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.
