Her footsteps were lighter than the mist surrounding the Laguna de Bay. The beautiful woman liked to reminisce about her previous adventures, especially around her place of power. The other spirits wondered why she would choose a place with so many humans around to be her locus, they would never know the joy that one could acquire through toying with the denizens of the earthrealm. Boredom and immortality were intertwined, and she had to deal with the former somehow.
The water lilies were lighter today. A chill in the air told her that Larina had been crying again. The engkanta remembered the crime for which she had punished the spoiled girl, it was many human lifetimes before.
She remembered when Larina was a beautiful maiden with golden hair and cruel intentions. The sister was the complete opposite, hair as black as a night when the Laho would do its business and kinder than a Kamanan Daplak. Was it Mara? Maria?… Mangita, of course, it had been so long she had almost forgotten her name.
The cold wind blew again and the engkanta stopped herself from laughing. It had been a wind like this that helped her spread the sickness that Mangita caught, which gave her an excuse to save her and punish her sister.
The seeds would have never healed Mangita of course, they were just there to spread the curse when the engkanta returned. It had taken twelve seeds, twelve times when instead of giving a cure to her sister, Larina put a seed in her hair. The engkanta was impressed, that kind of cruelty befitted a dalaketnon. She would have given the girl to those spirits had it not been for the revenge the engkanta craved.
It wasn’t the cruelty that Larina showed to Mangita that the engkanta loathed, not even the fact that Lariana had disrespected the spirit by not offering her food. It was when the girl had the audacity to push the engkanta to the ground.
There was a small lesson for the humans in all this:
Never touch an engkanta.
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Written by Karl Gaverza
Copyright © Karl Gaverza
Story continued from “Mangita and Larina” http://
Story inspired by Philippine Folklore Stories. Miller. 1904. (Full text can be accessed at http://
The Engkanta of Laguna de Bay Illustration by Marc Samuel Magpantay
FB: Murcy Murc Art
Tumblr: Glassy-draws.tumblr.com
