Do you know more of me than I do? she asks them.
Do you?
* * *
Harmony
The eldest daughter escapes.
She must have seen the writing on the wall, Leto muses to herself when it happens. The Dowager is beside herself. It would not have happened, it would not have happened, if Leto had done all three of them at once like she had asked.
You should have known better than to let the other girls out, is all Leto thinks. Ofelia lets the Dowager know, calmly, that matters are being handled and shoots Leto a look. Leto understands: she wants Leto to fix it. The foundations of the world her mother is building depends on Chua Mercado’s reliability, their reputation. She needs to undo the damage she’s caused.
But Leto spends some time in the garden, among the specimens and patents that never quite caught on. She spends some time with the Bella Norte bees, waking in the moonlight, settling on Leto’s dress like golden dust.
You made them for me, said Charity. Why would Leto do that? What did she owe her?
She considers that Charity and Faith may be right, that her mother has been wiping her memory, altering her like a story that she can’t quite perfect. She should be terrified. She should be outraged, but all she feels is hollow. She wonders if anger was edited out of her too.
“I don’t know what to do,” she says, honestly, to the Bella Norte bees, as if they could answer her.
* * *
They track Harmony down in a shabby little street in Binondo, in a shabby little room. Leto insists on going herself. After all, it was her mistake.
At that, something inside Ofelia seems to untwist and loosen. She kisses Leto on the cheek. She says: She knows Leto will make it right. Everyone makes mistakes. We all learn from them. We make ourselves perfect.
Leto lets herself into the shabby little room, and there is Harmony, waiting.
The survivors of Charity’s bees surround her, drinking sugar water. Harmony is tall and striking, even with her hair slick with the humidity and the lack of care over the past few days. Charity was the sweetheart, Faith was the baby, but Harmony was meant to be their mother, all over again. It must have galled the Dowager, when Harmony picked her sisters over her mother. That was not the natural way of things.
Leto isn’t sure what edits to make to improve those outcomes.
“We all know you’d come for us, you know,” says Harmony. She doesn’t move. The bees settle around her, as if she is their saint.
“So I’ve heard,” says Leto. Harmony raises her eyebrow.
“What do you remember?” Harmony asks, point blank.
Leto says nothing.
“What do you remember?” Harmony asks. “How many times did she make you over, so she could start all over again, a clean slate?”
Leto thinks of the ashes in her mother’s garden. Whether any of them are made up of her former selves. She wouldn’t know when her mother started. She wouldn’t even know where to begin.
“I know about Charity’s daughters,” she says, her voice hollow. “I know about the bees.”
Harmony sighs, and her shoulders slump over.
“We didn’t know,” she says, “if she’d remake you, over and over again. Just to make sure you couldn’t remember. Do you remember? Making the bees for Charity? Do you?”
Leto feels breathless. A little bella norte lands on her cheek.
“She cried when you stopped answering her letters,” says Harmony. “When we passed by each other and you acted as if you didn’t know her. And later—when classmates came back, from rehab, from sabbaticals, from tours, not quite right, well, we all wondered.”
It’s like a knife to her ribs. She doesn’t—she can’t feel anything.
Harmony gives her a box.
“I’d do it again you know,” she says, between her teeth. “I would pick Faith and Charity, every time. Every time. Hollow me out, empty me of all the inconvenient things my mother wants gone, and I’d still make the same choice.”
“What’s inside?” Leto asks.
But she already knows.
* * *
The Dowager sends payment: all three Prodigals, successfully remade. She even gifts Leto with the survivors of Charity’s bees. They have no use for them, and the girl is getting married again in the fall. Another fairy tale wedding. Then: one for Faith, and one for Harmony. She’s already signed contracts for little Seraphim to be made.
“Well done,” Ofelia says, and kisses her cheek. Another death, smoothed over. Because these girls wanted something outside what they should want.
What does Leto want? Nothing except her work. There’s nothing that her mother left her.
So she creates a second variant of the Bella Norte, from the daughters of Charity’s bees. They have Faith’s anger; Charity’s love; Harmony’s loyalty. And inside, inside, they contain slivers of memory, two baby girls avenged by their mother and aunts.
Leto’s daughters have no debut: they are not presented to the world the way Leto was. Instead, she lets them fly wild.
That year, the Dowager and her congregation will be haunted at night time by bees that sing like wind chimes, that smell of baby’s breath, and build cathedrals inside her church. At her wedding, Charity will turn to look at them, and she won’t know why she feels joy and heartbreak. Faith will wonder as she lets them settle on her shoulders and Harmony will feel a strange peace, even as the bees murder her mother’s congregation.
They’ll say it’s a miracle, that the three of them are left alive.
KAPRE: A LOVE STORY
Rin Chupeco
This is the tale of Kapre, who lived in ancient trees tangled in shadow. Massive, stubbed fingers the color of faded coffee, scrabbling at tree trunk and bark for sustenance. Irises the color of twin moons, mouth the redness of withered santan. He shinnied up mountains in the heat of day, made nests of dried bones and rain at night. He could see himself in the twisted gnarl of branches, found comfort in the rigidness of bamboo. Nestled in the thickness of wood, Kapre could pretend friendship with plants and soil. Birds found homes within the snarls of his beard. Bees sought honey in the yellows of his eyes.
From his perch he could see Aswang fly past, skirts billowed out behind as her wings extend, grasping at wayward breezes. Her dress would lift up to ride the winds, high enough that Kapre could see the hollows of her breasts, the grey ripples of her waist that tapered into stumps where hips and legs ought to be. Aswang’s mouth opened and closed, bloodied tongue flickering out to sample the lightness of air, savoring the freshest scent of newborn child or pregnant woman.
From his perch, he could see Tikbalang down below, pawing at the ground. The sound of hooves striking rock, of hands that constantly grasped and clenched at nothing, of the sharpness of teeth. The horse-man stood upright, preyed on unwary travelers and the lack of pavements. Kapre, Aswang and Tikbalang shared body space in the forests of San Lorenzo, because choice was not a commodity.
Ironic, that the pickings grew slimmer with the explosion of humanity. Villages burst in size and mind. Fewer children were considerate enough to wander out alone: generations of warnings and superstitions passed down, whipped into their bloodstream. Strong men foraged together with heavy axes and stout cudgels, and even monsters learned to fear the beat of heavy footsteps, the flickers of torch fire. Centuries of living made them soft.