The Difficult Loves of Maria Makiling

by Wayne Santos

  “Ah, shit, fuck…” The Tikbalang broke first, taking a step back and shaking his hand as if that might make the pain drop out of his fingers. “Guess I’m not the only one that watched Predator.”

  “‘I ain’t got time to bleed,’” Maria said.

  The Tikbalang gave her a thumbs up with the hand he had just used, regretted it immediately, and shook it out again.

  “Oh, yeah, one more thing.” Maria was a little embarrassed this hadn’t occurred to her right at the start. “What do I call you?”

  “You want to know my name?”

  “Well, yeah… we’re going into this together, right? I can’t keep calling you Tikbalang; not like you call me ‘human.’”

  “But…” his pointy horse ears twisted backward. “You’re not human. So, I wouldn’t call you that.”

  “Oh. I… I guess you’re right, I haven’t really processed that. Maybe I’ll do that later.” She shrugged. “But still, I gotta call you something, right?”

  “My preferred name is Señor Eduardo.”

  She blinked twice. It took her a few moments to realize her hand was rising up to cover her mouth. “I’m not calling you that.”

  “That’s my name.”

  “Mister Ed? That’s not your fucking name, no way!”

  “A few brutal enslavements back, I was running through New York state, spent some time with some guy by the name of Walter Brooks. So don’t get any funny ideas about who’s being ripped off here.”

  “I’m not calling you that, I can’t!”

  He crossed his arm. His biceps bumped up against his pectorals. “Well, that fizzled quickly.”

  She bit her lower lip. “How about Teek? Can I call you Teek? Teek works for me, is that okay for you?”

  A sigh. “I’ve been called worse, I guess. At least it’s not insulting or unintentionally offensive.” He looked her up and down. “So I guess I call you ‘your majesty,’ or ‘your highness’ or some shit like that?”

  “What, no! No! Why would you call me that?”

  Another shrug. “That’s the protocol, right? Show respect and all that for someone higher up on the divine ladder.”

  “I don’t feel like I’m higher than you.”

  “Believe me, I agree with that opinion.” He held out both his hands and measured the distance between the top of her head and his. “I’ve got at least a few hands on you.”

  “Ha, fucking, ha. Maria.”

  “What?”

  “That’s my name, you can call me that. Maria. Or Hugh, if I’m calling you Teek. We can be flexible on this.”

  “I’ll go with Maria. But it’s gonna be weird.”

  “Because you’re so used to cursing me out as ‘the fucking bitch’?”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to say it like that, but…”

  “No, no, I get it.” She held out her hand, looking down at the palm. A small orb of green light blinked into luminousness. “It’s all weird now.”

  Teek slapped at his thighs as if he were smacking some dust off nonexistent pants. “Okay. So… the power of Margaret Atwood has brought peace to the land. Yay. Now what?”

  “Now we get Tate to a safe place.”

  “I got some ideas about that. Then after?”

  “Then we pay a little visit to Aurelio and Mateo, and we force them to reconsider their position.” She looked out at the stars. It really was beautiful here. She wondered if she could bring Tate here someday. If there was a ‘someday.’

  “That’ll be interesting. They’ve been trying to get you to pick one of them for over four hundred years. Not taking no for an answer is pretty ingrained by now.”

  “We’re not going to teach them to ‘take no.’”

  “We’re not?”

  She turned to face Teek. “We’re going to teach them to say please.”

  “Please?”

  “Please let me live. Or please I’ll do anything you want, just don’t kill me. It’s all the same to me.”

  “You are a harsh mistress,” Teek said with clear approval in his voice.

  “But first we’re going to make a quick stop.” She stuck her hand out, the one that the green light had been glowing in. Now her entire hand was glowing.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My place,” she said. “You gotta’ prepare before you take on a pair of immortal Spaniards.”

  She opened the door—it was much easier this time—and stepped through.

  Chapter Seven

  IT’S THE GOOD FAT

  MARIA REALIZED ALMOST immediately that the one thing she hadn’t really considered before opening a doorway between worlds was whether a Toronto condo had the ceiling height to accommodate a demon horse.

  The low-hanging ceiling light swayed gently as Teek knocked into it. He caught it himself and looked around. “Nice digs,” he said. “What’s the maintenance on a place like this?”

  “How do you know all this shit?” Maria asked, genuinely curious. “I mean, do you have a loft somewhere in Yorkville, and buy premium baguettes from Whole Foods every day, or something? Like, you just put on a mustache, and no one knows it’s a demon horse walking around, tipping waitresses?”

  He did the weird mouth grin thing again, and Maria realized she was getting used to it. “Now wouldn’t that be something? Okay, I don’t live day-to-day in the mortal realm. Not the way you do. I do a lot of work here, ancillary support stuff. But mostly I interact with the world through the dream plains of the people. Man, World War II … that was nightmarish in all kinds of ways…”

  “So, you don’t have a Yorkville loft or condo.”

  “Bit limiting, isn’t it? Being stuck in one place?”

  “Well, most of us don’t have a choice. Play the cards we’re dealt with, and shit.” Maria drifted over to the kitchen and opened up the freezer, pulling out a frozen pizza. She turned on her oven to warm it up.

  “You’re not playing cards anymore,” Teek said. “Better get used to this new game you’re playing. Or not, depending on how this all shakes out.”

  “What do you mean?” But Maria already had a vague idea of what he meant. She just didn’t want to think about it.

  Teek made her, by flat out saying it. “Well there are really only two ways this is going to go, right? Either we fail again, and you say ‘bye’ to this life and start on another one, in your never-ending attempt to stick with your boyfriend. Or this actually works, and you’re a goddess. Does a goddess still get benefits and an employee bonus when she’s not even showing up at the office anymore because she’s too busy being, y’know… a goddess? That’s not a part-time gig, you know. And—ohmygod, what is that?”

  Maria looked down the box in her hand. “It’s frozen pizza.”

  Teek pointed towards the box, and his index finger trembled. “That’s not pizza.”

  “Sure it is. I want something to eat. I had no idea going all-out like that was going to take so much out of me.”

  “But that’s not pizza. Pizza does not have pineapple on it.”

  “Hawaiian pizza does. Well, okay, we call it Hawaiian, but it was actually made right here in Ontario. In Chatham, down on Lake Erie.” She pulled out a bottle of Mott’s Clamato from the fridge.

  Teek screamed again, a high pitched noise liberally sprinkled with whinnying at the end. “And what the fuck is that?”

  “Clam and tomato juice. I’m making a Caesar. It’s got Clamato, Worcestershire sauce, vodka, bunch of other stuff.”

  “And you put that into your mouth?”

  “Yes.”

  “And swallow it?”

  “Along with the pizza, yeah, that’s the general idea.”

  He put his hands on his head, his pointy ears stretched taut towards the ceiling. “What is wrong with you?”

  “I’m... Canadian?” She shrugged and looked for a glass.

  “Then what the fuck is wrong with Canadians? Pineapple on pizza, clam and tomato juice with booze, do you drink the milk straight from human b
reasts too?”

  “No, we get that out of bags.” She opened the fridge and pulled out the milk pitcher with its plastic bag, the corner of the bag cut with scissors so she could pour it out. “Et voila.”

  Teek visibly flinched. “What is wrong with you people?”

  Maria narrowed her eyes. “Okay, let’s address this calmly, shall we? You’re flipping out over pineapple and clam juice and… plastic bags. But… you’re from the Philippines, right?”

  “So are you!”

  “No, I’ve got Filipina DNA, but I was born here. This time. This time I was born here. So I’m kind of straddling the line, but if we’re talking about food that’s going to raise some questions, what about helmet?”

  “What about it?”

  “That’s a chicken head. On a stick.”

  “So?”

  “Not a problem? No? Don’t even get me started on balut, you’re totally okay with that? Not the least bit gross?”

  “It’s just duck embryo.”

  “It’s fucking baby Huey, Dewy, and Louie. In your mouth. Raw.”

  “Boiled.”

  “Boiled in the egg!” She shuddered. “I mean, if you’re really that down on Canadian culture, what the hell are you even doing running around in Margaret Atwood’s head?”

  “I might have been looking for some hints on the next season of The Handmaid’s Tale.”

  “You know she doesn’t write that show, right?”

  His mouth opened. “…well, I do now…”

  “Okay. Fine.” She went back to her cupboard and pulled out a second glass, and plate.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m setting a second place on the table, what do you think I’m doing?”

  “Wait, you want me to eat and drink this?”

  “That is exactly what I want.”

  Teek looked at the table. It resembled a kid’s tea party set compared to him. “Is this feasible?”

  “I can move the chair.”

  “Why do you even want to do this?”

  “One, you have just mortally insulted the country I grew up in, so we’re gonna’ get some of this shit in you before you weigh judgment on it.”

  “Okay. Fair.”

  “Two, if this is potentially going to be my last meal, I’m not eating alone.”

  “Frozen pizza and clam juice booze. That’s your last meal.” If he’d had an eyebrow, it would have been arching now.

  “Welcome to Canada, eh.”

  Teek pushed the chair away and hobbled himself into a kneeling position that looked like some kind of equine Zen monk preparing to meditate on the state of nothingness and horsiness. “We gotta have us a talk about getting back to your roots.”

  “Sure. But you have to try this pizza first. I’m making two now, one for each of us.”

  Maria put the food in, and they talked a little about her past—or at least, her current past. Growing up as a minority kid in Grande Prairie. Attending the University of Alberta in Edmonton and almost going into sensory overload at the sudden influx of other students who weren’t white. Talking to other Filipinos for the first time in her life who weren’t related to her. Teek shared what he’d been doing for the last several centuries, which largely seemed to consist of running around in people’s dreams, occasionally causing brutal, traumatizing nightmares and getting people lost and potentially killed in the forest if they brought too much harm to it.

  “Which, by the way, would be part of your fucking job description if you’d ever stop obsessing about your relationships,” he said. “Not judging. Just saying.”

  Maria served the pizza and mixed up the Caesars in two generously sized glasses. She pushed both the pizza and the glass over to Teek. “Just shut up and try that.”

  Teek took the pizza first, bringing it up to his mouth, one eye closed, his head tilted slightly away as if he was waiting for an explosion to take half his face off. He bit into it gingerly, chewed, and said nothing.

  “Can you even digest that? You’re not of this mortal plane, do you even need to eat?”

  “As soon as you understand how you exist, you’ll understand how I do.”

  “Now the Caesar.”

  “I’ve never had clam juice.”

  “I’ve never served a Tikbalang pizza and cocktails in my condo. Today is a day for a lot of firsts. Drink.”

  His tongue came out as the glass approached his mouth and he lapped once, delicately, at the Caesar. Then he tilted it up and took a full sip. More silence, though he at least looked like was giving this a good think.

  “Well?”

  He took a larger bite from the slice of pizza. “Tell me why we’re not charging to the rescue.”

  “Because we’re trying something different,” Maria said. She leaned back and ate her own slice. “Now I’m going to assume you’re telling the truth. As far as I can remember you’re right: every time I’ve tried to fix things, we’ve failed.”

  He nodded. The slice was gone, and he was reaching for another.

  “Do you know why we failed?”

  “Because you keep trying the exact same thing, but harder.” The next slice disappeared the moment he stopped speaking. “You come riding in all witchy-woo, ready to kick supernatural ass, and usually one will take you on, while the other obliterates your boy from this plane of existence. Then it’s wipe and better luck in the next life. Only it never is.”

  “So I’m always doing the same thing? The exact same thing.”

  Another nod, another slice of pizza. “You’re too mad to want to do anything else except hit something really, really hard. I admit, for you, the definition of really, really hard is… considerable.” Another slice disappeared into what Maria was beginning to suspect was not a mouth, but a bottomless pit. His pizza was half gone now.

  Maria worked at her first slice, still in her hand. “But I’m not mad now.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “But then, I’m not Maria either. Not completely. Not Maria Makiling.”

  “Yeah, there’s a distinct lack of thees, thines, divine fury, and holier-than-thou.” He took two slices this time, and both of them vanished into his mouth. He reached for the Caesar. “Can’t say I miss it, if we’re being honest.” The Caesar glugged down his throat.

  She kind of sounded like a bitch. But then this was coming from a supernatural being that she’d repeatedly enslaved, so there needed to be some allowances made for bias. “Okay, then, since I’m not mad, and I haven’t ripped your golden hairs out and broken you, can we keep trying something different this round?”

  He placed the glass down. It was half empty. “Like what?”

  “The way you tell it, and from what I remember, mostly this just boils down to a lot of screaming about injustice and going on a ferocious rampage.”

  He swallowed the second last slice. “Yeah, that’s about what I’d call it. Let me add ‘futile,’ and I’d say the picture is complete.” He took the last slice, and that was gone too. His pizza plate was officially empty.

  Maria pushed her plate over, taking one more slice for herself, and he helped it along to his end of the table. He polished off another three-quarters of an insane Canadian pizza.

  “So if I’m always going on the attack, and dragging you with me. What say we try a little bit of scouting and defense?”

  He stopped chewing and grabbed for his glass, completely emptying it. “Interesting. Go on.”

  She chewed on her own pizza absently, not really tasting it. Too many thoughts were rolling through her mind, like a slow train, each car filled with a circus act that she wanted to see and take in before it passed from view. “I don’t want to do things the way Maria Makiling does. I want to do things the way Maria Malihan would. And Malihan doesn’t like to go in without a plan. She especially does not like going into a fight without knowing much about who she’s fighting.”

  “You’re referring to yourself in third person, that’s kind of a Makiling thing.”


  “Shut up and drink.” She offered him more Caesar, and he eagerly pushed his glass over. “First, I want to make sure that Tate is safe. Part of the problem with the old way of doing things is just running into the middle of a battlefield with Tate there. I want to keep him out of the line of fire this time, so he can’t get into it once things get nasty. Once he’s safe, I want to dig deep.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know why you’re still here after four hundred years. You’re supernatural. And I know why I’m here, because I’m… Maria Makiling. Sort of. And I know why Tate keeps coming back, because we keep shuffling him off to reload and retry.” She looked up at Teek and took a bite of her pizza. “But Aurelio and Mateo… they’re just two Spanish guys. Or they should be. One was a noble, the other a soldier. If we find out whatever power is making them immortal, and powerful, can’t we use that to change the outcome this time?”

  Teek ate the rest of Maria’s pizza in slow, thoughtful contemplation. “This is a fascinating plan.”

  “It’s a plan, at any rate. If my memory serves, that’s already huge progress. What do you think of insane Canadian food choices?”

  Teek looked down at the table. All the food was gone. He sniffed at the glass with the Caesar and emptied it. “We will never speak of this again,” he said.

  “So, you don’t want anymore?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just meant we will never refer to my previous opinion. Nor will we ever ask what my current opinion is.”

  Maria grinned. “I have no issues with that.” She got up, reached over to a drawer, and pulled out her box of marijuana. “Do you want some? Maybe not the whole thing, I doubt that’s advisable, but one last toke before going off to die in glorious battle?”

  Teek’s mouth hung open again. “Where the fuck did you get that?”

  “The store?”

  “You bought it in public? They have that in stores? And you didn’t get shot?”

  “It’s been legal the last few years, why would I get shot?”

  “Man, you really haven’t had much familiarity with the Philippines in this lifetime, have you? The cops could gun you down for that over there, you know.”