Until the Tree Blooms.
When the War Ends Chap. 1
The war had ended, but peace did not arrive with drums or cheers. It came quietly, like a soft sigh over the hills of Luzon, too tired to celebrate, too broken to be loud.
In the little barrio tucked between rice fields and bamboo groves, people moved carefully, as if the air still remembered gunfire. The Japanese had surrendered. The American planes had stopped flying overhead. The bodies had been buried, and yet the war remained in the silence, in the absence, in the waiting.
Eight-year-old Lina sat on the old wooden bench, under the old mango tree behind their nipa hut, her bare feet swinging inches above the earth. She came here every day after chores were done, after the laundry had been washed by the stream and the goats had been fed. She would sit, quiet and patient, on the thick root where her father once carved a heart for her mother.
The tree had never bloomed.
"Papa said," she whispered, her chin resting on her knees, "when the tree blooms, it means he's home."
Tiyang Amapola, her mother's elder cousin and the only family she had left, would scold her gently each time she found her outside.
"You'll catch the cough again, Lina. The wind is cold this time of year."
But Lina would only nod and return the next day.
They said her father, Anan, was dead. He had joined the guerrilla resistance up north when the Japanese occupied the village. Some said they saw him among the rebels who ambushed a convoy. Others claimed he had been caught, tortured, left to rot in a ravine. One story said he blew himself up with a grenade rather than be taken.
Lina didn't listen to any of them.
He promised, before he left, that the mango tree would bloom the day he came home.
It had been three years.
The sky was starting to soften into the pinks and golds of dusk. Smoke curled lazily from cooking fires. A dog barked in the distance. Chickens pecked at the dry path behind the hut.
Lina rubbed her eyes and yawned, hugging her knees tighter. Just one more minute, she thought. Just one more.
And then a sound.
Footsteps.
Slow. Uneven. Crunching softly on the dirt path.
She lifted her head.
A figure appeared at the edge of the field, where the sun melted into the horizon. The silhouette moved slowly, limping slightly, the shape of a rifle slung over one shoulder. His shirt was torn, smeared with dust and dried blood. His pants were tattered at the hem, the cloth near the knees stiff with old mud. A bandage was wrapped tightly around one arm.
He walked like he was dragging the whole war behind him.
Lina stood up.
Her breath caught in her throat. She stared.
He stepped closer, now near enough for the fading light to touch his face.
Gaunt. Bruised. Dirty. And yet unmistakably him.
Anan.
His eyes searched the yard, searching, searching, until they found hers.
"Anak…" he whispered.
She didn't move at first. It was too much. Too long. Too impossible.
Then she ran.
She bolted across the grass barefoot, a shout bursting from her lungs, her arms already open. She threw herself into him, and he caught her, though the weight knocked him back a step. He laughed, hoarse and shaking, and hugged her with every broken muscle he had left.
"You came back," she cried, her fists clutching his torn shirt.
"I told you," he said, kissing the crown of her head. "I'd come back. Always."
They stayed there for a while, just holding each other. The sun behind them dipped lower, and the light made the mango tree look almost golden. Almost.
But still, no blossoms.
Tiyang Amapola stood at the bamboo steps, her rosary clutched in one hand. She didn't speak right away. Her lips parted, and her knees seemed to tremble.
"Anan?" she said softly.
He nodded. "It's me, Tiyang."
She swallowed, eyes wide with disbelief. Then, without another word, she stepped aside.
The inside of the hut smelled the same. Boiled rice, wood smoke, the faint sweetness of old prayers. Dust clung to the shelves. A candle burned low at the altar beside a faded photograph of Mina, Lina's mother.
Anan paused in front of it.
"She never left this house," Tiyang Amapola said behind him. "Even after she passed."
Anan nodded. "She's always been stronger than me."
Lina stood beside him and took his hand. "Do you miss her, Papa?"
"Every day," he said, gently squeezing her fingers. "But I see her in you."
They sat down for dinner, a boiled kamote and dried fish, the same meal Lina had eaten every week since the war began. Anan ate slowly, as if each bite reminded him he was still alive.
Lina never stopped looking at him. She told him everything: about the neighbor's pig that escaped three times, about learning to write her name, about how Tiyang Amapola muttered in her sleep. She giggled as she remembered how she once made tinola taste like soap.
Anan just smiled and listened.
That night, they lay on the banig under the soft flickering light of a lamp. Outside, the frogs croaked. The wind rustled the banana leaves.
"Papa," Lina whispered. "Can you check the closet?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Still scared of monsters?"
"No… ghosts."
Anan picked up a slipper and held it in the air. "Any ghost that dares show up will get this right on the nose."
She laughed, pulling the blanket up to her chin.
"Promise you'll never leave again?"
He hesitated, then reached out to brush the hair from her face.
"Not in this lifetime," he whispered.
But for the first time in years, Lina fell asleep with a smile on her face.
She believed the promise. And Anan, for that moment, did too.