Atin ko Pung singsing (a novel) part 1

The early morning sun shone brightly on this December morning as Marciano slowly worked his steed up to a smooth canter. The past season had been good to the current crop of cane growing lush,  green and tall under the San Fernando sky.  IN just thrity more days, it would be ready for the Sagadas to cut and bundle straight onto the carts that would bring it into the La Suerte Milling Corp’s new sugar plant. The Santoses had been good to him. Providing everything he and his new family would ever need. The new hut right beside the Apong Tomas’ mansion in the town plaza was perfect. A divider between the kusina and the bedroom prevented the smoke from their wood oven from entering the room and kept Rosa and their sons Maning and Susing from choking on the kindling wood that they used to cook their humble meals, usually of rice and whatever the main house had as Rosa would be working from dawn to dawn working on the feasts that the family would put on almost daily. She was just a helper in the kitchen and had started out shopping onions and pounding garlic then transferring them into a colander made from clay. The kusinera would unceasingly take literally bowls full of the chopped onions and garlic straight into the constantly burning hearth that resembled a volcano on fire. All manner of concoctions were prepared here, from the simple Pork Adobo, to the Pastel de Lengua demanding an eye for detail as the kusiera laid the soft and pliable dough over the stew and laid out decorations, sometimes, the initials S and P for Santos and Paras, an yet at other times, a butterfly indicating the crest of the family hanging at the main entrance of the mansion. This is really where Rosa learned the basics of cooking as her mother before her and apparently her grandmother as well.

Marciano blinked squarely into the sun as he always did and suddenly realized something was amiss. The normal cacophony of birds was strangely missing. Ordinarily, as the horse’s hooves pounded on the dirt track along each section of the plantation, crows, mayas and as is common this time of year, the snipes migrating from China would respond with their screeches and chirps, sometimes even an entire flock rising suddenly from the different watering holes located haphazardly around the plantation, would fly off in a flight path straight up into the sky. As he took a quick turn into one of the smaller paths leading into the watering hole, his mount slowed to a careful walk and then he saw it.  There it was. First just the sound of heavy breathing but as he approached, snarls of the type that one would see in the heat of a feeding frenzy were apparent. For as long as he could remember the packs of wild dogs that (more to come)