“What the—”
Shep shook himself, and a shower of water sprayed from his soaked fur. “Hey, wait, cut it out!” Rolf yelled, trying to protect himself with his hands.
He rubbed the water from his eyes and felt the hot Florida sun baking him dry. Then the air of the Hollow shimmered and Rita appeared, holding both their bicycles, looking rather surprised and troubled.
“Rolf, you’re all right!”
“Yeah, sure… but…”
Suddenly the air about them was filled with fireflies, thousands of dancing lights that spun around their heads and settled to the ground. Wherever one of the sparkling lights touched down, it turned into a gremlin. And now the gremlins were laughing and dancing lightly, grabbing each other and whirling around, arm in arm. Baneen was dancing with La Demoiselle. O’Rigami was twirling with O’Kkane Baro.
Lugh appeared, and he was neither laughing nor dancing. Rolf had never seen the gremlin leader look more grim or more terrible. At the sight of their prince, the other gremlins stopped dancing and their laughter faded into silence.
“So!” said Lugh, looking up at Rolf and at the same time seeming to tower mountainously over him. “You’d trick a gremlin would you—you’d try to pull the wool over the eyes of Lugh of the Long Hand? Well, it’s a short delay you’ll find you’ll have gained, in a moment—and a long time of sorrow to repent interfering with our departure! So, you bid me stop the launch by virtue of the Great Wish gained when you drew our Corkscrew from its case, did you? I suppose you’ll not be shy about drawing the Corkscrew forth once more, just to show me while my eyes are on you, how the strength to do so is in you, and you alone?”
“I…”
“Ah, now, Lugh!” chattered Baneen, appearing beside Rolf with O’Rigami and the rest. “Sure, and it’s a terrible hard thing to do, drawing the Great Corkscrew from its holding place. You wouldn’t be requiring the lad to do it more than once, and that second time right on the heels of his first mighty effort. How much better to admit ourselves beaten—”
“SILENCE!” roared Lugh. Silence fell over the Hollow. “BOY, LET ME SEE YOU DRAW THE CORKSCREW FORTH!”
The Great Corkscrew, once more in its case, winked into existence in front of Rolf. Half-paralyzed by Lugh’s voice, he reached out and took hold of it, pulling at it. And then, a strange thing began to happen…
In front of Rolf’s eyes… in front of Lugh, himself… first Baneen, and then, one by one, O’Rigami, La Demoiselle, and O’Kkane Baro, along with other nameless gremlins, began once more to disappear into the glare and glitter of the case… and the Corkscrew once more came forth in Rolf’s hand.
Lugh stared. For a second his jaw worked, but no sound came out. Then, incredulously, he spoke.
“What… what is this? MUTINY?”
Baneen and the others reappeared.
“Ah, Lugh, darling!” cried the little gremlin. “Sure, and we’d never go against your wishes, ordinarily. But it’s fond of this world we are, to be sure, after all these thousands of years, and—”
“Silence!” thundered Lugh. “What kind of gremlins are you?”
“We are ze good gremlins!” cried La Demoiselle. “Eet ees because we are true gremlins zat we fight to stay on ze Earth!”
“FIGHT?” roared Lugh. “Well the lot of you know that it’s myself alone—” he shook one knobby fist, “is more than a match for all of you put together. What, must I take you all up under my arm and carry you back to Gremla by force? If so be it, I will—”
He began to roll up his sleeves.
“Wait!” shouted Rolf. Lugh paused and looked at him. “Wait,” Rolf said again, more quietly. “This is my fault, but somebody’s got to tell you you’re wrong—”
“Silence, human!” rumbled Lugh ominously, continuing to roll up his sleeves.
“I’m not going to be silent,” said Rolf. “You’re just like I was—”
Lugh paused in rolling his sleeves, and stared at Rolf in astonishment.
“I?” he said. “Lugh of the Long Hand, like a mere human-lad?”
“That’s right,” said Rolf, determined now to get the words said, no matter how Lugh would react to them. “I kept trying to make my parents be the way I wanted them, in spite of the fact that they had other responsibilities. And you’ve been trying to turn Earth into another Gremla—into Gremla all over again, with the drawing of the Great Corkscrew and someone being king, and all that—and now that it hasn’t worked, you’re going to run away, back to Gremla and Hamrod the Heartless. Even Hamrod’s better than admitting you were wrong!”
Lugh’s ears rotated slowly, twice.
“Do I hear what I think I hear?” he muttered. “A human, saying such to me ?”
“It’s time somebody said it to you!” Rolf shouted. “None of the other gremlins want to go back to Hamrod. They’ve come to love Earth—and so have you, only you won’t admit it! If you’d admit it to yourself, you’d be willing to work with humans, even if none of them has a big enough soul to draw the Great Corkscrew from its case without help, any more than there’s any gremlin who can. Can you pull the Great Corkscrew loose by yourself? Of course not! So what makes you the one to decide whether all the gremlins on Earth have to go back to Gremla?”
Lugh began to swell… his actual body began to enlarge until he seemed to be growing to twice his normal size. As for his aura, that large impression that hovered over him at all times, it grew and grew until it seemed as large as a mountain. He spoke—and his voice was so deep that it seemed to come from the bowels of the earth and shake the very Hollow around them like an earthquake.
“L I G H T N I N G!” said Lugh, in that awful voice.
Suddenly the sky was black with clouds over their heads. A roll of thunder rumbled, echoing the sound of Lugh’s voice and a jagged spear of lightning shot down from the clouds and was caught, still jagged and so bright none of them could look at it, in Lugh’s right hand.
He poised the shaft of lightning, aiming it toward Rolf.
“B O Y!” he said. “A D M I T Y O U L I E!”
Wincing away from the blinding glare of the lightning shaft burning in Lugh’s hand, Rolf shook his head stubbornly.
“No!” he cried. “I’m right! You’re the one who’s wrong!”
For a moment there was a terrible hush in the Hollow. Lugh stood still. Then he lifted his arm.
Suddenly the lightning shaft flew from his hand back up to the clouds. The clouds themselves rolled up and disappeared. Bright sunshine poured down again on them all; and a great sigh of relief went up from thousands of gremlin throats.
“Ah, sure, your honor!” piped the voice of Baneen. “And wasn’t it yourself said that if you could find a human who cared more for another creature than himself, you’d give that human the Great Wish? And haven’t we here a lad who today risked everything, his own life included, for that of his faithful dog—and sure, if a dog’s not a creature now, what is?”
Lugh stared fiercely at Baneen, and then at Rolf, and then off into the distance.
“Quick, lad!” whispered Baneen in Rolf’s ear. “Make your wish— now!”
“I wish,” said Rolf, rapidly, “that gremlins would work with humans from now on to clean up the world and keep it clean and safe!”
“There, Lugh, darling!” cried Baneen, dancing in front of the gremlin prince. “It was yourself heard his wish. Do you grant it, now?”
Lugh glared at Baneen and turned to glare again at Rolf.
“Harrumph!” he growled, deep in his throat. “Rahumpf! HAHR-rumphff… all right!”
He turned and stalked off. The gremlins in the Hollow burst into wild cheering.