Read an Excerpt
Spirits used to roam the town of Heridos.
Regina knew this of course, being born and raised here. But right now, lying in the dark on the side of the road, she felt as if she had to keep telling this story, or else, she would forget who she was.
So.
From the top.
Spirits used to roam the town of Heridos, and then suddenly, they didn't.
As a child, Regina was used to seeing adults making animal sacrifices and offerings to bless a new house, to ask for the end of an illness, or to pray for a bountiful harvest. Regina's grandmother used to say,Your mother spilled blood to give birth to you, and so too we shall spill blood as an offering to the spirits to give birth to a wish or a dream.
Which sounded beautiful to Regina, but not, as she was fond of saying, something that would sway her vegetarian friends. (Her parents didn't approve of her jokes, which they found insensitive. Other things they didn't approve of: her whiny complaints about every little inconvenience, like the power going out, the heat, the heavy rain, the long commute, hard pillows; her impatience with the slow pace of rural life; her flippant "Work smart, not hard!"; her hatred of backbreaking work that her parents—and her parents' parents, and her parents' parents' parents, and soon since the very beginning of time—took so much pride in.)
Ten years ago, Heridos suffered a poor harvest, which got increasingly poorer as the years went by. It was as though the soil was cursed. The animal sacrifices stopped, and the goats and the pigs and the chickens moved—alive, at least initially—from the fields to the local parish, to the delight of the town priest, who for so long thought his parishioners were being annoying and pagan.
Spirits sightings became increasingly rare until no one believed in them anymore. Regina's mother continued to set food aside for the spirits whenever the family had a huge gathering at the house—a birthday, or the Day of the Dead—and her father still asked permission and gave due warning before watering the plants, Tabi, tabi po, but they did this more out of habit now than actual belief.
Most of the farmers became store owners, selling vegetables, root crops, and rice sourced from nearby towns. Some became hog and poultry farmers, raising pigs and chickens in backyard kennels and selling them as butchered meat in the wet market. They sold their farmlands to residential and commercial developers, and one of the rice fields gave birth to a mall.
(Though no blood was spilled.)
(At least as far as Regina knew.)
Some of the men and women went abroad and worked in factories in Taiwan or China or the United Arab Emirates, joining the deluge of skilled workers leaving the country to earn more cash for their families. The price of land in town appreciated significantly, and consumer goods, especially food, became much more expensive. The average Heridos house, especially in the Poblacion, transformed from a simple one-story wooden house to a concrete structure with a second-floor terrace and a grotto—the house built by remittance.
What kind of spirits used to live in this town?
Well, imaginary talk show host, these were: the spirits of palay, of alimuom, of sun, silence, and rain, of clouds and lingering dreams, of the turning earth. Of the artisanal soda. Of the matte lipstick. Of the hipster meme.
Of—well, Regina, you are losing the plot.
Now you are just being condescending.
"Are they gods? "Regina once asked her grandmother months before she died of old age. Her grandmother said they were nature personified; entities we could commune with and understand until we were worthy enough—or strong enough—to grasp the complexity and magnitude of Bathala.
"So," little Regina said, "they're like secretaries?"
