Homecoming

Catarina surveyed her villa, a monkey running with a mango across the bamboo fence. She smiled at the monkey's antics. The curious animal was like her - on tenterhooks:

Waiting for her story to begin, after two and a half decades. When would Mindanao change? It seemed stuck in cycles. The summer of fruits and feasts.

The harvest. The monsoons. Jungle heat, verdigris shade. Motorcycles, pandesal sellers, hawkers of wares and woes. Catarina sipped on coconut juice spiked with human protein. A product of her laboratory.

Catarina had dug into the bones of Domminga Mountains to construct her castle of wood, clay, crystals, and stone. Her abode straddled a waterfall, glorious atop a crest in the lush mountain jungle.

It was like a great earth giantess consuming the wetness of Idiyanale, the goddess of justice.

The Ikapati Aswang used to be just and merciful.

That was a long time ago.

They were the cruel but kind rulers of the Domminga Mountains and Mindanao. In the past before civilization had encroached, and electric lights flooded the mountain, the Aswang were peaceful:

The Ikapati Aswang used to claim the firstborns of the human tribes as tribute. Instead of killing them, they raised them as blood donors. The Pilipinos could own property, marry aswang, and fight and work on Aswang Mountain. Now, Catarina had human blood from her ancestor's intermarriages with royalty.

In return, the strong, peaceful Aswang had protected Mindanao's supernatural and mortal citizens from the fearsome Tikbalang and mercurial wind spirits.

Human babes were raised as thralls, drained for their blood each morning, but kept alive with vim and vigor as a warrior class, like a white swan donor of human protein to the Domminga aswang.

The Domminga Mountains were remote, home of the proud Phillipine eagle. The verdant jungle thrummed with cobra and wild cats. As for Catarina, she vowed to never leave home again. This was her roots, her livelihood, and her kingdom.

She was a kind Queen, but soon... winds of war would blow.

The foot-long flying fox bats made their nests on the roof of Catarina's castle, the Iron Pillar.

She mused over this as she ate chicken adobo her right hand man Ambrosio had cooked with dried bay leaves from her garden, the veggies enriched with human protein.

Lechon stewed over the fire as Ambrosio, a faithful human protein-vegetarian aswang, turned the roast boar on the spit.

"Ambrosio, do you think I have what it takes to change the loathsome ways of the Ikapati Tribe for good?" Catarina mused.

Her swordstick cane - made of rosewood and bamboo - was lacquered bright and boot polish black. She smirked, petting the golden Philippine eagle in silver on its cobblestone crest.

Catarina ran sharp red nails over its bright metal beak.

Ambrosio, a golden eyed, brown skinned aswang, smiled like silk on a midsummer night. They had grown up together. Ambrosio was ten years her senior, a far-removed cousin, and her faithful bodyguard. He always challenged Catarina to improve her fighting prowess. A scientist who had studied in Britain, Ambrosio helped develop new Mendelian strains of fruits and veggies to supplement the pacifist aswang's diet of human protein.

"Can Anagolay find Father Time's watch?" Ambrosio laughed.

He was referring to Ikapati and Mapulon, the god of seasons, prized daughter. Every Queen Aswang was connected to her: Princess Anagolay, the daughter of lost things.

Anagolay was sacred to the children of the Ikapati Tribe, and the child goddess offered wandering baby aswang and humans alike special protection against Tikbalang hunters and trickster wind spirits.

Catarina smiled like a knife, her violet lips, crimson eyes, and bronzy skin shining like a wind chime.

Catarina's sleek, proud black hair cut like a blade across her face, and the Aswang Queen smirked, winking at Ambrosio.

"Men can't tell time, Ambrosio. Always waging war, instead of keeping peace like us women. That is why the humans of Mindanao and Domminga Mountain valleys used their warrior shaman to forbid the offerings of babies to us as servants, and why those miscreants Aswang feast upon pregnant fetuses. To not embrace change, dear Ambrosio..." Catarina sighed, petting a stray tarsier. "Is to die. And Ikapati, she does not want her daughters and sons to die."

"So what do you propose, Queen Catarina?"

She plucked a mango from her gardens, then used her sharp, hollow needles of fangs to parch it of sweet juice.

Lips shining like a woman's sex, Catarina grinned:

"We evolve."