This is a fairy tale for adults.
And that means you, dear reader.
Whether you are lying in bed or sitting at your work desk, sneakily scrolling away at your phone, allow me a few minutes of your precious time to weave you a story.
We begin this adventure a stone’s throw away from the Loakan Airport: long rumored as the favored ground for all things scary, spooky and otherworldly. Here the night was quiet, and the moon above shone bright, as it did in the first 10 minutes of any B-movie horror show.
At the end of the street stood a secluded house; a two-story cabin with a pine forest backyard that seemed to stretch for miles. It was late, but the kitchen lights were still lit on the first floor.
Here, a married couple, Gev and Gary, sat in silence on opposite sides of a wooden dining table. Not a word was said—until Gary finally asked,
“Is Nina asleep?”
Gev nodded and crossed her arms.
Another five minutes of frosty stillness followed.
Now, dear reader, while these two continue their cold war, let us pause here to take note of our humble surroundings.
The kitchen was spotless, bearing no remnants of the pizza and fried chicken wings from earlier. A family picture from last year’s Mt. Ugo climb was tacked onto the refrigerator by a Mayon-shaped magnet from Albay. Water dripped from the dish rack as freshly washed plates dried. There was a door that led out to the backyard, and propped against it on the opposite side, under the pale moonlight, were three pairs of muddied hiking boots — one for each member of this family.
Although this seemed like a house, was it also a home?
“I don’t know what else you want me to say, Gev,” Gary said, unable to hold the silence.
Gev stared at the floor, the linoleum gleaming back at her.
“We’re leaving Gary. Dad said he’ll pick us up tomorrow. Nina and I will stay with him until we figure this whole thing out.”
“Gev, please.”
A tear fell from Gev’s face.
“You should go now, Gary.”
“Gev. Please.”
“Stop it, Gary. I said we’re leaving. You’re not listening. You never listen.”
“No, you are not. Please, Gev, think about this.”
“You’re not listening, Gary. You never listen.”
“I’m trying Gev!”
Gary’s fist slammed onto the table. Another quiet spell fell upon the scene. Gev cried softly, while Gary paced his breathing with his face in his hands.
The two resumed their wordless battle, oblivious to the effect their argument had on our tale’s real main character.
Upstairs, past the half-open bedroom door lied our teary-eyed heroine, Nina. Her ten-year-old ears had heard more than their fair share of parental arguments, and by now they had grown weary of it all. She was young, but even she knew that if a toy were shaken hard enough, it would eventually break.
Nina took a deep breath, as the silence from below crept up the stairs, slithering, and sneaking its way into her anxious heart. It was long past her bedtime, and a chirp from her pink Disney watch on the bedside table told her midnight had struck.
No matter how many attempts Nina took, she could not cling onto sleep. Somehow, she knew that tonight’s fight was something else — something deeper, like the steep drop off a cliff at the edge of a rocky mountain.
She sniffled and hugged her stuffed toy, piggie, tighter. It was such a sad scene to watch; however, we come to learn that we are not the only ones watching.
Floating outside of Nina’s bedroom window, a glowing orb of what looked like blue flame, rapped against the glass. Nina turned and saw the light, as it danced and bobbed against the dark silhouettes of the tall pines behind it.
Nina, instead of fear, sensed a calm familiarity.
For reasons she could not explain, this mysterious orb felt much like an old friend, a warm refuge from the scary thoughts which scrambled about her mind. She stood up and walked closer, watching the luminescent visitor jiggle and flip like a circus performer on primetime. The guest tapped at the glass again, not urgently, but in a manner almost inviting, like a friend calling on another friend.
Nina walked over and opened the window, welcoming the flaming orb which zoomed and darted across the room in the most playful of manners. The young girl giggled and tried to give chase, but the light visitor slowed down and instead came to rest upon her open palm.
Nina heard a lady’s voice, almost like a whisper in her ear.
“Come with me, Nina.”
And with that message, the orb floated back outside, where a trail of other glowing spheres led from the window, all the way into the forest. Nina watched as a cluster of lights gathered just beneath the windowsill, which now formed a stairway of magical brilliance that buoyed and carried her safely as she climbed down to the grass below.
The orbs then reformed into a line, guiding the path forward. Nina took a few steps before realizing she had forgotten something.
“But wait!” she said.
Stealthily, Nina crawled toward the kitchen’s back door and grabbed her muddy hiking shoes which leaned against it. Now in the appropriate footwear for a proper midnight jaunt across the forest, Nina followed the lights into the pines, leaving her parents who had begun to argue even louder than before.
**********
You must be wondering, dear reader, how this family even ended up this way. And for us to understand, we must return to the beginning. Long before hiking trips and instagrammable mountaintop selfies became a thing, Gev and Gary had already been outdoor people. In fact, it had been during a climb along some forgotten mountain a little over a decade ago that the pair first met.
Gary worked insurance, while Gev worked accounting. And so numbers and computations, risks and their equivalent rewards surrounded them, and later on, their daughter. Throughout Nina’s childhood hikes and nature walks were logical explanations for the shadows cast by trees, or the spooky sounds from the woods during campfire sessions.
There was little room for the magical or the supernatural — that is unless they visited Gev’s mother, who Nina affectionately called Lola Fel.
Upon her bungalow up in the Buguias mountains, Lola Fel provided Nina with a welcome break from all the statistical stiffness. The young girl would sit wide-eyed, listening intently as her grandmother regaled her with tales and legends about the forest, hills, and spirits of the Cordilleran mountains.
Hiking trips became more fun, with the little stories Nina knew. The outdoors became more colorful, even as the hues at home began to wear and fade.
As the years went on, Gev and Gary grew apart. In perhaps what was best supported by the statistic which claimed most marriages did not last after a certain number of incompatibilities arose, the dissolution of their relationship was the logical conclusion of a consistent pattern of cause and effect.
Cause and effect. Cause and effect. Cause and effect.
And so, perhaps, it was all this which caused Nina to follow the lights leading deeper into the pines, farther and farther away from the house, and farther and farther away from the logic that weighed upon her young heart. The wind blew cold, but Nina felt only the gentle warmth from the guiding flames that protected her from the chill. She had never been out this late, let alone, this far into the forest.
Nina thought of her parents and wondered if they were still fighting, or if they even noticed she was gone. She thought about turning around to return, but the desire to follow the lights was greater. Before long, Nina found herself at a clearing, where the rays of moonlight fell perfectly upon it and bathed the grass in silver luminescence.
The guiding blue orbs flickered and faded, leaving Nina alone.
You may be thinking, dear reader, oh no. Was this a trap? Was this poor girl tricked? Was this all a dastardly set-up? Was this one of those Cousin stories where a tragic twist was about to happen? Well, it may serve to calm you, that there are no fearsome beasts, nor menacing brutes here.
In the space before Nina, fading in from the moonlight, came an old lady dressed in a beautiful native tapis she was always known to wear.
“Lola Fel?” Nina’s eyes widened.
“Nina,” beamed her grandmother. It was the same soothing voice Nina had heard from the flame in her bedroom.
“It’s so nice to see you Lola!” said Nina as she ran and hugged her Lola, “I thought I would never see you again!”
“Yes, child,” whispered her grandmother as the two shared an embrace, “I have heard that you could not sleep?”
“Yes… Mama and Papa are fighting again.”
Lola Fel stroked the child’s hair.
“I’m so sorry to hear that little Nina. If you cannot sleep, would you then like to walk with me some more, since you are already here?”
Nina nodded and happily took her grandmother’s hand. The blue orbs of light reappeared from the darkness, and pranced around the pair as they walked down a path past the clearing.
“Are these lights your friends, Lola?”
“They are child, and they are also friends of the forest. They are botatews — bundles of energy that live among these trees. They don’t show themselves to just anyone, so you must be very special to be able to see them.”
Nina beamed with pride. As the two continued their stroll, Nina noticed how flowers and trees and orchids and rocks sprouted and arranged themselves, almost to appear presentable to the visitors. The glow from the botatews made everything look even more otherworldly and dreamlike.
Upon reaching a vacant patch of moonlit grass, Lola Fel waved her hand, and on the ground bloomed a set of dainty white lilies.
“Pretty, aren’t they?”
“Yes, Lola!” said Nina.
“I’ve always loved white flowers. They remind me of your grandpa.”
And with another wave of her hand, the flowers faded gently into the moonlight.
“But Lola … why can’t we just leave the flowers so?”
“Ah Nina,” said Lola, “because it is not their time to grow yet. They will have their time to bloom, but it is not today. So we will have to wait, and be patient until it is their time to do so.”
“Mama always tells me that.”
Lola Fel smiled as the pair went on their way.
“Well, now you know where she got it, Nina.”
**********
“They need time to grow, Nina. We have to be patient, okay?”
Nina was weary of waiting for the onion to sprout. Although she hated onions—and made a point of flicking them off her pizza, or pushing them to the side of her plate—the only reason she planted one was that her mother had said it would be one of the easiest things for her to grow.
“But there’s still nothing, mama.” Nina would cry.
“We have to wait, anak.” would come Gev’s reply.
Looking back now, Nina understood her mother better as she and her Lola rested on a large rock. They had walked for an hour, and Nina had began to feel drowsy.
“Lola Fel, I have a question to ask you.”
“Yes, Nina?”
“Well, I can see you here, and I’m with you now, but Mama and Papa said you were gone…”
Lola Fel clasped Nina’s hand gently in hers.
“That is true, Nina. But we must remember that some people never leave us. We may not see them, we may not hear them, but it does not mean they are no longer there. They remain alive, here.”
She pointed towards Nina’s chest, to which Nina laid her hand and felt the beating of her heart.
“Why can’t you come back with me, Lola Fel?”
Grandmother smiled and sighed gently. She gestured to a fallen log a few steps away.
“In life, sometimes we have to say goodbye, even if we do not want to say goodbye yet. But it is with each end, and each goodbye, that we have new beginnings.”
With a wave of her hand, the fallen tree sank into the ground and returned to the earth, serving as a bed for mushrooms and flowers. A new sprout had taken the tree’s place.
“It is sad, Nina, I know. But you will understand in time. Perhaps not tonight, but one day. ”
Nina nodded and yawned.
“I believe it is time for you to go home, Nina.” grandmother whispered, as Nina rested her head on her Lola and drifted off to sleep.
**********
Gev walked into Nina’s room the next morning and pulled the bedroom window open.
“Wake up, sleepy head. We have a busy day today.”
Nina stirred in bed and rubbed her eyes. Her mother had begun packing her clothes into a readied luggage.
“Did you sleep well last night, anak?”
Nina nodded.
“I had a dream, Mama. I saw Lola Fel, and we walked around the woods outside. There were all these cool plants and flowers and blue lights from these little things called bota-… botat-…”
“Botatews?” laughed Gev. “I see you still remember your Lola’s stories. That must have been quite a dream.”
“It felt pretty real.”
“Like most dreams, anak. You can tell Lolo about it too later, and I’m sure he’d like to hear about it, especially since your Lola was in it.” Gev stuck a few of Nina’s shirts into a bag. “So you better get ready because he’ll be here in half an hour.”
“Is papa coming with us?”
Gev paused and held Nina’s hand.
“Not today, anak. But we’ll talk about it more when we get to Lolo’s house, okay?”
“Okay, mama.”
And so Nina got out of bed while Gev continued packing their belongings. With the sun and the wide blue sky stretched above that morning, the mother and daughter carried their bags and boxes out to the curb, where they waited for Gev’s father to arrive.
Gev looked toward Nina and said,
“By the way anak,” she said, “Later, please make sure to leave your shoes outside of Lolo’s house. I found your hiking boots under your bed earlier and the floor was all muddy.”
A knowing smile formed on Nina’s lips.
“Yes, mama. I won’t forget.”
“Good girl. And are you sure you’ve got everything you need?”
Nina scrunched her forehead and thought hard before remembering one more thing. Running back into the house, she made a beeline toward the kitchen windows where a small clay pot sat. She grabbed it and walked back outside with a joyous smile on her face.
Upon it was a single onion sprout.
Copyright © 2019 Cousin from Baguio