PodCastle 763: INDIGENOUS MAGIC – Dying Rivers and Broken Hearts

* Author : Gabriella Buba

* Narrator : Vida Cruz-Borja

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

* Artist : Cindy Fan

*

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Previously published by Strange Religion: Speculative Fiction of Spirituality, Belief, & Practice (Strange Concepts: Big Ideas Explored Through Speculative Fiction)

Rated PG-13

Dying Rivers and Broken Hearts

by Gabriella Buba

Manila, Philippines, 1936

Maria-Lucia had failed.

In her hand, a freshly struck agimat burned. The copper amulet pressed with the image of the Virgin Mary was hot with the power the coven had gathered from the full moon. Golden light streamed between her clenched fingers.

All eyes were on her, as her first meeting as leader of the Mallari witches after the death of her husband came to a close. The full moon sank into the black waters of Manila bay.

Pasig, the sea-dragon of Manila Bay, had not come to renew her pact with the Mallari Witches, nor to accept Maria-Lucia as their new leader. The dragon went by many names. She was a bakunawa to the sailors from Cebu. In Manila she was a laho, the moon chaser.

“Is it because of me?” Maria silently asked her witch-heart Lucia, “Because I’m not truly a Mallari Witch — only married-in?”

Lucia, normally euphoric after soaking up moonlight and magic with her coven, was hesitant. “I don’t know. She’s come to our call before, why not now?”

Her mother-in-law raised her hands from her seat on the edge of the circle, which was on the balcony below.

“It’s not unprecedented for the bakunawa to decline to appear until a new coven leader has introduced themselves properly,” she reminded the three dozen assembled witches.

Some stood down in the courtyard of the home. Some, like Maria-Lucia, were up on the tiled roof. Maria-Lucia had no memory of such a story about the great sea-dragon. The laho was the coven’s patron saint from before the Mallari witches adopted the concept of saints from the Spaniards. Still, no one dared nay-say the eldest witch present, not even Maria-Lucia’s brother-in-law, the second-eldest Mallari son. He firmly believed he should’ve been named coven leader, rather than his eldest brother’s wife.

Maria-Lucia would’ve conceded the title, if it wouldn’t have meant being cast from the coven and homelessness for herself, her ten-year-old daughter, and her four-year-old son. But she’d had a son, and so her branch of the Mallari line would hold precedence as soon as her son’s witch-heart named itself. She’d promised his father she wouldn’t give away his birthright.

She swallowed down her own and Lucia’s terrified uncertainty. “Forgive me. I’ve been so caught up in the funeral preparations; I did not think to reintroduce myself to Pasig. I will remedy my oversight without delay, and she will heed our call on the next full moon.” Maria-Lucia hung the rejected agimat offering around her neck. It scalded her sternum, full as it was with so much power.

She urged the assembled witches back inside the Mallari home, helping the titas and cousins lay out food and drink on long tables. The smell of crisp pork skin from lechon stuffed with crab and lemongrass filled the kitchen. Heaps of fresh white rice and garlic shrimp sat in large bowls.

As her mother-in-law hobbled to her place at the head of the table, leaning on her coral-inlaid cane,