Hugh Cook: The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

Then the Crab advanced.

‘No!’ screamed Chegory. ‘No, you mustn’t, you can’t, I won’t let you!’

These stupid Ebbies! They never know when they’re done for! How could an ignorant redskin like Chegory Guy take on the dreaded Hermit Crab? Did he have magic? No. Allies? Yes, but these were as powerless as he against the Crab. Did he have a fool for a foe? Most definitely not. Did he then have weapons? Yes! A little knife which he had drawn from a boot sheath. But what good was that? None. If he had gone up against the Crab with such a toy, his splinter of steel would have been as useless as a toothpick to a dragonkiller.

Axes, that’s the thing! Axes! If you must kill someone, an axe is the way to do it. Ah the strength that surges into your limbs when you heft the weight of that weapon, when lusts murderous and urgent strain toward their consummation! But we digress. Suffice to say that Chegory Guy had failed to provide himself with an axe, and had naught but a bodkin-bright frog-stabber in hand as he stepped forward to intercept the Hermit Crab.

‘Stand out of my road,’ said the Crab, in tones no different than those in which he had said (in the oh-so-recent but oh-so-different past) ‘Stand out of my sunlight.’ ‘You can’t do it!’ said Chegory. ‘I won’t let you!’

‘Brave words,’ rumbled the Crab. ‘But empty. Much I’ve endured these last few days, but tolerance is at an end. Stand aside, and I will destroy the woman’s corpse and the demon both.’

‘She’s not a corpse!’ said Chegory in high distress. ‘She’s alive, alive, she’s still alive, don’t, you mustn’t, you’re a — you’re a murderer!’

The Crab muscled toward him. Then Chegory screamed with blood-blind wrath, with anger deranged, with passion virulent, with rage obscene. Screaming, he struck. So screamed his ancestors when they with their harpoons transfixed some hapless cetacean, dooming a sentient being to death most cruel so they could drag its corpse to shore to cut it up for dogmeat.

Blood will tell!

But the Hermit Crab had rather more resource than a dumb whale about to fall victim to a slew of villainous Ebrell Islanders. As Chegory struck, the Crab exerted the merest fraction of its Power. Chegory was flung backwards. He sprawled amidst the stones.

The Hermit Crab marched on implacably.

‘I will destroy girl and demon both,’ said the Crab, opening its claws (first left, then right) then closing them (first right, then left) with nut-crunching clicks (and here, to know the full force of the argument of those claws, you must understand that the nut in question in the metaphor immediately above is the coconut.)

‘No!’ screamed Chegory. Then again: ‘No!’

In extremis, with the life of his true love in danger, this was all the eloquence this Ebrell Islander could muster to his assistance. Just one single word, and that entirely negative. And yet, your average Ashdan liberal will ask us to accept these people as our equals!

Chegory screamed again, then closed his eyes as the Hermit Crab closed with Olivia. There was another nut-crunching click. She had been cut in half! So thought Chegory. Then his eyes stumbled open (thanks to the urging of a bloody Curiosity, perhaps) and he saw that Olivia was not yet dead. Instead, a cocoon of mauve light had been spun around her body.

As Chegory watched, Olivia’s body rose into the air. There it hung free-floating. The air crackled where it intersected the mauve cocoon.

‘What are you doing?’ said Chegory, voice thick with fear and panic.

‘I am proposing to cook the sole significant impediment to my peace on Untunchilamon,’ replied the Crab. ‘Stand back! Some heat will spill from the cookery.’

‘You can’t!’ said Chegory. ‘You mustn’t!’

‘What am I supposed to do?’ said the Crab. ‘Let a delinquent demon run amok on Untunchilamon provoking firefights four times a day? You’ve seen its work already. What next will it do? Turn the sea to custard?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ said Chegory, near-weeping in fear and panic. ‘But you can’t, you mustn’t, you can’t bum Olivia.’

‘I can,’ said the Crab. ‘I can. I must. I do.’

Yet it had not done so. Thus Chegory babbled all the faster. Hoping and thinking. Or — let us be realistic, now, and remember that it is an Ebrell Islander we are dealing with — at least trying to think.

‘Look,’ said Chegory, ‘look, look, please don’t, you can’t, you — you mustn’t, I, I’ll — hell! — just give me a moment, okay, that’s all I ask, just one moment, please — come on, okay? Just a moment to talk with — well, with that. Olivia. The demon. Whatever.’

‘Talk would be of no consequence,’ said the Hermit Crab. ‘Stand back! It will get hot!’

By now the warning had been twice-repeated, suggesting to Chegory that the Crab had ethical reservations about incinerating an innocent Ebrell Islander along with the demon-possessed Ashdan. So Chegory moved closer.

‘Talk would be of consequence,’ he insisted, with that bloody-minded stubbornness for which the Ebrell Islanders are so famous. ‘There’s — there’s secret strategies. That’s what it is. Negotiating strategies. A special secret. Family secret. I can’t tell you more. Oaths and all that, you know. I’m sworn to secrecy. But I can fake out the demon, I know it. Just give me a few moments alone with Olivia. In private. That’s all I ask.’

‘You mean,’ said the Crab, ‘you have a method whereby the demon can be persuaded to banish itself?’

‘Exactly!’ said Chegory.

‘That is very — very interesting,’ said the Crab. ‘If you let me learn the method then I will let you try it.’

‘I can’t tell you!’ said Chegory desperately. ‘I’ve sworn an oath! I can’t tell!’

‘So,’ mused the Crab, ‘you’ve sworn an oath not to tell. Very well. Then let me listen.’

‘No, no,’ said Chegory. ‘I can’t, I can’t, you’d — you’d upset the demon. I bet it’s scared of you, really, you’re so strong, and, um, look, I’ve been good to you, haven’t I? All these years, I mean, I brought you lunches, didn’t I? Okay, it was buckets and all, that’s not good enough, I see that now ^ T, but who else was there, okay? And — and I did ask if you wanted anything. I did ask. I was your friend, wasn’t I?’

Silence.

Then, from Chegory:

‘Wasn’t I?’

The Crab sighed.

‘I’ll let you talk to Olivia,’ it said. ‘But I must have a means of learning what took place. If you truly do have a method for banishing demons then I must learn it. There is so little which is new which is worth learning. So… let Shabble stand within earshot. You have sworn an oath not to tell. Very well. Don’t tell! But let Shabble listen. Then Shabble can tell me hereafter.’

‘That… that’s okay,’ said Chegory weakly. Then, looking round: ‘Shabble? Shabble! Where are you, Shabble?’

‘Up here, Chegory darling,’ sang Shabble.

‘Then come down!’

Within the free-floating cocoon, Olivia was stirring. As Shabble joined young Chegory, the Hermit Crab opened and closed its claws with further formidable clicks, then said:

‘Clear the island. Everyone — go. Into the Institute. No, Zozimus, get back, I don’t want to talk to you. Or you, Pokrov. Off you go! Vanish! Yourself likewise, Ingalawa.’ This clearance took quite some time for there were some very strong-willed humans among the onlookers. But, after renewed threats and a minor demonstration of force (two rocks melted to slag by the Crab) the last of the spectators retreated into the Analytical Institute. Chegory was left alone under the burning sun with Shabble, the Hermit Crab and the cocooned Olivia. The Crab said: