The banana-plant was in flower, one solitary blossom facing east. You had to be a shaman--or a shaman's daughter--to realize just how unusual that was. Dalisay was the latter, and she knew she would never get another chance like this.
       The flowers were long, dusky purple, pod-like things. Her mother had made them into nourishing stews. And while she'd been chopping and ladling, steaming and simmering, she had told Dalisay about the mutya--the talismanic stone harboured by the banana-plant and toyed with by its dark guardians. It was supposed to be the size of a man's big toe. As a child, the comparison had stuck with her, and she had imagined the thing as a floating toe, prodding idly at the flowers.
       But it was both more prosaic and more fantastical than that. It could have been a nut or a lumpy black marble, except it glowed like a live coal. Her brain told her it was just a firefly, nestled at the heart of the flower. But you didn't listen to your brain when dealing with demons.
       She was here for a good reason, but there was no question of the guardians understanding. They looked after their own, just as she was trying to do.
       She climbed the ladder to the bamboo platform she'd positioned under the flower, trying not to notice the way it creaked and shuddered and swayed. She had been clambering over platforms like this at harvest-time since she was two years old, but somehow the motion seemed ominous tonight.
       She knew from the stories that you were supposed to hold the stone in your mouth, rather than clenched in your hand. When she had asked her mother why this was, she had only said:
       "Because you're going to need both hands free."
       She had imagined clinging to the banana trunk while the tree's guardians buffeted her like a gale, but they were probably not going to be as mystical as that.
       Still, she wasn't having second thoughts. No. Maximo had been held back too long. And he had been frantic that morning. He'd worked so hard. Over the past week, she had seen him fell more trees and load more timber than he'd ever done in his life, but it still wasn't enough. Gisurab was always better.
       He was the strongest man in the village--a position every bit as important as the shaman or the priest--but he was not normal. At least, he was normal in as much as he chewed betel nuts, he spat, he leered at the women. He worked in the rice fields or in the forest, and he uttered the usual incantation to appease the spirits whenever he felled trees:
       "Bari-bari, be not angry, friend."
       But he said it with his eyes closed and his brow furrowed with concentration as if he was praying.
       For this reason--and a couple of others--he was said to be favoured by the aghoy. They could give gifts of uncanny strength and skill to any human they chose. It set him apart a bit. Everyone was obsequious to him, but they left a kind of space around him, and she didn't think that was all due to respect. When you fraternized with outsiders, you could never completely be an insider again.
       Of course, he was the enemy, but Dalisay couldn't help feeling a kinship with him there.
       The week's tree-felling had been a sort of contest. Everyone liked to know who the strongest man in the village was, so they could adjust their behaviour accordingly, and Maximo could easily have crept ahead since the last contest. He was young, and his biceps were ever-expanding. The land needed to be cleared anyway, to make room for the new church, so Father Cruz had tolerated all the posturing--even the prayers of appeasement to the aghoy--safe in the knowledge that it was all for a godly purpose.
       When it was over-- when the timber had been cleared and the shrubs had been scythed down to stubble--Maximo had sat on the stump of a santol tree, and Dalisay had hovered wretchedly, not knowing what to say. She was caught between not wanting to desert him and not wanting to annoy him. In the end, she just stood--as if she was the one tree they hadn't cut down--and waited for him to speak. He said the most obvious thing possible, but perhaps you didn't get over a disappointment by not saying obvious things.
       "It's not fair."
       "Everyone saw how hard you worked," said Dalisay. "They saw what you can do. None of this is for nothing."
       "It's worse than nothing!" he snapped. "They saw me fail. Do you think they'll ever forget?"
       "They know about Gisurab's… advantages," said Dalisay, looking prudently over her shoulder.
       "But they don't do anything about it."
       "What could they do?"
       He glared at her. This had obviously not been the right thing to say.
       "It's as bad as hobnobbing with the colonisers," he said at last. "It shouldn't be allowed."
       Dalisay closed her eyes. "Should that not be allowed?"
       He stopped and glanced up at her. Perhaps he had forgotten. Still, he gave a mutinous shrug and swept onwards.
       "Maybe not. What did they ever do for you, eh? Taught you a few words of Latin, made you think you were-"
       He stopped again as if relenting. Dalisay wondered what he had been about to say. Whatever it was, she had never thought it.
       She sat on the stump beside him--half-squatting, because there wasn't much room--and he sullenly took her hand, intertwining his fingers with hers.
       She couldn't blame him. She had thought this before--about the colonisers being similar to the aghoy. Both were pale-skinned and strange; both were powerful. But it was easier for Gisurab. A man who fraternized with outsiders was daring, but a woman who fraternized with outsiders was treacherous.
       "I'm not giving up," said Maximo, suddenly tightening his hold on her hand. "If I were the strongest man in the village, I'd be able to get something done around here. I could change things."
       "And," she said hesitantly, "if you were the strongest man in the village, we'd be able to marry."
       It was impossible now. She was the shaman's daughter, and he was nobody. They might treat Dalisay with a respect that was bordering on revulsion, but she was still theirs. She was still important.
       Maximo looked up at her but said nothing, as if he was expecting more. Well, she supposed there was more.
       "I think there might be a way," she said. She didn't know about the aghoy, but she knew about demons. She knew how you bargained with them, tricked them, pulled the wool over their eyes, and never, ever trusted them--unless you were trusting them to be themselves.
       There was a simple way to be the strongest man in the village. You stole the mutya from a banana-plant when the blossom faced east. And, whatever happened afterwards, you kept the mutya on your person until sunrise. After that, you could swallow it--or give it to someone else to swallow--and it would give them peerless physical strength. Demons didn't do things by half-measures.
       "Can you meet me in the bamboo grove tomorrow at dawn? Don't ask me why. I can't make things fair, but I can make them unfair the other way."
       That little crease she loved so much had appeared between his eyes. But there was also something triumphant about it as if he'd been expecting this.
       She didn't care. There was no way she could look into that face and disappoint it.
       And so she was here, at moonrise, standing under the glossy leaves of the banana tree. Her mother had told her in no uncertain terms what the penalty was for dropping the mutya before the night was through: insanity. "Lose the mutya, lose your mind."
       But she would lose her mind anyway if she couldn't have Maximo. So she reached into the heart of the flower and closed her fist around the stone.
       It was cool to the touch and sent a little, silvery shudder through her. She put it in her mouth--carefully clamped under her tongue--and waited.
       A wind blew from the East, pushing her hair over her shoulders, leaving her back exposed. It prickled on her sweaty skin and felt like the lightest of touches--gentle as she had dreamed Maximo's would be. Then it reached forwards and fastened around her throat.
       She was lifted, whipped round, and driven against the trunk by something she couldn't see. To her left and right, smoky arms blossomed out of the air and rammed into her sides. They were not as insubstantial as they looked.
       Dalisay tried to reach down with her feet, tried to get a purchase on the bamboo platform, but she was driven upwards, scraping against the bark, scratched open by the jutting twigs. They were trying to get her to cry out, to open her mouth. As soon as she realized that, she kicked out at them, and heard a hiss from between invisible teeth.
       She had to get to the ground. In the air, she would just be their plaything, tossed from fist to fist like a rag doll. But on the ground, she would have some kind of spring-board, some kind of shelter.
       She kicked again, and they dropped her. She fell downwards, frantically scrabbling at the branches that whipped past. More hands blossomed out of the night to catch her, but they couldn't get a good enough grip. They slowed her down--one of the sleeves tore off her dress--but she dropped to the ground, out of their grip, and rolled over, breathing hard through her nose. The mutya knocked against the roof of her mouth as if it was trying to get back to its former owners.
       She scrabbled to her feet, ducked another dark hand--unless it was a bat--then fell in the leaf-litter as something jerked her feet out from under her. Blows landed on her then--two horrible whacks to the kidneys that made her straighten and squirm like a hooked fish. She breathed in dirt at her nostrils and squirmed again with a cough she couldn't release.
       She rolled, kicked out madly, and heard a grunt of pain. That was heartening. Still, she didn't stay to gloat but limped on through the leaf-litter, her mouth clamped firmly shut. She saw the tree ahead and almost believed its branches were extended towards her as if beckoning. Or begging. She didn't care which.
       She had climbed in amongst the root systems of trees like this and stayed hidden for hours--though anyone foolish enough to play hide and seek with a shaman's daughter was liable to give up pretty quickly.
       At worst, it might form a cage around her that would shield her from their blows. At best, there would be a cavity in that trunk that could keep her hidden till morning.
       She realized her mistake as soon as she crawled inside, as soon as the noises ceased. She had expected the guardians to beat at the trunk, pull down the branches, peel back the bark to get at her. But now she realized they couldn't do that. The tree was occupied, and not by her. It was a balete tree--ficus indica--home to worse demons than the guardians of the banana-plant.
       The man filling up the space in front of her was dark and spindly. He was seated on the ground, but his legs were so long that they reached above his head; he had parted them to grin at her. He had a long face and horse-like teeth, and she instantly understood what her mother had told her about the tikbalang:
       "When he laughs, all you can see is mouth."
       There shouldn't have been enough light in here to glint off those teeth, but they glinted anyway.
       Not knowing what else to do, she took the stone out of her mouth, clenched it in her fist, and stammered the standard formula you were supposed to say whenever you passed a balete in the woods.
       "By your leave, sir."
       He inclined his head as if he appreciated it.
       "What can I do for you, dear daughter?"
       She bowed her head a little, as she had been taught--not far enough to leave the back of her neck exposed.
       "If it please you, sir. May I stay here until morning?"
       He put his head on one side as if considering her. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dark--and the shock--she could see that he had his own mutya. He toyed with it as if he were a conjuror, tossing it from hand-to-hand until she lost sight of it, then bringing it out from behind his ear, or between his teeth, miles from where it had disappeared. Dalisay wondered if she was being hypnotized.
       You could wrest the mutya from a tikbalang by jumping on his back and riding him like a horse while he thrashed and bucked and attempted to throw you off. She had absolutely no desire to try it.
       "It's not impossible," he said at last, transferring his stone from one hand to the other. "Let's discuss the price."
       His voice was very sibilant. It had such big teeth to hiss through.
       "What is the price?" said Dalisay.
       "Knowledge."
       "But I--don't have any knowledge."
       "You misunderstand," he said. "Knowledge is not what I will be taking from you, but what I will be giving to you. It's the burden you'll have to bear in exchange for spending the night here. I suppose what I will be taking from you is ignorance." He flashed his teeth at her. "Ignorance is delicious."
       "You can eat ignorance?"
       "I can eat lots of things," he said as if she needed reminding. "Ignorance is actually very nourishing. It isn't a lack; it's a sophisticated construct. Takes days to digest, but I'm never one to shy away from a challenge."
       He tossed the stone up in the air again, watching her eyes follow it.
       "What--um--want kind of knowledge will you give me?" said Dalisay.
       He spread his hands. Neither of them seemed to contain the stone anymore. "Well, that's the thing about knowledge. You can never know what it is before you learn it. And, once you learn it, you can never un-learn it."
       Dalisay didn't respond. She tried to recall everything she knew about the tikbalang. They liked tricks and psychological warfare. When Christianity had first come to the islands, they had delighted in forcing people to give up their rosary beads or utter something blasphemous in front of the priest.
       Was that what she should expect? Would he make her reject something that was sacred to her? She couldn't even think of anything--except Maximo, and her mother's cooking.
       She pulled her knees up to her chest and listened to the telling silence from outside. The banana-guardians hadn't even knocked on the trunk. There was no question which was the stronger demon.
       "I'd be better off out there, wouldn't I?" she said. "At least I'd know what I was facing."
       "You'd not have lasted," said the tikbalang. "Your body can only take so much beating, but your mind has been through something like this before, hasn't it? Knowledge you didn't ask for, that tainted you and made you restless. I know. I saw it."
       Horror and understanding spilled over her all at once, leaving her drenched and shivering. She said, in a small voice, "Yes, I expect you did." But she couldn't say anything else. She was too busy trying to keep the memories hemmed in behind her eyeballs. She had worked so hard to push them back.
       The tikbalang wouldn't spare her, though. He said, "Does it bother you to hear?" and then swept on as if she'd answered him.
       "What age were you? It was hard to tell. Thirteen? Fourteen? Not so long ago, then. That priest recommended you as a guide because you were the shaman's daughter and knew all about the local plants. And they saw you listening--and you were so pert and observant--and they thought ‘How sweet! A savage girl with a glimmer of intelligence. Let's domesticate her.'" He drew out the word domesticate as though it were obscene. "Let's teach her just enough to make her a stranger among her own people, but not enough to be one of us, of course, because--well! Look at her face.'"
       He gave a dry, hacking laugh, and crooked one finger as if beckoning--as if he was drawing the memories out of her. Perhaps they were eager to be drawn, like the mutya knocking against the roof of her mouth.
       She pursed her lips and clenched the stone tighter in her fist, trying to absorb its coolness. She didn't know why she was blushing so hard--or why her soul felt like a scrunched-up ball of paper at the centre of her being. The memories were not disturbing. The colonisers had been kind to her.
       She had been thirteen, not fourteen. People had often made use of her as an errand-girl back then because she'd been clever and quick on her feet. But not since. When the colonisers used you, they used you up.
       It had been an expedition of naturalists--mostly men in stifling, starched collars who shaved out of tin mugs and cursed and swore about the mosquitos. But there had been a woman amongst them who'd been so beautiful, Dalisay hadn't known how to stop staring. Father Cruz had called her ‘Donna Maria' but she said her full name, "disregarding any irrelevant titles or appurtenances," was Mrs. Mary Cavendish. Dalisay had said it all together in a rush--"MissessMaryCavendissssh," with a reverence that made her cringe now.
       But, oh, she had been so beautiful! She'd worn spectacles like the Jesuits, and she had powdered her cheeks white and carried a parasol of dangling lace over her shoulder. She had been an impossible shape, too. A big man could have cupped his hands around her waist and felt his fingers meet at the back.
       She had spent some time sketching a balete--maybe even this balete--and, when she'd seen Dalisay watching, she had beckoned her over and explained that the tree was called Ficus Indica, sometimes known as the strangler fig.
       The reason, she said, that the balete had such a drapey, half-melted shape, was that it started off as an epiphyte--"That is, a plant that grows high up on another plant." It then grew hanging roots that reached to the ground and eventually encircled and suffocated the host tree.
       "That's why you often find cavities inside the trunks," she had said, "where the host tree has died and rotted away."
       Dalisay had been too polite to correct her. She hadn't wanted to say, "The cavity is actually where the tikbalang lives." She knew it to be true, but she didn't want this lovely, sophisticated woman to sneer at her. Besides, it occurred to her that both things could be true at the same time.
       Later, she would think that the action of the strangler fig was not unlike those of the colonisers. They wrapped themselves around you--supposedly in friendship--and when they were gone, you only had the empty space that they'd enclosed.
       The demon scratched his head. "They spoke so much Latin, I couldn't tell what their nationality was. Was it English? Not that it makes any difference to me, of course."
       He crooked his finger again, and it was here that the shame boiled up and threatened to overwhelm her.
       She remembered them leaving. They had pledged such solid friendship. They had promised to write. She couldn't look Father Cruz in the face anymore, she had asked him for news of them so many times.
       By the time she understood that she'd been used and toyed with and abandoned--by the time she realized she had betrayed her heritage and her mother's cooking by dreaming of corsets and libraries--it was already too late. She could neither stop dreaming nor quite be accepted by her neighbours. She hated her home and she hated herself.
       She sniffed and blinked and forced herself to look the demon squarely in the eyes.
       "Is this the knowledge you were talking about? It's not new to me."
       He lost his smile a bit. Perhaps he had been expecting tears--he could probably eat them too.
       "It's only the first part," he said. "I've given you knowledge of the past and now I'll give you knowledge of the future. That, too, is inside you and only wants calling forth."
       Dalisay narrowed her eyes. Knowledge of the future sounded like one of those dubious gifts that demons were famous for bestowing on their favoured humans.
       "Are you making me your ally?"
       He put his head on one side. "No--my pet. I hear you make a good one."
       She looked down at the stone and clenched it tight once more. "Let's get on with it."
       When she next looked up at him, he was Maximo--and even though she knew demons could shapeshift, and he was smiling in a way that Maximo had never smiled, she felt her heart flutter. She wondered if she had ever been this close to Maximo, without him squirming away or stalking off.
       He was holding out his hand, and it was a moment before she understood that he was expecting her to hand him the stone.
       "You must think I was born yesterday," said Dalisay.
       He frowned in that way she knew so well. The crease between his eyebrows stood out on his forehead like a brand. And just as there shouldn't have been enough light to glint off the demon's teeth, that crease shouldn't have been able to harbour as much darkness as it suddenly did.
       She felt herself pitched forwards into the dark between his eyebrows--either that or it was rushing out to meet her--and in its depths, she saw him beating her, she saw him taking his fill of the other village girls. She saw all his misplaced confidence and his inability to back down. She saw him lose his temper with Father Cruz and hit him too hard; she saw him taken away in chains.
       When she came to herself, her back was pressed so hard against the trunk that she was surprised she hadn't torn it up and knocked it over. There was no sound except her ragged breathing, and the darkness dispersed in little shreds, so she wasn't sure for a long time where she was or who she was with. She was almost relieved to see the feeble glow on the demon's teeth.
       "That was a lie," she panted. "It was a trick! And stop being him!"
       "I have."
       "It was a lie," she said again, shaking her head. "You can call it knowledge if you like--I know it was a lie."
       But this wasn't like learning something new; it was like coming to terms with something she'd always known. Her thoughts frantically tried to veer off in face-saving directions--it was a trick, an illusion--or she had dropped the stone at some point and gone mad without knowing it. But these thoughts were like fevered dreams that she kept waking up from, in a cold sweat.
       Maximo didn't love her--and, what was worse, he couldn't be trusted to be the strongest man in the village. Perhaps that was the reason Gisurab was quiet and strange--if he wasn't, his strength would have blown up in his face long ago. But-
       "Oh god, what am I going to do?" she breathed. "If I let go of the stone, I'll lose my mind, but if I give it to Maximo-"
       "Two further options present themselves," said the tikbalang. "Firstly, you could keep the mutya for yourself."
       "And be the strongest man in the village?"
       He pursed his lips over his huge, horse-like teeth.
       "An interesting notion. Would you become a preternaturally strong woman or would you change overnight into a man?"
       Dalisay reeled at the idea. But it would almost be better that way. Her neighbours thought she was strange enough already, and physical strength was not quite the admirable thing in a woman that it was in a man.
       "I don't want to be a man," she said, half to herself.
       "Brave choice," said the tikbalang. "Perhaps your choice will count for something."
       She looked up at him suddenly. "You said there were two options."
       "Oh, well." The tikbalang spread his spindly hands. "You could give the stone to me."
       Dalisay gaped at him. "This was what you wanted all along, wasn't it?"
       But it was a very round-about way of getting what he wanted. Why hadn't he pounced on her the moment she'd entered his home and prised the stone out of her dead fingertips?
       With difficulty, she unclenched her hand and held it, palm-upwards, in front of the demon.
       "You can't take it, can you? You would have done it already."
        "Suppose I have an interest in watching you suffer?"
       "You're running out of time, though." This was a wild stab in the dark--she had no idea how far off the morning was--but it tightened his smile all the same. He was afraid of something.
       "Is it like the banana blossom facing east?" she said. "Do you have to find precisely the right circumstances to take it from me?"
       But, if he did, that would imply the stone was hers--as if it had bonded with her, perhaps through suffering.
       Slowly, unnerved by her own daring, she tossed it up in the air and caught it again. "It's mine, isn't it?
       "You have to be a guardian to own a mutya," he said softly. She couldn't work out whether that softness was contempt or awe or the calm before the storm. "What could you guard?"
       But she was guarding something, she realized. She was prepared to risk her own sanity rather than give the stone to Maximo--and it wasn't just because he would beat her and betray her, but because he would hurt people.
       And she had thought of her mother more than ever tonight--more than she had, anyway, since the naturalists and Mrs. Mary Cavendish had come into her life.
       Perhaps the tikbalang could see the way her thoughts were headed.
       "You don't belong with them," he said. "They think you stand-offish and strange, and you think them stupid."
       "But that's because of who I am," she protested, half-laughing, "not because of the colonisers."
       "Didn't the colonisers make you who you are?"
       "No," she said firmly. "My mother and my home made me who I am. And even if I don't get on with them, I can still guard them."
       She was starting to realize that the mutya was no longer cold between her fingers. She had no idea whether she had warmed it, or it had warmed her, but it felt right--as nothing had since Mrs. Mary Cavendish.
       She put it back in her mouth and swallowed it as though it was a morsel of warming banana-heart stew. Whatever she was going to be when the dawn finally rolled over her--a man, a woman, or a guardian spirit--at least she would be at home.