Therefore, while I’m sorting things out, let me have another shameless self-promotion. Here’s my second Manobo-inspired story. My medium-term goal is to write at least seven stories about the indigenous people of Kulaman. So far, two have been published and one has been stuck in the rewriting process. Oh no. I should be working harder.
In the hinterlands of Cotabato region, among the Manobo people, roams a spirit called fegelilong. It is one of the most feared and despised spirits, for it makes fun of the human heart and kills mostly young men.
The fegelilong preys on lovers. Whenever it hears them set a tryst, it will come to the agreed place and lurk around. If the woman fails to show up on time, the fegelilong will assume her likeness and appear before the man, who will be struck dead the moment he sees the doppelgänger. Young people who have found love for the first time, because of their propensity to meet in secret and ignore the counsel of older folk, are the most vulnerable to the viciousness of the fegelilong.
Or so according to the beliefs of the tribal people. Unbeknown to them, the fegelilong does not kill on purpose. Its concept of death is different from that of humans. In fact, all the spirit desires is to help its supposed victim. It wishes to soothe a man’s aching heart. It wants to atone for something it did a long, long time ago, when human beings had not yet arrived in Mindanao and spirits had dominion of the large island.
The fegelilong then was an enchanting spirit called Sinta. Her beauty was known even in the lands far beyond the seas, and many male spirits journeyed to the mountains of Cotabato to court her.
Read the rest of the story in New Asian Writing, a Bangkok-based independent press.
