The garage door grated up on tired rollers, the sound bouncing thinly across the quiet lot. Dust lay over everything in a soft film—the bicycle with rusted chain, the old bamboo ladder, the stack of paint cans her lola kept "just in case." Emma tugged her suitcase from the trunk, the handle warm under her fingers, and rolled it the short distance to the back door. It wasn't far—just the length of the cemented path past the calamansi bushes her grandmother once fussed over. Still, the wheels rattled loudly in the morning hush, and she winced as if she'd broken some unspoken rule of the town.
At the door she hesitated, key poised above the lock. The world on this side smelled like sun-baked concrete and leaves. The world on the other side would smell like memory.
She turned the key.
The back door stuck a little, then gave with a sigh. Inside, light slanted across the kitchen table, catching the rim of the enamel mug her lola preferred. The air held the layered scents of old wood, camphor, and the faintest echo of a floral cologne. Dust motes spun lazily, a galaxy of small witnesses.
"Hello, Lola," Emma said softly. "I'm home again."
She parked the suitcase, pulled a rag from the drawer, and set about wiping the table. The first swipe left a clean crescent; she smiled despite herself. Order, routine—these she understood. She filled the kettle, lit the stove. The flame bloomed blue; the kettle began its low, tinny murmur. Coffee first. Decisions later.
The back gate clicked.
"Uy, doktora!" a voice called, lilting with warmth. ("Oh, doctor!")
Emma glanced out the window. Aling Nena, the neighbor whose guava tree had always leaned into their fence as if trying to listen in, waved from the alley. She wore her forever housedress and carried a shallow basket of malunggay leaves balanced on her hip.
"Bumalik ka?" ("You came back?")
"For a while," Emma answered, pushing the door open. "Maglilinis lang, aayusin 'yong mga naiwan." ("Just cleaning up, putting things in order.")
"Hay naku, buti naman nakita kita," Aling Nena said, coming closer. "Akala namin tuluyan ka nang sa Maynila. Kumusta ka, iha?" ("Oh, good I saw you. We thought you were fully in Manila. How are you, dear?")
"I'm okay," Emma said, and meant it more than she expected. "Ikaw, kumusta?" ("How are you?")
"Eto, buhay," the old woman chuckled, then peered past Emma's shoulder. "'Yong luma mong kalan, gumagana pa? Kung hindi, may extra kami." ("Here, alive. Your old stove—still works? If not, we have an extra.")
"Gumagana pa," Emma smiled. "Magkakape ka? May barako pa ako dito." ("It still works. Do you want coffee? I still have barako.")
"Hindi na, iha. Babalik ako mamaya. Gusto ko lang sabihin—ang saya na makita ka ulit dito." ("No need, dear. I'll come back later. I just wanted to say—it's so nice to see you here again.")
The compliment settled over Emma like a shawl. When the gate clicked shut behind the neighbor, she poured coffee into her lola's enamel mug and leaned against the counter, both hands around the heat. Outside, a tricycle coughed to life, a dog answered, and a little boy recited multiplication tables to an invisible judge. The town moved without hurry, as if time here agreed to be gentle.
She took her cup to the dining room and stood before the glass-front cabinet. The plates and bowls were in their usual stacks, the serving spoons lined like sleeping fish. On the top shelf was the small wooden box that used to hold her lola's rosary. She took it down. The rosary was still inside, cool in her palm. For a second she pictured it looped around patient hands—waiting, thanking, bargaining. She put it back carefully.
By mid-morning the house had surrendered parts of its quiet, replaced by the rhythm of cleaning: water sloshing in a pail, the steady swipe of a rag, the soft thud of a broom finding dirt in corners. She opened the windows. Heat moved through the rooms and took some of the stale air with it. The living room curtains exhaled. In the bedroom, she set fresh sheets on the old bed, smoothing the cotton flat with the practiced hands of someone who needed that neatness to calm the static at the back of her mind.
When she pushed the garage door fully up to sweep, two teenagers paused on the alley, whispering.
"Si doktora pala," one said. ("So the doctor's back.")
"Akala ko, balik na sa ospital," the other murmured. ("I thought she went back to the hospital.")
Emma lifted a hand in greeting; they waved back, suddenly shy. Their eyes slid to the suitcase by the door—proof she was not just passing through. The rumor would travel quickly now, not unkindly. In Panganiban, news moved like water—it found its own level, then settled.
She brought the suitcase inside. The wheels clacked once over the lip, then fell quiet. She left it by the hallway and went to the sink to wash her hands. The compass in her bag clicked against her phone when she set the bag down; the sound startled her memory. She glanced at it, then away. Not now.
For lunch she sauted garlic and onions , but the other stove had a pot of softened monggo which has been boiling for a while now. She put in some small shrimps she bought at SM Supermarket before continuing her journey, she put all the sauted goodness in the pot of softened monggo plus some chicharon and malunggay the way her lola had taught her, and ate with rice at the kitchen table. With each bite the house felt less like a museum and more like a place that could forgive her for leaving and allow her to begin again.
Why did I really come back? The question arrived uninvited with the last spoonful.
Because Manila had taken what she offered and then looked past her at a newer face with an older name. Because here, when patients said salamat, it landed somewhere inside that awards never found. Because there was a forest at the edge of town that made her skin hum as if the air were saying her name in a language she had forgotten.
She rinsed the bowl and placed it in the rack. The clock over the stove ticked bravely toward afternoon.
Far beyond the alley and the gate and the kitchen clock, Adrian stepped off the jeep from Daet and onto the shoulder of the road that led home. The sky was the pale, forgiving blue of a midweek day. He hoisted his satchel, adjusted the strap, and began to walk.
The forest leaned toward him as he approached its edge. It whispered the way leaves whisper when a bird changes branches.
She is here.
Adrian stopped, one hand still on the strap, the other hovering in the space between restraint and need. The forest was rarely unclear. He didn't ask who. His blood already knew.
He closed his eyes. He saw, absurdly, a mug—the cheap enamel kind—brimming with coffee. A hand he had held once when it was small and shaking; a voice that had learned to count with him in a clearing. He opened his eyes.
"Bathala," he said quietly, not as a plea but as a reminder. "Your will."
A tricycle rattled past on the highway below, a kid in the sidecar grinning around a packet of ice candy. Adrian nodded to the driver, stepped off the shoulder, and entered the trees.
He would not go to her door. Not yet. The forest had taught him a hundred kinds of patience; he would not forget them for the one thing his heart wanted fast.
By late afternoon, Emma had finished the kitchen and living room. She stood in the doorway of her grandmother's bedroom and let her eyes settle on the small things. The comb on the vanity. The hairpins in a saucer. The framed photo of her lola in a baro't saya, chin up, eyes laughing. Emma touched the glass with her thumb.
"Namimiss kita," she whispered. ("I miss you.")
On the bed she laid out clean clothes from her suitcase. She arranged them on the shelf by color because color gave her a strange, quiet courage. She tucked Ronald's card deeper into the side pocket of her bag and pretended she hadn't noticed herself doing it.
A knock at the front door startled her.
"Doktora?" a thin voice called. "Pwede po bang magtanong?" ("Doctor? May I ask something?")
Emma opened the door to find a girl of perhaps twelve, hair in two tight braids, clutching a folded slip from school.
"Assignment ko po," the girl said, thrusting the paper forward. "About puberty, sabi ni Mama magtanong daw ako sa inyo kung tama 'yong sagot ko." ("It's my assignment, about puberty. Mama said I should ask you if my answers are correct.")
Emma couldn't help it—she laughed, delighted. "Sige, tignan natin." ("Okay, let's see.")
They sat on the step, the afternoon sliding toward gold. Emma corrected one term gently, explained another. The girl nodded fiercely, pronouncing words slowly until they fit. When she left, she bowed as if leaving a small clinic.
"Salamat po, Doktora." ("Thank you, Doctor.")
"Walang anuman," Emma said. ("You're welcome.")
When the girl turned the corner, Emma stayed on the step, the heat of the day softening on her skin. Somewhere a radio played an old love song. A vendor called "Baluuuut!" down the main road. She closed her eyes. The quiet here was not absence. It was presence choosing a lower volume.
Dusk breathed itself into the trees. The light tilted; the birds traded songs for small, practical calls. The path to Adrian's hut gathered shadows like folded cloth. Inside, he set his satchel down, washed his hands, and, without lighting a lamp, sat on the mat to let the forest finish speaking.
When the first star appeared, he stood. He bolted the door. He drew a long, dark strand of hair from his bun, held it over the low flame, and whispered the old words. The smoke rose—the familiar curl that was both signal and permission.
His human shape yielded.
Hooves found the packed earth. His chest broadened; his height grew until the hut felt too small to hold him. His hair fell heavy, a mane drawn by gravity and vow. The Kabalan exhaled, and the night accepted him.
He moved through the trees with the ease of a creature who knew every root by memory. The clearing ahead flickered with fireflies as if the stars had come down to listen. Bayani stepped forward first, muscles tight under hide, eyes bright.
"Lakan," Bayani said, bowing, fist to chest.
"Lakan," Luntian echoed, calmer, the calm of slow rivers and old leaves.
Pilat bowed last, scar catching the small lights, his silence as deep as the ground.
Before anyone could speak, laughter threaded through the clearing like a ribbon. It was not mocking laughter; it was the laughter of cold water on ankles, of wind sneaking under a hat. The source revealed herself by degrees—a figure stepping from behind a banyan root, hair long and glossy as wet bark, skin with its own light. She wore no crown and needed none.
"Na-late ka," she said, hands on her hips, pretending offense. ("You're late.")
Lakan's stern mouth softened. "Amihan."
He had named her as a breeze when she'd first joined his court—a young diwata whose joy was as unselfconscious as the wind. She looked no more than thirty by human count, but her eyes held an old kindness that came from watching flowers open when no one clapped.
"The birds told me you were in Daet again," Amihan teased, walking a circle around him as if measuring how much of the day he'd used up on human obligations. "Plants, papers, humans. Hmph."
"The balance includes them," Lakan said.
Amihan rolled her eyes exaggeratedly, then stopped, nose tilted toward the village. Her smile thinned into something like attention. "Hmmm."
Bayani looked up at that same invisible point. Luntian's head cocked, listening.
"You feel it," Amihan said softly. "Someone has come back."
Pilat's scar twitched as if remembering rain. "Matagal nang wala," he murmured, voice rough. ("Gone a long time.")
Lakan did not turn his head, but his body learned forward as if the air itself had become a road. "Yes," he said. The word cost him more than he let them see.
Amihan's mischief is gentle. She stepped closer and pressed her palm lightly to his forearm, a sister's touch, not supplication. "You don't have to run," she said. "You never do." Then, because she could not help herself, she grinned. "But if you do, Kuya, I will race you and still win." ("Big brother.")
Even Bayani smiled at that, brief as a flash of a fish under water.
"Reports," Lakan said, easing the court back into its shape.
Bayani spoke of farmers who had tilled too near the duwende mounds. Luntian described a creek running threadbare and the diwata of that water growing anxious with thirst. Pilat mentioned a kapre drifting nearer the coconut grove, not threatening, only watching, the way some storms watched for days before deciding whether to come ashore.
"We will appease the duwende," Lakan said. "Rice wine, salt, sweet cakes. I will mark the mounds before dawn; no plows should cross. For the creek—offerings of buko water, banana leaves, a song. The kapre—leave him. He is not a dog to be scolded. He is a mountain that chose to stand on legs."
Amihan swayed, pleased with the shape of his decisions. "I'll carry the songs," she said. "They like it when a woman sings."
"Salamat," Lakan said. ("Thank you.")
As the court dissolved into tasks, Amihan lingered. "She smells like the first rain after a long heat," she said dreamily, half to herself. "Like the edge of a river when the moon is big." She glanced at him. "Hindi siya ordinaryo." ("She is not ordinary.")
Lakan's throat worked as if swallowing a stone. "Walang tao ang ordinaryo," he said. ("No human is ordinary.")
Amihan accepted the correction with a small bow, then lifted her face to the canopy as if waiting for the wind to return with a message. When it didn't, she twirled and vanished into the trees, laughter fading like a ripple.
Bayani came to stand at Lakan's side. "You will not go to her?"
"When memory calls, I will answer," Lakan said. "Not before."
Bayani clenched his jaw but bowed. Luntian touched Lakan's shoulder in quiet agreement. Pilat's scar caught the last of the firefly light and went dark.
Later, when the tasks had taken them away and the clearing was only crickets and star-pricks, Lakan stood with his weight shifted onto three legs and let his body lock into the standing rest his bones remembered. He dozed without surrender. After a time, when the forest's breath changed, he eased down fully, pressing his flank to the earth, his human torso curling the way the body does when it hides its most tender place. An hour. No more. Enough to dream without forgetting to guard.
Night moved on its rails toward whatever hour was meant for it. In the small house by the alley and the guava tree, Emma finished showering and stood at the window with her hair wrapped in a thin towel. The field beyond the fence was a dark square, the line of trees beyond it a deeper shadow. Somewhere a gecko clicked judgment. She cradled her mug. The steam clawed one more last bit of dust from her throat.
On the table lay the compass.
She didn't mean to pick it up, and then it was in her hand. The needle quivered, flirted with north, then trembled toward the trees as if pulled by breath. She almost laughed at herself. "You're broken," she told it, but gently, like scolding a child who was only half wrong.
"Bukas," she said to the room. ("Tomorrow.") "Maglilista ako ng kailangan ayusin." ("I'll list what needs fixing.") Curtains, pantry, the leak in the hallway roof when the rain came sideways. She would go to the market early; she would ask if Julie's was still making those sinful ensaymada; she would plan to resist and then fail.
On impulse she stepped onto the back step and sat. The concrete let go of its heat in slow breaths. The sky above the trees had more stars than Manila remembered how to show. She tried to name the constellations and got them wrong and didn't mind. The night put its cool hand on her forehead.
From the forest, miles and minutes away, a wind came thin and curious. It lifted a piece of hair from her cheek, set it down again. She closed her eyes.
"It's not running," she said aloud, surprised at herself. "It's… choosing."
The words didn't ask for an answer. The night kept its counsel, which was always kinder than silence.
Inside, she placed the compass back beside the mug and turned off the lights. Outside, at the edge where human roofs met the first line of trees, a shadow paused and listened to the sound a house makes when it finally recognizes the person inside as its own.
Emma lay down on fresh sheets in a room that smelled like lemon soap and old paper, and slept the first unbroken four hours she had managed in months.
In the clearing, far away and not far at all, the Kabalan stood, listening to the forest listening to her.
The town, which had a way of saying only what it meant, took one more breath and settled, as if making room for something it had been expecting for a long time.
—