What The Fireleaves Danced

"Terrible beings walk the scarred land. Maligno, they are called. Creatures of evil and darkness, they are. They thrive the most during the night, and some wise-men speculate that they were brought about after the oft-whispered Final War of Sunder Nevertheless, this gives us cause to avoid travel during the night, or to pray to the Apo for their safety. The maligno stalk, and they do not discriminate. They are fear manifested."

- Katalonan Lona, 394th Year of the Masked Moon

"A survivor?"

Dimalanta nodded. "One was able to escape."

"Oh dear."

Dimalanta nodded. "We observed the barangay from afar before the attack. Their defenses were weak – they had three maharlikas, and their main protector was still their Datu. Our maharlikas were numerous – about twenty of us bandits were maharlikas of Lakan Gaputan. We were bred for war. Barangay Sariman depended on their Datu."

"That is true," she said, her voice croaking. She had walked over to the makeshift tripod and stirred the soup within. It was chicken. Dimalanta could hear the crows of c.o.c.ks and roosters from outside. "How did you not suffer the wrath of the diwata?"

"I knew they had some sort of powerful spiritual protection," said Dimalanta. "So I told Gaputan to spare a katalonan for us. Ditaan. A katalonan of marvelous skill. She held back the diwata with her own force of will."

"That's… incredible."

"It is," said Dimalanta. "The boat has since left, and so I am not sure of what has happened to them. No doubt enjoying the riches that we have plundered from Sariman's barangay."

"No doubt. Would you like to eat?"

Dimalanta nodded. "Dying has a way of activating your appetite."

Manang chuckled. "I could only imagine." She moved over to a part of the desk that encircled her entire kubo, sweeping aside various bleached and yellowed bones and berries crushed within a marble bowl and a masher. She picked up two clay bowls that looked relatively clean, and a ladle that hung from a makeshift wooden hook, which itself hung from one of the strands of long leaves. "Oh, would you be a dear and reach for that?"

Dimalanta moved off of the table he had laid on. As he got to his feet, the world swirled for a bit and he almost fell to the side, but he managed to control his footing. He shook his head, hearing Manang say, "You're going to experience some dizziness for a short while." Nevertheless, he reached for the ladle hanging from the ceiling and gave it to Manang.

"Thank you, dear." She walked over to the clay pot cooking above the flames and poured chicken soup into the clay bowls. With that done, she laid the bowls on the table, pushing away an entire skeleton of… something non-human. It fell to the ground, along with a pair of horns, and some shavings of gold. "Sit."

Dimalanta nodded and smiled, sitting on the chair. He closed his eyes and thanked the Apo for the blessing. "You still pray to the Apo?" asked Manang.

Dimalanta nodded once again, before bringing up the soup to his lips and sipping. Warm, meaty heat poured down his throat in what felt like ambrosia entering the lips of a mortal roach. It was amazing, and he felt like he couldn't stop.

He managed to, anyway, and he put the bowls down. "I do, yes."

"Pardon me," said Manang. "I always thought pirates and bandits like you don't revere the Apo anymore."

Dima grinned. "We pirates and bandits have our own Patron, you know."

"Oh? Well the vast plenty of Apo that oversee Lakungdula escape my memory."

"Makanduk," he said. "That's his name. We pray to him before every voyage, before every raid. I pray to different Apo, personally, but revere the Moon God Apung Bu-an most of all."

"Oh? The King of the Skies, the Child God… Why is that?"

He sipped on the chicken soup. "I wasn't born into this life. I was born high up, in the mountains of Mayakon, among the Lipod. I revered the Moon God then as well," he sipped. "The Lipod are the friends of Bu-an, after all."

"Ah." She nodded. "Yes, of course. So, you worship Apung Bu-an because of your roots?"

Dimalanta nodded. Then he shrugged. "Sure. He also gifted me with the Sibat of the Bakonawa, right before I left seeking to become a maharlika of a Barangay Datu."

"And you became a maharlika of Gaputan?"

Dimalanta shook his head. "I first became the maharlika of Datu Igaano, far north the Karikit River. I met my wife, there. The love of my life. The fire of my soul."

Manang chuckled. "Ah, yes. Young love. It must've been amazing."

"It was," said Dimalanta. "She was."

Manang grinned, putting her chin on her hand. "And what happened then?" She sipped on her own bowl. The first time she had eaten at all during the course of their meal, Dima realized.

"Then Gaputan himself arrived, along with his host of maharlika. Fifty-seven of them, in all. I fought with them, but it was a slaughter, almost. I managed to save myself and my wife – who was to bear child – by pledging my allegiance to Gaputan, becoming his fifty-eighth."

"Ah," Manang said. Dima nodded and sipped. "So right now, your family is…"

"In the Sea Lakandom of Lakan Gaputan."

"Lakan?"

The maharlika nodded. "It has been almost twenty years since that raid," said Dimalanta. "Gaputan had subsumed and raided so many barangays and Datus that his barangay had become a conglomerate of other barangays. Thus he was named Lakan, who lives in the ship known as Mabangis, with a hundred other sh.i.p.s that follows after his trail, creating a city of their own. A bastard, hodgepodge city known as Hukbo-Dagat."

"Ah, yes," Manang said, nodding. "I've heard countless stories about the Boat City of Hukbo-Dagat. You reside there?"

Dimalanta nodded. "Along with my wife and daughter. Gaputan holds them in his grasp."

"And so you fight for the Lakan Gaputan," said Manang. "That is an interesting position, for sure. Is this something coerced, or something you enjoy doing?"

Dima stared at the empty clay bowl before him, his eyes almost glazing over the fact that Manang had said anything. His thoughts swirled about his head, and he thought about how he would answer, despite the back of his mind already telling him that he did, in fact, already know the answer.

He shook his head.

"Ah," said Manang. "So you wish to be free?"

"I wish to return to Mayakon," said Dimalanta, and the wistful tone in his voice was unmistakable. "I wish to be once again with the Lipod, free and worshipping the Moon God. I wish once again to be among the stars, high up in the mountains, among the wind-people, with the love of my life and the gift of the gods." He realized he had been looking up, at the ceiling, his voice reaching out to the heavens, as if Kapalaran could hear him. He looked back down at Manang. "I wish to be free, mangkukulam."

"Seeing as you were coerced, were there any clauses of your fealty?"

"That I raid fifty barangays for the Lakan."

"Oh? And which one is Datu Sariman's?"

"The fiftieth. And thus I must kill the last survivor."

Manang let out an elongated, rasping 'ah'. "I understand." She said, and she rose up and turned to the cooking pot. With a snap of her finger, the clay pot hovered up into the air, and then shot into her hands. She caught it – despite her hands being brittle as bone – and she poured more chicken soup to it. When she was done, with Dimalanta watching her all the way, she turned and placed the refilled bowl in front of Dimalanta. "Eat. You are hungry. Near-death does that to you."

Dimalanta raised an eyebrow. "Have you ever been at the gates of the Sulad?"

Manang shrugged. "One could say that." She stood up and – with the long bone staff of hers – walked over to the door of her kubo. "Eat up, and you can take another day resting here. You will need it. The diwata will be fiercely angered at you – at least, those that their anitowan have conscripted into their help, near Borders of Sariman's Barangay. You will need all the strength you need."

"Where are you going?"

"To attune the wards to your Soul's Frequency, so you will not be fried when you try to leave. Oh, and for more chicken."

"Why are you helping me, mangkukulam?" asked Dima, rising to his feet. At the sound of him saying mangkukulam, his eyes fell to his emptied bowl. "Did you—"

"Oh, don't be so crass!" She said from outside. She was moving about now, walking to each of the four points of the house and tapping each corner as she walked. The walls were thin, because Dimalanta could hear her say "I don't poison people! Mangkukulam have a bad reputation with you, we know. We may be witches, but we're not assassins or murderers."

Soon enough she was done and arrived once again at the door. She began chasing after chicken. They moved too fast, though, so she decided to check up on the crops she had planted. "Dimalanta, was it? Be a dear and help me grab one of these chickens if you can. I have to prepare for dinner and breakfast."

Dimalanta blinked, somewhat taken aback by her sudden familiarity. He realized then that he was, technically, in her house after all, and that he should respect that. He finished his soup, and then with a sigh, walked out to her.

Lowering his head to move out of the door, Dima walked out into a sunlit spot in the forest. Trees and vines still grew around the house; it was as if the house was nestled into a grove within the trees, or more like the trees grew around the house in an embrace. The small front yard had a wooden fence that surrounded it, and in that front yard were all the chickens scratching at the dusty soil, pecking at seeds. There were lines of crops resting against the front of the house, and more outside the fence. Manang was going through the crops in front of the house, picking out various herbs and spices. The crops were the most varied kind. She would pick out berries that were as black as the abyss, and then pick up what seemed to be a pepper that had that crimson that denoted it was dangerous. There was one that seemed to be a flower with impossibly translucent leaves. "I know of a great way to season chicken."

Dimalanta raised an eyebrow. "Who raised these barriers?"

"The tamawo," said Manang. "I helped them with something, and in return, I asked them if they could help me create a fence for my chickens. Please grab one of them."

Dimalanta managed a chuckle as he walked up to one of the standing chickens, unmoving from his spot. "Why don't you tie them down?"

"I did," said Manang. "But this one managed to get free. Infuriating."

The rogue maharlika reached for the one free chickens – he saw that there were two others underneath basket ages, and one tied down to a post – and it darted out of the way. Dimalanta moved just as fast as the running chicken. The chicken darted to the right, and Dimalanta reached it in two strides, one hand grasping the chicken's back and the other picking it up. "Should I kill it?"

In a nonchalant gesture, Manang nodded and waved her hand. Dimalanta snapped the neck of the chicken, and it flapped its wings in one final attempt to get free. From both his grasp as well as the final cold embrace of death.

"Put it inside, please. In the kitchen counter."

"Kitchen counter?"

"Among the other skeletons of chickens."

Raising an eyebrow at that again, Dimalanta walked back into the house and immediately saw to his right a pile of chicken skeletons. He placed the chicken there, leaving it bleeding.

As he turned around he saw a glinting piece of gold hanging from above the skeletons, hanging by some hook to the roof. It was some sort of pendant – an agimat, most likely – adorned with various other precious jewels and bound together by strong rattan fiber.

Looking at the agimat, Dimalanta reached for his own agimat necklace… and found it not to be there. His gift from Bu-an himself – a Moonstone – gone from his being. He'd always thought it to be there, never leaving him, the one thing that kept him bound to Mayakon, and reminded him of his true goal.

With the thought of his agimat gone, he looked around as well for the rest of his martial array. He realized his kalasag and arquebus and Sibat were all gone. Dimalanta was now a warrior without his implements of war.

Dimalanta walked out just as Manang straightened her back from picking up all those spices and herbs. "Mangkukulam," said the maharlika. "Where are my weapons?" He saw that his armor – something that he didn't inherit from living in the Mayakon, and was something he earned as a maharlika under the Lakan – of steel and chain was nowhere to be seen from any nook or cranny of the kubo. A white silken shirt and some brown trousers were all he had.

"Weapons?" Manang said, raising an eyebrow and then walking past him. She walked into her kubo, and Dimalanta followed after her. She walked up to the kitchen counter, all the while saying, "I don't know where your precious weapons are. I found you with Adira in that current state. I seem to remember some putot holding them, though…"

"Yes," said Dimalanta. "Where are they? Even my moonstone necklace is gone."

"Oh, that was moonstone? Fascinating. So you've met the Moon Child God himself?"

Dimalanta nodded. "Yes, but that's beside the point. I need to find my weapon and my agimat. And quickly."

"Right right, I know how you maharlikas can be with your weapons." She sighed. "But, my son, it will be night soon! We will look for it in the morning. You will be safe here. During the night, there are many maligno lurking about. You surely would not want to encounter an aswang during this time, right?"

Dimalanta frowned. His shoulders had been tense all this time, he realized. He let them down, relaxed. "Yes. That is the logical thing to do."

Manang grinned that toothy grin, and turned around. "Of course it is. Now, be a dear and help me cook this chicken. You do know how to cook, yes?"

"I know some," said Dimalanta, suddenly awkward; a warrior being asked by a witch to cook a delicious chicken meal with him.

"Now I don't have any fancy stoves or cooking implements, so we'll have to make do with our tripod."

"We can probably work something out," said Dimalanta as he went ahead and helped Manang with the cooking.

"While the Sun is still out, why don't you go and collect clean water for the rice? Put them in this pot."

Dimalanta blinked, and then nodded. "I do not have my weapons."

Manang reached up and pulled down one of the many bracelets that hung from a rack. This one had been fashioned with some sort of white stone. "This is white jade. With it being connected to a similarly white material – in this case silver – you are by all means invisible to anyone that might wish harm upon you."

"Ah, it's an agimat."

Nodding, Manang gave it to Dimalanta, who slipped it into his wrist. "Now there is a clean stream to the west of this kubo. There will be a dirt path that will lead there. Follow that. It should be simple enough, and the stream is overflowing with clean water."

Dimalanta nodded. "I will keep safe."

"Kapalaran winds around you, maharlika. You need not worry, unless you anger the Kumakatok, of course."

* * *

Dimalanta walked out of the small kubo housing that they had, winding through trees and vines until he saw that dirt path that led west. The Sun was directly behind him now, hiding behind the horizon, ready to plunge into darkness. Adlayari handing the reins of the sky to the Halea, Masked Goddess. Now she puts on her Mask of Light once again as she turns to face the world. The protean mask that was, at present, a copper Crescent.

Dimalanta quickened his pace, afraid of being caught without his weapons at dusk. The period between night and day also was a ripe place for monsters and maligno to rise into the night, from their graves or their groves or their shadowy hiding places.

Dimalanta reached the stream as the Sun's last few rays shined upon them. The sky had turned into that leaden pink, now. That strange moment as the Moon caught the sky from the Sun's toss. Ulalen rose.

Dimalanta fell on one knee and gathered water into the clay pot he had been given. Once it was full, he looked up, rising to his feet.

And saw another human looking straight at him from the other side of the river. Dimalanta froze.

It was a man. His eyes didn't move, and they were bulbs of pure black. The man simply stood there, staring at Dimalanta, wearing nothing but a brown bahag from waist down. He did not move, even though he had suddenly appeared there, and had not been there before.

Dimalanta realized he couldn't move from fear. He silently cursed the mangkukulam for making him believe her agimat worked. Maybe there was a kink in the construction, something wrong with the creation of the charm. Did it work? Did it not?

Dimalanta waited. The humanoid creature turned its head to the right. An unnerving motion – even to the battle-hardened maharlika – for it looked as if the usual muscles that would've moved did not. He did not see his neck strain, or muscles bundle. All he saw was his head move in that inhuman fashion.

When the creature had looked away, Dimalanta was already running. He turned and dashed down the path he had come from. He couldn't depend on the light of the day, neither the light of the Moon, for Ulalen shone so quietly. He was the meekest of all the Seven Moon siblings.

The obfuscating darkness pierced his vision, and Dimalanta tripped and fell. Ignoring the pain and the bleeding knee he got up and kept running. Jumping over the branches that he could see, and falling over the ones he could not. He slipped on moss covered roots; vines and branches clawed and grasped at him, tearing away at the little clothing that he had.

He closed his eyes, praying to Bu-an to bring him home safely. To let him continue his goal, his life.

And then saw an opening in the darkness of the forest. A sliver of starlight deep within the murky wood-dark of the trees. Was that the clearing to the Mangkukulam's kubo? To Manang's witchcraft wards?

He burst out into the opening, and tripped over another set of fallen branches. He fell on a knee, but managed to keep himself upright.

Cold prickled the length of his spine when he heard the trickle of the stream.

Dimalanta looked up, and saw that same, ash-skinned, bald-headed creature that was definitely not human. This time, it was across the stream.

* * *

Manang ran.

She had used various herbs on her feet and bones. Despite being around a hundred years old, age and time is one of the easiest things to trick with sorcery. By virtue of concocting a minasa infusion from various ingredients – specifically, the fate-weaver spiders' webbings steeped in hot water from Biringan, mixed with the leaves of a mahiya plant and the ground bones of a magindara. It tasted horrible and felt like drinking liquid sulfur, but she had drunken that fifty years ago.

And she hadn't changed. Oh sure, maybe her stature had change, and her appearance, but not any of her strength. She grinned that witch grin as she ran, cackling to herself about how appearances truly can deceive.

She had brought a leather sling with her, filled with fireleaves mixed with ash from the volcano Laat that rose from the Ignaya Gulf to the far south of Liway. As she reached the opening where the stream could be heard, she felt the presence of a maligno almost immediately.

Manang burst into the scene from a different point, though, and she stood to the left of the two entities in the small clearing, which was cut in twain by a stream. She found herself standing on a rock, looking down at the two of them. Dimalanta, handsome and strong, on his knees, bleeding, and without the white jade anting-anting she had given him.

On the other side, was an ashen-skinned man, that was definitely not an tamawo of any kind. As he stepped forward toward the fear-frozen Dimalanta, he opened his mouth and his jaws unhinged. He fell on all fours as he transformed into a chimerical, horrible creature.

Manang wasted no time. In one hand she held her bone staff, tipped now with an obsidian fixture. She opened the airtight bag of fireleaves and Laat ash, scooped out a handful of it and threw it in an arc in the air.

"Aswang!" she rasped, and she swung her obsidian stone staff. The stone met with the fireleaves and ash and air, and ignited an inferno. The fireleaves reacted to the flames, meshing together with the ash to create daggers of flame burning red and white that flew towards Aswang, as if the swinging of the obsidian tipped staff was a bat she had used.

The creature, as expected, was quick. It darted to the side, avoiding most of the sharp daggers of flame, which exploded at various points in between Dimalanta and the aswang. Flames splashed and exploded out into the various leaves and dry detritus. Manang cursed, and pulled out a bag seemingly made of stitched together feathers of a king eagle. This bag she threw like a cusser toward the direction of the growing wildfire. As the bag hit the ground and the twine that kept it closed unfurled, a huge gale of wind swirled about the entire clearing, bringing the flame with it, whipping at Dimalanta's hair and Manang's clothes. It even moved the aswang a bit.

When the winds died down, the flame was gone.

The aswang was quick.

It blurred into a semblance of shadow, darted up the rock and then was on her in a horrible beast form. An abhorrent, vaguely lupine beast that resembled no animal but a creature of nightmares. Its silhouette appeared in front of Manang, its eyes burning crimson.

"Back!" shouted Manang, as she dove backwards, dug her fingers into the rough soil and flung it at the advancing demon. She screamed out an incoherent word, a word that belonged to the speech of the Apo. As she wove power into the dirt, and unlocked its hidden symbolism with that snarling evocation.

Incantations was something she had always been bad at, but this particular Incantation she remembered. Clearly. It had kept her safe for way too many times, and is why she always brings with her a pocketful of soil if she was ever in a setting without any soft earth. "Ba'leka!"

The dirt vibrated, and as soon as it made contact with both the ground and the shadowy aswang, it exploded, transmogrifying into sharp lances of stone jutting up from the earth, all pointed at the advancing beast. It threw the aswang back, off the rock and down the level ground below.

Manang hit the ground rolling, and she ended up on her feet, crouching and ready. She walked up to the stone lances jutting from the ground, now dripping with some black fluid. The mangkukulam jumped up on top of it, watching now from that vantage point as the aswang rolled and rolled and then came to a stop. It looked up at her, staring at her with two, burning balls for eyes, its entire body a black void, and its figure that of a mix of a spider and a wolf. It was quite literally a solid shadow, walking amongst the living.

Manang looked down at it with disdain. She lifted her bone staff tipped with obsidian, and then she took a pinch of the fireleaf- Laat ash mixture. She sprinked that into the air once again, and then ignited it with a scratch of the staff's obsidian head. Daggers of flame sparked to life again and she flung them at the aswang with another swing of her staff.

The aswang, of course, was quick. It flashed to the right, and then to the left, evading knives of flame, allowing the grasses to catch fire. It blurred forward again, and Manang cursed herself. The aswang was too fast for her to catch.

As she thought this, the demon was climbing up the stone once again.

Manang scrolled in her mind through the multitudes of witchery that she knew, seeking to find one that would help herself protect against the aswang, but she found that she had devoted most of her life to keeping out of fights, and the only spell that would deal harm in a straight up fight was the fireleaf and Laat ash mixture. Something that the aswang could dodge readily.

She hadn't brewed up any minasa – herbal infusions – for this either. Mystic potions she could've readily used to create spontaneous sorcerous effects would've helped tremendously, but she was all out. The aswang reached her in a matter of moments, and extended a strange, unhinged claw that looked like it hadn't been part of its body beforehand. Cursing, Manang decided in that moment, right before she was struck by the claw, to shift.

Two can play that game, aswang.

She had done it before, and there was a time where shifting was like second nature to her. It had been like moving from a walk to a sprint. Of course, that was when she spent her life back in the city, almost thirty years ago. Many things had changed during that span.

Manang grasped the owl feather hanging from her bone staff.

The beastly claw of the aswang met thin air as Manang shifted into a hawk-owl, lean and quick. She flapped her wings and ascended into the air, far away from the reach of the aswang. Her head throbbed, this much magickal power forced in such an instant, without much preparation and after losing so much practice with it. But now, high up into the air, with Ulalen's single sleepy eye watching over them, Manang in her hawk-owl shift darted up into the clouds and pierced the dark blue veil of the sky. She reached the height of her flapping, and then she dropped, plummeting like a dark brown meteor from the sky.

Manang reshifted back into her human form as she reached the ground on the other side of the stream. The hawk-owl had been perfect for quick turnings and emergency landings. As she landed, she winced once again, her abstinence from the usage of her shifting witchery affecting her physical prowess. Manang grasped her bone staff as she hit the ground.

The aswang was still on top of the rock; it had watched as the mangkukulam vaulted through the air. Manang grimaced as the aswang moved again,

It jumped from the rock. A great, inhuman leap that cleared the entire space between her and it.

It was a terrifying sight to behold, this black beast sailing through the air, staring at you the entire time as it fell towards you. It was staring the inevitability of death straight on at the face.

Manang thought fast. She snarled another word from the Dawn of Time, pointed at the rushing water. The power of symbolism was something vital in the art of the kulam. It was how kulam worked at all. The manipulation of the physical world by moving around something spiritually connected to it. These could be words, or various herbs and specific magical ingredients that resonate with something, such as fireleaves resonating with fire. These could be gestures, or various implements that strengthen the symbolic link. It's no wonder why mangkukulam use bones of a human to affect humans, and geomancers from the far southern country of Kikuji-Mushi use gems and jade to manipulate the earth.

The human body itself has a symbolic resonance. One of the easiest things to manipulate in in the art of the kulam is water, for it is fluid and obedient, flexible and pliable, yet powerful when used correctly.

Within the corpus of the human body resides water. The body is filled with water. If this knowledge is known, then water may be manipulated by symbolizing the human body as a vessel of rushing water.

Manang winced. Her growling, snarling evocation with that ancient language aided her symbolization – it was the Apo Word for rushing water. "Mu'tasa!"

With her hand outstretched, she flung her fingers up, her body all but breaking with the force of having to change the course of a rushing stream so suddenly. She fell on one knee as she flung her hand up, at the aswang sailing through the air in that devil-arc.

Water exploded, the stream jetted out of its course, and it was as if a blade of water had come up to strike the demon. The water slammed straight onto the aswang, knocking it out of the air and tumbling out of its forward momentum. But the water didn't only strike, it claimed.

The water grasped at the now flailing aswang, and pulled it with it, downstream. The aswang gurgled, and screamed with a cacophony that resembled wasps buzzing as they died. It tried to fight free, but it was as if the water was its supernatural cage, bringing it along to whatever river the stream flowed into, and subsequently out into the sea, or to be destroyed by crocodiles or maybe the vast clans of the buwaya or siyokoy.

On her knees know, Manang's hands were joined together, clasping each other, fingers intertwined and outstretched at the river. She was shaking, and power burst from her in waves. And then, she collapsed. The elderly woman fell forward, onto her elbows, and she shuddered, vomiting out blood and liquid.

* * *

Dimalanta watched the act of black magic and aswang play out before him. He had lived with the Lipod – winged engkanto themselves with the ability to control the winds – but he hadn't seen such an invoking of sorcery such as this.

He watched as daggers of flame erupted behind the aswang from his perspective, and saw this elderly woman fling them down at the aswang. He watched the aswang retch and transform into that grotesque abomination of a being, that moving shadow that ate, its tongue made of liquid darkness trailing out from its unhinged mouth. It moved with a preternatural speed that could only be made akin to that of a flowing night. That impending blackness that accompanied the vanishing of the day and the arrival of the night.

When it reached the rock, the witch Manang dove back and created stone from thin-air, jutting out and flinging the aswang back. Then came the rain of fire, all with that witch waving her staff.

The aswang was quick though, and evaded the flames, and reached up to her, but she… transformed into an owl and reappeared on the other side. And then she diverted the stream, a blade of water slicing the aswang and bringing it with the flow of the river. She was the god of rivers, in that instant, commanding the forces with nary but her movement of her finger. There was no technology or instrument or tools that required it.

Dimalanta, at the end of it all, was more afraid of Manang than the aswang. His entire body was shuddering, and that primal fear rose up from his heart, like a well claiming him. That inherent wrongness of watching the natural world be manipulated. That primeval fear of the unknown.

When the maharlika found his footing and regained his composure, he rose to his feet, staring still at that slight shower borne from the exploding river. He saw, through the slight mist that followed: Manang, on her elbows and knees, heaving, her brittle frame looking like it was about to break.

Dimalanta walked over to her, trudging through the t.h.i.g.h-high stream, taking advantage of the momentary stop of flow thanks to that miracle that Manang had managed. When he reached her, she was raising one foot, planting it onto the ground. Her bone staff lay beside her.

"Are you okay?"

Manang nodded. She gestured for her bone staff, and Dimalanta grasped it and gave it to her. The slight shower and mist had matted her hair to the sides of her bony face. The maharlika offered his hand to the mangkukulam.

Manang looked up at him, her eyes obviously tired. She grasped Dima's hand, and got up to her feet, yet still leaned against her bone staff.

She shook her head. "Carry me, maharlika."

"What?"

"You heard me."

Dimalanta blinked, and then lifted the witch, carrying her in front of him. She muttered something once again. "Your bracelet is gone."

The maharlika furrowed his eyebrows. He looked down on his right wrist to find that statement true. Manang continued, "It's why that aswang saw you in the first place. Most probably snagged by some branch. My Incantation protects us," she said. "Quickly. Back to my kubo."

Dimalanta nodded, and hurried back to the kubo of Manang.

* * *

They ran into no problems the next time they plunged into the clearing.

As if some otherworldly force was guiding him, Dimalanta leapt over the roots he had fallen over before, and ducked underneath branches that had scratched at him. All the while Manang was sound asleep, cradled in his arms.

They reached the kubo in a matter of minutes. Dimalanta gasped for air, breathing heavily, as chills still ran down his spine. He could hear infernal whisperings crowding his ears, speaking to him in intonations of death and fear. He saw shadows flitting from tree to tree, cracks of twigs and branches and detritus underneath the maligno's feet.

Dimalanta ran past the wards of the kubo and into the kubo itself.

The whisperings stopped. The chill that ran up his spine like an icy serpent receded, melting away. Within the kubo, the bonfire heating the bowl suspended by the makeshift tripod still blazed, as if warding off any monster that might come tonight.

"Put me down," said Manang, startling Dimalanta, who had thought she was asleep. He did so, positioning her so that she could stand. Once her feet were on the ground, she quickly walked over to one of the desks, grabbing at a vial with a bright, clear liquid with little, indiscernible particles within. It slopped out of the vial like slime. She finished it in one gulp, and exhaled.

There was a silence, as they both gathered their breaths.

"I guess there will be no rice, tonight," she said, turning to look at Dimalanta.

The maharlika shrugged. "Is the chicken ready at least?"

Manang managed a grin, and nodded. They both set to eating the roasted chicken.