The Pint-Sized Piloto

Prologue

Once upon a time, flying the skies over Batangas, a banged-up airplane was riddled with bullets. Sputtering smoke, losing fuel and altitude, it was the end of the road for this pilot. His plane was a dead stick, apparently determined to just give it a rest and crash.

An instant before the inevitable, a strange interjection flashed in his mind, this one last thing this cruel universe had to say as if to make a kick to the groin. You’re not supposed to die today, it said. It’s supposed to be Christmas time, you’re supposed to be grilling pork, making merry, and doing cheer. The pilot looked across the shattered glass of his monoplane, a green and brown P-26 Peashooter, streaking across an otherwise blue morning sky. Beneath him, he could see trees and the rolling hills of what might be the town of Mataas na Kahoy. 

You’re not supposed to die today.

Several tapping noises rained across his right wing, causing a loud pop and a brief explosion. Maybe he got sprayed on by another round of bullets. He didn’t know anymore. The plane shook violently and started to spin. The pilot let go of his grip on the stick. Flames had burst around him and now his plane dove into the thick forest below like a meteor. The trees seemed to have unclenched themselves, welcoming him to its dark corners and cold embrace. He hovered above his seat, along with all the items he had strapped on his cockpit, a photograph of his wife and child, a baseball, and a talisman his wife believing it would bring him luck. A useless piece of gem. He stretched out his arms and felt time seemed to have slowed down to a crawl.

His world has come to an end. Just like that. You’re thrown away, regardless of how much you value yourself. Still, the world will forget. It hasn’t time to ponder on how you die, or when. It doesn’t bargain. It doesn’t care even if you make a plea to live another day. It moves on. And so the pilot got caught in the heart of the fire, all he could do was think how he’s leaving a perfectly normal life; how he, Joaquim Dela Cruz, a pilot in the Philippine Constabulary Air Corps, who a week ago had been naïve to think that he can get past this war, that December will be just like any other, that he would bring home a puppy to his daughter on Christmas day, that he was looking forward to getting fat before the year-end, was about to leave this world in an old dumpster of a plane.

The answer was simple. He believed in the wrong myth.

Yet sometimes, the world turns out to harbor some other plans. It doesn’t care for the reasons behind it, it just makes it so. And on this particular moment, for this particular soul, it did not want Joaquim’s story to end. For as the plane and the man burned and enveloped itself in a billow of black smoke, it just so happened that something or someone had performed a silly magic trick. With a few sparks here and a few spritely specks of dust there, the pilot felt fire in his skin feel like a warm bath in the cold mountain air. He woke up. Out of the chaos of the crash was supposed to be a wreck and his burnt corpse. He instead found himself shrunk to a size of a soup can.

He’s become five inches tall—give or take. It doesn’t matter what he turned out to be. When people would see him—if they see him—they would see him as a dwende.

You’re not supposed to die today.

Right, he thought.