I spent the better part of this early morning researching the tribes of the Ati that will make up much of my book. I was truly fascinated to read about the wedding traditions of various indigenous tribes. How colorful and full of stories they are compared with Christian weddings. And how sad that all throughout my formative education growing up in the Philippines, I was never taught this, likely because it wasn't very Christian (and I went to Catholic school) with its rituals involving worshipping pagans and belief systems in gods and deities. Reading about these tribes made me swell with pride in their resilience despite being marginalized, discriminated against, and displaced. I hope to bring about awareness of their existence and their plight in my book, even if I am taking huge liberties in fictionalizing their culture. I hope historians and the tribes themselves forgive me. But truly, what I want to see is that they all find their HEA (happily ever after) in real life. For now, if they can join me in my make-believe journey of creating a narrative of joy inspired by their culture, then I believe we will have reached a small amount of awareness of their existence. That would be a huge accomplishment for me as a Filipina.
- Jan 20
The Haribon is one of Dalikamata's animals. Its ability to travel far and wide makes it ideal for the Goddess to see what is going on that is beyond her physical sight. I've included the haribon in the prologue of this book, and is likely to reappear several more times. While doing research on the haribon, I was astounded to learn that this Philippine eagle is the third largest in the world and among the critically endangered species of its kind. It has a wingspan of nearly seven feet and a length of up to four feet from its crest to its tail. When I saw a picture of it, I just went holymotherf#*@$r.
Nobody in Manila would have mistaken Diwa Bandera for a deity. Her family name, once Vanderveen, had been changed to Bandera—meaning "flag" in Tagalog—generations ago. Adapted to make it easier for Filipinos to associate with since there is no “V” in the Philippine alphabet, it certainly made assimilation among the locals easier.
Despite that, Diwa was still pale as moonlight and prone to burning under the Manila sun; her complexion drew curious stares, though not always for the reasons one might hope. Her skin marked her as different but not exotic—not the kind of beauty celebrated in her city. Her delicate cheekbones, angular jaw, and the aquiline nose she’d inherited from her Dutch great-grandfather, alongside her own Filipino features—a wide mouth, a pert little nose—set her apart from the kind of Filipina loveliness immortalized in pageants and film.
Her friends teased her relentlessly. Alembong, they called her. Malandi. Haughty. Vain. The words were thrown casually, coated in laughter. For anyone else, they might have stuck like prickly burrs. But Diwa’s easygoing persona as one who could deflect racial insults and jabs like water off a duck’s back never let the barbs sting. It was just the Filipino way of kidding around. Kantsawan. Teasing. In friendship, there was never any harm intended.
Still, there was more to Diwa than what her friends or even she could see in the mirror. She had always known it, felt it as a small, quiet truth. From the time she was a child, her hands had been drawn to what was broken—to wounds, to sickness, to pain. She had bandaged her dolls with careful precision and stitched their imaginary injuries with whispered prayers. The gift had grown with her, though she didn’t yet call it that. By the time she entered nursing school, it was second nature. Her patients said her touch was soothing, her presence calming. But to Diwa, it was simply instinct.
That instinct had been shaped by her summers in the mountains of Madja-as, where the Ati tribe had taught her things no classroom ever could. They were her first teachers—not in formal lessons, but in the quiet wisdom of living with the land. She’d spent her childhood fishing barefoot in rivers, speaking Kinaray-a with her best friend Agila, the Datu’s son, and watching elders mix salves from wild herbs. They’d shown her how to stitch a wound with sinew and steady hands, how to hear the spirits’ guidance when all else failed.
Those summers had faded into memory by the time she started high school, replaced by trips to the Netherlands and lessons in the family business, Hebeya Brasilia, NV. The merchant marine ships her family traded with seemed like something out of a storybook, more Wendy Darling in Peter Pan than the gritty reality of life aboard a tanker ship. But sometimes, cocooned within the safety of their home in the wealthy neighborhood of Forbes Park, when the nights were quiet, she could still hear the whisper of cicadas in the mountain air or the steady rhythm of river water against her feet.
The visions, though—those were harder to explain.
The first had come in the darkest corner of a dream. Blood pooling on the floor. Her parents’ faces pale with soulless eyes, shadowed by something she couldn’t name. She had woken choking on her own breath, trembling in a room that felt too still. The next dream came months later, so vivid it stayed with her even after the sun had risen: she would live once again in a forest of towering coconut trees, banana plants growing in squat rows, and the precious rubber trees her great-grandfather had planted when he arrived in the Philippines in 1942. And much later, the strangest vision of all—a glimpse of herself rising above the clouds, wings carrying her to a far-off land. The spirits began to whisper soon after. They called her name in the stillness of her dreams, telling her of her destiny. Her gift of healing, they said, was only the beginning. She would uncover the truth of her parents’ murder, and only then could she save her people from extinction and understand the power within her.
Diwa didn’t believe the spirits at first. She didn’t know where her journey would take her, but for the first time, she began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, she was meant to do more than survive the Manila sun and the words of her friends.
Maybe she was meant to rise.
