Tengu by John Donohue Page A

held to the high ground in the hopes of peace. It was in many ways a tranquil life; one measured by the pace of dry seasons and wet ones, of the growth cycle of crops. But the jungle slopes were not always quiet. More than just spirits haunted the deep woods. The Muslim tribes, the old Moros, still struggled for independence. The central government fought back. Truces were made and then broken. There were times when the faint ripping of automatic weapon fire could be heard, even on the high slopes of the Higuanon farms. Hatsue had shrugged off the danger: there were very few places left in the world to study tribal peoples. Most of them were curious blends of shamans and Kalashnikovs, of Stone Age farming and geopolitical struggle. It came with the territory. Literally.
    That day passed like most others. Hatsue had long ago paced off the dimensions of the hill fields and inventoried the crops grown. She had reduced what she could of Higuanon life to facts and numbers, but that effort was soon completed and paled in comparison with the challenge of really understanding these people. She watched the daily pace of their lives and hoped for insight through the experience of the mundane.
    Hatsue resigned herself to another sleepy day on the mountain slopes, to the buzz of insects and the distant calls of birds, and the desultory conversations with the women. Only the children offered some relief. They hovered around her, fascinated by the spectacle of a grown person who, even now, knew so little about their world. They offered to take her into the forest to show her a troop of monkeys or a tree as old as the world. They brought her curious insects, cupping them in the cage of their small hands and smiling at her feigned surprise. The sun made the fields steam with heat and they moved into the shade of the trees for relief. The weeding done, the adults, Hatsue included, culled the fields for the evening’s meal and collected wood for the fires. She straightened up for what seemed like the millionth time and rubbed the small of her back. An old woman saw her and grinned. The old one’s face was creased and leathery, her few teeth discolored from chewing betel nut. Her ageless brown eyes glittered with silent understanding: she too rubbed her back. Then bent again to pick up another piece of firewood.
    Late in the day, a runner toiled up from the river valley, his face streaked with sweat and his secondhand sneakers covered in mud. He spoke quietly with one of the guards, who nodded him along the trail toward the village. Then the alimaong checked the action on his old M-1 carbine and ushered the women and children out of the fields.
    There were strangers on the slopes.
    Hatsue had been through these types of alerts before. The Higuanon prized their isolation and any outsider was viewed with deep suspicion. Sometimes it was nothing to fear. The blonde-haired evangelist from a Chicago mission society would sometimes make the long trek by horseback up to see them. He was greeted politely and was respected for the rudimentary medical care he could give people. The datu listened to the missionary’s stories of Jesus with pleasant tolerance. There was also a team of scientists stumbling around down in the valley, occasionally lugging boxes of instruments upslope to measure volcanic action in some of the older craters.
    But this time the runner spoke of men with guns.
    The women shouldered their loads and slipped down the trail quickly and efficiently. They cast an occasional glance back along the trail where the sentry stood watch, but their feet moved quickly toward the village. The children, whose energy level seemed to spike shortly before the evening meal, hooted in excitement. The elders hushed them with a severity that was unusual and squatted in a circle to debate a proper response to the mysterious intruders. Hatsue edged closer to learn what she could.
    The sky was still bright, although when you lowered your eyes to the ground