It was a day just like any other when lola got sick and could not go up the mountain to harvest crops. One of the youngest, a girl of eight volunteered to go with her uncle and eldest sister up the steep trek to the slopes where they gathered crops.
The girl had a soul for adventure, but that was tempered by filial duty. Her father and eldest brother had passed on and at that young age she knew that she had to assist her mother. That didn’t stop her curiosity or her love of exploration.
The villagers called her a tomboy. She behaved unlike the other girls her age. While they were preoccupied with dolls and playing “bahay bahayan” the girl would jump headfirst into deep streams, hike the mountains alone and challenge the boys to games of skill and chance.
Today she had to do her duty for her family. The hard rains struck the roof of their payag (nipa hut) and the girl and her older sister and uncle were waiting for hours. It was late in the afternoon when the clouds broke and the three rushed to their plots high up in the mountains, they did not want to let the last lights of the day slip away.
The harvest was finished when the moon was bright in the sky and the three agreed that it would be too dangerous to cross the river at the foot of the mountain at night. They decided to spend the night in the payag and the three drifted into the land of dreams.
That is, until something awoke the little girl. It was a strange sound coming from outside the payag. She thought it might be the rain coming back for another shower, but the night sky was dry. She realized that the sweet sound was music making its way through the leaves and branches of the forest.
“There aren’t any people that live here!” She thought to herself. Curiosity overtook the young girl and she followed the music to the banks of Lamesa falls. There were stories that the falls were the home of enchanted beings. The girl used to think that those stories were just make believe, but now she wasn’t so sure.
In the waterfall there was a flat rock at the bottom from where the falls derived there name. It was gone then and in its place was a dry plaza filled with expensively dressed men, women, children and horses. Music was thick in the air and the people were moving to the sweet sounds. There was a banquet filled with food and the whole scene enthralled the girl so much that she forgot she was in a forest.
The girl would never forget that night, for it was the most beautiful sight that she had ever seen. Their fair skin, aquiline noses and expressive eyes would flash into her mind whenever she thought of beauty.
She watched them until it was time for her to return to the payag and kept their secrets to herself until sometime in the far future when she would tell her own children about the engkanto that lived in the forest along bodies of water.
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Written by Karl Gaverza
Copyright © Karl Gaverza
Adapted from a Story told by Grace Collantes
The Engkanto of Lamesa Falls Illustration by Ysa Peñas
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