The Diwata's Promise

The morning mist still clung to the lush terraces of the mountain, smelling sweet with crushed lemongrass and damp red earth. Lira balanced two hollowed bamboo water-tubes across her shoulder, taking the worn stone steps down toward the whispering banks of the Agno. Before she had left their stilt-house, Lola Elena had pressed a sprig of wild ginger into her palm, her petite, weathered hands trembling slightly beneath the woven sleeves of her abaca baro't saya. *'The mountain breathes unevenly today, apo,'* her grandmother had warned, her silver bun catching the lantern's glow. *'Do not wander where the shade grows thick.'* Yet when Lira knelt at the pebble-strewn shallows where the village had drawn drinking water for generations, the water did not sing its usual crystalline tune. A stagnant, oily film shimmered over the surface in iridescent swirls, coating the smooth river stones in a dull, curdled gray. Floating trapped against a bamboo weir were half a dozen silver river-barbs, their bellies turned toward the dawn, mouths agape in silent suffocated agony. Tangled among the reeds beside them lay things that did not belong to the forest: cracked polyethylene jugs leaking a foul…