THE LITTLE PEOPLE What could our poor family do?

by Maria Aleah G. Taboclaon

Papa tried to call an albularyo to get rid of our
unwelcome housemates but the woman was
booked till the end of the week. Meanwhile, the
elves had become our alarm clock. When they
start their noise, we would get up and do our
errands. Papa would start cooking, I would start
setting the table, Mama would sweep. The
whole house--my older sister and my cousin
would water the plants, and my brother would
start coloring his books. (We really didn't expect
him to work, he was only four.)

After a week, we got hold of the albularyo. She

spent the night in our house and by morning,
©2001 by Copper Sturgeon
she told us to never bother her again. The elves
had already made themselves a part of our life,
 
she said. Prax, the leader of the elves, had
spoken to her and had told her that his family
THE elves came to stay with us when I was nine.
had no plans of moving out. They liked things as
They were noisy creatures and we would hear
they were.
them stomping on an old crib on the ceiling. We
heard them from morning till night. They kept
We eventually settled down to a comfortable
us awake at night.
coexistence with the elves. They woke us up at
six, they let us sleep at eleven, and in return for
One night, when it was particularly unbearable,
the alarm service we would leave food on the
Papa mustered enough courage and called out.
table. By morning, the food would be gone and
"Excuse me!" he said. "Our family would like to
the table cleaned.
sleep, please? Resume your banging
tomorrow!" Of course, we had tried restraining
All in all, it was a very good relationship.
him for we didn't know how the elves would
react to such audacity.
After three weeks--the first week of May--I met
Prax, the leader and oldest in the clan, and I
We got the shock of our lives when silence
met him literally by accident. I was climbing the
suddenly filled the house--no more banging, no
mango tree in our yard when one of its
more stomping from the elves. Papa turned to
branches broke. I fell and broke my ankle. The
us smugly. Sheepishly, we turned in for the
pain was so great that I just sat there numb,
night, thankful for the respite.
staring at my ankle which had begun to turn
blue. I could not move or cry out. I went to
When dawn came, the smug look on Papa's face
sleep to forget the pain. My last conscious
the night before turned into anger for shortly
thought was that the ground was too cold to
before six, the banging started again, and
sleep on.
louder this time! We got up and tried speaking
to the elves but got no response. The banging
I woke to a hand touching my foot. It belonged
continued all day and into the night, and
to someone--somethingnonhuman, for his hand
stopped at the same hour--eleven o'clock. And
radiated warmth that seemed to penetrate to
at exactly six a.m. the next day, it started again.
my bones. His hand was small, wrinkled and felt
like dried prunes.
Although I was curious, I kept my eyes closed. I
imagined a hideously deformed face, with long
and sharp teeth. Would he disappear when I
open my eyes? Or would he devour me? I
pretended to be asleep.
After several minutes, I could pretend no
longer; I was too curious to remain still. When I
opened my eyes, the horrible sight that I
expected was not there. Instead, there was this
old, wrinkled creature, even shorter than I was
although I was the smallest in my class. He wore
overalls unlike any clothing I knew of. Its texture
was a mixture of green leaves and earth. It
clung to his skin and writhed with a life of its
own. Its color continually changed from deep to
light green, to dark to light brown, and to green
again. It was fascinating to look at. I felt a sense
of awe and respect towards the elf.
He was good with his hands. My ankle already
felt better. He was massaging it with an
ointment that smelled nice. Before I could stop
myself, I sniffed deeply, bringing the healing
aroma of the ointment deep into my lungs.
Detecting my movement, the elf turned to me
and smiled kindly. Although I didn't see his
mouth moving, I could hear him talking.
"Don't be afraid," he said. His voice was so
soothing that I had to fight my urge to snuggle
and sleep in his small arms.
I shook my head slightly. What was I supposed
to say? Hello, elf? How are you? I could not. I
didn't even know if I was supposed to call him
that or just say Tabi or Apo.
As if knowing what I was thinking, the elf smiled
again. "You call our kind dwendes or elves, no?"
I nodded. "I actually don't mind if you call me an
elf, but please call me Prax."
Seeing my astonished look, Prax laughed. His
laugh sounded like the whistling of wind
through the trees and a bit like the breaking of
the waves on the seashore. I thought it nice and
longed to hear more. And I wanted to know
more about his kind. Did they have children?
Wives? Did they play games like patintero?
Habulan?
But Prax was not in the mood to chat. He told
me that I should have been more careful. I
could have been seriously hurt.
I nodded absently, thinking that I liked his
clothes, his laugh, and his voice. He reminded
me of my grandfather who had died a long time
ago.
I closed my eyes, letting Prax's healing massage
lull me to sleep. Thirty minutes later when I
woke up, the elf was gone. Only the lingering
fragrance of his balm remained.
When Mama and Papa arrived, I told them what
had happened. It was really frustrating seeing
their reactions. They became pale, then
collapsed on the sofa. I had to douse them with
water before they revived. Why couldn't they
be like other people and be glad that I had been
befriended by a supernatural being? I had told
them about my first encounter with a real elf,
and they fainted on the spot! I sulked for the
rest of the evening.
Mama told me to never, never talk to elves
again. Or did I forget the countless tales of elves
taking people to their kingdom after killing
them? I just shrugged. After all, the elf had
saved my life!
I thought no more of it and, indeed, began to
enjoy the banging and stomping on our ceiling. I
almost wished to be hurt again just so I could
see Prax. But nothing happened and I passed
the rest of my summer days dreaming about
playing with elves.
I met my second elf in school. I was in Grade 3,
a transferee to a new public school that had a
haunted classroom. My classmates related tales
about dwendes, white ladies, and kapres in our
school. I believed their stories readily.
I tried to tell them about Prax but since they
were skeptical, I decided to let them be. As it
was, I was excluded from their games.
In the classroom, I chose the seat I felt was the
most haunted, the one farthest away from the
teacher's table. Nobody wanted to sit near me.
Behind me was a picture of the president.
Without the company of my classmates, I
expected elves to make their presence felt. So I
waited.
By the third month in class, it happened. We
had a very difficult math exam. Our teacher left
us and went to gossip outside and all around
me my classmates were openly copying each
other's work. I looked at their papers from my
seat, hoping that their scribbles would mean
something to me but the answers to the blasted
long divisions eluded me. I looked at the ceiling,
trying to see if my brain would work better if my
head was tilted a certain angle. It did not. I
looked to my right, nothing there. And finally, I
looked down and saw this tiny little elf, smaller
than Prax by as much as six inches, sitting on
the bag in front of me tap-tapping his foot
impatiently.
"What took you so long to notice? I've been
here for hours!" he said.
What gall! Did he really think that his race
would excuse his bad manners? I ignored him
and frowned at my test paper. What was 3996
divided by 6?
Immediately, he apologized and told me that his
name was Bat. He had seen me play outside and
thought that I was beautiful, sensitive, and
romantic. Did I want him to help me in my test?
Me beautiful? I enthusiastically agreed to let
him answer the test. I showed him my paper,
and he snorted. "For us elves, this is
elementary!" he said. I wanted to tell him that
to us humans, these problems are also
elementary, third-grade in fact, but I changed
my mind.
Bat and I became friends. He helped me with
my homework and gave me little things such as
colored pencils and stationery that were the
craze in school. He cautioned me strongly
against telling my parents of my friendship with
him. After all, he said, some people might not
understand our relationship. They might forbid
us from seeing each other.
I thought nothing of it and kept silent about my
friendship with Bat. I enjoyed his company, for
he was very thoughtful. He was a good friend
and I thought we would be friends forever.
The time came, though, when he declared that
he loved me. He wanted me to go with him to
his kingdom and be his princess. I refused, of
course. For God's sake, I was only nine! I didn't
know how to cook or do the laundry or do the
other things that wives are expected to do. And
he was an elf! Short as I was, he only came up
to my knees. What a ridiculous picture we
would surely make. He pleaded with me for
days but out of spite I told him that I had
already confided to my parents, and that they
were very angry. It was not true, but Bat didn't
know that. He got angry and launched into
diatribes about promises being made and
broken. Then he vanished.
That night I dreamed that Prax talked to me. He
told me that I should have never offended Bat
outright. "That elf is a stranger in our town," he
said. "We don't know his family. He might be
violent."
But I had already done what I had done and
there was no use wishing otherwise. I told Prax
I'd never worry. After all, he'd always be there
for me and my family, right?
"Wrong," he said. His gift was for giving good
luck and for healing minor, nonfatal injuries.
"What good is that for?" I asked. He couldn't
answer, and left me to a dream of falling houses
and shrieking elves.
The next day, I got sick and did not get well
even after the best doctor in town treated me.
My parents had grown desperate so
the albularyo was called once more. She told
my parents to roast a whole cow, which they
did willingly. The albularyo and her family
feasted on it. When I was still sick after a few
days, she instructed my parents to cut my hair;
she told them that elves liked longhaired
women. The problem was Bat liked my new
look, and in my dreams, he was always there,
entreating me to go with him. I got sicker than
ever.
The albularyo, getting an idea from a dream,
then tried her last cure--an ointment taken
from the bark of seven old trees applied to my
hair. It cost more than the cow and nobody
could enter my room without gagging. The
smell was terrible. That did the trick.
Apparently, Bat was disgusted but he would
stop at nothing to get me, even if it meant
getting my family out of the way. I told him
again and again that I didn't love him and would
never go with him, but the elf's mind was set. In
the end I just ignored him, for who could reason
with an elf, and a mad one at that?
He did not turn up in my dreams the next few
nights. In a week, I was up and running again
and I thought that all was right. My parents
decided that I should transfer to another
school, this time a sectarian school.
Then something happened. My mother had a
miscarriage. People blamed the elves and talked
about it for a long time. I remember the sad and
fearful looks of my parents every day as they
heard the banging on our ceiling. Were they
friends or were they responsible for the
accident? I had never told them about Bat, who
Prax said was the one behind all these
incidents.
Years passed, and since nothing untoward had
happened since my mother's miscarriage, we
began to let go of our fears. The alarm service
continued, and our belief that my mother's
miscarriage was the elves' doing was discarded.
It was simply the fetus's fate to die before it
was born.
"Bat left town, probably to look for some of his
kin to help him," Prax said.
It was a chilling thought, and with Bat's words
the last time we talked, I was terrified. I laid
awake at night thinking of a way to protect my
family. I had Prax, but what about them?
When I was twelve, the banging on our ceiling
stopped. We were having lunch, feasting on the
pork barbecue my mother had bought after her
experiment with chicken curry failed. The
sudden cessation of the noise we had been
living with for years was jarring. The silence
grated on our ears. For the first time, we could
hear ourselves breathe.
No one moved. Even my brother, who was now
seven, stopped chewing the pork he had just
bitten off the stick. Papa stood up and called to
the elves. Nobody answered. Gesturing for my
cousin to follow him, they got the ladder and
prepared to climb to the ceiling. They took with
them an old wooden crucifix and a bottle of
water from the first rain of May. My cousin
brought along a two-by-two and a rope. I didn't
know what they wanted to do but we looked
on, our barbecue forgotten.
Papa went inside the ceiling and my cousin
followed. Moments later, they came back
running. My cousin descended the ladder first
and I don't know whether it was because of
fright or just because he was careless, but a
rung broke and he fell to the ground, back first,
hitting the two-by-two he had dropped in his
haste. He lay there, unmoving except for his
ragged breathing, his back bent at an angle we
never thought possible.
Mama fainted, Papa stood still, my sister called
an ambulance, my brother wailed, and I sat in
the ground, laughing. It was not a laugh of
gladness, just my nervous reaction to what
happened. But they misunderstood and locked
me in my room. I cried, shouted, cursed, but
remained locked in. From inside my room I
could hear them talking, the medical help
coming in, and relatives pouring inside our
house. I was ignored. I slept and dreamed that
an elf was laughing. When I woke up, the whole
house was filled by elven laughter. Then my
cousin died.
After another year, my little brother followed.
He was run over by a postal service van. I can
still hear the anguished wail of the driver as he
asked for forgiveness. He claimed that a tiny
creature had run in front of his van and he had
swerved to avoid it. My brother was
unfortunately playing by the roadside and the
van ran straight into him. Witnesses say they
had heard laughter at the exact moment the
wheels caught my brother.
The driver was imprisoned, but the deaths did
not stop there. Barely six months later, my
father drowned while fishing. A freak storm, the
fishermen said, but for us who were left alive
there was no mistaking that our family would
die one by one.
There were only three of us left: my mother, my
sister, and I. We tried to seek help, but the
policemen laughed in our faces. We were
branded as lunatics. And Prax was gone,
defeated by Bat and his family apparently on
the day the banging stopped. Even
the albularyo could not help us. What use were
her potions and ointments? What the elves
needed was a good dose of magic, and
the albularyo was primarily a healer and an
exorcist. She had no training when it came to
defending a whole family against vengeful
elves.
And poor Mama! A mere week after my father
died she followed. Extreme despair, the doctors
said but we knew better.
My sister and I left home and went to live with
our relatives in the city, hundreds of kilometers
away. We told them about the elves but they
laughed and told us we were being provincial.
"It is the 90s," they said. "Belief in the little
people died a long time ago." We knew they
were wrong, but how could two orphaned
teenagers convince the skeptics? Perhaps, we
should have insisted on talking more but, as
things were, our aunt had already scheduled
counseling sessions for the two of us The fear of
being sent to a mental institution stopped us
from further trying to convince them. In the
end, we just hoped that the distance from our
old home would keep us safe from the elves.
But they followed and, one by one, our foster
family died. Car accidents, food poisonings,
assassinations through mistaken identity--there
were logical explanations for their deaths but
we knew we had been responsible. We could
only look on helplessly, and despaired.
We traveled again, haphazardly enough to let
us think that we could outwit the elves. But
they finally caught my sister about a year ago.
We were on the bus bound for another town
when a tire blew out. The bus crashed into a
ditch and although most of the passengers
including myself were injured, the only fatality
was my sister. I realized then that there was no
escaping the fury of the little people.
After my sister's death, there was a period of
silence from the elves. I decided to continue
studying and enrolled at the local college. I had
no problem with finances. I had inherited a
large sum from a relative I had unwittingly sent
to death.
After I got settled in the school dormitory, Prax
appeared in my dreams again. He told me about
a chant that he had dug up in the enormous
library of a human psychic he had befriended. It
was a weapon against any creature--effective
against those with malicious intentions,
whether towards humans or other creatures.
Prax thought it would he better if I could defeat
Bat myself. After all, hadn't Bat done me great
harm already? I agreed and prepared myself for
the battle that would decide my fate.
It was not long after my conversation with Prax
that Bat tracked me down. It was a weekend
and I had the room all to myself. I looked up
from my notes and saw him--much older, his
once clear complexion now marred with dark,
crisscrossing veins. Hate screamed from him,
and he stooped and walked with great difficulty.
I pitied him.
He gave me an ultimatum: go with him or die on
the spot. I pretended to look defeated and
worn out. My act was effective and Bat looked
pleased. He wanted us to go immediately but I
dallied. At the pretext of packing my few
valuable possessions, I told him to wait outside
and count to a hundred.
When he was gone, I took out the ingredients I
had prepared and the mini-stove I had
borrowed. I boiled a small amount of sweet
milk. I unwrapped Bat's image made in green
and brown clay, with strands of his hair given to
me by Prax, and started blowing and chanting
words that meant nothing to me.
Blow. Allif, casyl, zaze, hit, mel, meltat.
Blow. Allif, casyl, zaze, hit, mel, meltat.
Blow. Allif, casyl, zaze, hit, mel, meltat.
Outside the room, Bat's count reached 70. I put
aside the image and into the pan I poured
hundreds of brand new pins and needles that
had been blessed. The count reached 80. I
repeated the chant and immersed the image in
the boiling liquid. I waited.
Bat's count reached a hundred but I did not
worry for it had become faint and weak, just as
Prax had told me. Then Bat dissipated into a
mist--shrieking, I might add--to where, only God
would ever know.
Prax appeared again in my dreams that night
and told me that they--Bat and his family--
would never bother me again. He himself would
move his family away from humans to avoid
similar incidents in the future. It was too bad he
didn't discover the old book with the
vanquishing spell earlier for I could have saved
my family. I could not bring them back, he said,
but I could build a good life of my own. With the
luck he bestowed on me, I would never be in
need for material things the rest of my life.
I kissed the old elf, knowing that we would
never see each other again. I watched him fade
away, seeing the last of my family go.
When I woke up, I went to my desk and studied
math, remembering where it all began.