It had been some time since Maria had found love. Times had changed. Young men are more careful now when they traveled in Laguna.
Nobody gets lost anymore to find her. And most have forgotten who she is. Even Los Banos is no longer the secluded place it used to be where communities would send young men up the mountain in pretense for getting some herbal plant or woodgathering but actually sending her an offering for her blessing.
Makiling used to be a great kingdom of spirits and a community where spiritistas thrived and served the people who lived near the sleeping volcano. Though there was evil in the land as always, lurking where one last thought to look for them so they could be purged, Makiling was a safehaven for all spirits in the land.
The locals managed to build towns around the old volcano and the fertile land brought bounty and peace and healing to all comers in Laguna.
It was during the Spanish period that Maria first fancied her first love.
There was a local member of the Guardia Civil who seemed to young to wear a uniform and was constantly bullied by the mustached older guard, being their errand boy and also a liaison with the locals of whom they were loathe to get in touch with unless they were too drunk and an Indio woman who bathed everyday would always be more enamored of their sorry ass than some Hispania lady with hairs in her armpits and who would only wash her hair but seldom bathed except with perfume once a week. If only Spain would send wenches from the motherland to their garrison but Spain was the Pope’s bonded for spreading Christ into the barbaric Asian.
Santino was a new conscript who had escaped an orphanage and didn’t want to end up his life as someone scrubbing the floors for friars in some convent. He joined the army, the Guardia Civil so that he could find adventure in the East Indies and kill a Portugese pirate or two if he could. He had a locket containing the face of one of the nuns who cared for him, a pretty young sister named Corazon who had taught him how to pray the rosary.
Santino was assigned at the garrison in Los Banos in Laguna where they had some friars managing some fruit groves as well as the local parishes that sprouted in the area. He had an immediate distaste of the locals especially the young women whom were all trying to befriend him. He was told these Indios bathed everyday and cleaned their hair and teeth like Catholics prayed every day. It was disgusting. Even though he seemed to proud for his youth, he befriended the young daughter of some mestizo who was actually the kept mistress of one of the friars. Anna Lucia was an exceptional mestizo who despite bathing everyday, was a very proper lady. He lived for escorting her around town and on trips to nearby towns as he was handpicked by her Friar father so that he would woo her and she could travel back to Espanya with him as a true Espanyol. Anna Lucia also fancied the young soldier although she played hard to get and this got the ire of the young Spaniard as in this country, even an idiot like him was superior to the heathen populace, and not even a mestiza like Anna Lucia should have the gall to refuse his pure heritage.
Maria felt sorry for the handsome handsome young boy who was often angry and even spurned by the maidens whom he tried to woo. He kept a locket of his mother around his neck and prayed the rosary fervently every night at that accursed cold stone crypt they call a church which was warded against her powers and she could not even step on its hallowed ground unless invited in by a churchgoer.
Which is what one suman vendor did when she was roaming the community as some pretty barrio lass and she coaxed him to show her inside the beautiful crypt. As she sat inside the church, fearing its power but her fear was forgotten as soon as she gazed at the young soldier boy kneeling and praying in one of the pews of the cold stone crypt.
