On the outskirts of Kota Bharu, in a rental Perodua

Mouseover Malay text for an English translation

“Kami kat luar Pacific Hotel, pak cik,” said Jen down the phone. She was still pink with frustration from driving in circles all morning.

The voice that answered her was hard to make out, partly because it was fuzzed up by being on speakerphone, but mostly because it was pure Kelantan. But it only said a few words anyway:

“Sampai dah? Awak tunggu!”

“Eh!”

But the pak cik had hung up. Jen and Hwee Ning shared a look of confusion.

“See lah, read food blogs some more,” said Hwee Ning. “That’s what happens when you try to follow the hipsters.”

“Are there even any hipsters in Kelantan?” said Jen mournfully. She jabbed at her smartphone, as if in hope that that would persuade it to explain where they were and how they had got there. “If there was at least they’d update Waze!”

Portrait of a hipste Kelate by Alina Choong

Stockholm, May 14

Stockholm, May 14

Question: What is reality?

Answer: A sphere where humans through consensus have established rules for how things work. Language is the most important method through which humans convey the rules for how the world functions and what it contains.

Stockholm, May 18

Question: Does reality have the same shape everywhere?

Answer: No, of course not. Local realities are always subtly different. For example, the American reality is dramatically more heavy on frightening imagery than ours. Interestingly enough: ”aliens” began as a defense mechanism in the brain, mixed with the influence of science fiction. These entities now have their own place. Reality has widened to include a new phenomenon.

Stockholm, June 9

Question: Do they have a purpose here?

Follow-up question: Can we understand that purpose? Would we find it relevant?

Answer: It’s uncertain whether we would understand. But the fact remains that in our pocket of the world, there are creatures who for some reason want to coexist with us.

The Green family goes to the mountains

“You’re just in time, Ah Guang Ge. Grandmother was asking after you.”

“Where is she? I must pay my respects,” said Guang.

Jiayi shook her head. “Don’t worry, she wasn’t angry. Anyway she’s distracted now. Your siblings are exchanging poems. Come and watch them.”

He shuffled off his shoes and followed her through the house. The smell of the cedar walls and floors, mingled now with the tart fragrance of oranges filling the house, brought back to him powerfully the Spring Festivals of his childhood. The tables were laden with golden fruit representing prosperity: besides the ubiquitous New Year’s oranges, there were fresh persimmons and the last of the winter’s dried apricots, a speciality of the City Between The Hills.

Though it was the start of spring it was still cold up here in the mountains, and as usual everyone was crammed into the large interconnected space of the dining room and kitchen. Guang stepped into the midst of warmth and laughter and the smells of good food. Shouts of welcome greeted his entrance, but these were immediately followed by hisses for silence: Zhenzhu and Bing were duelling.

“The snow recedes from the mountaintops,” said Bing.

“The apricot trees blossom, white-petalled
Winter bows out, allowing spring’s entrance
What joy to take wine with our family!”

“The apricot trees blossom, white-petalled,” replied Zhenzhu.

“Like froth on the waves of the sea
What joy to take wine with our family
But remember our friends below!”

This was a courtesy to Guang — and a challenge. He bowed, and replied:

“Like froth on the waves of the sea
Is the morning’s first thin ray of sunlight.
Since your brother has travelled since dawn
Won’t you feed him instead of reproach him?”

This was a breach of the rules, but it drew a burst of laughter.

“Have you forgotten your form, Fourth Brother?” said Zhen, shaking her head.

She was the youngest of their generation, the golden seventh child — sixteen years old and her grandmother’s special pet. The Lü departed from traditional Han culture in valuing their daughters the most, and allocating to them most of the power within the family, for though all the Lü children were magical the talent evinced itself most strongly in the female line.

Zhen was not only a daughter — and Guang’s family counted fewer girls among them than they would have liked, with five sons to balance out their two daughters — but the seventh child of a seventh child, born of the direct line that could trace itself back to the first Lü scholar-magician, Mistress Lü. With so many natural advantages she was outrageously gifted, spoilt, clever, charming when she wished to be, ruthlessly ambitious, and almost totally bereft of a sense of humour.

Siargao, 3rd Month of Madrina’s 23rd year

From where she stood, Siren could hear the boom of the waves as they crashed into the hollow beneath the cliffs. No one knew better how treacherous those waves could be, after all, this was where Siren had spent her childhood–the country where she’d honed her skills, where she’d discovered a joy that exceeded the dream of flight.

Her heart twisted at the look that crossed Adji’s face. They’d worked side by side these past few weeks, and she’d never once imagined that the surgeon was the one she sought. Siren had seen her handiwork firsthand and every single timoran who had passed under this woman’s hands would bear her mark. An indelible stamp to prove that they had passed through the hands of one of Ayudan’s most gifted surgeons.

More than catching her, Siren wanted to know why, but time was running out and the look on Adji’s face sent alarm racing through her body.

Don’t you ever feel it in your blood? Adji said. Don’t you ever wonder what it’s like? Surely the heritage that travels through your veins whispers to you sometimes.

I don’t know what you mean, Siren said. We are the same, aren’t we, Adji? Common. You and I. What other heritage is there?

Adji laughed.

You are no more common than I am. You who display the work of Corazon so proudly on your walls. I’ve seen your body map, Siren. I know what waits in your blood.

You speak in riddles, Siren replied. Come away from the Cliffside, Adji. It’s dangerous there.

Deny it all you want, the woman said. I know what I saw when I looked inside you.

You saw nothing I don’t already know, Siren said.

A flash of light showed Siren the look of pain that crossed the Adji’s face.

They took from us, Adji said. We gave and still they took until we were left with no other choice but to leave. We must hide the proof of who we are while they traverse the skies and the spaces that were once ours.

It’s not my intention to harm you, Siren said. I only want to ask you some questions.

Adji laughed.

It’s too late for talking, she said. No one listened before, and no one will listen now.

Please, Siren said.

Adji backed away from her, inched closer to the edge of the cliff.

Listen to me, Adji said. There are secrets you don’t know about. You think you’ve found your saboteur, but I will tell you this, it wasn’t my hand that broke the timoran.

Then why, Siren asked. Why run?

In the distance, Siren could hear the voices of the others. Finally, they were picking up the trail.

Adji heard them too, and her face twisted into a grimace.

You won’t understand, Adji said. But you will understand very soon.

As in a dream, she saw Adji reach towards her, her body jolted forward and then they were falling, falling through the darkness, falling through the rain, the sea was rushing up towards them and then Adji’s voice was in her ear, chanting a song, chanting a rhythm, strong arms closed about her, and then just when the spray touched her face, they were lifting up and away. Talons gripped her flesh, the arms that enclosed her were scaled and the body pressed to hers was no longer woman, but something other.
Qata, the word whispered through her mind as oblivion took her.

Blood in Abundance

An excerpt from “How the Jungle Got Its Spirit Guardian”, published in Phantazein (FableCroft Publishing).

One morning in the jungle, without blinking, Tenu shot down two from the flock of toucans fleeing from Daza’s jumble of notes and said, “Enough. We are finished for the day.”

Daza could hardly complain as he followed her into the clearing to which she carried the birds. The sun was high over the trees as Tenu piled sticks in a circle, sat on a fallen log, and began rubbing a long twig between her palms.

When Daza realized what she intended to do, he took one of the toucans’ still-warm bodies and placed it atop a stump. He said, “I know you have no patience with me, Tenu. But if you can find it in you to wait a while, I promise it will not be in vain. Let me apologize for your Tateh.”

Then he lopped off the toucan’s head with his hunting knife, tracing the symbol of Vaya in blood on the ground around the firewood, muttering a prayer of thanks. When the blood was drained, he returned to the stump and plucked the feathers from the carcass, gutted it, and seasoned everything with the salt and paste and oregano he kept wrapped in banana leaves in a pouch. He asked Tenu—who had been noting his precision, his oscillations between savagery and gentleness as she got the fire going—to procure for him a tomato from her father’s jungle garden. After halving it, Daza squeezed the pulp over the length of the bird, and chopped up the remains. Then he skewered the entrails, then the body, set the carcass over the now burning ring of twigs, and turned it until they were nice and brown.

When it was done, Daza speared a piece with his knife and handed it to Tenu. She blew on it, bit it off, chewed, and let the juices spread over her tongue. A moment of thoughtful silence passed. She said, “I see.”

“See what?”

“You belong to the wrong god.”

Daza averted his gaze. “Boys are not supposed to cook.”

Tenu gestured to her pipes. “And girls are not supposed to hunt. But look at me.”

“Machen does not know I watch and listen to her teach my sisters to cook. She is grooming baika Tachi as the next doru.”

Tenu sniffed. “Do not be insulted, but I heard your baika can barely soak maize.”

They ate for a while in wordless understanding.

“Tenu, do you hate me?” said Daza suddenly.

“How sly you are,” she answered. “To ask me such a question when I am stuffing myself with your savory food.”

“Do you?”

“Your word choice is stronger than your spices. No, I do not—I used to think you were useless,” Tenu added, and the twinkle in her eyes caught Daza by surprise. “And if what you are truly wondering is if I blame you for what happened to Tateh, no, I do not. I could, but I do not.”

“Then why did you seem angry with me when—?”

“Well, to be truthful, I blamed you then,” Tenu was quick to answer. “And the way the villagers fawned over you when it was so clear you were incapable of the music left a bad taste in my mouth. Not that I care for them, you understand. But I think they believe in all the wrong things.”

Daza flinched at her honesty, but he was grateful for it. At least she bore him no ill will. They ate again in silence until at length, he said, “Tenu, what do I do? Everyone expects me to hunt for my family now—yet I cannot make music, I cannot trap beasts!”

Tenu finished her meal, licked the tips of her fingers. “That was very good. Better than I have had in a long time, and I usually eat the neighbor’s leftovers and the occasional insect when they are too busy. You cook like a woman.”

“Tenu!”

“And,” she added with a pointed stare. “I hunt like a man.”

Cupped in her hands like a precious gem was the other toucan, which she held out to Daza. He stared a while at the carcass, met Tenu’s eyes, nodded, and took it from her.

Outside Amatka

The sun and the sky push the tundra down.

Out of the ground grow iron pipes with riveted seams. They are painted yellow and white.

Some of them bend at an angle. The paint flakes here and there.

The pipes form thickets on the hills.

Their burst openings turn toward the sun.

 

I djupet står en jättelik ångmaskin,

en trädgård uppsprungen runtomkring;

färglös murgröna och klematis virar sig runt pistongerna

ramar in urtavlorna och kryper sakta uppför pannan.

En skorpa av kalksten har bildats på hjulet.

 

Ice forms on the sea at night. A silhouette stands by a hole in the ice

where a bronze pipe sticks out of the water.

 

Frost creeps up the metal.

 

The silhouette draws a deep breath.

At age 16, in Lubuk Udang

Ah Lee had only been 16 when she died and she felt that she had not had time to take shape. She worried that now she was dead she would never get to be a real person.

When she died, at first she had been so full of rage at the man who had given her the baby that had killed her that it did not occur to her to worry about personal growth. She gobbled up men with injudicious greed, not because she liked the taste but because she wanted them to suffer. The local population of men of a certain age dropped dramatically.

The aunts disapproved. Such particularity in a small town was liable to draw attention, not a good thing when you are a household of vampires just trying to get on with your lives. And there were even worse potential consequences of Ah Lee’s overindulgence.

“You will get fat!” said Ah Chor, Ah Ma, Sa Ee Poh, Ji Ee, Tua Kim and Aunty Girl.

After a while Ah Lee stopped, though not because she was worried about putting on weight. She got bored of the taste of middle-aged men, and she stopped being so angry. She started eating for enjoyment again, and not simply as a way of getting back at her horrible death.

She never ate women, however.

certain ways of dying in the land of Namayan

A king lies dying in a sunlit room.

It is a small room, paneled in rare wood and hung with weaving. There is a sleeping mat in the center and beside it an unlit lamp. On the mat, half a corpse, sprawled out on his belly: a large man who would render the room tiny if it weren’t for how the flesh has sunk into his bones, carved traitorous furrows down his limbs. The room resounds with his gasping breaths.

Outside stand trees that have grown brittle and gray with the stench of the king’s dying. They whisper together, passing messages of bark and sap. Skeletal leaves strain towards the death rattle, awaiting that dark-glittering moment. They will drink long and deep when the king dies, and they have not drunk well in years.

The king calls himself Kidlat, lord of Namayan. Histories of conquest run intricate linework over his arms and chest: circles overlaid one upon the other, blue constellations marking kills, black spirals bearing witness to the cities he has raised in stone and mahogany and gold. Late afternoon sunlight parts the shadows to gild his tattoos, as if to say: The marks are beginning to fade. The blue has sunk to mere traces on brown skin.

Beside the king, Bai Marikit of Namayan sits and listens to the trees and combs her fingers through his hair. She touches an arm patterned with ink and the symbols of reign, nails scratching lightly over the pale-spined whorls.

“Send another,” she says.

The king stirs. “There are no others to send,” he answers past the stutter in his breath. “I will not burden you with even more loss.”

Marikit smiles briefly. She has lived too long not to recognize a lie when she hears one.

The trees continue to murmur of patience, of the eventual end of drought.

---

The sickness had come upon him like lightning. All too fitting, in its own way: Lakan Kidlat struck down at the feast that had all of Namayan dancing, afire with the music of silver cymbals and golden bells and the clear strong sound of the city’s flautists. The long war with Ma-i was over; after the rains they would crown its fertile plains with a new city of stone and red-tinted glass.

Then at the very height of the festivities, the king fell between one dance step and another, collapsing athwart poles of bamboo and the handles of long spears. When he opened his eyes they had been swallowed up by red-streaked black.

The albularyo and manghihilot would say nothing of healing. They only reeled back from the king after the briefest of touches, mouthing a single name before fleeing.

Later, the royal guards found that they had hanged themselves in their homes, every single one.

Golden Days Under the Old Acacia

I have to start from the very start, back to my own days in elementary school, with a boy named Vincent. We were busmates from Grades 3 to 7. He’d always been small for his age, dark-haired and dark-skinned, the hand-me-down Ateneo Grade School uniform two sizes too big on him; but what eyes! Green like the leaves of the acacia tree that still stands today at the corner of the Miriam Grade School parking lot (I hope it’s still there for you to see). He couldn’t tell me if this trick of genetics was because of a father who was British or American or French or whatever because Tita Mercy, his mother, would not tell him.

We would sit together at the back of the bus, ignoring all the pointing and giggling, and he would share bits of dried mango his mother packed in his lunch box for him and tell me stories of kapre falling in love with the high school girls; duwende tricking the loose change from little boys’ pockets; the lady in white who roamed the campus when the sun went down, wailing, wailing, wailing; and the diwata living in the trees, ever-flitting, watching all the students play and coming out at night to dance. I believed in all those things too, back then. You can believe anything when you’re nine. The difference between Vince and I was that he said that all these creatures were his friends and they often spoke to him. His idea of a “Hello, how are you?” was an “Ever wonder what the kapre in that tree does all day?” and instead of jokes, he told tidbits of folklore.

For all these reasons, Vince was often the butt of jokes, the target of the crumpled paper balls, the kicks and pushes, the dirt, the mean laughter. Our friendship began with my curiosity and my guilt. It helped that we were both fluent English-speakers and everyone else on the bus preferred to talk to each other in Tagalog; sometimes, I felt as if nothing anyone did to him mattered so long as we understood one another, even if I knew nothing about folklore before I met him.

I never bullied him, but I did not stop anyone from bullying him, either. At first I wanted nothing to do with him, but I was forced to sit next to him at the back of the bus one day, when I got out of school a little later than usual, and I couldn’t stop myself from asking him why he was talking to himself. He obliged me with a story. I can no longer remember what it was about. But then he told me another, and then another, and then another, and before I knew it, we were in front of your grandparents’ house in Sikatuna Village and the all the boys and girls were hooting and calling us a couple and pelting him with Maxx and XO. Days after, Vince would joke that maybe he really didn’t belong there—maybe he was a changeling or a kapre or something, but I never found that funny. I remember having a hard time explaining your to Lola exactly why I came home crying when I had lost none of my things or had any bleeding wounds from falling on the ground either through my own clumsiness or the bullying of a schoolmate. How many little girls know how to explain their first experience of malice, anyway? Did you, Meg? I would have loved to have heard it if you had.

Dreaming in the Underworld

“Which punishment should we inflict on him today?” The voice boomed from high above, so strong it seemed to reverberate her from inside outward.

She heard shrill screaming, and the thick pungent scent of blood hung in the air. She wanted to scream herself, but could do nothing.

“This was not a good time to come,” Zhong Ye said aloud, in a quiet voice.

“Shut up, worm!” The voice pounded into her mind.

She couldn’t hear Zhong Ye’s thoughts, but felt his fear–his anticipation of what was to come. A sense of defiance still lingered within him.

He was strapped down on a wooden plank, unable to move. Zhong Ye opened his eyes, and she saw the hell lords towering over them. They were at least three times the height of any mortal man, their black hair unkempt, wild. Both were dressed in glimmering robes the color of fire. She glimpsed bodies strung from the cavern ceiling dangling like slaughter, and screamed within her mind. Zhong Ye twitched, his concern washing over her.

Most did not have all their limbs, their naked bodies scalded and scarred. They swayed amongst the two giant magistrates like grotesque ornaments, moaning; and she suddenly realized they were all still conscious. Ai Ling tried to quiet her mind, tried to will herself awake. Panic spread like an inferno.

“This one is stubborn.” One demon leaned close and she smelled death and violence from him, through Zhong Ye. His giant eyes glowed red. “But he will break. We have him for eternity. This one can’t reincarnate.”

The other rubbed his meaty hands together, his robes dancing with flames. “Fantastic!”

Zhong Ye closed his eyes again. Ai Ling tried to stir herself, but to no avail.

“Why not a classic today? The three tortures?”

Zhong Ye flinched, despite himself. Ai Ling whimpered. She knew the three tortures from The Book of the Dead–burn by fire, chop by knife, torn apart by beasts. The victim was kept conscious for the entire ordeal in the underworld—even if it were a physical impossibility in the mortal realm—to maximize the terror and pain.