Alingawngaw sa Banga--- A Guniguni Tale

In a quiet barrio nestled between rice fields and forgotten footpaths, there lived an old woman named Luningning. Her house was modest, shaded by a balete tree whose roots curled like sleeping serpents. Beneath that tree sat a clay banga, half-buried in soil and memory.

Luningning never touched it. She said it belonged to her mother, and her mother’s mother before that. “It remembers,” she would whisper, eyes clouded with something deeper than age.

One rainy evening, her granddaughter Tala, curious and unafraid, leaned close to the jar. She heard it—soft, layered voices. A lullaby. A prayer. A warning.

“Huwag kang tumingin.”
“Bumalik ka sa loob.”
“Hindi pa tapos ang dasal.”

Each night, the voices grew louder. Tala began to recognize them—her aunt who drowned in the river, her cousin lost to fever, her teacher who vanished after a storm. All women. All gone. All whispering.

One night, Tala placed her ear against the jar and whispered, “What do you want?”

The jar pulsed with light. The voices stilled. And then, one final echo:
“Ikaw ang susunod na tagapagdala.”
(“You are the next bearer.”)

The next morning, Luningning was gone. The jar sat open, empty. Tala sealed it with wax and ash, placed sampaguita garlands around it, and whispered her own prayer. She never spoke of it again.

But the jar still waits. And it still remembers.

Reflection: Echoes and Inheritance

“Sa bawat bulong ng banga, may isang alaala na ayaw matahimik.”
(“With every whisper from the jar, a memory refuses to rest.”)

This tale speaks to the quiet burden of remembrance—how women in our families carry stories not always told, grief not always named. The banga becomes a vessel not just of horror, but of inheritance. It asks: what do we carry that isn’t ours? What do we silence to survive?

In crafting this story, I felt the ache of ancestral echoes—how folklore and gentle horror can hold space for mourning, mystery, and myth. It’s a reminder that remembrance is both a gift and a haunting. And sometimes, the most powerful stories are whispered, not shouted.

© 2025 Amee  Tala at Dilim Writes



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