How to Tame Your Tikbalang Ch. 03

On which thought the TV exploded, along with the lighbulbs and the PS4 console. Whoopsies.

Tala knew deep down inside that the power surge that had caused all the electronics to blow up had come from her, though she kept that thought to herself as she stood up and worked to stem the chaos she'd caused.

Nobody needs to know and maintenance will just say it was one of the usual power surges that hit Metro Manla because of our power-plant problems.

"All right, people, let's stay steady and leave the room calmly, single file to the door," she said out loud. "We know the drill."

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Saturday morning was awash in heavy rain as Tala picked her way through the bowels of the Baclaran public market. She had a live chicken in a cage, its glossy feathers all totally black (she'd checked and the fowl balked and pecked her hard when she inspected it's tailfeathers).

Ginger root. Check. Moringa leaves. Check. Unripe papaya. Check. Bird's eye chilies. Check. Peppercorns. Check. Sea salt. Check. That's it for the wet market, then.

Tala had found the almost transparent spatter of Tikbalang come on her sliding doors

She browsed among the spices and herbs as she waited for the downpour to let up, as most tropical rainshowers did this time of year. She would head on down to the Redemptorist Church, or rather, behind it, where a middle-aged Chinese lady sold hand-dipped beeswax candles at a reasonable price out of a tiny makeshift stall. She'd get herself more lavender incense, perhaps some verbena and sage sticks, too, in case she needed them.

Once the rain had eased, she'd made her way to the little shop, haggled as the tindera expected, and wound up with a bottle of ginseng root in rice wine—allaway froh Xiamen, iha, the Chinese storekeep boasted—and an oblong carbon-steel amulet graven with an eye within a triangle, within the spokes of rays.

"It will keep you safe from the malignos, evil spirits," the Chinese matron in her faded denim apron and gaudy floral print dress told Tala, her chinky black eyes darting behind her customer time and again.

"There is a maligno following you. He is very big. Suzy knows this," the woman said as she pressed the talisman into Tala's hand and wrapped her fingers around it despite Tala's raised eyebrows. "You are what the Filipino call Baylan, ano? I can feel it. So can he. You take and you use. Is a very old anting-anting. Very strong."

With that Suzy the storekeep turned away and put Tala's payment into an old-fashioned cash register and wrote out a receipt. She handed Tala several dried katatataka leaves in a small ziploc bag along with the receipt. "You will need this if the maligno bites you, to keep you here on our side of Lupa. We are Taga-Lupa, we do not belong in their world."

"What do you mean if the maligno bites me?" Tala's unencumbered hand went up to her neck as she asked Suzy this question. Her fingers fluttered over the hickeys and bite marks on her neck beneath her blouse.

"The maligno kidnap Taga-Lupa two ways: They either bite you and break the skin, or they feed you things that have grown in their world," Suzy said, clucking in disapproval over Tala's ignorance. "Then you will follow them no matter what your mind tells you. You are Baylan. You should know this. You should have anting-anting, oraciones, the works. Because maligno like kidnapping Baylans. This is why there are so few of you now."

Shaking her head at Tala's befuddlement, Suzy espostulated: "Hala, just do as I say. If the maligno bites you, you soak these leaves in hot water and press them to the places where the skin is broken.You have a book with you, do you not? Something written by an ancestor? Something only you can read? Read it."

Suzy began muttering in Fookien under her breath and lit joss sticks that she waved in Tala's wake as Tala left her store with eyebrows still cocked high.

+++

It was well past noon by the time Tala got home. She set down the scandalously squawking chicken and her other purchases on the kitchen counter, half-filled her largest stockpot and set it on the stove to boil.

Tala picked up the bundle of candles wrapped in an old edition of the Chinese United Daily News tallboy newspaper and, glancing on the bookmarked page of the Bestiario, set them out in the middle of her sala, which she had cleared of furniture.

She took out the salop of salt, slit it open, set it on the counter and took a handful of the salt and put it in a glass bowl on the kitchen counter. Then she took the rest of the salt and made a circle around the candles she'd positioned according to Beatriz's dictum.

Tala prepared the vegetables and opened a bag of red rice before drawing her trusty, sand-weighted Solingen chef's knife and giving the blade a firm kiss. Then she opened the basket, grabbed the ulikba by its fat neck with both her hands and wrung it, whispering apologies and thanks to the frantically-jerking fowl as it died.

She dropped the dead chicken into the boiling water, rolling it with a long-handled slotted spoon to ensure the bird got properly soaked. She pulled on a pair of pink silicone oven mitts and, thus protected pulled the chicken out and laid it on a pile of kitchen towels.

Tala set about plucking the bird, draining its blood and adding that to the handful of red rice she'd placed in another glass bowl on the counter. She dressed the fowl out using her memories of the process from visits to Guimaras at fiesta time and reduced the chicken to its birdy-parts.

She put the head and feet in the center of the salt circle and candles and set its feathers out to dry on the bilao-the round threshing tray most Filipino households use to sort pebbles and palay grains from milled rice.

By the time she was done, the sky was turning orange and lavender. Sunset. The time to begin her chicken soup ritual had come.

Tala emptied the stock pot into her sink and refilled it with water from the tap. She put the pot on the stove, tossed in the ginger, onions, mashed garlic and chicken, kissed a the handful of salt she'd reserved and sprinkled it into the pot, following up with peppercorns and chilies.

The papaya and moringa leaves would follow in about 30 minutes and she'd let the magic tinola cook another 20 minutes before turning the stove off. Then she'd begin her ritual and change her stars.

+++

Tala stripped naked and laid her clothes on the sofa behind her. She took the amulet Suzy the storekeep had pressed into her hand, unfurled its black leather thong and put it on.

The carbon-steel talisman glinted dully as she moved to extinguish the overhead lights and began lighting the black candles, then the white ones.

The Baylan in Tala took over, her confidence now solid as she carefully scattered the ulikba feathers within the circle. between and around the candles.

She knelt before the chicken head and feet and began to chant the oraciones for protection, the spells claiming her birthright of knowledge, the paeans of thanks to the Old Gods for her innate power with her hands raised to the ceiling, palms up and cupped to hold her magic.

Speaking in old Tagalog, the ancient form and not the modern slang that is so commonly used, Tala called the Tikbalang to her with a chanting rhyme as new and as ancient as all Baylan spells are:

Do not hide in shadow

You will not succeed.

Your plenty will be fallow

If my call you do not heed.

I am Baylan, you will come to me

I am Baylan, you will not be free

Until you manifest and allow me astride

Take me for my desired ride.

Bring me fortune, power, treasure and gold

I bind you to suffer my brutal hold.

Tala took up the chicken head, squeezing its throat and calling on her sympathetic magic to transform that neck into her Tikbalang's neck. She set it down between a black candle and a white candle, picked up the chicken feet and continued her chant.

Your hooves will bring you to my domain

When I say and when I deign

You will bow your head and let fall your mane.

Thence shall I pluck the first golden hair

And give you pleasure in an exchange most fair.

My second call will be louder still

You will bend even more to my will.

Turn about and bend yourself over

Willing or no, you will not recover

The hair of gold I will have without fail

From your lush and beautiful tail.

But protest not for I do bargain

Another night of your bliss without wane

You will be sated, I will be stronger

You will love me even more than ever.

Finally, Tala took nine of the black feathers and tied them in a bunch with one long lock of her hair and sealed it with hot wax from a black, then a white candle.

She ran the feathers over her skin, making electric trails up and down each arm, each leg, circling the light caresses to raise goosebumps of pleasure over her skin.

Tala brought the the feathers to her breasts, caressed and teased her nipples until they stood achingly erect. She visualized Buhawi on the sofa, watching her by the dark reflection on her freshly-cleaned sliding doors.

The Baylan pleasured her cunt with the feathers, holding the labia open as she swept the black softness around and around her clitoris, dipping into her wetness and back again to that knot of nerves until a soft crescendo played through her body.

She imagined Buhawi pulling his cock out of his pants and stroking because he just couldn't help himself. But he could not come yet, and he would not touch her no matter how horny for her he was.

Tala brought herself higher and higher with that brush of feathers, closer to the orgasm she sought. As she came her voice swelled with the closing verse of her spell, the power coursing through her body and into the words.

In her fantasy, Buhawi, too, was coming, his fist pumping furiously, gripping his magnificent cock as he spurted hot, white come all over her breasts and thighs, directly onto her clit and making her orgasm even more intense.

Come to me, open your thighs

Bring your ari even with my eyes

That I might pluck the last golden hair

While on my knees within my lair.

I will win this, doubt that not

You will then know just how hot

This joining will be, how elemental

How you were at birth held and shall

Remain so to be mine alone until

I choose to release you from my will.

Panting from the chanting and her orgasm, Tala sagged to her butt on the floor. She'd been straining her body into an arc limned by the candles' glow.

The power surging through her had ebbed, contracted back into her body to throb slowly, steadily in that part of a woman now called the Grafenberg spot.

She slowly put out the candles and swept up the floor, putting everything in biodegradable trash bags ready for dumping down the building's trash chute.

Without bothering to get dressed, Tala took a bowl of the tinola and some fish sauce for dipping, scooped some hot white rice and ate her magic meal with gusto and in silence. The ginger-laced soup soothed her throat and the chicken meat filled her belly quite nicely. She cleaned up, put the excess food in the refrigerator and headed for a shower and then bed.

Take that, nasty Tikbalang. I'll be fucking you back and over soon enough. Meet me in the dream if you dare. These were Tala's last coherent thoughts as she fell asleep, girded well now to give as well as she'd gotten.