The Witch

by Edilberto K. Tiempo

When I was twelve years old, I used to go to Libas, about nine kilometers from the town, to
visit my favorite uncle, Tio Sabelo, the head teacher of the barrio school there. I like going to
Libas because of the many things to eat at my uncle’s house: cane sugar syrup, candied meat of
young coconut, corn and rice cakes, ripe jackfruit, guavas from trees growing wild on a hill not
far from Tio Sabelo’s house. It was through these visits that I heard many strange stories about
Minggay Awok. Awok Is the word for witch in southern Leyte. Minggay was known as a witch
even beyond Libas, in five outlying sitios, and considering that not uncommonly a man’s
nearest neighbor was two or three hills away, her notoriety was wide. Minggay lived in a small,
low hut at the back of the creek separating the barrios of Libas and Sinit-an. It squatted like a
soaked hen on a steep incline and below it, six or seven meters away, two trails forked, one
going to Libas and the other to Mahangin, a mountain sitio. The hut leaned dangerously to the
side where the creekwater ate away large chunks of earth during the rainy season. It had two
small openings, a small door through which Minggay probably had to stoop to pass, and a
window about two feet square facing the creek. The window was screened by a frayed jute
sacking which fluttered eerily even in the daytime.

What she had in the hut nobody seemed to know definitely. One daring fellow who boasted of
having gone inside it when Minggay was out in her clearing on a hill nearby said he had seen
dirty stoppered bottles hanging from the bamboo slats of the cogon thatch. Some of the bottles
contained scorpions, centipedes, beetles, bumble bees, and other insects; others were filled with
ash-colored powder and dark liquids. These bottles contained the paraphernalia of her
witchcraft.Two or three small bottles she always had with her hanging on her waistband with a
bunch of iron keys, whether she went to her clearing or to the creek to catch shrimps or gather
fresh-water shells, or even when she slept.

It was said that those who had done her wrong never escaped her vengeance, in the form of
festering carbuncles, chronic fevers that caused withering of the skin, or a certain disease of the
nose that eventually ate the nose out. Using an incantation known only to her, Minggay would
take out one insect from a bottle, soak it in colored liquid or roll it in powder, and with a curse
let it go to the body of her victim; the insect might be removed and the disease cured only rarely
through intricate rituals of an expensive tambalan.

Thus Minggay was feared in Libas and the surrounding barrios. There had been attempts to
murder her, but in some mysterious way she always came out unscathed. A man set fire to her
hut one night, thinking to burn her with it. The hut quickly burned down, but Minggay was
unharmed. On another occasion a man openly declared that he had killed her, showing the
blood-stained bolo with which he had stabbed her; a week later she was seen hobbling to her
clearing. This man believed Minggay was the cause of the rash that his only child had been
carrying for over a year. One day, so the story went, meeting his wife, Minggay asked to hold
her child. She didn’t want to offend Minggay. As the witch gave the child back she said, “He
has a very smooth skin.” A few days later the boy had skin eruptions all over his body that
never left him.

Minggay’s only companions were a lean, barren sow and a few chickens, all of them charcoal
black. The sow and the chickens were allowed to wander in the fields, and even if the sow dug
up sweet potatoes and the chickens pecked rice or corn grain drying in the sun, they were not
driven away by the neighbors because they were afraid to arouse Minggay’s wrath.

Besides the sow and the chickens, Minggay was known to have a wakwak and a sigbin.
Thosewho claimed to have seen the sigbin described it as a queer animal resembling a
kangaroo: the forelegs were shorter than the hind ones: its fanlike ears made a flapping sound
when it walked.The wakwak was a nocturnal bird, as big and black as a crow. It gave out
raucous cries when a person in the neighborhood had just died. The bird was supposed to be
Minggay’s messenger, and the sigbin carried her to the grave; then the witch dug up the corpse
and feasted on it. Thetimes when I passed by the hut and saw her lean sow and her black
chickens, I wondered if they transformed themselves into fantastic creatures at night. Even in
the daytime I dreaded the possibility of meeting her; she might accost me on the trail near her
hut, say something about my face or any part of it, and then I might live the rest of my life with
a harelip, a sunken nose,or crossed eyes. But I never saw Minggay in her house or near the
premises. There were times when I thought she was only a legend, a name to frighten children
from doing mischief. But thenI almost always saw her sow digging banana roots or wallowing
near the trail and the black chickens scratching for worms or pecking grains in her yard, and the
witch became very real indeed.

Once I was told to go to Libas with a bottle of medicine for Tio Sabelo’s sick wife. I started
from the town at half past five and by the time I saw the balete tree across the creek from
Minggay’s hut, I could hardly see the trail before me. The balete was called Minggay’s tree, for
she was known to sit on one of the numerous twisting vines that formed its grotesque trunk to
wait for an abelated passer-by. The balete was a towering monstrous shadow; a firefly that
flitted among the vines was an evil eye plucked out searching for its socket. I wanted to run
back, but the medicine had to get to Tio Sabelo’s wife that night. I wanted to push through the
thick
underbrush to the dry part of the creek to avoid the balete, but I was afraid of snakes. I had
discarded the idea of a coconut frond torch because the light would catch the attention of the
witch, and when she saw it was only a little boy... Steeling myself I tried to whistle as I passed
in the shadow of the balete, its overhanging vines like hairy arms ready to hoist and strangle me
among the branches.

Emerging into the stony bed of the creek, I saw Minggay’s hut. The screen in the window
waved in the faint light of the room and I thought I saw the witch peering behind it. As I started
going up the trail by the hut, each moving clump and shadow was a crouching old woman. I had
heard stories of Minggay’s attempts to waylay travelers in the dark and suck their blood.
Closing my eyes twenty yards from the hut of the witch, I ran up the hill. A few meters past the
hut I stumbled on a low stump. I got up at once and ran again. When I reached Tio Sabelo’s
house I was very tired and badly shaken.

Somehow after the terror of the balete and the hut of the witch had lessened, although I always
had the goose flesh whenever I passed by them after dusk. One moonlight night going home to
town I heard a splashing of the water below Minggay’s house. I thought the sound was made by
the witch, for she was seen to bathe on moonlit nights in the creek, her loose hair falling on her
face. It was not Minggay I saw. It was a huge animal. I was about to run thinking it was the
sigbin of the witch, but when I looked at it again, I saw that it was a carabao wallowing in the
creek.

One morning I thought of bringing home shrimps to my mother, and so I went to a creek a
hundred yards from Tio Sabelo’s house. I had with me my cousin’s pana, made of a long steel
rod pointed at one end and cleft at the other and shot through the hollow of a bamboo joint the
size of a finger by means of a rubber band attached to one end of the joint. After wading for two
hours in the creek which meandered around bamboo groves and banban and ipil clumps with
only three small shrimps strung on a coconut midrib dangling from my belt, I came upon an old
woman taking a bath in the shade of a catmon tree. A brown tapis was wound around her three
fingers width above her thin chest. The bank of her left was a foot-wide ledge of unbroken
boulder on which she had set a wooden basin half full of wet but still unwashed clothes.

In front of her was a submerged stone pile topped by a platter size rock; on it were a heap of
shredded coconut meat, a small discolored tin basin, a few lemon rinds, and bits of pounded
gogo bark. The woman was soaking her sparse gray hair with the gogo suds. She must have
seen me coming because she did not look surprised.

Seeing the three small shrimps hanging at my side she said, “You have a poor catch.”
She looked kind. She was probably as old as my grandmother; smaller, for this old woman was
two or three inches below five feet. Her eyes looked surprisingly young, but her mouth, just a
thin line above the little chin, seemed to have tasted many bitter years.

“Why don’t you bait them out of their hiding? Take some of this.” She gave me a handful of
shredded coconut meat whose milk she had squeezed out and with the gogo suds used on her
hair.

She exuded a sweet wood fragrance of gogo bark and the rind of lemons. “Beyond the first
bend,” she said pointing, “the water is still. Scatter the shreds there. That’s where I get my
shrimps. You will see some traps. If you find shrimps in them, they are yours.”

I mumbled my thanks and waded to the bend she had indicated. That part of the creek was like a
small lake. One bank was lined by huge boulders showing long, deep fissures where the roots of
gnarled dapdap trees had penetrated. The other bank was sandy, with bamboo and catmon trees
leaning over, their roots sticking out in the water. There was good shade and the air had a
twilight chilliness. The water was shallow except on the rocky side, which was deep and murky.

I scattered the coconut shreds around, and not long after they had settled down shrimps crawled
from boles under the bamboo and catmon roots and from crevices of the boulders. It did nottake
me an hour to catch a midribful, some hairy with age, some heavy with eggs, moulters,dark
magus, leaf-green shrimps, speckled.

I saw three traps of woven bamboo strips, round-bellied and about two feet long, two hidden
behind a catmon root. I did not disturb them because I had enough shrimps for myself.

“No, no, iti. Your mother will need them. You don’t have enough. Besides, I have freshwater
crabs at home.” She looked up at me with her strange young eyes and asked, “Do you still have
a mother?”

I told her I had, and a grandmother, too.

“You are not from Libas, I think. This is the first time I have seen you.”

I said I was from the town and my uncle was the head teacher of the Libas barrio school.

“You remind me of my son when he was your age. He had bright eyes like you, and his voice
was soft like yours. I think you are a good boy.”

“Where is your son now?”

“I have not heard from him since he left. He went away when he was seventeen. He left in
anger,
because I didn’t want him to marry so young. I don’t know where he went, where he is.”

She spread the length of a kimona on the water for a last rinsing. The flesh hanging from her
skinny arms was loose and flabby.

“If he’s still living,” she went on, “he’d be as old as your father maybe. Many times I feel in my
bones he is alive, and will come back before I die.”

“Your husband is still living?”

“He died a long time ago, when my boy was eleven.”

She twisted the kimona like a rope to wring out the water. “I’m glad he died early. He was very
cruel.”
I looked at her, at the thin mouth, wondering about her husband’s cruelty, disturbed by the
manner she spoke about it.

“Do you have other children?”

“I wish I had. Then I wouldn’t be living alone.”

A woman her age, I thought, should be a grandmother and live among many children.

“Where do you live?”

She did not speak, but her strange young eyes were probing and looked grotesque in the old
woman’s face. “Not far from here--the house on the high bank, across the balete.”

She must have seen the fright that suddenly leaped into my face, for I thought she smiled at me
queerly.

“I’m going now,” I said.

I felt her following me with her eyes; indeed they seemed to bore a hot hole between my
shoulder blades. I did not look back. Don’t run, I told myself. But at the first bend of the
creek,when I knew she couldn’t see me, I ran. After a while I stopped, feeling a little foolish.
Such a helpless-looking little old woman couldn’t be Minggay, couldn’t be the witch. I
remembered her kind voice and the wood fragrance. She could be my own grandmother.

As I walked the string of shrimps kept brushing against the side of my leg. I detached it from
my belt and looked at the shrimps. Except for the three small ones, all of them belonged to the
oldwoman. Her coconut shreds had coaxed them as by magic out of their hiding. The protruding
eyes of the biggest, which was still alive, seemed to glare at me---and then they became the eyes
of the witch. Angrily, I hurled the shrimps back into the creek.

Plot:
"The Witch" follows a young boy who frequently visits his uncle in the barrio of Libas. During his
visits, he hears stories about Minggay Awok, a feared witch who lives in a small hut near the creek.
The boy becomes intrigued by Minggay's reputation and the strange occurrences surrounding her. He
learns that Minggay possesses bottles filled with insects, powders, and liquids, which she uses for her
witchcraft. People believe that those who wrong her suffer from terrible diseases and afflictions.
Despite attempts to harm her, Minggay always emerges unharmed. The boy develops a mixture of fear
and curiosity toward Minggay, especially as he passes by her hut. One day, he encounters an old
woman bathing near the creek, who shares a kind conversation with him. However, when she reveals
that she lives near Minggay's hut, the boy becomes terrified and flees. He later contemplates his actions
and throws away the shrimps he caught, symbolically rejecting the association with evil.

Characters:
● The young boy (narrator)
● Minggay Awok (the witch)
● Tio Sabelo (the boy's favorite uncle)

Setting:
The story is set in the barrio of Libas, a rural area in southern Leyte. The main locations include Tio
Sabelo's house, Minggay's small hut near the creek, and the surrounding natural environment.

Theme:
The theme of "The Witch" revolves around fear, superstition, and the power of perception. It explores
how the fear of the unknown, in this case, the witch Minggay Awok, can shape people's beliefs and
actions.
Moral Lesson:
The story conveys a moral lesson about prejudice and snap judgments. It encourages readers to
question their assumptions and not judge others solely based on appearances or rumors.

Point of View:
The story is narrated in the first person from the perspective of the young boy. The events and
experiences are presented through his eyes, thoughts, and emotions.

Conflict:
The main conflict in the story is the boy's internal struggle between fear and curiosity. He is
simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by the mystique of Minggay Awok, torn between wanting to
learn more about her and avoiding any potential harm.

Tone and Mood:

The tone of the story is a mix of curiosity, fear, and unease. The author creates an atmosphere of
suspense and mystery, building tension around the character of Minggay Awok. The mood oscillates
between apprehension and wonder, as the boy grapples with his conflicting emotions.

Main Points:

● The protagonist, a young boy, visits his favorite uncle in the barrio of Libas, where he hears
stories about Minggay Awok, a witch known for her supernatural powers and acts of revenge.
● Minggay lives in a small, dilapidated hut near a creek, and her notoriety extends beyond Libas to
neighboring areas. She is believed to possess bottles containing insects, powders, and liquids
that she uses for her witchcraft.
● Minggay is feared by the community, as those who have wronged her are said to suffer from
various ailments and diseases as a result of her curses.
● Despite attempts to harm or kill Minggay, she always emerges unscathed, leading to further fear
and superstition surrounding her.
● Minggay's companions include a barren sow, black chickens, a wakwak (a nocturnal bird
associated with death), and a sigbin (a strange creature resembling a kangaroo). The sigbin is
believed to carry her to graves to feast on corpses.
● The protagonist, initially terrified of Minggay, must overcome his fear when tasked with
delivering medicine to his uncle's sick wife. He passes by the balete tree associated with
Minggay and her hut, experiencing intense fear.
● Over time, the protagonist's fear diminishes, and he encounters an old woman bathing in the
creek. Despite initial trepidation, he realizes she is not Minggay and engages in a conversation
with her.
● The old woman shares her story of an estranged son and a deceased cruel husband, expressing
her longing for her son's return. The protagonist feels a mix of compassion and discomfort in her
presence.
● After parting ways with the old woman, the protagonist reflects on his encounter and the power
of the witch's influence. He discards the shrimps he caught using the old woman's method,
feeling a sense of anger and fear.
● The story explores themes of fear, superstition, the power of perception, and the blurred line
between reality and folklore. It showcases the impact of rumors and legends on the mindset of
individuals and communities.
Possible Questions:
1. What is the significance of the title "The Witch" in the story?

Answer: The title "The Witch" refers to the central character, Minggay Awok, who is
feared and regarded as a witch by the community due to her supposed supernatural powers.

2. How does the author build a sense of fear and superstition surrounding Minggay Awok?

Answer: The author uses various techniques to build fear and superstition. He describes
Minggay's dilapidated hut near a creek, her association with supernatural creatures like the
sigbin and wakwak, and the rumors of her curses and revenge. The community's belief in her
powers and the failed attempts to harm her also contribute to the atmosphere of fear.

3. What role does the protagonist's fear play in the story?

Answer: The protagonist's fear serves as a catalyst for his personal growth and
exploration of the themes in the story. Initially terrified of Minggay, his fear gradually
diminishes as he confronts his own perceptions and engages in conversation with the old woman
at the creek.

4. How does the story explore the theme of superstition?

Answer: The story delves into the impact of superstition on individuals and
communities. It portrays how fear and belief in supernatural powers can influence people's
behavior, perpetuating superstitions and leading to actions driven by irrational fears.

5. What is the significance of the encounter with the old woman at the creek?

Answer: The encounter with the old woman challenges the protagonist's preconceived
notions and stereotypes associated with Minggay and witches. It humanizes the figure of the
witch, highlighting the complexities of individuals beyond their feared reputation.

6. How does the author blur the line between reality and folklore in the story?

Answer: The author blurs the line between reality and folklore by presenting both
tangible elements (such as Minggay's hut and the creatures associated with her) and intangible
beliefs and rumors. This creates an atmosphere where the reader is left questioning the veracity
of supernatural events.

7. What does the story suggest about the power of rumors and legends?

Answer: The story suggests that rumors and legends have a profound impact on people's
mindset and actions. The community's fear and attempts to harm Minggay are fueled by the
legends surrounding her, highlighting the potent influence of stories passed down through
generations.

8. How does the protagonist's perception of Minggay and the old woman change throughout the
story?

Answer: Initially, the protagonist is terrified of Minggay, but as he interacts with the old
woman, his perception starts to shift. He realizes that his fear may have been based on
exaggerations and hearsay. The encounter challenges his preconceptions and encourages a more
nuanced view of the individuals involved.

9. What is the significance of the protagonist's anger and fear at the end of the story?

Answer: The protagonist's anger and fear at the end of the story reflect his internal
conflict and the lingering influence of the witch's power. It suggests that even though he has
grown and developed a more rational perspective, remnants of fear and uncertainty still remain
within him.