“’Wag!” I shout again. “’Wag mo syang pakialaman!”

The woman reels back. Prinoprotektahan kita.

“And I want to protect you, too.” I say the words in English, for Chase’s benefit. “You looked out for me. You want to be just. But this isn’t justice. And you can’t make that decision for him.”

“I just want to go home,” Chase whispers. “With Dad. Please.”

The man is worthless. Elena Gries twists against me. The boy is too young to know justice.

I tighten my grip. “That’s a part of being human,” I shout back at it. “You can’t force people, even if you’re looking out for them! You have to let them make their own decisions. You can’t have them do whatever you want just because you want it! I’ve always obeyed, but that doesn’t mean others should if you’re in the wrong!”

The woman smiles, her face crinkling when she does—only to fold in ways that a human cannot. Her skin begins to slide off, her smile and her eyes and the rest of her features slipping off with it.

I keep my hold on the woman’s wrist, even as the now-familiar tree creature inclines its faceless mouth to look at me. It ululates slowly, the teeth within that carnivorous flower-like mouth shifting and grating.

You have never gone against me before, she whispers. These humans are bad for you. I will take his father, and he will dream with us. It is for his own good.

“If you do that,” I respond angrily, “then I will leave with Chase.”

There is a snap. Elena Gries’s limb comes off. It takes a step backward, but already the roots are reforming and reshaping, the torn arm slowly being reabsorbed back into the creature.

The world will hurt you, the creature whispers. Now it is revealing its true nature; the woman’s face loses its animation as her body grows more wooden, becoming like the balete with the crudely defined faces on its bark. I protected you your whole life. ’Wag mo akong iwan.

I lean closer, unafraid. The Diwata watches me through the woman’s alien gaze. “I won’t leave you,” I say softly, “but I can’t obey you this time.”

A large baton strikes the tree creature squarely in the center of its head. I step back in surprise as it staggers, but Chase does not let up, swinging his weapon at it again and again.

“I’m not afraid!” he shouts. “I miss her but I’m not afraid of you. And I won’t let you use her against me!”

His last upswing shatters the tree creature. It crumples to the ground, and something at its core unfurls. The form dissipates, sprawls out into roots that run tangled across the ground, joining the others that lie twisted and decaying in this cave, and remains still.

Breathing hard, Chase stares at what’s left of it, as if expecting a new form to reconstitute and rise up again. But the broken roots continue to decay, splintering slowly on their own. “I didn’t kill it, did I?”