullaby to his little sister. He looked no older than eight years old, but the expression on his face belonged to a man of sixty.

  They came upon the family Maria had been looking for, lying in one corner of the room. Both Emilio and Jacinta were still awake, as they were murmuring among themselves, with occasional wild-eyed glances at the rest of the room, while Rosa slept soundly with her head in her mother’s lap.

  “Good evening,” Maria said to them. “I am really sorry to bother you, but I have been looking for you. You are the Aguelo family, from Sagkahan, Tacloban? I am Maria Sinukuan, of Arayat. I just came from your village, and the people there informed me that you have been missing for days now.”

  Emilio and Jacinta looked at each other, then Emilio stood up and took Maria’s hand. “Oh, we thought we were going crazy,” he said, a little breathlessly. “Yes—yes. That’s who we are. Jacinta said it was probably just all a dream, but I can swear I remember everything that happened. I was just minding my own business, and then the next thing I know we’re here now somehow, in Palo, of all places. Who are you? Can you tell us what just happened?”

  Maria nodded. “Please sit down,” she said. “And tell me what happened to you, at least what you remember.” She sat down on the floor as well, her skirts billowing beneath her feet.

  Emilio sat back down on the floor again. “It started out an ordinary morning,” he said. “Well—as ordinary as it can get these days, after everything that happened to us. I think the other villagers told you about that?”

  “Yes,” Maria nodded. “What happened to your workers, Jacinta’s rashes, Rosa’s sickness, and your near-fatal accident.”

  Emilio’s voice quivered as he spoke. “So that morning started out really well,” he said. “Rosa finally had the strength to go back to school, and Jacinta no longer had any rashes. I was just going out to work in the fields again—”

  “That’s why his salakot was nowhere in the house,” Juan whispered to Maria, but she quickly shushed him.

  “—so I left the house and took the usual path to the fields,” Emilio said. “But then something went wrong. The road… well, the road just wouldn’t end. I kept expecting to get to the end of the road and arrive at the village, but there was nothing, just the same trees over and over. It felt as if I was walking for days, and that was when I found Jacinta and Rosa in the middle of the road, as scared as I was.”

  “I was on my way to the river to do the laundry,” Jacinta said. “But like what Emilio experienced, the road to it just kept going and going. I found Rosa a while later, sobbing. She, too, had been on her way to school, but she said she got lost, and couldn’t find her way out to the village, or even back to the house.”

  (“That explains the absence of the child’s bag and the clothes,” Juan whispered again to Maria, which made her snap, “I know, tikbalang, can you please be quiet for just one second?”)

  “We were there for days, weeks, months, I don’t know,” Emilio said. “It was terrible. We always found food and water along the way, though—there was a sack there that kept filling itself whenever we saw—which made the whole thing even more terrible, because he kept us alive for so long, just so we could suffer longer.”

  “He?” Maria asked.

  “The enkanto,” Jacinta said. “We thought we would never get out, we thought he was going to keep us there forever. And then, finally, yesterday, we somehow found our way out, and we arrived here. But we were so shocked to see that we were here in Palo, and they told us there was this big storm that hit the islands. We kept telling the people here in the center that we were really from Tacloban, but no one would listen to us.”

  “He brought us here,” Emilio said. “I don’t know why, but you have to bring us home, Miss Sinukuan—”

  “Sinukuan,” Jacinta repeated, and then she looked up at Maria. “From Arayat. Oh, you’re that diwata we keep hearing about! You help people, solve murders and catch thieves and such. And you punish evildoers. Are you going to punish the enkanto who did this to us?”

  “No, I’m sorry,” Maria said. “You’re sadly mistaken. I’m not here to punish the enkanto who did this. In fact, with everything you told me, I believe they might even be worthy of a reward.”

  Jacinta and Emilio’s eyes widened. “Excuse me, my Lady,” Emilio said. “But, what?”

  “The enkanto were not punishing you,” Maria said. “They were warning you. And they, in fact, saved you.”

  She looked gravely at Emilio, then at Jacinta. “I have been to your house,” she said, “or at least, what used to be your house. You built it beside the hill, didn’t you? Well, there was a landslide, and your house was completely buried beneath it. If you had been there, you wouldn’t have been alive now.”

  Jacinta held her daughter tighter, while Emilio wrung his hands. “They knew what could happen, if you built your house there,” Maria continued. “So they tried to keep you from building your house there. When the incident with your workers still didn’t stop you, they turned on you, in the hopes of scaring you off the land. When that still didn’t work, and they saw the storm coming, they had to resort to desperate measures. They had to take you away themselves, take you to a safer place.

  “You didn’t know about the storm because you were in their realm,” she said. “They cast that enchantment on you, and you wandered in their realm while the storm raged on outside, destroying everything in its pa
th. You were completely oblivious, safe in your ignorance. And when the storm subsided, they led you straight to this shelter.”

  “W-we didn’t know,” Emilio said. He kept his eyes on the floor. “At first we didn’t believe it them. We thought they were mere superstition. I was raised in Manila, and I don’t believe in these things.”

  “But even when you started to believe in them, you were still mistaken,” Maria said. “Not all of the enkanto wish to do you harm, at least, if you look into their true intentions.” She looked at Juan, who met her gaze. “Sometimes, it’s better when people get lost, so they say.”

  Maria stood up. “I will get you home, when things are better in Tacloban,” she said. “In the meantime, you will have to stay here. You’ll be taken good care of here, in any case. I will check on you from time to time.”

  “Thank you, Lady Sinukuan,” Jacinta said.

  “And can you speak to the enkanto, too?” Emilio stammered.

  “I can try,” Maria said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Please, can you give us our apologies,” Emilio said. He turned away. “And our gratitude, as well.”

  “Of course,” Maria said. “I’ll tell them.”

  She was about to leave, when Jacinta called after her. “Lady Sinukuan,” she said. “You keep calling the enkanto them. You mean there was more than one?”

  “Yes, three of them, actually,” Maria said. “Good night.”

  She and Juan walked back to the doors, and found the young man sitting at the desk with the other man, who was again smoking a cigar.

  “I’d have expected no less from the Diwata of Arayat,” the young man said, looking up at her. “It’s no wonder that Señor Juan of Makiling is besotted with you, Lady Sinukuan.”

  “How did you know that there were three of us?” the man smoking the cigar said.

  “After all the dealings I’ve had with your kind, I am familiar with the powers of each enkanto,” Maria said. “And because of the fear humans have of you, and their complete lack of understanding, they have this tendency to think that you can do everything, which is, of course, completely false. But I knew there had to have been three of you. One, to cause their workers to get lost in the forest, and to get the family members to lost themselves.” She looked at the young man. “Of course, no one else would call the tikbalang Señor, but a fellow tikbalang.”

  The young man bowed again, once to Maria, and another one to Juan. “One must respect one’s elders, of course. It’s an honor to finally meet you, sir.”

  “Yes,” Juan said. He shook the man’s hand. “It is an honor, isn’t it?”

  “I did cast that enchantment on them,” the young man—tikbalang—said. “But I made sure they were well-fed. Teban would have killed me if I didn’t take care of them, especially their kid.”

  The man smoking a cigar glared at the young man.

  “Then another one, who caused the father’s accident,” Maria said. “With a falling tree. And who else could do that, but the very same being that lived in that tree?” She looked at the man smoking a cigar. “A kapre.”

  “You said it yourself a while ago, Lady Sinukuan,” the kapre said. “It was a near-fatal accident. I only meant to shake him up a bit. He deserved it, in any case, for being this arrogant. If anything had happened to him, or his child, it would be all his fault, because it is a father’s duty to ensure the safety of his family.”

  “You’re such a big softie, Teban,” the young tikbalang snickered.

  “And lastly,” Maria said. “One who caused the mother’s rashes and the daughter’s sickness.” She kneeled down, and reached for something underneath the desk. When she stood up again, she held a struggling dwarf in her hands, his red hat askew. “A duwende.”

  She set the duwende down on the desk, and he scurried up to the young man’s shoulders, hiding beneath his long brown-black hair. “We really didn’t mean them any harm,” the duwende said, his voice surprisingly deep. “We only wanted to protect them. We know our land, and we know its dangers. And we also knew that once he started cutting those trees near the hill, nothing could prevent that landslide from happening.”

  “And to their misfortune, that happened sooner rather than later,” the kapre said. “I felt there was something different in the wind, that there was a storm coming. So we had to keep them trapped in the tikbalang’s realm until we could be sure they were safe. But nothing prepared us for how strong the storm was, and when we saw the extent of the destruction to our land, we thought the humans would be safer here than back at home.”

  “And it was a truly wise decision,” Maria said. “And I meant what I said, for you did save them.” She frowned. “But was all of this truly necessary? The tikbalang and the kapre both have human forms. Could you not have just talked to them and told them of how it was unsafe to build there?”

  The kapre looked shocked, as if the idea had never occurred to him, while the young tikbalang only shook his head. “But where would be the fun in that?”

  Juan burst out laughing, and he clapped the young man on the shoulders. “Nice, young one.”

  “Tikbalangs,” Maria sighed. “Sometimes I wonder why I even try.”

  She was about to walk out of the door, when Juan said, “There’s still a few hours left before sunrise, Maria,” he said. “You had better sleep here first.”

  “No, there is work to be done back at Tacloban,” Maria said. “We do better get going.”

  “My Lady, think of yourself first, if only for a little while,” the kapre said. “You need to rest.”

  The duwende emerged from the young tikbalang’s hair, and jumped up to Maria’s shoulders to whisper in her ear. “I know you do not wish to show it, but I can see your fatigue,” he said. “I see it in the shaking of your hands, and in the dark circles around your eyes. The tikbalang can take you to a shorter path back to Tacloban.”

  The young tikbalang nodded enthusiastically.

  “All right,” Maria said. “Only a few hours. You will take care of the Aguelo family, won’t you?”

  “They’re safe here,” the kapre said. “You can count on it.”

  “Right this way, my dear,” Juan said. He gestured towards an empty spot among the refugees, where he had a mat laid out on the floor. He sat down on one end of the blanket, patting the space beside it. “Sleep with me here,” he said.

  Maria glared at him at that (“I didn’t mean anything by that, I swear!” he protested), and looked around the room. “No,” she said. “There is someone here who needs me.”

  And she walked over to the young boy in the corner of the room, still singing to his sister. He was not crying, unlike all of the other children, but Maria saw the tears that were swimming in his eyes, which he held back for his sister’s sake. She held out her arms to him, and soon, he collapsed in them, crying for his lost mother and father.

  Juan gazed at Maria from across the room, watching as a single tear rolled out of her eyes, and down her cheek. “Good night, my love,” he whispered, before closing his eyes. “Or rather, good morning. Tomorrow’s another day.”

  #

  Maria and Juan returned to Leyte, and to the daunting task of helping the survivors rebuild their ravaged lands and ruined lives. More volunteers from all over the archipelago came and helped, and the next weeks kept them all occupied.

  A week later, the mayor of T— returned, completely naked, his face ashen gray, his hair in disarray. When they asked what happened to him, he said he couldn’t remember. But sometimes he would speak of strange dreams, dreams where he was turned into a carabao and made to transfer the wounded survivors to the ports. Doctors said they were all just that, dreams, but the other mayors and leaders made sure that every single one of the victims received aid, even their enemies.

  Maria stood outside the doors of the center, watching as some of the children played a game of patintero in the fields outside. “These people are amazing, aren’t they?” Juan said, materializing at her side, out of
nowhere. “Their resilience is truly admirable.”

  “There’s still a lot of work to do, though,” Maria said. “But watching them like this makes me believe that someday they will be all right again.”

  “Everything will be all right again,” Juan said. “You can count on that.”

  “I’d hate to pin my hopes on the word of a tikbalang,” Maria said with a chuckle. “But you’re right. These people are strong, and no storm can defeat them.”

  She kept smiling as she watched the children play, their laughter easing the ache she felt in her bones, and her heart. And in that moment, she truly did believe the tikbalang’s words.

  Synchronicity

  By Victor Fernando R. Ocampo

  For the third time since he had crawled out of the wreckage, Felix pressed the power button on his phone. He hoped against hope that something, anything, would happen, but nothing did. It was exactly the same as the last time. His phone was inert, impotent.

  “Why am I even alive?” he groaned, oppressed by the silence, of the shapelessness of evening.

  Frustrated, he removed the back cover and took the battery out. He placed it between his palms and shook it desperately. For added measure, he prayed to St. Isidore, the patron saint of the Internet. “Help me,” he asked softly. “Spare me one small charge please, just enough for a status update, just enough for a text.”

  The young man required only enough power to send a quick word for help—one small blip to tell the world where he was and that he was okay. But St. Isidore’s help line, it seemed, was otherwise engaged. His phone remained stubbornly, obstinately dead.

  Despite the wrack of pain, he knew that he had no choice but to walk if he wanted to be rescued. “Forgive me,” he asked his passel of precious saints. “But if you wanted to really help me, you should have just killed me. At least I’d be with her.”

  Felix had totaled his car on a remote and desolate stretch of highway. He hadn’t gone on a road trip in a long while, not since he’d lost his wife in the nightmare of the previous year. Now his foolhardy journey had almost cost him his life. “You’re not the type to travel by yourself,” she’d once warned him. “We’re so used to being together. It would be hell to be on the road alone.”