Wicked As You Wish (A Hundred Names for Magic #1) - Rin Chupeco Page 0,7
other tita. Her name’s not really Baby, is it?”
“Course not. Her name is Joanne. Tita Chedeng is Mercedes, and Tita Teejay is Tiffany. You’ll get used to the nicknames. That’s a Filipino thing too.”
Alex gave up and tried the crispy tissue instead. “It’s pretty good,” he admitted, chewing, and had another. “How long have you been living next door to the Katipuneros?”
“Almost all my life.”
“And you know about who they are?”
Tala hesitated. “That they were a part of Avalon’s 65th regiment, yeah.” The notorious 65th regiment. Nicknamed the Underdogs for taking on missions with the lowest survival odds. Tala had grown up on their stories. Tita Baby, who’d once killed a jabberwocky; Tito Boy, who’d lost his hearing protecting refugees from the sirens haunting the Neverland Sea; General Luna (not the actual Filipino hero of history, but who wore the same kind of mustache), a serial cusser and hero of the Adarna Pass; Titas Chedeng and Teejay, who once fended off a dozen ogres for two hours until help arrived; and Lola Urduja, the strongest of them all. Half of the original members died in Wonderland helping survivors flee after the wilder magic was unleashed there. These were the toughest fighters Avalon had to offer, and there were no better protectors for Alex.
Alex stared at his banana leaf plate. “Filipinos always had strong ties to Avalon,” he said. “There is—was—a huge Filipino population in the kingdom for as long as I could remember. I’m sorry we couldn’t save them. And now it looks like you all are going to sacrifice even more for my sake—hey!” Tala had picked up a piece of calamansi and squirted juice in his direction.
“Mum used to tell me about this thing they have back in the Philippines called bayanihan,” she said matter-of-factly, ignoring Alex’s glare as he mopped up his lap. “People used to live in bamboo houses. When families needed to move, they enlisted the help of the whole community to move their homes to the new locations.”
“You’re kidding me. How do you move a whole house?”
“It was all about community spirit. People pitched in knowing that if the roles were reversed, the family they were helping would do the same thing for them. Like it or not, you’re one of us now. And we always look out for our own.”
That made him smile. “Thanks.”
“There we go!” Tita Baby proclaimed, adding a tray of freshly grilled tilapia to the table. “Now we can eat!”
“Excellent,” Alex said, as the others took their places. “I’m starving. Where’s the silverware?”
The Katipuneros traded glances with each other, looked over at the exiled prince of the kingdom of Avalon, and began to laugh.
* * *
“Am I the reason we’re stuck here?” Tala asked sometime later, once the leaves had been cleared, the leftover food carefully stored away in Tupperware containers, and the Katipuneros were treating a very amused Alex to numerous renditions of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” via the karaoke system they had plugged in.
She had asked variations of this question over the years and had never received a straight answer from her parents. Was her ineptitude keeping them from leaving? The thought upset her, though not enough to stop herself from cutting a huge slice of flan.
“Oh, anak,” her mother said. “It’s not that. There are far more factors involved than you think.”
“I mean, surely this town can’t be the only place where magic doesn’t work? There must be better places out there. Places where…you know…”
Places that weren’t stupid small towns that had stupid small-town kids and their stupid small-town parents, where the closest thing to variety was the tamale festival at nearby Somerton. Places where people didn’t think and act like Mark Jones or Mr. McLeroy. Places in America where she didn’t have to stand out, where her mother and her side of the family didn’t have to look so different. So yeah, maybe Invierno wasn’t conducive to magic and that was good for a girl and a mother who negated spells on a daily basis, but surely there were nicer towns out there with the same hiccup?
Her parents looked at each other. Finally, her father reached out and gave her a quick hug. The mic had now been passed on to Alex, who was doing his best impression of Bruno Mars. The general was attempting to dance, to mixed reactions. “We stay because it’s right bastard hot out here,” her father finally replied, but that didn’t sound like much of a reason to Tala either.