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| NIKKI ALFAR |
| Menggay's Magical Chicken |
| THE AUTHOR HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT TO THIS STORY. THIS IS POSTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR. |
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| THIS IS PART OF THE LITERATURA READING SERIES | CLICK HERE TO GO BACK TO LITERATURA |
| Once, a little girl named Menggay had a pet chicken that could do magic.
It was a odd-looking chicken--black where it should have been brown, and brown where it should have been black--and it acted oddly, too. While all the other chickens in her family’s yard would rush forward at feeding time and gobble up every grain of chicken feed that Menggay scattered on the ground for them, the odd-colored chicken would eat only some of the grains that she spread in front of it. It would leave most of the chicken feed where it fell; but it would pick up several grains one by one in its beak, then put them down carefully in different spots on the ground. And Menggay would look at this pattern the chicken made, and read important messages in it for her family and their neighbors from the nearby farms and town. When it rained early in the season, Menggay was able to tell her father in advance, so he could decide the best times to plant and harvest. When the carabao of the farmer next door got sick, Menggay knew it was because the carabao had stepped on the home of a nunô; and that the farmer should offer gifts of salabat and milk candy, so that the dwarf would stop being angry. When a fisherman from the shore thought he was in love with a mermaid he had spotted at sea, Menggay learned that it was really only a friendly dugong; and after the fisherman got over his embarrassment, he started courting a nice young washer-woman instead. And when the town albularya, despite her charms and potions, could not find her missing magical ring, Menggay and the chicken found out that she had accidentally baked it into a bibingka meant for her merienda that afternoon. So more and more people started coming from farther and farther away to see Menggay and her chicken. The strangest one was a blue-eyed, bluish-skinned man who never asked any questions as others did. He would just stand outside the chicken yard every afternoon, watching Menggay feed the chickens. Menggay, who had been taught to be very polite, would always bring him a glass of water to drink; and the man would take a pinch of salt from somewhere in his pockets, sprinkle it into the glass, drink the water down in one long gulp, and hand the glass back to Menggay without saying a word. One especially hot day, Menggay went into the kitchen to get the man his water, and decided to save him some effort by putting a little salt in the glass herself. So she took just a bit longer than usual inside the house; and by the time she went out into the yard, the strange man was gone… and so was her pet chicken. Menggay was so upset! She ran and asked her mother to please help her, and together they looked all through the house; across the front yard, back yard, and chicken yard; and around the nearby fields. But the chicken was nowhere to be found; and by the time Menggay’s father had come in from their field and joined the search, they all had to agree that the chicken was missing and that the strange man had probably taken it. This made Menggay even more worried. She missed the chicken terribly and knew that her pet must be missing her, too. So the next morning, she asked her parents if she could go and look for her chicken; and her parents, who knew that they had raised her to be able to take care of herself, gave her their permission, some words of caution, and a few pandesal to take along. “Be careful,” her father reminded her, as he prepared to leave for work himself. “And don’t forget to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’,” said her mother, handing her a small bag containing the pandesal, a bottle of water, and a change of clothes. “Yes, Papa. Yes, Mama,” said Menggay. And she set off on her search. “I do not know this blue-skinned man,” said the farmer next door, when Menggay asked him. “But here, I will give you this milk from the carabao you helped cure. It is thick and goes down smoothly; maybe it can help make your journey smoother.” Menggay thanked the farmer and put the bottle of milk in her little bag, where it clinked gently against the bottle of water her mother had prepared for her. “I do not know where he lives, but that blue-skinned man is a siokoy, a merman,” said the town albularya. “Here, take this magical ring you helped me find. It is made of gold, so you can sell it or trade it if you need to. But never put it on, because only an albularya like me can wear a magic ring like that without strange things happening.” Menggay thanked the albularya and put the ring on a string around her neck. “I know where to find that siokoy!” said the fisherman from the shore. “He lives at the bottom of a big whirlpool. It is very strong and has been known to destroy many boats, so no one goes near it. But because you helped me find true love, I will take you there in my fishing boat, and we will see if we can reach your chicken.” So Menggay thanked the fisherman; climbed into his boat; asked the fisherman’s washer-woman girlfriend to please tell her parents where she had gone; and set off to sea. It took quite a while before Menggay and the fisherman reached the siokoy’s whirlpool. Luckily, Menggay had her baon of pandesal, which she shared with the fisherman; and they made the bread into sandwiches with his stock of dried fish. They were a bit tired, but not hungry at all by the time they spotted the big, strong whirlpool. It was very scary-looking, spinning quickly and roaring hungrily, as if it wanted to eat up the little fishing boat and the people inside it as well. Way, way down at the very bottom of the whirlpool, Menggay thought she could see a small figure on a dry patch of sand, standing over an even smaller figure that might be her beloved chicken. “Down there!” she said, as politely as she could while shouting to be heard over the sound of the water. “I see them!” the fisherman shouted back. “But the whirlpool is too rough and too strong! Our boat will be torn to pieces if we can’t find a smoother way down!” Menggay remembered the bottle of milk that the farmer next door had given her, and the words he had said while giving it. So she took the bottle from out of her small bag; opened it; and spilled the thick, smooth carabao milk over the side of the boat and into the whirlpool. As she and the fisherman watched, the white carabao milk spiraled down into the depths of the whirlpool, making the angry waters calm wherever it touched them with its creamy smoothness, and showing a thick, white, safe path down to the bottom of the sea. Quickly, the fisherman guided his boat along the path marked in carabao milk; and he and Menggay went down, down, down, and down. The little fishing boat sailed upright and unshaken, in spite of the rushing waters all around them. “Stupid chicken!” they could hear the siokoy shouting, as they settled in for a landing on the sandy sea floor. “Useless, stubborn, ugly, stupid chicken!” “Don’t call my chicken names!” cried Menggay, jumping out of the boat and running to pick up her pet--which was looking mostly scared and lonely, but also a bit insulted as the merman continued to yell at it. There were hundreds of pearls, rice grains, and other tiny bits of things scattered messily on the sand all around the chicken. “I’ve scattered feed in front of that animal,” said the siokoy angrily. “I’ve scattered rice and seaweed and flower petals and even pearls, but it doesn’t tell me anything! All it does is eat some chicken feed and move things around on the sand!” “Maybe you’re just not reading the messages right,” Menggay said reasonably, trying to get a proper look at the mess on the ocean floor. “No, it’s just stupid,” snapped the siokoy. Then his watery blue eyes lit up greedily, as he spotted the gold ring Menggay was wearing on a string around her neck. “I’ll tell you what: if you want this chicken so badly, you can have it back... if you give me that gold ring you’re wearing.” “What?” Menggay had completely forgotten the albularya’s ring, in her excitement at finding her chicken. “But it’s a magic ring--” she started to say. “Even better!” said the siokoy, rudely snatching the ring right off Menggay’s neck, breaking the string that held it. “There, now it’s mine.” He was so busy staring at the golden ring that he no longer bothered to look at Menggay, her chicken, or the fisherman. “Go on, take your stupid chicken and go away.” “Now, wait a minute,” said the fisherman, still in his boat. “You can’t just--” “You mustn’t put it on!” cried Menggay, as the siokoy slid the ring onto his blue finger, already turning his hand this way and that to admire it. As soon as the ring was firmly in place, there was a great whooshing and gurgling sound, as the siokoy began to lose his solid human shape, and to quickly turn into the water that he was really made of. “What’s happening to me!?” the siokoy tried to say; but as his toes, knees, shoulders, and finally his head melted away into salt water, what he really ended up saying was, “What’s happening to mumble bubble burble.” And just like that, what was left of the greedy, selfish merman spilled down onto the sand like rain, and was quickly swallowed up by the spinning waters that once protected his home. “What a foolish creature that siokoy was,” said the fisherman, climbing out of his boat, and nudging Menggay to help him collect the pearls that lay scattered on the ocean floor. “All this time that your chicken was becoming famous for its magic, we townsfolk knew that you were the only one who could read its messages. You were the only one who would have known to use carabao milk to find a safe path to the ocean floor. You were the only one who would not have been tempted to try on the magical ring. I don’t think it’s really the chicken that has magic, Menggay; I think it’s you.” At first, Menggay was too amazed at this idea--and also too busy hugging her pet chicken--to know how to answer the fisherman. But before she had started using magic and long before she went off on an adventure, she had been brought up to be a very polite young girl; so she simply said, “Thank you.” Then she and the fisherman finished picking up the pearls, and went home to share them with all the townspeople; and everyone was happy except for the greedy, selfish siokoy, who really didn’t deserve to be. This story won Third Prize for the Children's Stoy in the 2005 Palanca Awards |