Turning, Lugh gruffed, “Visitors, is it? I’ll thank you, tricky one, to watch those smelly, water-crawling spalpeens for a while.”
“Nothing could please me more, Lugh darling,” Baneen said happily, “than to give you a bit of rest from your mighty labors. I’ll take care of the scalawags for you.”
And Baneen planted himself on the dune’s crest, puffed out his cheeks, squeezed his fists until the knuckles went chartreuse, and put on a glowering scowl just like Lugh’s.
“Ahhh…” said Lugh. “I feel better already. You’ll be the lass Baneen told me of. You’ve come to help this lad here?”
“Well,” Rita said, sitting on the sand, “I suppose so…”
“Hah. And a good thing it is that you have. It’s almost time for us to leave this foulsome planet, and we’ll be needing all the help we can muster.”
“It’s not a foulsome planet!” Rita snapped. “It’s a beautiful planet.”
Lugh glared at her. “Is it now? Well, maybe once it was, when we first came here, but not today. Not when you’ve got ugly ones like those down in the boat dirtying up the very air we breathe with their smelly engines and oily garbage.”
“Well, you’re helping them!” Rita said. “You’re protecting them. Why don’t you use some of your gremlin magic to chase them away?”
Rolf watched her, goggle-eyed. Any minute now, he knew, Lugh was going to explode and turn her into a tree stump. He reached out for Rita’s arm.
But Lugh’s answer was strangely soft, quiet, even sad. “Ah, lass, but it’s not our world. It belongs to you humans—it’s the world you made for yourselves, in a manner of speaking. Once we thought that we might help you, if you had the will to handle matters right—but it turned out to be of no use, no use at all.”
He stalked away, moodily.
“What does he mean?” Rita demanded of Baneen.
The little gremlin shook his head, but without taking his eyes off the men he was supposed to be watching.
“It’s a sad tale, indeed,” he said. “And a specially sad tale in the part of it that concerns Lugh, himself. It was his idea, you see, to disguise the Great Corkscrew and use it as a test to find one human who cared more for others than himself. And when no such human could be found, it was Lugh that took it the hardest of us all—though never a sign would he show of how he felt.”
“No such human could be found?” Rolf echoed. “Surely there’ve been lots of humans who cared more for others than themselves?”
“Oh, indeed, there have been—but it was for other humans they cared. Never yet has a human been found who cares more for other creatures than he or she does for himself or herself.”
“But how would a corkscrew show the difference—” Rita began.
“Ah, but it’s not just any corkscrew!” said Baneen, swiftly. “It’s the Great Corkscrew of Gremla, that symbol of Gremlin kingship that belonged to Hamrod the Heartless and which Lugh himself stole away from the king when he brought us here—to pay Hamrod back for all his pranks and tricks upon Lugh, himself. You see, in olden days—so far back that your world of Earth was still a steaming mudball, cooling down into a planet—the Great Corkscrew was a test of Gremlin kingship. Only one wielding more power and magic than any other gremlin could pull it from its case. He who could withdraw the Corkscrew was rightwise king of all Gremla. Every thousand years or so, whoever was our Gremlin king must pull forth the Corkscrew to prove his right to rule.”
Baneen paused and sighed heavily.
“If at that time he could not pull it out,” he went on, “then all other gremlins who wished to try had their chance—until one succeeded and gained the throne. Ah, but the sad year came, and the sad month and the sad day—the then king of Gremla not having been able to pull out the corkscrew—when every other gremlin on Gremla had tried as well, and none had been able.”
“None?” said Rolf. “One of them must have had a little stronger magic than any of the rest. It just had to be.”
Baneen shook his head.
“No, lad,” he said. “It’s clear you don’t understand the strange and marvelous principles of magic. It’s not how strong your magic is, but how much of it you have. The greater your soul, the more magic you can carry. And over the centuries, unbeknownst to ourselves, our gremlin souls had become smaller and smaller, so that even the largest soul among us could not hold enough magic to let its owner pull the Great Corkscrew from its case.”
“But,” said Rita, “if nobody could pull the Great Corkscrew out, what happened to the kingship?”
Baneen shrugged.
“Indeed, what could happen?” he said. “Since no one could pull the Corkscrew forth, it fell into disuse as a test of king-worthiness. The then king stayed on the throne, and those who came after him were smaller and smaller of soul until at the end, Hamrod the Heartless was rumored to have none at all—and sure his actions seemed to testify to that. But still it was said, that secretly Hamrod would go and pull at the Corkscrew now and then to try and prove himself rightful king. It was to deprive him of that hope of kingship-proof that Lugh stole the Corkscrew away and brought it here.”
“What’s all this about using the thing as a test, then?” growled Mr. Sheperton. “If no one could pull it out, what was the use of it?”
“Ah, but it was only no gremlin who could pull it out!” said Baneen. “That did not mean there was no human about with a soul large enough to free it. Indeed, Lugh’s conscience had been troubling him for some time then about our gremlin rights on this world of yours and whether it had not become our world—a second Gremla, as it were—just by our being here so long. He decided that we would change our age-old custom of keeping to ourselves, and follow humans, if only humans could prove themselves worthy of being followed. So, to find out if such proof was possible, he set up a legend and a place, and disguised the Corkscrew itself so that no one could guess its origin, and then waited for what would happen.”
“What did happen?” asked Rolf.
“Do you need to ask, Rolf?” demanded Mr. Sheperton. “Isn’t it clear the rascal’s trying to make us believe that the celebrated sword in the stone of Arthurian legend was no other than his gremlin Corkscrew?”
“And so it was,” Baneen nodded.
“Stuff and nonsense!” snorted Mr. Sheperton. “Corkscrew indeed! It was a sword!”
“But—” said Rolf. “King Arthur pulled the sword out of the stone and was crowned king of England because of it—”
“So he did and was. But it was only with gremlin aid he was able to pull the blade forth—though little he suspected that, himself,” said Baneen. “It happened that by the time young Arthur got his chance to try pulling loose the sword nearly everyone in England who stood a likelihood of being accepted king, if he did pull it forth, had tried and failed. Now, Arthur was very great of soul—but not quite great enough by the width of a dragonfly’s wing, as all we gremlins know. So it happened that a number of us went and pleaded with Lugh, and Lugh consented to our getting invisibly within the stone to push, while Arthur pulled—and so the sword came forth.”
“Hurrah!” cheered Mr. Sheperton.
“Ah, but if you remember, it all turned out sadly,” said Baneen. “Arthur prospered for a while, and brought justice to his kingdom. But you remember how his reign ended—the knights of the Round Table all divided against themselves, with Lancelot on one side and Arthur on the other, so that everything fell back to savagery and barbarism again.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“I’d like to try pulling that Corkscrew out,” said Rolf, thoughtfully.
Baneen had been doing all this talking while keeping his eye on the boat and his fists clenched at his sides. In the process he had gradually drifted upward off the ground. He reached down now with one hand to make a brief pass in the air before Rolf. There was a shimmer and something took shape. It was not easy to see it clearly, but it was something like a massive bone handle attached to something metallic that was wrapped and sheathed in light.