How to Tame Your Tikbalang Ch. 10

Buhawi and Tala wandered off to another clearing that, obviously, served as a kitchen of sorts, though not one Tala understood at all (not that she understood kitchens, really).

A stump wider than her girth and Buhawi's combined made a counter-cum-butcher's chopping block and four clay wood stoves stood in a straight line along the flattened top of a massive fallen log.

Here and there were beautifully hand-shaped pieces of unglazed terracotta pottery of varying sizes, what her people called palayok, which were used to cook traditional Filipino dishes like the oxtail and vegetable stew called kare-kare and the tamarind-broth based sinigang, as well as sweets like leche flan, ube halaya and the multi-colored and sticky sapin-sapin rice cakes in banana leaves.

Some of the pottery were sitting open, lined with fragrant leaves: Leeks, lemongrass, pandan. Others were bare, but capped with lids sculpted so that their handles were shaped like the Sarimanok or the Ibong Adarna.

"What do you feel like having, BaBaylan mine?" Buhawi's equilibrium was back and his question was good-natured and upbeat. "I can't cook as well as my Inay does, but I can whip up some pretty good dishes, like dinuguan stew from razorback boar blood and meat or deer tapa. I can even make puto rice cakes from scratch and steam them in this," he said pointing to an unusual layered set of two palayok.

"I'm not much of a cook, Buhawi," Tala said hesitantly, holding onto the sheet she'd wrapped about her body for modesty's sake. "You just go ahead and cook. I won't be picky about what I eat."

"I guess this means that I am the appointed cook, then," Buhawi said on a grin. "Perhaps I can get Inay to part with some of her recipes, then." He proceeded to prepare garlic, bird's eye chilies, red onions and ripe little native tomatoes for a saute, chucking the sliced condiments into little wooden bowls, whistling as he worked.

Tala settled herself on a bench across the kitchen work areas that had formed from smooth gemelina saplings that had been overlaid with fat square cushions upholstered in silk.

Oh, I could get so used to this, she thought to herself. It is so nice to watch a ripped, gorgeous man cook in nothing but those thin cotton pants that hug his gorgeous ass. Now, time to go over the Bestiario again. Maybe I missed something...

Tala had taken Beatriz's journal out of the folds of the bedsheets, where she'd spotted it before heading to the kitchen clearing. The book seemed to have a strong enough connection to her that it was with her when everything else in her bag was back in the land of the Taga-Lupa.

***

A shadow slid behind a huge balete tree, its tail whipping swiftly into the shadows cast by the trunk. A low snicker carried on the wind, but Buhawi was too busy making a feast for his Baylan and Tala was doggedly trying to find even the slimmest guide to taking the third hair. It passed them by even in the quite of the glade.

A horse's head, huge and malevolent, black as the deepest night, peeked slowly around the craggy bark of the ancient balete. Red eyes gleamed, shrouded by the moss and the masses of aerial roots hanging from the trunk and low branches of the tree as a huge Tikbalang, bigger even than Buhawi, hunkered down with predatory patience.

Soon, soon, it will be time to move. The malevolent creature behind the balete tree grinned as it watched the witch and her Tikbalang move to a picnic blanket laid on the forest floor to eat the dinuguan stew and steamed rice Buhawi had prepared.

They think they've found their way. They think they will triumph. It will be so sweet to take that victory right out of their reach. The shadow Tikbalang, for that is all he was, shadow sifting out all that is light, a featureless maligno eroded by time. I'll let them enjoy this meal. Even the condemned get to eat what they will before the end.

The creature phased in and out, flickering from opaque to translucent, once, twice, a third time. Then he gained full solidness bearing an ornate bow double-nocked with barb-tipped arrows that dripped red venom from their pointed tips to the fastenings of their flights, sighting his unsuspecting prey.

***

"That dinuguan was delicious," Tala said as she curled into Buhawi's body. "And the puto... fluffy, light, but so beautifully done. You have to give me the recipe."

"Give you the recipe?" Buhawi cocked his left brow up at Tala as he pulled her closer to him. "Witch, after you take the third hair, you'll probably be calling me in at all hours to cook you that puto you like so much." He rubbed her belly slowly. "Then you'll be my fat wife—eventually, after all those rice cakes."

Tala gave Buhawi a filthy look, one that made him laugh again. She pursed her lips and pulled away from him as she rose gracefully from the ground, all legs and hips working and look-Ma-no hands. Fat wife my ass.

Buhawi stood up and pulled Tala into a hug, his mouth opening to reassure her that he'd still find her sexy, a few more pounds notwithstanding when his words were cut off by a searing pain in his arm. Just feet from them, two bloody arrows thudded into the forest floor. Arrows that had left deep gashes in Buhawi's arm and on Tala's shoulder.

Fire was spreading over his skin as he heard Tala's gasp of pain. Then she screamed, her agony making her keen through clenched teeth, gripping him to stay upright.

A shadow detatched itself from the huge balete tree to Buhawi's left. A tall, menacing umbra with red eyes and a long, flickering tail. A tikbalang unlike any other seen by Buhawi or his kind stalked across the space between them and Buhawi moved between it and his Baylan almost by instinct.

"I see the prince of the Tikbalang is not yet immortal," the shadow spoke, smoke snorting out of its flared nostrils, its voice both sharp and raspy. "Nor is the Baylan."

"Who are you and what did you do?" Buhawi's query trembled. His body was tense and awash with cold sweat and flaring, sharp pains that caused his muscles to sieze and shake.

Tala was trying to keep her feet under her, but her vision was blurring. Must stay awake. Can't pass out. She uttered incantations for healing under her breath, clasping Buhawi's hand tightly in hers as she willed herself into a conduit, praying her incantations worked.

"Don't worry yourself overmuch, Princeling," the shadow Tikbalang chuckled. "The poison is slow-acting. You have just enough time to finish your quest. Though I wouldn't dally, were I you. The poison is lethal, after all. Blood from a tiyanak's first kill always is. Especially if you manage to kill the tiyanak."

Tiyanak. Tiyanak blood. Herodes! Tala closed her eyes, willing herself to remember the Bestiario's passage about the tiyanak and its poisonous blood.

The tiyanak is what Europeans would have mistaken for one of their monsters, a changeling. But changelings are not by nature the purest evil, as the tiyanak is, Beatriz had written. The tiyanak is the soul of a human child unwanted by its mother, fed on hate and weaned on despair, often killed in utero and buried or tossed out with the trash in shame.

This vengeful infant is undead, the hate and despair it carries fuel its rage. The tiyanak often disguises itself as a beautiful but fretful infant left deserted on the edge of the forest or on the front stoop of its victim—and its first kill is often its own mother.

The tiyanak's true form is that of a demonic infant, with skin gray as charcoal ash, eyes of a flat black void and vicious, pointed teeth of dull jet. It only shows its true form when its prey has picked it up and tries to comfort it, as such prey feel compelled to do. Then the tiyanak strikes for the throat, baring its ungodly teeth and bites deeply and repeatedly until its prey is full of its venom.

Tiyanak-attack victims rarely feel the initial attacks, bleeding profusely while their minds are numbed to all but one thought: To feed the baby they have rescued. To protect it until death claims them. Which happens in mere minutes, as the tiyanak has an uncanny sense for biting deeply into the large arteries of the neck and head.

As Tala fought to remain conscious, her mind skipped forward to Beatriz's passage about poisons. Tiyanak blood, it said, is an especially treacherous and deadly poison, though it takes at least three months to kill. If, however, it is made more potent by blending with the blood if its first victim, then the time to death is shortened to three weeks at most.

Such a compound has three effects: Those poisoned with tiyanak blood and the blood of its first victim will first feel the agony of fire, though they do not burn, and frightening hallucinations.

The next effect is psychological, but no less agonizing: Whoever is poisoned with this combination of venom and victim's blood will grow paranoid, anxious, terrified of all that surrounds him or her, so much so that the being will fight off even those who would help.

This is followed by muscular spasms that begin as cramps and increase in intensity until the muscles break the poisoned being's bones and, eventually the seizing and rupture of the poisoned creature's heart.

The antidote to the tiyanak's venom mixed with its first victim's blood is rare and difficult to obtain, for one must seek the scales of the siokoy, inhabitants of rivers and the sea. They must bargain for the scales, as only a fair trade of scales for goods or services will make the cure effective.

The siokoy scales, at least a dozen for each poisoned being, must be ground to a fine powder and mixed with Tikbalang blood on a full moon night.

Meanwhile, incantations for healing can keep the poisoned one alive and in a relatively functional state. Without the oraciones by a Babaylan, however, the poisoned being will be unable to think lucidly or act rationally. If there is no Babaylan on hand to utter these spells, it would be most merciful to spare the poisoned being by euthanasia.

Tala shut her eyes as she recalled the passages of the Bestiario in her head. Ah, what one can recall when the situation is life or death. She opened her eyes and fixed a glare on the shadow Tikbalang before her and shoved her way past Buhawi.

"You will tell me your name, maligno." Tala's voice was cold as the stream nearby, even if it was unsteady. "I am Baylan and you will obey me."

The shadow tikbalang made a tsk-ing sound and shook its head slowly as it stepped closer to the poisoned couple. "You don't need to command me, puny witch. I'm more than happy to make your acquaintance. My name is Bulalakaw, and I see your grandmother's choice has borne pretty fruit. I will fuck you as the spasms take you. Because tight, clenching pussy and ass, and a mouth sucking desperately for air are always so much fun to fuck."

"I'll kill you before you have a chance to do that, you abomination." Buhawi's words came out on a ragged whisper as flame licked through his veins. "I will kill you with my bare hands."

"Such bravery, princeling," was Bulalakaw's wry retort. "It will amuse me to watch you sort yourself out well enough to make more of that than an empty threat. Perhaps your father will be able to say his goodbyes to you yet. Do give him my regards. Ta-ta. For now. Be watching you."

That said, Bulalakaw made a circle with his left hand and clenched his right before he dissipated like smoke, leaving Tala anf Buhawi fuming and in a literal hell.

***

"Where on in the realms will we find a siokoy? Are there any nearby?" Tala shot these questions in a fusillade at Buhawi, explaining the text from the Bestiario to him as coherently as she could through the sweat and the pain licking her all over.

"By the old gods, don't tell me we need to call on those lechers," Buhawi said on a ragged sigh. "They won't come out of the water unless they've got a helluva show to watch, and I don't mean that in the sense of dinner and a movie. That, and most of them are in the land of Lupa, up north, just past Paoay in Ilocos Norte this time of year."

"And that's a problem because?"

"Because, it is taking all my energy just to talk to you and make sense, woman," Buhawi said through gritted teeth as he suppressed a groan of pain.

"Let me worry about that," Tala said "I am a Babaylan. Or at least I'm learning to be one. I'll do the incantations and you get us to a full Babaylan—you know, your mom—and we'll take it from there."

"I can see why my parents like you, smart girl," Buhawi said, a bit of his good nature showing through the heat haze in his body. "Let's do this."

***

Seven incantations and two "homing amulets" later, Buhawi and Tala finally got themselves back to Bulan's house in Manila sprawled on the hardwood floor of the sala while Bulan rushed to the kitchen to get what she needed to administer her incantations.

"Who did this to you?" Bulan's query came out on a quietly furious note after she spat the herbs she'd chewed onto katakataka leaves that she slapped onto the deep cuts made by Bulalakaw's barbed arrows on Buhawi's arm and Tala's shoulder. "Tell me so I can find whoever it is and kill that creature myself."

"He called himself Bulalakaw," Buhawi said, hissing as the poultice touched his wound. "He told me to give Itay his regards."

"Oh, he did, did he? That son of a syphilitic breeding nag should die," Bulan said, anger bringing out the fire in her eyes and making her hair curl and writhe in defiance of the laws of gravity. "You know where to find the siokoy and I will teach Tala the incantations you will need to keep the worst of the poison from making you both helpless. Then we will make that gods-forsaken creature pay for doing this to my firstborn and his bride."

The front door opened and Buhawi's father, Ulap, rushed to his son, his human face pinched with worry, his brows united on his furrowed forehead.

"I came as soon as you called, beloved," Ulap turned his intense eyes on Bulan. "What do our son and Baylan need?"

"They need to go to Paoay, Mahal ko. They need siokoy scales," Bulan answered, her voice curt with care. "Take them there. I have stocked Tala's bag with what they need. There is no time to lose."

Bulan looked right at Tala as the Babaylan began to rise off the floor. "I have put my spellbook in your satchel, young one. Use it well and return it to me intact."

With that, Bulan took Ulap's hands and they exchanged a quick kiss before Ulap helped both his son and his prospective daughter-in-law stand. "Goodbye, children. Go with Ulap now and get your antidote. Remember that you only have three more days to complete the taming of our Prince, Tala. I'm counting on you."

She turned to her son and hugged him. "Take care of your Babaylan, my son, and do not fail."

"Inay, I'm all grown up now, you can let go of your foal now." Buhawi's shaky attempt at levity only made his mother give a sad shake of her head.

"Let's go now," Ulap said in stern tones. "I'll talk to you about sassing your mother when you get back, young man."

***

They arrived at the seaside town of Paoay quickly, thanks to Ulap's long strides—literally leaps and bounds, for he had taken his full horse form and he was bigger than any horse, natural or not, in existence.

Tala and Buhawi thanked Ulap and bade him farewell when they reached the seashore, where powder-fine white sand met indigo sea and blended seamlessly into starry skies.

Bulan's spellbook was open in Tala's hands as Buhawi shone a maglite onto its pages and both of them read the delicate cursive Baybayin script that gave instructions for summoning the siokoy who were likely cavorting in a festival beneath the warm and gently lapping waters of the West Philippine Sea.

"Okay, how do we do this summoning without setting off a storm or a volcano, you think?" Tala asked no one in particular. "Because every time we so much as think horny thoughts about each other, we set the darned planet off."

"Maybe a striptease? While facing opposite directions?"

Buhawi's suggestion had some merit. "Maybe we can just masturbate with our eyes closed." Tala said wryly. "Because your Mom says here that the siokoy are drawn by sexual arousal or any heightened emotion."

Buhawi nodded his assent and turned to the sea and away from Tala, who was spreading a shawl she'd taken from her bag on the seashore. "Go for it, babe. I don't mind if you have a go-to fantasy to use that doesn't include me," Buhawi said. "Just as long as I'm in whatever comes after."

"Roger that, o great prince." Tala rolled her eyes heavenward and both of them shared a little laughter before they faced the sea and its unseen denizens.

Buhawi stripped, knelt on the sand and closed his eyes as he gripped his tarugo, throwing his head back and thrusting himself into his fist until he hardened to his full length and girth. Then he began to wank in earnest, his buttocks' clenching limned in the faint light from the moon and stars.

Okay, Tala took her gym shorts off and settled on the shawl with her legs spread. All I need to do is make a good show of jilling myself off—and not think about how good it would feel to watch Buhawi stroke himself. Not hard. Not hard at all. Really.

She pulled off her tank top and began stroking her breasts, closing her eyes and going to her favorite fantasy of reclining against a muscular man big as... well, a big muscular man, then, stroking her breasts, rolling her nipples and tweaking them until she gasped.

Getting there. His hands are so hot and he is squeezing my breasts. He is sucking a hot path from my shoulder to my earlobe while one hand trails down my belly to my thighs. I am shivering in pleasure because his fingers have found my wet center and he laughs softly, hotly in my ear. He is telling me how much he wants to eat my pussy while he finger-fucks me for an audience.

He is moving his fingers faster, curling them against that sweet, sweet spot while he nips my earlobe and tells me how hard the men watching me are, how the women are fingering themselves with abandon while he makes me come. His thumb is circling my hot little clit now, faster, harder and he is telling me to come while he pinches one of my nipples, then the other.

So close, so very close.

Tala's body arched on the sand and the shawl, her teeth dug into her bottom lip almost hard enough to draw blood. The fire smoldering in her veins began burning hotter again, the poison making her orgasm more intense, blending pain with her pleasure in equal measures.

Beside her, Buhawi's groan comes just seconds before the sound of come spurting on the sand as he sinks to his knees, still holding his member in a tight, tight grip.

Both Babaylan and Tikbalang begin to drift into a sleepy, post-orgasmic nap when they hear the wet smack of applause coming from the sea.

***

The naked couple opened their eyes to see a pair of siokoy rising from the water, one male (or so the tumescence at his groin would indicate) and one female. These were beautiful creatures, with their bodies covered by pearlescent scales the size of Tala's thumb.

The female siokoy was broad-shouldered and curvaceous, with a large bust nipping into a small waist before flaring out into generous hips and gliding down to sleek, beautifully muscled legs. If not for the scales and the long, deep green, pearl-studded hair, she would have been quite the ringer for a Baywatch babe.