(Note: The story that follows is a work of fiction and should not be quoted in part or in whole as a traditional Manobo narrative. This is the last of three parts. The first part was posted on May 20 and the second part on May 27.)
Tomigel told Tomelos of the plan and asked him to come with her. Much to her disappointment, her son refused. Tomelos confessed that he had fallen in love with a young woman and he wanted her to be his wife. Besides, he was not sure if he could go with his mother and the spirits; after fighting off the people who wanted to harm his mother, he had not exhibited any unusual strength again.
In any case, the plan did not push through. Tomigel and the spirits tried all the methods they could think of, but each one failed to move them off the ground permanently. The most successful of their attempts was when they flew up with the monsoon wind. They were able to stay in the clouds for nearly a day, but when the rain poured down, they were hurled back to the ground. They also tried riding a giant whirlwind, but the result was even more disastrous.
Tomigel bitterly accepted her lot. She continued living as a human being. Tomelos married and built a new hut for him and his wife a little far away from his mother’s house. As much as Tomelos wanted to be by his mother’s side, Tomigel could not last the company of her son’s wife, or any human being, for that matter. If she so much as caught a glimpse of human beings or heard their voices, their ingratitude came flooding back to her mind. She came to hate all human beings, and she hated doing things that reminded her that she was one of them. She kept to herself inside her hut.
One day, Tomigel found out that she had run out of ready-to-cook rice. With a heavy heart, she checked her large bin, took a basket of unthreshed rice from it, went out of the hut, and poured the grains into a mortar. Of all household chores, pounding rice was what Tomigel hated most, because it was a basic and constant reminder that she was a human being. No spell or concoction could make the grains automatically shed off their skin. For human beings to be able to eat rice, they must perform the manual labor.
With all her pent-up emotion, Tomigel drove the pestle into the mortar. A thunderous sound erupted as the wooden pole cracked the skin of the seeds.
Tomigel paused and looked around. She did not notice anything unusual, so she went back to the mundane task. When she dropped the pestle again, she heard another deafening sound. Soon she realized that the explosion occurred in unison with her movement. She also began to notice that a thin, flat layer of mist was rising from the ground.
A group of spirits called out to Tomigel, and when she looked at them, she noticed that they were floating on the air—no, they were standing on the thin layer of mist. It dawned on her that the spirit world was moving apart from the human world, and somehow the pestle was causing it. She was filled with joy. She ran back inside the hut and refilled her basket. She pounded more rice, and the spirit world rose higher and higher. She did not stop until she was satisfied with the distance between the two worlds. She made sure that even the sound of the loudest human voice would not reach the new realm of spirits.
Tomigel did not fully realize it at the time, but it was her so much desire to be not human that awakened the power that had been sleeping in her. The power was created when her father copulated with her mother. The fusion of a spirit and a human being, first to happen since the world began, created a force surpassed only in uniqueness and magnitude by the emergence of life itself. Thus seething with fury, Tomigel was able to separate from earth what we call today sky.
As soon as the sky reached the height Tomigel desired, she went up after it. As she left the earth, her human half transformed into spirit, making her a full spirit and releasing long streaks of blinding light.
Tomelos was out hunting in the jungle that time. When he saw the light piercing through the foliage, he climbed a huge boulder and looked up. He witnessed his mother’s ascension. It occurred to him right away that the spirits had found a way to separate the two worlds.
While watching Tomigel, Tomelos felt a heavy loss. He had thought he would be able to overcome his grief once his mother left him. That was why he told Tomigel that he would stay with his wife. Now his heart was torn between the two women.
Tomelos could not decide for himself, so he sought for a sign. His eyes fell on the boulder he was standing on, and he thought of using it to test his identity. Tomelos decided that if he could break the rock with his bolo, it meant he had enough essence of a spirit in him to go up the sky. It meant he could and should join the world of spirits. But if his bolo broke or got stuck, it meant he was more a human being and should stay on earth.
With all his strength, Tomelos drove his weapon on the rock. It split in two as though it was just a piece of rice cake.
Having known his fate, Tomelos realized he was also capable of controlling nature, like the spirits. He left a spell on the game he had hunted so that they would not move until his wife found them. He then kicked on the ground, and he shot up to heaven.
Before Tomelos’s wife found the deer and wild boars, some foraging men came upon the animals. The men took the animals, even if they knew Tomelos captured them. They butchered them and put the chunks of meat inside their baskets. When they reached their homes, they proudly announced to their families that they had a good hunt. They opened the baskets, and yelped in horror when dark, furry, smelly creatures leaped out of the receptacles. The tiny creatures, which came to be known as rats later on, hid and propagated in the houses and brought pestilence to the people and the future generations.
Seeing the great firmament being formed and Tomigel ascending to it, the people of the village realized that Tomigel had been telling the truth. Alas, the realization came too late for them. No matter how loud they wailed for help, no one answered them.
In the spirit world, Tomelos discovered that he had arrived there ahead of his mother. He peered down through the clouds and found out that Tomigel had been stuck midway. She had used up much of her power in separating the two worlds and transforming herself into a full spirit, and the energy that was left in her was just enough to keep her afloat in the air. She was content, however, with where she was. She could no longer hear the voices of human beings, and she could still hear the voices of spirits. The spirits, too, could hear Tomigel, so Tomelos and she were able to communicate whenever they wanted to.
One day, a long time after the sky was formed, Tomigel heard the voice of a female human being from below. The voice sounded so much like hers. The woman was asking for help—not for herself but for her neighbors.
Tomigel soon figured out what was happening. The owner of the voice was her granddaughter. When Tomelos flew up the sky, the wife he left behind was with a child. Delighted, Tomigel told his son about the voice, but because of the distance between the sky and earth, Tomelos could not hear his daughter. Just as before, Tomigel became the only medium between the world of spirits and the world of human beings.
Tomigel could not bear to ignore the entreaties of her grandchild, so she asked the spirits to help the woman. The spirits, feeling indebted to Tomigel for forming the sky, relented. The communication between human beings and spirits resumed. The descendants of Tomigel inherited her ability to conduct a beliyan. The gods, though, had learned the lessons of the past. They no longer granted all the wishes of the people. They acted only on the direst circumstances and up to a reasonable degree.
The Manobo myth, specifically the version I discovered, ends thus. I must admit the story still leaves many unanswered questions in the mind of a particularly meticulous reader. I am confident, however, that after this account finds publication, no one, researcher or otherwise, will still find the myth “crude,” devoid of logic,” or plain “boring.” For this is the truth. This is the account of spirits who had been there, both as witnesses and participants to the great division that forever changed the face of the world.
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