Clifford D. Simak

He put the mug to his mouth again and emptied it in several lusty gulps. He slammed it down on the table and looked at Maxwell’s mug, still full.

“Drink up,” he urged. “Drink up, then I fill them yet again for a further wetting of the whistle.”

“You go ahead,” Maxwell told him. “It’s a shame to drink ale the way you do. It should be tasted and appreciated.”

Mr. O’Toole shrugged. “A pig I am, no doubt. But this be disenchanted ale and not one to linger over.”

Nevertheless he got to his feet and shuffled over to the cask to refill his mug. Maxwell lifted his mug and took a drink. There was a mustiness, as Mr. O’Toole had said, in the flavor of the ale-a tang that tasted not unlike the way that leaf smoke smelled.

“Well?” the goblin asked.

“It has a strange taste to it, but it is palatable.”

“Someday that troll bridge I will take down,” said Mr. O’Toole, with a surge of sudden wrath. “Stone by stone, with the moss most carefully scraped off to rob the stones of magic, and with a hammer break them in many smallish bits, and transport the bits to some high cliff and there fling them far and wide so that in all eternity there can be no harvesting of them. Except,” he said, letting his shoulders droop, “so much hard labor it would be. But one is tempted. This be the smoothest and sweetest ale that was ever brewed and now look at it-scarcely fit for hogs. But it be a terrible sin to waste even such foul-tasting slop if it should be ale.”

He grabbed the mug and jerked it to his face. His Adam’s apple bobbed and he did not take down the mug until all the ale was gone.

“And if I wreak too great a damage to that most foul bridge,” he said, “and should those craven trolls go sniveling to authority, you humans will jerk me on the rug to explain my thinking and that is not the way it should be. There is no dignity in the living by the rule and no joy, either, and it was a rotten day when the human race arose.”

“My friend,” said Maxwell, shaken, “you have not said anything like this to me before.”

“Nor to any other human,” said the goblin, “and to all the humans in the world, only to you could I display my feeling. But I, perchance, have run off at the mouth exceedingly.”

“You know well enough,” said Maxwell, “that I’ll not breathe a word of it.”

“Of course not,” said Mr. O’Toole. “That I did not worry on. You be almost one of us. You’re the closest to a goblin that a human can approach.”

“I am honored,” Maxwell told him.

“We are ancient,” said Mr. O’Toole, “more ancient, I must think, than the human mind can wonder. You’re sure you don’t want to polish off that most foul and terrible drink and start another one afresh?”

Maxwell shook his head. “You go ahead and fill your mug up again. I’ll sit here and enjoy mine instead of gulping it.”

Mr. O’Toole made another trip to the cask and came back with a brimming mug, slapped it on the table, and settled himself elaborately and comfortably.

“Long years gone,” he said, shaking his head in sadness, “so awful long ago and then a filthy little primate comes along and spoils it all for us.”

“Long ago,” said Maxwell. “As long as the Jurassic?”

“You speak conundrums. I do not catch the term. But there were many of us and many different kinds and today there be few of us and not all the different kinds. We die out very slowly, but inexorably. A further day will dawn to find no one of us. Then you humans will have it to yourselves.”

“You are overwrought,” Maxwell cautioned him. “You know that’s not what we want. We have gone to much effort…”

“Loving effort?” asked the goblin.

“Yes, I’d even say to much loving effort.”

Weak tears ran down the goblin’s cheeks and he lifted a hairy, calloused hand to wipe them away.

“You must pay me slight attention,” he told Maxwell. “I deep am in the dumps. It’s this business of the Banshee.”

“The Banshee is your friend?” Maxwell asked in some surprise.

“No friend of mine,” said Mr. O’Toole. “He stands on one side the pale and I upon the other. An ancient enemy, but still one of us. One of the really old ones. He hung on better than the others. He dies more stubbornly. The others all are dead. And in days like this, old differences go swiftly down the drain. We could not sit a wake with him, as conscience would decree, but in the absence of this we pay him the small honor of a wake for him. And then these low-crawling trolls without a flake of honor in them-”

“You mean no one, no one here on the reservation, could sit the deathwatch with the Banshee?”

Mr. O’Toole shook his head wearily. “No single one of us. It is to the law contrary, to the old custom in violation. I cannot make you understand-he is outside the pale.”

“But he is all alone.”

“In a thorn bush,” said the goblin, “close beside the hut that was his domicile.”

“A thorn bush?”

“In the thorns,” the goblin said, “dwell magic, in the tree itself…”

He choked and grabbed hastily at the mug and raised it to his mouth. His Adam’s apple bobbed.