DIWATA

1.

There once lived a strange deity who was only strange because few strove to know her. ¡Bárbara! ¡Que barbaridad! taunted her eldest brother, who was lightning. Her own light was confined to a glass vial. She knew stars an ascension of pearls hung by Gigante on the highest tree boughs. When he danced, earth descended beneath his feet. There below, a vain woman, earthbound. She knew tongues of many men, those who brought boats and steel, those who brought silks and jade, those who brought the cross.

 

But this story lacks proper symmetry.

 

A woman’s hands make fine threads dance. With needles of carabao horn, of bamboo, she embroiders names into silk—serpent ulap scale luna fire lihim gem azul eye liwanag river mariposa light talà—when she weaves these words into the fabric of sky, a charm against forgetting. With ink and thread she draws her own hands pero siempre estas manos desaparecen; she weaves enkanto contra palabras vaporosas, poemas contra vacía alma. And when her face begins to resemble the porcelain virgin’s face, for this firelight causes much to appear, still she sings: o diwata, your words are our breath! O diwata, our words are our offering to you!

2.

Some say thunder, child of the earth, calls to lightning, child of the sky, because they are twins, split in two by their spirit father. As the mortal woman ascended with her lover, the path through clouds to sun burned. Her flesh also burned. The child below the villagers wished to keep, so that the spirit father would always return to them.

 

Yes, he cleaved his son in two. And from these halves, the one skybound grew a new self just as the butiki who’s lost his tail. The one below would have perished had not the spirit father descended and breathed his breath into the lifeless half body. This one, how his voice booms when his twin brother streaks across heaven.

 

And their sister, the strange diwata whose light remains contained. Witness she is, and weaver. If she would only speak, then she would tell you—these stories I give you, I swear they are the truth.

3.

Before this time, sky was high as a tent. Children poked clouds with bamboo sticks. Some could jump high enough to touch it with their fingertips. When headhunters danced around the bonfire, keeping vigil, their blades pierced the skins of the gods.

 

…Yes, hija, we were headhunters once, our people…

 

There, the battlefield between forest and river’s edge, littered with headless bodies. The heads they took to their own village for they believed the soul resided there. Beyond the distant lowlands, a deity whose winged head our god buried with the remains of the serpent who ruled the clouds. The orphan spirit, whose body our god set afire. This is how he invited his enemy’s soul to be his spirit guardian.

 

Some also say, this was how the first coconut tree came to grow.

4.

Once a diwata stole fire. He brought it to the riverbanks where the earthdiver shivered, unclothed. This was her fate for peering through the hole in the clouds while her father hunted the red deer and the wild boar. She had grown tired of animal bones scattered, a house of musk and taut skins. How she’d wince as her father’s sharpened teeth pierced his prey’s liver.

 

There is no secret in fire, the diwata told her years later, after they had wed, after the ocean floor’s black mud bubbled to the surface, birthing islands. Others say the maya bird taunted sky, and ocean revealed its hidden contents in epic warfare. But the earthdiver remembers it this way: mighty Lawin dropped her upon the back of the eldest tortoise. Masqueraded as dove, Lawin cooed, Paloma, paloma, dalagang paloma! Amorcita paloma, minamahal kita, paloma! He took her there, he gave her child. She fled deep into the glowing darkness of salt caves, where the virgin draped in sky wept silver tears. She taught young village girls to guard its entrance and wail. O diwata, kaawaan po ninyo ako! But he pursued, captured her. Dalaga, dalaga, dadagitin kita, dalaga! A tent of skins and tools carved of animal bones, these were her dowry.

5.

He took me, from my hole in the clouds. He took me, gripped between his talons. I feared that if I tried to escape, I would fall into the deepest, the bluest ocean. I knew for sure I would drown, for I had lived my entire life in my father’s realm and had never before touched water. When mighty Lawin came with his sugared words, I leaned farther over the edge than I should have. But so pretty, his words. Upon the shell-mound of kind Pawikan, there, Lawin took me and took me, and Pawikan could do nothing. I knew my brothers too would do nothing. There, he tore me in two.

 

My child, your father’s eyes. My child, one day you will fly.

6.

The child tore at his mother’s breast for he was born with talons and a tendency towards treetops. When he grew old enough to climb, he built a nest in the knotted, ancient tree and refused to descend despite his mother’s calls, despite her tears.

 

She brought the child rice wrapped in banana leaves. She whispered, tabitabi po, to the air around her. She bowed as she approached the tree’s giant roots which forced up earth and made caves. Ants and the anito lived in these. Everyday she did this. She feared he would starve, but the spirits of the tree taught him to lure and snare bee-eaters, flame-breasted doves. Kalapati, kalapati! Kalapati, kalapati! He’d sing and coo; he’d cradle sunbirds in his claws and then crush their fine bones.

 

A season ago, hunters’ arrows felled mighty Lawin. After this, she lived alone. She dreamed his plumage adorned elders’ headdresses by firelight. How they’d bare their blackened teeth. How these with the blackest teeth were most beautiful. How she never returned to her father’s realm.

7.

On the darkest nights, some say a tree spirit takes off her wings to bathe in the forest lake, and her wings the hunter hides in the heart of mangrove thickets. No ancient forest spirit he is, but a man. In the wet earth, tracks like no other, and no scent. Because he is a hunter, he lures her to his village home. Because she is diwata, she feigns capture. For his every kill, the elders have marked his skin with glyphs resembling reptile scales, owls’ eyes, thunderbolts. Sunbursts and daggers along his arms’ sinews. And one day, perhaps today, to be inscribed where the rib cage opens, a circle broken, pointing upwards to its own center. Hanging from his earlobes, this same symbol, carved of carabao horn, washed in the animal’s blood.

 

The old ones say when he hides her wings, she sits upon a rock and weeps. He clothes her in a gown of tree bark. He warms her body with his own. He teaches her to weave dancing women, leaf storms, rice terraces into midnight colored cloth. The old ones say she uses human hair to bind mother of pearl shells to boars’ teeth, and human skulls to doorposts.

 

…Yes, hija, our people, once headhunters…

8.

I am the tree, and thinking me naked, he blankets me in a dress of my own skin. Upon my head, a wreath he’s weaved from the leaves and branches of my own crown. This death shroud for the living, though he believes himself to be kind-hearted in this gesture. His arms are sturdy from hewing down many of my kin, and his body smells of the animals whose lives he takes. I could flay him, and fashion a musky death shroud of his skin. But when he comes to me, mute, clothed in the scent of the dying, and seeking passage through my thickets—tell me, would you not also allow him entrance?