by  Raissa Claire R. Falgui

(image from Wikipedia)

I saw him blundering through the forest before he saw me. Naturally. I was the goddess of Mt. Makiling and he was a mere mortal. And he was getting old. It had been over twenty years since I had last seen him. But I knew him, old and stooped and anguished as he was. 

“What a surprise to see you here, Dodong,” I said, as I appeared before him. “How have you been all these years? And how is my namesake?”

For he had named his daughter, his only child, after me. That had been what he promised me after digging up a pot of gold from beneath the roots of the mighty narra tree I had forbidden the ambitious furniture-maker to cut down. A simple reward for his humble compliance. He was so delighted! 

Though I said nothing of it, I made sure that my future namesake would be blessed with all the finest attributes. Beauty. Grace. A way with plants, especially flowers. She was such a perfect epitome of femininity, I heard that she managed to transcend her plain, common name of Maria the Spaniards had tacked onto my true name Makiling, and became known as Mariang Mayumi. Simply Mayumi, in recent years, for her sweet and modest nature. Overly modest, perhaps. She was known in her town for extreme shyness and reticence. 

I knew because many a young man had come to the forest asking for my assistance in reading her exceedingly diffident expressions, recounting how they would serenade her with: “Mariang Mayumi, I beg you to smile upon me.” But never received a response, never saw her face peep from her window. Did she care for any of them at all, could I make her care? I ignored most of them, not finding them deserving of the girl who was like a daughter to me. 

As a child, Mayumi loved to go to the forest and quietly explore by herself. I taught her about plants and sent her home with flowers to plant in her garden. I told her to simply call me Maria. In her politeness, she called me Miss Maria, like one of her American teachers, and asked me no questions about who I was and why I was always on the mountain. If she had told anyone of our interactions, they would probably have suggested my identity to her. But I enticed her to keep our walks in the forest a secret, and as a child she had treated me like an everyday person so I felt certain she kept her promise. 

Anyway, she was not one for talking much. At first, at least. As we saw more of each other, she confided more easily with me, in a way she could not with her own mother and father. I knew because she told me this. She told me too that they kept her at home and discouraged her from having friends. She didn’t have anyone to talk to about me until she met Agustin, and if she told him about me, that was all right. 

“My daughter,” Dodong rasped now, as he knelt before me. Well, it was hardly surprising his daughter should be on his mind as much as she was on mine. I had seen her in the forest recently, in fact, but no need to tell him that. It would simply horrify him, in any case, if he knew under what circumstances I had seen his child, now a woman.

“What of her?” I asked nonchalantly.

He held up a pile of dirt, in which was a spiky plant with a dainty pink puffball of a flower. “She has turned into this. Surely it is by your power? Will you please have the goodness to turn her back into a girl?”

I stifled a laugh. 

***

Mayumi, as she became known as a young lady, may have been quiet, but as the American teachers say, still waters run deep. She had a mind of her own, her own preferences and dreams which she never shared with any mortal, not even her parents. 

In fact, I gathered that her parents often asserted to her their belief that children, especially female children, should be seen and not heard. Perhaps it was due to their influence she had grown to be so timid. According to the men who spoke about her, anyway. With me, she was not so. She confided in me all her young passions. As a child she questioned me politely about the plants she saw. 

“What do you call this?” she asked, pointing to an orchid on a tree. 

“I call them bright jewels,” I laughed, plucking a few of its tiny blossoms and settling two of them on our fingers like rings and on her hair. “Men don’t have a name for it yet, I believe.”

Her eyes widened. “Do you think if I tell people about this plant it will be named after me?”

“I hope so, though more likely whatever scientist studies it to find out if it is a new, unnamed plant will end up naming it after himself.”

Her face fell. “Yes, that probably will happen. Nobody pays attention to what children do very much. At least my parents don’t. They aren’t interested in the things I do. They tell me to keep quiet when I try to tell them. But at least they don’t notice me going out here to see you. I’m glad I have you,” she added, smiling shyly up at me.

“I’m glad too,” I smiled back, touched by her unusually long, affectionate speech.

As she grew though, this changed. Her parents started taking notice more of what she did, of her trips to my mountainside, and not in a good way. She came to me once as a young lady to say goodbye, explaining her parents disapproved of her wandering in the forest alone. We only spoke briefly that time. 

She never spoke directly of her feelings for Agustin, the poor youth her parents had contracted to help her tend her by now vast and richly-populated garden. I did not ask though I knew about him. She had spoken of him and how they worked together in the garden a good deal. It started with innocent remarks like Thank you for the cinnamon tree. Agustin had never seen one before. Eventually came giggling confessions like, It was so hot today I told Agustin that he could take off his shirt if he wanted to. And he blushed and said no, it wouldn’t be proper. I stared at him, wondering why, and I imagined how he would look with his shirt off and I could feel myself blushing! It was so embarrassing.

 I easily gathered that she had a strong fondness and sympathy for Agustin, despite her parents’ less stellar opinion of him. They had hired the young man out of charity but were wary of him, and never let him set foot in the house. For his father was in prison for theft, while they, thanks to Dodong’s judicious use of the gold I had given him, were the richest family in town. They had made it clear that none of the young men in the town were quite good enough for her, particularly one as poor and disadvantaged as Agustin. Despite my encouragement, Mayumi dared not stand up against her stern, proud parents, though her love was strong and steadfast. She shrugged in resignation and turned away after her tearful goodbye to me.

It would be from Agustin himself that I would hear about her again. Agustin, who knew her better than anyone, knew her heart. He knew her parents’ minds as well, which is why he sought me out on the mountain and begged me to help him win his love.

“She is too good for me, I know. Marrying me will ruin her reputation. Her family and friends look down on me. They’ll never accept me! But I cannot stop thinking of her, and I’ve heard she has never shown any encouragement to the men who serenade her.”

I absently caressed with one finger a butterfly sipping nectar from a flower. “And has she shown she cares for you?” I asked.

“I don’t wish to brag. But she speaks to me as she does to no one else. She tells me all about the plants in her garden. She glows when she talks to me about the simplest things.” He sighed. “Her words are like poetry. Once she spoke of the dainty pink flowers of the Rangoon creeper blowing sweet kisses to me as I took my leave, and I knew she was really speaking of what was in her own heart.”

“You know her feelings for certain?”

He nodded, smiling tenderly as if at a memory. “Once, in the garden, I took her hand to help her jump over a puddle, and she blushed. That was when I knew. I assure you I have done nothing to her. I don’t dare embrace her. To kiss her would be to ruin her—”

“It might also be a way to get her parents to let her marry you,” I interjected. “Isn’t that the way it is with the foolish so-called social mores you mortals have? If an unmarried woman has lingered too long alone in the company of a man or if they are seen embracing or kissing, they must marry since the young lady is considered compromised, or some such nonsense?”

“That wouldn’t be fair to Mayumi, though, would it?”

“You are an upright, honest young man, despite your father’s ways,” I said approvingly, touching his shoulder. Ah, muscular, too. I did not wonder at Mayumi’s blush at touching his hand.

“Thank you,” he responded gravely. “It has been so hard for my younger brothers and me after Tatang was imprisoned. Everyone suspects us of being thieves. So I have worked hard all these years to prove them wrong and make sure my brothers do the same. I am all they have since our mother died last year.”

I smiled. “Very well, I shall help you. Go to her parents and ask for her hand in marriage.”

“Thank you, Mariang Makiling,” he said, with a respectful bow of his head.

***

I yawned behind my hand while Dodong recounted to me how three young robbers had come to the house and he had called to Mayumi to hide in her garden while he and his wife faced them and were knocked out. I supposed they had spread the same story around the entire town.  

He never suspected that I was in the garden with Mayumi, soothing her when she heard from within her father’s resounding cry of “No!” and ordered Agustin to leave, shouting insults after him and his brothers.

I spirited Mayumi from her garden to Agustin’s humble home. They went to a town on the other side of my mountain that night, with his brothers in tow to stand as witnesses in their wedding. The brothers easily found work with a farmer who provided a hut for them to live in. As for Mayumi and Agustin, I invited them to spend their honeymoon on my mountainside.

They lay together not on a bed of roses but of morning glories. Much more comfortable, when you think about it. After all, roses have thorns. In the morning, they would be surrounded by soft purple blooms and spy the gold I had strewn on the ground around them. Enough for them to build a small home and get a start on a life together. 

The plant I left in Mayumi’s garden? A little joke. 

Poor Dodong, of course, didn’t get it. He stared at it in his palm, stroking the leaves that shut tight at his touch beneath the jaunty pink flower.

“What makes you think I turned your daughter into a flower?” I asked him.

“My apologies, if you did not. But I am sure this is her. It is so like her, the shyest, most sensitive of all plants with a delicate blush color.” He touched its little blossom. 

I suppose he had never noticed beneath those pale pink filaments was a deep red heart. 

He sighed deeply. “She was such a good daughter. Our pride. We felt secure in the belief that she would stay with us and care for us in our old age.”

“And now you can be sure you’ll always have her well in hand,” I smiled.

He scowled, affronted, I suppose, at my taking the situation so lightly. “I apologize for having accused you wrongly, queen of the mountain,” he said, “but even if you had nothing to do with this, could you please work some magic to break the curse so that I may have my daughter back?”

“But you have her!” I cheerily insisted. “And it seems to me everyone is much happier with things as they are.”

Well, at least Mayumi and Agustin were. And Dodong and his wife had all they really wanted: a sweet creature that stayed quiet and contained. Though admittedly, the last might be difficult. Small as it was, it would be a constant nuisance and they’d have to work constantly to keep it from interfering with their crops. 

As I said, a little joke.

About the Author. Raissa Claire R. Falgui is a Filipina author whose most recent speculative fiction publications include a story in the anthology Fly by Night and several in her collection Dreaming of the Sea. Due to the knowledge she has picked up throughout her studies and various writing and editing jobs, most of her works have to do with history, culture, and mythology often combined with elements of romance. Her historical novel Woman in a Frame was shortlisted for the Philippine National Book Awards in 2015. Her collection Virtual Centre and other Science Fiction Stories, published by Penguin Random House SEA, includes an update of her Palanca-winning future fiction story. Now an editor at Milflores Publishing, she is a graduate of the University of the Philippines with an MA in Creative Writing and a BA in Art Studies. She is married to Ateneo English teacher Joel Falgui. They have three children.