“Here?” Rolf asked, surprised. He looked and saw a trail he didn’t recognize snaking away through the brush.
“It’s a bit of a shortcut we’ve fixed up to our Hollow,” said Baneen.
Rolf turned down the trail, which turned and twisted in strange ways. In seconds, it seemed, he was completely out of sight of the road they had just left.
“How far—” he started to ask.
“Not far, not far at all!” said the gremlin. “In just a second now, we’ll be there. Once again it’s yourself who’ll be setting eyes on the high mysteries and secret workings of us gremlin-folk, that none but you know about. And it’s certain sure that I am that none but you does know; because a fine lad such as yourself wouldn’t have told anybody about us, would you now?” His voice and eyes suddenly seemed sharpened all together. “Not even that fine young lady you were talking with less than an hour ago?”
“Rita? Why would I—” Rolf broke off suddenly, stopping his bike and putting his feet down on the sandy soil. For they had come suddenly upon the lip of the Gremlin Hollow. Down below, he could see hordes of gremlins hard at work stretching out the large kite-shape of O’Rigami’s. The Grand Engineer stood patiently off to one side, watching the work. Further away, Lugh was busily directing still more gremlins who carried, dragged, and tugged strangely shaped chests and boxes across the sand. A few gremlins were floating a foot or so off the ground, guiding green-colored crates that floated alongside them.
Everything in the Hollow was noise and bustle, a thousand tiny voices chattering and screeching at once. And, as usual, the gremlin magic was playing tricks with Rolf’s vision. The kite once again looked as big as a jetliner, while the Hollow itself seemed no more than thirty or forty feet across.
Rolf started to pick up the sentence where he had left it, but before he could get out another word, Shep set up a furious barking.
“What’s that? Stop! Stop immediately, do you hear me! Turn that thing round and get it out of here…”
Rolf and Baneen turned together to look, because Shep was facing away from the Hollow, in the direction of the beach.
“Great Gremla protect us!” yelped Baneen. “It’s a monster, headed right this way to destroy us all!”
“It’s a bulldozer,” Rolf yelled.
The machine was indeed roaring in their direction. It topped the rise that separated the Hollow from sight of the beach, and bore straight down toward the Hollow itself.
“Hey, it’s going to tear up the kite!” Rolf cried.
“Stop! Stop, I say!” barked Mr. Sheperton.
But the bulldozer came right on.
“It’s no good! It’s no good!” cried Baneen, hopping madly on Rolf’s handlebars. “Sure and we’re all invisible here within the magic wards about this place. We’re going to be scooped up like peas on a spade and drowned in the sand!”
6
The bulldozer roared and clattered like an angry demon with a hide of yellow steel. Instead of breathing fire, though, it puffed dirty black smoke into the clear sky.
It bore straight down on the Gremlin Hollow, pushing a huge pile of sand ahead of it on its wide ugly blade. Gremlins were dashing everywhere, screaming in terror and rage. O’Rigami was madly trying to fold up his kite before the ’dozer’s treads ground it to shreds. Baneen huffed and puffed and made wild motions with his magical hands. The bulldozer didn’t even slow down, although the driver sneezed once.
Rolf saw the great machine boring straight at him, like a moving mountain of sand threatening to bury him.
Mr. Sheperton barked furiously. Baneen fluttered up into the air, screeching, “It’s no good, no good at all! He can’t see us or hear us!”
And then Lugh’s giant voice roared out, “WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE DUSTY SKIES OF GREMLA IS GOING ON HERE?”
Before anyone could utter another word, Lugh looked up at the approaching bulldozer.
His brows pulled down into a terrible scowl. His cheeks puffed out and his nostrils flared dangerously.
“A great ugly mechanical monster, is it? Well, we’ll just see about that.”
The bulldozer had just reached the edge of the Hollow, still pushing sand ahead of it. Some of the sand was already spilling into the Hollow and pouring over some of the gremlins who were shrieking and scattering every which way. O’Rigami’s hands were flying faster than the eye could follow, folding up the precious kite. Rolf stood straddling his bike, with Baneen floating up at about his eye level and Mr. Sheperton growling and tense beside him.
Lugh thrust out his jaw and eyed the machine angrily. Fists planted dangerously on his hips, he strode off to one side of the oncoming monster, fury and vengeance in every stiff-legged, four-inch-long step.
“What’s he going to do?” Rolf wondered.
“Not…” Baneen started, then pressed both his fists into his mouth and stared at Lugh, goggle-eyed. He zipped downward and touched his feet to the sandy ground.
Lugh thrust out his right arm and pointed at the yellow bulldozer. His voice became mighty and terrible:
“MAY THE GREAT AND THUNDEROUS CURSE OF GREMLA FALL UPON YOUR HEAD!”
Baneen fainted.
Mr. Sheperton snorted, almost like a sneeze.
Rolf hiccupped.
And the bulldozer slowed. Its roar became a rumble, then a squeak. The smoke-belching exhaust stack seemed to tremble, then shot a sheet of blue flame fifty feet into the sky. Both treads of the bulldozer snapped, and all the wheels fell off.
The driver yelled something wild and leaped from his seat as if his pants were on fire. He dived headfirst into the sand. The bulldozer’s engine dissolved in a huge cloud of smoke. The metal sides of the machine fell away and turned to rust as they hit the ground. The whole machine seemed to crumble, like a balloon when the air goes out of it.
In less than a minute there was nothing left except a badly frightened driver and a mess of steaming, rusting machinery that was fast disappearing into the sand.
Lugh nodded his head once, the way a man does when he knows he’s finished a task and done it well.
“Be that a lesson to all of you,” he said firmly, “gremlin, man and beast alike. Lugh of the Long Hand is not to be pushed about.”
Rolf simply stared. The bulldozer was completely gone now, hardly even a wisp of steam left to mark where it once stood. The driver was sitting on the sand, looking as if he didn’t believe any of this, even though he had seen it. He was a young man, Rolf saw, with long black hair and a sun-bronzed skin. He kept shaking his head and staring at the spot where the bulldozer had been.
While Rolf watched, Baneen stirred himself and climbed weakly to his feet, using Rolf’s leg for support. “I was afraid Lugh would invoke the Great Curse. It’s a wonder it didn’t bury us all with its terrible magic.”
Another man was running up to the bulldozer driver. He was older, black skin shining with perspiration where his shirt was open and showing his chest.
“Hey, Charlie, what did you stop for? Where’s the ’dozer?”
Charlie extended a shaking arm and pointed. “It… it was right there…” His voice was trembling.
“Was?” The black man took a quick look around. “Where is it now?”
“Gone. Dissolved. Fell apart and rusted away—just like that.” Charlie tried to snap his fingers, but it didn’t work.
The black man stooped down and picked up a tiny fragment of rusted yellow-painted metal. “Rusted out?” His voice had suddenly gone high-pitched with shock. “A whole ’dozer don’t rust out, not all at once.”
“Thi-this one did!”
Charlie stared at his partner, then reached down and yanked him up onto his feet. “Come on, friend. You been out in the sun too long. We better get out of here before the ranger patrol flies past.”