PodCastle 618: Odd and Ugly

* Author : Vida Cruz-Borja

* Narrator : Don Pizarro

* Host : Summer Fletcher

* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh

*

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Previously published by Writers of the Future vol. 34.

Rated PG-13.

Odd and Ugly

By Vida Cruz

I.

You come to my tree at high noon in July, sweating, panting, young. So very, very young. I can’t help staring at you: it’s like watching a walking, talking circular window with square glass stuck through it. I knew you’d come someday, but I’m still so stunned to see you that I disbelieve my own eyes. The small sack in one hand and the clay jar at your hip tell me that you mean to stay, too.

“Are you the kapre from the stories? The one with the shell necklace?” you ask, your voice high and clear. You set your jar down and gather your long, sweat-dampened black hair over your shoulder, away from your nape, as you glance up from under your straw salakot. Your eyes are the color of tablea chocolate bubbling in a cup. I’m startled that I remember so human a sensation.

“That depends,” I say. I lower myself so you can see me, a thing moving and detached from the canopy of leaves above, although I’m of the same hues. Humanoid, but decidedly not human. I catch your gaze falling on my necklace: several cowrie shells strung together with black beads and woven thread, with a single shell hanging from the middle like a pendant. Your expression becomes momentarily unsettled; maybe you’re startled by my ugliness, just like all the other passersby whom I like to scare. Whatever it is, you shake it off, and the action comes from inside you: a slow resolve that hardens your features and makes you cling tighter to your small sack of belongings.

Your boldness is commendable, as always.

I ask you two questions that I already know the answers to: “Who is everyone? And who are you?”

“Everyone is the town, and I am Maria,” is your simple answer. I thrill to hear your name. “My tatay owes you a debt.”

I remember your father as a frightened young man, clutching a mango stolen from my tree, begging for forgiveness and blabbering about the cravings of his pregnant wife. It feels as if that happened only yesterday. “Ah, you’re that Maria. You’ve grown.”

You ignore that. “What’s your name?”

I laugh, long and low. “Oh, no. You haven’t earned that yet, ’neng. And you shouldn’t wander out here by yourself. The town’s tongues will wag about you meeting a lover.”

“Let them wag.”

“The Guardia Civil will say that you’re conspiring with revolutionaries.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“The friars will denounce you as a witch.”

It takes a while, but you give me a slow nod. I’m impressed, though I have no proof that you truly understand the implications of your declarations. You say, “I’m not afraid of them, señor. I’ve come to erase my tatay’s debt.”

Señor. I’ve been called many things in my long life, and most of them unpleasant — but never that. The irony tickles me.

I drop to the ground and straighten my back. You barely surpass my collarbones. But my height isn’t what gets your attention — you realize that I’m wearing nothing but a loincloth.

Your gaze snaps back to my face, though your cheeks are pink-tinged. I grin at your discomfort.

“Erase his debt with what? Another mango?” I know I’m being difficult,