How to Ride a Tikbalang Ch. 05

For those who are unfamiliar with the words "vinta" and "caracoa," these were warships. The vinta has a prow made for ramming other ships with and was propelled by both wind in their sails and rowing, as was the caracoa. The difference between the two is that the caracoa was larger, had two decks and carried a poet on board who served as both timekeeper and lore-keeper. He beat the rhythm to which the oarsmen moved on a drum while chanting the epic of his people's oral history-no mean feat, I will tell you, especially in a pitched battle. If push came to shove, the poet had to be a warrior as well and he was proficient with spear, short sword and shield.

I also introduce you to my favorite dessert: Halo-halo (direct translation is "mix-mix") and the pronunciation is hah-loh-hah-loh. Just in case you do decide to visit and give it a try. :)

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"Sinukuan used to be the most beautiful of us all," Adora began slowly. "She was the most open-hearted and joyful of us. If you were sad, she would dance and sing to cheer you up. If you were hungry, Sinukuan knew and she responded quickly by bringing you food prepared by her own hands. She was a very good cook, something that went well with her generous soul."

"You said she used to be the most beautiful of you," Jinx said when Adora paused for breath. "Why the use of the past tense?" Her brow furrowed in confusion, Jinx met the sadness in Adora's eyes with the puzzlement in hers.

"Well, changeling, we are tied to our mountains—or volcanoes, as the case may be," Adora began fidgeting with an ornate black and gold fountain pen she'd taken from atop a short, metal filing cabinet to the right of her desk, the motion betraying how disturbed the Diwata was with this part of her tale. "When our homes suffer, so do we. Mt. Arayat, which is Sinukuan's home, has been neglected, abused, even. Its flanks have been shorn of its old glory of forest. Some parts near its base have been pocked deeply with mine shafts for the minerals and metals deep in the roots of Arayat. She is no longer the beauty she once was when the people she sheltered had loved her well."

"Wait a minute, I thought Diwatas were goddesses, immortal? How can mortals harm them?" Cocoy couldn't help shooting this question, but he knew he needed answers, if only to keep Jinx from suffering the same fate if he could.

"Being immortal is not the same as being invincible," Adora said as she smiled ruefully at the trio, flipping the fountain pen in her hand yet again. "If only it were so. Sometimes it is a curse, immortality. Especially when you are as badly hurt as Sinukuan, who loved the people who lived at the base of Arayat as if she'd given birth to them herself."

"These people had come to her seeking shelter, for the goddess Bulan no longer answered their appeals for help and protection, for it was usually Bulan who sheltered the gentle folk when the warriors clashed," Adora said with a sigh. "I understand that Bulan was battling her brother Arao then, and so could not help for she herself was sorely besieged. Thus were the tribal wars killing these people, simple farmers and fishers who fled the spears, arrows and spells cast by the warriors of both tribes intent on annihilating one another. You have to remember that these islands we live in were once peopled by warrior tribes, headhunters, cannibals, even soldiers who went out on the sea in their vintas and caracoas to patrol and battle pirates along the sealanes—as well as by gentle folk who tilled the land and went out on the ocean's breast to catch fish. This archipelago, after all, is the cradle of the brave."

The Diwata of Mt. Mayon closed her eyes and took a deep breath before she continued, her face strained, as if she were reliving a very bad memory.

"These people arrived at the foot of Mt. Arayat with nothing but whatever rags they wore and small packs of food that would, at best, last them ony a day or less. They were rail-thin from the forced rationing of extended conflict that had left their fields and boats scorched, their skins broken with scratches from trekking through rainforest and leech-bites from traversing streams and they bore infections in those wounds. They were limping from the distance they'd walked across forest and plain and Sinukuan saw them, her tender heart melting in pity," Adora's voice was threaded through with something close to sad pride, as if she admired Sinukuan, even if she thought the Diwata had acted foolishly.

"Sinukuan healed their hurts and brought them fruit from her own gardens. She sent clear, cool water down to them, forming the Pampanga river while she was at it. Eventually they settled down in peace and welcomed her when she walked among them. They danced with her and some of their strong young men worshipped her body as it was meant to be adored when she needed their touch. They even made songs in her name that are still sung today, but not so often anymore," Adora said, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

"So what happened to Sinukuan?" Kidlat was losing patience for the long-winded tale, but he did his best to inject some respect in his tone as he uttered the query. It would not do to piss off Mt. Mayon's guardian—he'd just seen how hot she could get and that kind of heat would be deadly to him, considering that he remained mortal and untamed.

"The descendants of the Taga-Lupa Sinukuan sheltered and cared for forgot her," Adora said, her voice bitter and angry. The temperatures inside her office began to rise subtly, air-conditioning notwithstanding. "The people of the town began to think of her only as a myth, a legend lost in the mists of the past. They inter-married with the Spanish colonists, and the Americans who bought the Philippines from Spain, with the Chinese traders, with travelers from India and the Arabian peninsula who had come to trade or spread their own religions as evangelists."

"By this time, some of the men had lost their respect for their women and Sinukuan's trysts when she sought out the men she needed became brutal assaults on her body instead of worship. They treated her like a whore instead of the goddess she is," Adora's body vibrated with remembered anger as she spoke, bitterness giving her voice a hard edge.

"That was bad for Sinukuan and it resulted in her assailants burning to death before she was sated. Though even that was not as bad as Sinukuan's beloved townsfolk forgetting their own roots, their own history, and Sinukuan with those things. They lost who they were as the blood of their tribal ancestors became more and more diluted," the Diwata added, her voice wry and pitchy as she continued with the harsh fate Sinukuan suffered.

"They stopped passing the stories of their ancestors from parent to child. They forgot who they were and they forgot who she was as they lived and died and had children who now live in these modern times. They brought in massive illegal logging and pit-mining and forgot the debt of lives they owed to gentle, sweet Sinukuan."

Again, Adora drew a breath and looked each member of the trio in the eye to make sure they'd absorbed what she said as she gently set the fountain pen down on her desk. Then she continued her story, her shoulders a bit less proud than when she'd begun the tale.

"Sinukuan would walk among the Taga-Lupa each time their transgressions scarred her, bringing them food as was her habit. She would gently sing the song they'd made for her to remind them of how they had once loved her, of how she loved them," the Diwata's voice practically dropped to a whisper. "Each time they would remember, but for shorter and shorter periods, until the mines dug into her mountain pocked her face and limbs so badly that she became unrecognizable as our beautiful Sinukuan."

"When she saw she could no longer sway them to honor their relationship, she left a final gift of a feast in the town plaza and the people gathered to watch the old, ugly crone she had become throw off her shawl and reveal the damage they had done to her by pitting and shearing the trees from her mountain." Horror had crept into Adora's voice, as if the story of Sinukuan's abuse had happened just moments before this conversation instead of centuries ago.

"Then she told them she'd had enough, that the Taga-Lupa could not keep their word. She told them she would no longer provide for them or love them, for they no longer loved her, or even respected her. She has retreated even from us, the Diwatas who loved her and had been warning her not to get too close to the Taga-Lupa. She withdrew even from us, who would have healed her and held her as she cried. I know. I tried to see her. So did the Diwatas of Mt. Banahaw and Mt. Apo. We used to be closer than what you humans call sisters," Adora nodded in Cocoy's direction.

Jinx could feel the storm surge of emotion Adora was transmitting to the three of them within the confines of her office. The heavy beat of the club's dance music felt so far off, as if they'd been teleported to a space apart from Pepe's Pole.

Adora concluded her tale with this warning. "This is a cautionary tale to all Diwata, to all who are of the Other Land. This is why we don't reveal ourselves to just any mortal. They do not understand their own lore, are either afraid of it or draw all the wrong conclusions from it and abuse us. Oh, it would be so easy to annihilate them, but the SkyFather will not have it, nor will our EarthMother. It is so ironic that we are the elders in this beknighted place, yet we must hide to thrive."

"With all due respect," Kidlat spoke up, rising from his seat to pace to Adora's desk and back, pausing between to and fro to ask his question, "when was the last time you saw Sinukuan?"

"The last time we saw Sinukuan was in 1991, when Mt. Pinatubo erupted. She was carrying a changeling in her arms and she had chosen a family for the changeling. The infant she took in exchange came into my care and I raised her until it was time to again make the change," Adora said. "That changeling Sinukuan brought to Lupa was you, Jinx, I can feel it now. You were born into troubled times, my dear. When she switched you and that human girl back, she didn't even make herself felt to us."

Reaching for a handkerchief from her tote bag, Jinx dried her eyes and blew her nose. She didn't realize she'd been crying until the hot tears began plopping on the back of her right hand. Cocoy and Kidlat both reached over without thinking to stroke Jinx's back in an attempt to soothe her crying.

"Surely she knew what harm would come of a Diwata coming out of her human cocoon," Cocoy said with a worried voice. "Surely she would not abandon Jinx, especially since Mt. Pinatubo is a stratovolcano, one capable of destroying both the provinces of Pampanga and Zamables with another eruption?"

"Surely she does," Adora said on a tired sigh. "But I don't know if she even cares now. Think of a battered woman who has borne much abuse of spirit and body from a violent husband. She'd be suffering from the trauma and stress, right? She may become either uncaring or violent if she is not given help to heal. Sinukuan went through much, much worse than that. Add this: She has been celibate for centuries and her emotional turmoil has had no outlet or containment. I think the mild earthquakes the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology has been recording from Pampanga could mean Arayat is coming out of inactivity. She needs healing."

"We need to find Sinukuan, Adora," Jinx said in a slow, easy tone as she stood and walked to the Diwata and put a hand over Adora's. "I need her to help me break out of this mortal skin without harming the people near my mountain. From what I read of the news reports about the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, I cannot allow another disaster to happen. I can't be the reason for another calamity. According to what you just told me, we need to head off two violent eruptions instead of just one."

"I see you channeling Sinukuan like another fool," Adora's voice was shaky and angry still. "Very well. You have asked me for help and I am bound by honor to give it. Though I don't see why Taga-Lupa lives matter, brief as they are."

"Look, I understand where you're coming from," Cocoy interjected with a bit of anger in his voice as well, "but these people you are talking about, Adora, have done nothing to deserve your anger. As you said, human lives are brief. These are not the people who harmed Sinukuan."

"Then you can tell her that yourself, Taga-Lupa," Adora spat out. "Once you find her. But I will add a price to the aid you seek of me: If you find Sinukuan, bring her to me, that I and the other Diwata may help her heal. You," she said to Jinx in particular, "were born for a reason. We all are. Perhaps part of that reason is to bring Sinukuan back to us."

"If that is the cost of the help Jinx needs, then we will do that," Cocoy agreed, even as he reined in the urge to pick a fight with the Diwata looking at him with lava in her eyes.

Her story told, Adora helped the trio find the likeliest place where Sinukuan would be on Mt. Arayat and sent them a digital copy of the satellite map (via Bluetooth to their smartphones, of course) of Mt. Arayat's topography that they'd used.

Cocoy, Jinx and Kidlat left Pepe's Pole quietly, each of them lost in their own thoughts as they picked up clothes at Jinx's Pasay manse and Kidlat's penthouse suite before they returned to Manila and Cocoy's place to get some sleep and to determine their next course of action. After all, the fastest route to Balintawak in Quezon City and, from there to the SCTEX highway that would take them to San Fernando City in Pampanga was through the City of Manila. That's where their search for Sinukan would start.

The lovers slept snuggled against one another in Cocoy's king-sized bed, falling into each other after doing their pre-bed ablutions together in his black-and-white tiled bathroom with its vintage 1920s décor. While they all would have liked a turn in his antique claw-footed bathtub (it was modernized, of course, but still gorgeous), sleep was coming for them fast and they all agreed that the bed was their best option. To sleep in. For starters.

***

Monday's daylight hours saw Jinx delegating tasks to keep her business running smoothly without her for two weeks, while Cocoy and Kidlat made similar arrangements with their own offices.

Thank goodness Cocoy had finished the master recordings for his flagship artists before the Lintik Records launch, so he could leave the rest of the tasks on his table to his most able and seasoned managers. Multiple label launches across the country's urban centers would not go so well, otherwise, and while the groundwork for those needed to be done, the events themselves could be scheduled for when Cocoy could be at them physically.

Kidlat, meanwhile, got a summons from his father, the Tikbalang King, and went to see him. It was something to do with his brother getting married and some other business that sounded ominous and potentially upsetting, but it was not done to refuse his sire and king.

They'd brought the carved "research" chest from Kidlat's place to Cocoy's apartment and, while the roan Tikbalang was off meeting his father, Cocoy and Jinx went back to their reading and research as the afternoon wore on, looking for anything that would help them convince Sinukuan to listen to what they needed to say.

Cocoy had donned his favorite navy blue and white batik board shorts with a loose gray t-shirt that was so soft from being washed so often that it hid none of his magnificent abdominals as he slouched on the couch. Jinx was in a brief (very, very brief, as in ass-basing brief) pair of button-fly white denim cutoffs and a baby pink crewneck t-shirt that clung to her breasts and waist quite fetchingly. Kidlat had to tear himself away from both his lovers after unlocking the chest with an incantation, muttering that they'd better be ready for more strenuous activity when he got back.

It was between dry translations of Fray Domenico Juan's ledgers and maddeningly incomplete snippets of lore about Tikbalang taming, Diwata transitions and Bayot rituals that Jinx found herself sitting cross-legged on the hardwood planks of the floor of Cocoy's apartment, leaning back against his white canvas sofa between his legs.

She set her temple against Cocoy's right knee, his right hand ruffling her hair as she closed her eyes for a short spell, tired from all the reading and from her mind racing mile-a-minute from one revelation to another.

Cocoy was silently cursing his luck, or lack of it, as he could not find anything remotely resembling a way out of cross-dressing, or anything to help them create guidelines for the relationship he, Kidlat and Jinx were forming with all the inexorability of tectonic plates scraping against one another. Hell, he couldn't even find a reliable text for how long they had to find Sinukuan before Jinx (and Mt. Pinatubo and, possibly, Mt. Arayat) went nova.

Then he felt the heat under his right palm, which was pressed against Jinx's nape. Great. I love this woman's body and I love fucking it, but this demand created by her change? It's not the best of reasons to be doing this. I want to make love with her because I can't help myself, not because the situation and preventing an apocalypse do.

Cocoy stoppered the part of his brain that wanted to pick at the thought of "making love" and its implications as he slid his hand down to wrap sensuously around Jinx's neck and angle her head up as he bent forward to kiss her softly, persuasively.

"You're getting hot again, Diwata mine," Cocoy forced lightness into his voice, hoping it disguised the uncertainty he felt about handling a changeling on his own, without a Tikbalang in the room to back him up. "You need more, ahem, containment. Just enough to hold you until Kidlat gets here. So you don't set anything on fire but us."

He teased her with naughty eyes as he pulled away from her mouth and ran his thumb across her swollen lower lip before tracing a path down her chin and neck, down to the erect nipple poking through the fabric of her thin lace brassiere and baby-pink crewneck t-shirt.

Cocoy nudged Jinx forward before sitting behind her on the floor. He traced Jinx's belly under the hem of her shirt before grasping the cotton tee and pulling it up off her and divested her of the lacy blue froth of her bra before cupping her hot breasts in his tanned hands and pinching both nipples simultaneously between his knuckles.

Jinx groaned as Cocoy's mouth sucked a trail of wet, open kisses and licks over the flesh of her earlobe, the side of her neck, her shoulders. Her hands went up to his head, fingers spearing though Cocoy's soft, wavy hair and gripping tight as he bit down on that tender spot between neck and shoulder as he rolled and pulled at both of her hard nipples with rough fingers. She'd lost all capacity for words as her eyes slid closed in pleasure.

"I love this puki, how it smells, how it tastes, how tightly it squeezes me when you come," Cocoy's voice was a hungry rasp against Jinx's ear as he spoke, punctuating his words with sharp nips of the shell of her ear and hot licks into it. "I enjoy finger-fucking you and I would love to get my tarugo into you. Will you let me in tonight, my sweet? Will you allow me to fuck you into the next dimension?"

"Yes. Ohmygulay, yes," Jinx's response was made with harsh intakes of breath interspersing it as Cocoy slowly undid each of the buttons on her cutoffs' fly and gently slid his right hand in past the lace panties that matched her discarded bra. She levered her butt and hips up off the floor as Cocoy's nimble fingers slid about over her slick cunt, spreading her swollen lips, massaging them with wicked intent.