The elders teach us the gods are everywhere. They say that when the gods’ physical bodies descend back to Kaluwalhatian, their essence remains on the mortal plane. I could see traces of them, once. They suffused all life with a kind of magnetic iridescence that scattered the gaze even as it demanded attention. It was like looking at the world through a never-lifting fog, except I could see the world clearer for it. It was everyone else’s vision that was clouded.
My family has always been close to the gods, but Mother told me I was special, one of the few who could see the throughlines—wispy tendrils wafting from every living thing that kept us connected to the earth, that kept us connected to all life and all life to each other. The throughlines were energy, not solid enough to grasp and control but tangible enough to nudge, to coax. I spent my childhood in Mother’s garden learning how to weave them to encourage a flower to unfurl its petals or to calm an injured bird. It was about communication, not force, and the joy was in the exercise of our connection. When I learned how to read and navigate the throughlines, I tried to express to the other villagers what words could not. But people are always harder to get through to. Even Mother struggled to understand.
I still have trouble finding the words to describe it, but we understood each other back then, the world and me. It was a different kind of language.
With my gift, I should have become the babaylan’s apprentice, but I had no inclination towards leadership or battle. Instead, I became Mother’s apprentice. I never got better at talking to her patients, but I could intuit what ailed them when they did not quite know themselves, and I could draw out the healing properties of an herb better than anyone else in the barangay. I was content with the garden, each flower’s secrets clinging to my fingertips like dew. I liked the quiet repetition of preparing and grinding herbs into pastes, of mending what is broken.
Even now, after everything, I find myself searching for the throughlines, for that grounding magnetism.
I stare at the lone moon that remains in the sky. Despite the loss of her sisters, she still valiantly wards off the darkness. I dig my toes into the soft, damp earth and breathe deeply, but I feel nothing more than the sharp bite of the cold amihan wind.
Tonight, the grass is just grass, and the trees are just trees. I drift back to my kubo, as empty and untethered as the sky.
•••
We had seven moons once. The elders say Bathala created one moon for every day of the week so no single moon was ever strained, and so every night there was fresh light. I like to imagine the moons together as they rested during the day, like a string of pearls. The elders tell us each was distinct, but in my head, they look the same because I have only ever known one. Bakunawa had arched his giant serpentine body out of the sea to swallow the first moon long before anyone on the island was born, and the story goes that he had come back every night until we learned how to defend the seventh and final moon.
Most say Bakunawa was greedy and selfish, stealing the moons to possess their beauty. But Mother tells me there are a few, very few, who say that Bakunawa was grieving, that he once had a sister in the form of a sea turtle who visited our island to lay her eggs. A sister so beloved by the sea that the water followed her further and further up the shoreline with each visit, reluctant to let her go. Each year, our people watched our island grow smaller and smaller until half the beach had been engulfed by the sea. We killed the sea turtle out of fear, and, in his sorrow, Bakunawa became the moon eater. Perhaps that is why Bathala never punished Bakunawa. The punishment is ours.
I think about that story a lot now. I think about it as I watch night bleed into a milky sunrise, painting the world in flat, dull colours. I think about it as I mindlessly dig up my herb garden—the leaves brittle and lifeless in my hands despite their lush appearance. I think about it when I pray to any god who may hear me, but I remain unmoored without the throughlines, my words dissipating like mist.
I understand Bakunawa now. I know the kind of loss that settles and festers between your ribs, the kind that grows teeth and gnaws at you until you are desperate to fill it with something else, with anything else; the kind of loss that is never satisfied, never soothed, because something and anything are never quite the thing you are searching for. Maybe both stories are true. Maybe grief is a kind of selfishness.
And while she is dimmer from Bakunawa’s latest attempt to consume her, the moon still pierces the sky with an unrelenting brightness. She reminds me there is still work to do, wounded from last week to tend to. I am not Bakunawa, who can linger in his emptiness for centuries. But even as I prepare fresh poultices and salves, I know I am not quite the moon either, who will shine despite her loneliness until the end of time.
I do not shine, I think. I burn.
•••
“I destroyed our garden,” I tell Mother.
I glance up at her from the herbs I am chopping, expecting a scowl. I brace instinctively for the prickle of her annoyance. Then I remember the throughlines are gone, and she suddenly seems impossibly far away.
“Why?” she asks.
I set the knife down. The question grates like rocks scraping against each other in the surf. I do not know how to answer her. Because I felt like a clenched fist, I want to say. Because the air drapes around me like wet cloth, suffocating and weightless. Because I am an amputated limb.
“You can talk to me, Tala,” she says.
I make a helpless gesture with my hands, tugging at threads that are no longer there. “I am trying,” I say.
Mother takes my herb-stained hand in hers. “Okay,” she says, but the people in our barangay rarely say what they mean directly, often hiding words behind other words. “Okay” could mean “okay”, but it could also mean “that is not enough” or “I do not believe you”. I have always found it frustrating, and now without the throughlines, I cannot parse her meaning. My hand twitches in hers.
“The villagers tell stories about you,” she tells me after a while.
“What do they say?”
“They talk about the night Bakunawa became more than a moon eater.”
Her voice is soft, just like when I was a child. She would tell me stories of the moon eater, her voice low as though she was afraid she would summon Bakunawa himself if she spoke too loudly.
In ancient times, she would say, on the night Bakunawa first came for our final moon, we learned that he is sensitive to sound. Perhaps it is because of the long years he spends at the bottom of the sea, where the water is so dense that all sound coalesces into stillness. Perhaps it is because of the many years he spent with only his sister’s gentle voice for company. Perhaps it is neither and even a being as great and as ancient as Bakunawa can be simply vulnerable to the cacophony of human life.
Whatever the reason, the elders tell us that as Bakunawa’s mouth closed around the final moon, our ancestors screamed for mercy in the darkness, banging pots and pans in an attempt to get Bakunawa’s attention so he may listen to reason. Instead, Bakunawa reared back, his serpentine body curling into a tight coil of pain. He was forced to spit out the moon before retreating back into the sea. Each time he returns, our people scream until our throats are raw and strike metal until our moon is relinquished. Each time, Bakunawa dives back into the sea.
It has been this way for centuries. But last time, Bakunawa dove at us.
Despite the deep darkness, some swear, Mother says, that they saw me fight Bakunawa single-handedly, that they watched me wrestle his giant jaw apart and pry the moon free before I hurled him back into the sea. Others say Bakunawa was astounded by my beauty when he opened his mouth to consume me, that I dazzled in the moonlight, and he returned the moon in exchange for my hand in marriage before returning to the sea, where he waits for me.
But Mother also tells me that a few, very few, say that I made a terrible deal to welcome darkness in exchange for light. Those are the villagers who cannot bear to look at me as I treat their wounds. That suits me fine. I cannot quite bear to look at them either for fear that they will see they are not wrong.
Mother’s own gaze suddenly stings like salt water on sunburnt skin. I yank my hands out of hers and wrap my arms around myself. My skin feels too tight, my lungs too small. She echoes the villagers’ words, and I know then that she would not understand.
She survived Bakunawa, the villagers say. She lived. She saved us from the moon eater.
•••
That night, as if in mockery, Bakunawa had held the moon in his mouth as he swooped down, a horrible beacon of death. I saw the snap of teeth close around a farmer whose hand I had just sutured after his grip slipped while sharpening his bolo. Our babaylan raced to reach him, the glint in her eyes as sharp as her blade. I heard her yell, metal ringing futilely against Bakunawa’s scales. Then, somewhere just behind me—the scream of a woman who brought me a basket full of the sweetest mangoes of the season every year after I treated her son’s fever. Another flash. I lurched forward and tripped. My hands were sticky and warm, and I stared at the body of a girl who had just begun to shyly ask for a painkilling draught at the beginning of every month. I scrambled away, but the smell of blood was everywhere now. I could not find my footing as the throughlines stretched and tangled and snapped, and all I knew was pain and pain and pain.
Then, the cold light was on my face. That magnetic iridescence of the throughlines swirled around him. I saw him more clearly than perhaps anyone ever had and ever could. I saw the wispy tendrils that kept him connected to the sea, to all of us. Then, Bakunawa barrelled toward me.
I tried to nudge, to coax, but my mind was sea wash, and I was horribly overwhelmed by the chaos of the throughlines and Bakunawa’s own oppressive presence. I thought of my people and our shrinking island, of Bakunawa and the sea turtle, of the moon and her sisters, of loss and more loss around me, inside me. I thought of a sorrow-sharpened violence that would envelop the whole world before it was contained.
No, I thought, my heart a wound. Enough.
Through the iridescence, I reached out a hand.
Bakunawa stopped. His breath was warm and damp against my face. He was beautiful in a terrible way, or perhaps he was terrible in a beautiful way, and looking at him made my eyes well up with tears. There were colours in his throughlines I had never seen before, and the ones closest to his scales were snarled and murky. I was drowning in his grief and my own.
We have done enough to each other, I thought, as I used what felt like the entire weight of my soul to lean on the connection to communicate what words could not. No more.
But Bakunawa only stared at me, still waiting for me to strike at him first despite it all. We are raised on stories like this—heroes risking everything to slay creatures that threatened our barangay. Those who returned home were honored. Those who did not were remembered. But I am not a warrior. I am a healer. I laid one hand on his snout, then, slowly, I used the other to untangle the throughlines around him.
I caught impressions of a love as sweet and as sharp as almost-ripe mangoes, of an anger forged in a pit of grief and loneliness, of an emptiness that spanned centuries. My fingers trembled, the ache settling into my bones, and my connection with the rest of the world grew weaker as Bakunawa’s throughlines demanded more and more, but I did not stop. I offered parts of myself too—images of the people he had taken as I knew them: bright and brimming with life; our babaylan guiding our people with a gentle hand through typhoons or poor harvests; the pain he had caused already sweeping through the barangay like a flood. In that moment, we shared each other’s burdens.
And finally, finally, I felt a shift.
Slowly, Bakunawa’s body relaxed, and his jaw loosened. Moonlight spilled onto the grass. The moon drifted back into the sky like a lantern, and when I closed my eyes, I could almost picture the echoes of her sisters.
Then, Bakunawa cried out and reared back, brutally severing our bond. A spear was lodged deep in his side. I clung to the faint traces of what was left of our connection, apologizing for my people’s anger, for their fear. His eyes met mine one last time, and then he was gone. I was left gasping, reeling from the unbearable pain of something vital being torn from me. The magnetic iridescence was gone. There were no throughlines, no tendrils, or any of the other inadequate words I had to describe the tangible bond I had with the world.
For the first time in my life, I was lost, and I am still trying to find my way back.
Illustration by Alexis Young
•••
I spend my days preparing draughts for the wounded and tending to patients, many of whom look at me with something akin to worship. I see time pass in the way their bodies slowly knit themselves back together, and even the worst of their injuries from Bakunawa’s attack begin to heal. Mother and I do not speak. Sometimes, she touches my arm to let me know she is there. Still, the silence festers, and though the throughlines are gone, it itches like dried sweat. There are so many things I would like to say to her, but I do not know where to start, so I do not start at all. At night, I listen to her breathing and try to match it with my own, but then she will cough or shift in her sleep, and I will be out of sync, again.
•••
One day, more out of necessity than desire, I decide to regrow the garden. This time, there is no guiding the plants to sprout nor gently discouraging pests from coming near. There is only sweat and time and a different kind of patience, but I do not mind the work as much as I thought I would. Mother watches, then offers her own secrets—tricks I eagerly gather like seashells. I marvel as life begins to reach out from the soil, and I find myself speaking to the plants as they grow. Although the words feel silly and stupid and inadequate, I do not stop. I tell them inane musings or memories or stories—things I never had to use words to say before. It is not the same, but I am learning.
Sometimes, I can feel Mother standing by the door, listening. Most of the time, I let her stay.
At night, I stay awake long after Mother turns in, watching the moon, but Bakunawa never returns. I often wonder if he is alone, if he is healing. I pray to Bathala that he is okay. At peace.
Eventually, my exhaustion catches up with me, and one morning, when I wake, I mistake the dusty daylight streaming in through the slats in the window for the throughlines. The loss is fresh, and I stumble outside of my kubo just to breathe. Outside, the world seems hopelessly wide and distant.
I tend to the garden, if only so I have something to do with my hands, something to hold on to. I tear out weeds and hunt for pests, and, for one vicious moment, I move to uproot my garden again. I get as far as digging my fingers into the dirt, but then I feel the soil under my nails, and I see the leaves gently bobbing as beads of sweat drip from my forehead, and for the first time in a long time, I feel myself in something else and I feel something else in me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Then I sit back, exhausted, and let the sun kiss my face and the breeze ruffle my hair. The leaves of the garden—my garden—dance in the wind like dozens of hands waving at the sky, at me.
I am still crying when Mother finds me. She stares, a question forming on her lips, but when I open my arms, she envelops me in an embrace, her fingers combing through my tangled hair in soothing strokes. I hold her tightly, clinging to her warmth. I think of the throughlines, of the elders’ stories about the gods and their ubiquity in all living things. I think about the villagers’ stories about me.
She survived, they say. She lived.
I close my eyes, and, for a second, the world is clear.
