The Crocodile God

Part 4.

Part 4.

Mirasol wakes up in the dark before sunrise, carefully nudges Haik's arm off, and attempts to braid her hip-length cape of hair so she doesn't get heat stroke.

"Ow." She picks the snarl apart, but hits another one. "Ow." She gets halfway down before there's a third tangle. "Ow, fuck."

The crocodile-god wakes up and laughs, but gently.

"Shut up." But she can't help giggling. "Unlike gods, mortals have to deal with tangles. And this wouldn't have happened if you gave me five minutes before having sex."

"Oh, really?" He nestles into her shoulder, breathes deep for the smell of her jasmine shampoo, and starts to braid it for her. It's looser than she likes, but she gets at least five degrees cooler by the time he ties it off, and she settles back down in gratitude.

"Thank you."

"You don't have to go with me right this minute," Haik tells her. "And if you don't want to leave, I'd come home to you instead."

Home, he says, and a weight comes off her.

She doesn't know why she's crying. "Thank you."

"What do they teach you about gods here?" Haik wonders. "I want a wife, not a slave. There's a lot of options besides 'leave now and never come back.'"

"From Filipinos or Americans?"

"Whichever."

"We learn about other gods like they're just neat stories for movie material," she muses. "And for the Philippines, we learn about Catholicism. Do this, and God will like you. Don't do it, and he won't. We kind of learn about the tribes, but it's in the... 'Spanish came and saved us from ourselves' way."

"And all the good spirits are conveniently named Maria in the Philippines, now." He smiles, but it's bittersweet.

"What are baliti trees?" She knows they live farther inland, and the extremely old ones look as thick as the mangrove they got married under--but the English name isn't coming to her yet.

"Strangler figs."

"Oh, banyans!" She can feel him smile into her shoulder as his arms close on her. "Wait, Mom said she wasn't allowed to touch them or play too close. The baliti are where the spirits live."

"Our people used to swear oaths under them. So the diwat would witness, and tell the others."

"Didn't you ask me to do a vigil there?" She can't imagine the diwat being wedding guests, even for a god.

"Marriage is an oath," he reminds her. "There was a story--where a datu's daughter married a young datu from another barangay, but he wouldn't say his oaths under the baliti nearby. Her family was worried, so they told her to swear her own oath without telling him, but she was afraid of making her husband mad. 'You are a datu's daughter, too,' they assured her, 'and even your husband cannot argue with the spirits.' When he started abusing her, he wouldn't leave marks on her face or arms, where people could see. Or more importantly, not where his father could. His mother had died when he was a boy, so he had no sisters who could have helped her. Her own family was two days away, so if she went to them, she knew he'd follow her."

"Please stop." This is terribly real.

"But he forgot about the diwatahan, who was only a man on the outside."

"Wait, what?"

Haik laughs at the look on her face. "The Spaniards made us quit telling this story right quick."