Kapre endured. There was a sweetness to berries and mushrooms that human flesh did not have. Aswang laughed at him, and Tikbalang mocked his sustenance, but nourishment was nourishment whether it grew on ground or came with blood and entrails. Aswang and Tikbalang retreated into the observance of convention and tradition, catching unlucky humans during luckier months. Kapre remained on treetops, crunching nuts and small lizards by the light of the moon.
* * *
It was light that beckoned to him, a lone house growing out of thicket, a candle burning within. Curious, emboldened by hunger, Kapre crept closer. He was no longer familiar with the contours and shapes of houses, but the memories crept up on him, like morning coming into focus. The stout timber of walls, the dry thatch of ceilings, the rounded smoothness of glass under trembling fingers.
The window was open, the room empty. He feared candlelight, fire’s adopted child, but need drove him on. Something small at the very corner of that heated space wriggled and trembled, heavy with the smell of cotton and milk. Kapre approached the squirming bundle, expecting food and temporary appeasement.
Unlike other humans, the baby showed no fear. From under the thick bed covers of abacá and cloth she peered up at him, brown eyes shining in the dim yellow glow. She neither cried nor laughed, but instead regarded him solemnly from where she lay. Aware of her own helplessness, of the strangeness of his face, yet making no sound but that of quiet scrutiny.
She was an easy meal. No horrors of fire burns or flashing hatchets. He unfurled fingernails, moved in to feast.
The baby smiled at him, and Kapre hesitated.
She reached up only once. A tiny hand was no defense against claws that had weathered millennia of constant rending and tearing. The unformed fingers clasped around one of his, a contrast of nut brown on black.
Kapre looked down at the fragile, unprotected child, saw in one glance everything she was, and everything she could become. Her beauty seemed to flower and peak and fade all at once, and Kapre saw a young girl, a beautiful lady, an old woman, all juxtaposed into that tiny, heart-shaped face. Knew her future, knew what would become of her past. Knew that she would die one day.
Inside his chest something seemed to stir: a touch of gangrene on unused lung perhaps, or the decomposition of spleen.
A rough, calloused thumb pressed against the baby’s small wrist.
Several minutes later, when the mother returned, Kapre was gone. Inside her tiny cradle the baby slept on, undisturbed.
* * *
Kapre watched her in the years that followed.
He watched her take first steps, laughing, in between snatches of fir and wood. From high atop the trees he watched her swim, her stunted, clumsy movements folding and unfolding until they were sure and graceful. He watched her adopt the fluid manners of her elders, gathering wood and straw, tending animals.
A misstep alerted her to his presence. A sudden shifting on his part, a movement of branches where no breeze had touched. Immediately, the girl was on her feet, her eyes wide and fearful.
“Who’s there?”
Kapre could remain hidden, but knew she would no longer relish the safety of forests; knew he could not bear that look on her face. He emerged slowly from the camouflage of foliage, several heads taller, his black body leaned and gangly from abstinence, his jawline a crude map of past atrocities. “Do not be a-fraid,” he said, his mouth unfit and guttural for complicated words.
The girl continued to stand, paralyzed to the spot.
“Do not be a-fraid,” Kapre repeated. He slid to the ground, crossing his legs, to show he intended her no harm. He spoke again. “Do not be a-fraid.”
Still wary, the girl approached, a small stick raised in one hand. Kapre said nothing more and bowed his head.
“I know you,” the girl finally said. Slowly, wonderingly. “I have seen you before.”
“Yes,” Kapre said. Monsters knew nothing of lies; these were human entrapments.
The girl lowered her stick. “I’m not afraid,” she said, puzzled yet understanding, emotions in conflict. “I don’t know why, but I’m not afraid.”
“I would not harm you,” Kapre said, and he was struck by the enormity of what he said, and of what he knew was true. He would not harm her.
Her name was Nina, she said, and there was nowhere else for her to go. Her parents had been born in San Lorenzo, but had moved to Manila when they were older, in a small huddled room of ten cots and a kitchen stove. Her father had applied to Steel Forges, Ltd. in Saudi Arabia, but his contact soon disappeared with his money and his passport a month before his departure. Her mother worked as a maid for a wealthy Chinese family, cooking and cleaning for the comfort of others.
“Their neighbor’s house caught fire one day,” Nina said. “The fire moved from roof to roof, burning and burning and burning, till it burned their roof down, too.” Kapre shuddered in understanding, knew the terrible fear of fires. Deprived of the last of their possessions, her parents had moved back to San Lorenzo, her mother giving birth to Nina soon after.
They became friends. He was a companion when she lingered by the woods, finding fruit, harvesting small plots of vegetables and potatoes. He showed her his secret stashes of warm nuts and berries, outcroppings of mushroom farms that spun, dripping and wet, from the undersides of heavy moss and fissures. Sometimes Nina would bring these treasures back home, but more times than not she and Kapre would sit hunched over the small piles, greedy hands snatching back and forth and lingering, like guests seeking their fill of banquets.
Kapre protected her from staying too long, or straying too far. When night crept in, there were worse things in the woods of San Lorenzo than he.
Sometimes, they would play games. “Let’s play house,” she would say, and it was a sight to see—Kapre at small wooden tables, clawed hands wrapped around stringed paper dolls and imaginary tea. Held them like he would a baby, all those years ago.
“Let’s climb a tree,” she would say next, and Kapre would scamper from tree bark to tree bark as Nina clung to his back, laughing. “Let’s pretend you’re a carabao!” “Let’s go for a swim!” “Let’s build a castle!” He would do anything she told him.
Nina’s parents knew nothing of him or of their games. Kapre faded into scenery at every indication of their approach, watched as Nina ran to her mother and father, wondered about the intricacies of familial love. For Nina’s parents were no different than the dolls Nina played with. Often shredded, torn with little care and for fewer reasons: bits and pieces of mortality that came floating slowly, sadly, back down to earth.
But Nina was his paper doll and suffered no tearing and wearing. Was cared for. Adored.
Nina’s little fingers, dainty and clasped tightly over his own, rough-strewn as gravel, scraped as stone, gentle as a feather might alight on pavement.
* * *
“I shall eat her,” said Tikbalang, and once he nearly had. Worn by the meager feedings, by the toil of years, the Tikbalang entered Kapre’s territory one night. Red eyes greedy against the small house that crested the edges of the wood, the sputtering candle inside flimsy and fragile.
“No,” Kapre said. Tikbalang was strong: animal, mineral, vegetable. Hooves stamping onto ground, twinges of insanity at what was denied to him, teeth that knew only hunger. The temptation of meat was strong. Spit brittled over yellowed teeth, blunt from a lack of use. Underneath horsehide, powerful muscles bunched.