IT’S TOUGH BEING SMALL.

A curious fact of life in the galaxy is that most sentient species are about the same size: ranging in height between about half a meter to three meters. This fundamental assumption about scale in most designers’ minds can be observed in the ceiling height of wretched, scum-ridden cantinas on backwater planets like Tatooine, as well as the size of the repulsorpods in the ancient Grand Convocation Chamber of the Galactic Senate.

Anyone under this typical range is often looked down on. Literally.

That is why Kowakian monkey-lizards, smaller than human infants, get no respect in most corners of the galaxy. Even the most famous Kowakian monkey-lizard of them all, Salacious B. Crumb, widely acclaimed by his own kind as a master comedian, skilled in both physical antics and verbal whimsy, could not be accepted among the upper echelon of society. He had to settle as court jester to the terrible and butyraceous Jabba the Hutt.

See, you’ve never even heard of Salacious, have you? But your eyebrows lifted at the mention of Jabba, the peerless crime lord.

Surprised at my vocabulary, are you? Did not expect sesquipedalian words to emerge from my half-centimeter body? Oh, how predictable you are.

I’m Lugubrious Mote, the real source of Salacious Crumb’s comedic genius, and this is my tale.

Splash. Burble. Pitter-patter. Plop.

“Wait, wait! What do these words mean? I’ve never even heard some of them.”

“I told you the story is from a most unusual teller.”

“Sounds like she just likes big words.”

“Ha, you’re not entirely wrong. A sesquipedalian word is a really long word, one spelled with enough letters to go around the page a few times. For such a small creature, she had extraordinary lung capacity.”

“At least my brain is sufficiently distracted that I can almost forget the smell around here….”

“Jabba didn’t smell much better, from what I understand.”

“What about ‘buty-,’ um, ‘buty-ra’—”

“You don’t need to understand every word to understand a story. In fact, the most important parts of stories aren’t always told in words. Just follow along.”

First, observe and admire my form. I know I’m a bit hard to see, so feel free to use the magnifying glass hanging next to my ten-centimeter stage. Take note that my body is just a hair under four millimeters long, and from an ovoid torso covered in chitinous carapace extend two pairs of furry legs, a pair of smooth segmented arms ending in opposable pincers, and a pulchritudinous, whiskered head. Like other females of my species, I can jump as high as a meter from standing still, and I can lift forty times my bodyweight.

Biologists from the University of Coruscant describe my species, the mole-fleas of Kowak, as parasites, but that’s hardly fair. We think of ourselves as living in an ancient arrangement of mutual benefit with the monkey-lizards. In the lush, dense forests of Kowak, each monkey-lizard has living on its body a colony of mole-fleas who advise it on relations with the other monkey-lizards, warn it of danger, and keep its skin and hair free of harmful, true parasites. When infant monkey-lizards are born, some mole-fleas from each parent migrate to the young creature to set up a new colony, and thereby give the child the wisdom and experience of the mole-flea communities of both parents.

Our civilization evolved in conjunction with theirs, and I daresay our civilization is the more sophisticated for the simple reason that our minds are far quicker than theirs, just as our movements are far nimbler. We mole-fleas may live a life only a tenth as long as the average monkey-lizard, but we squeeze just as much delight and sorrow into it. To do so, we live a single day as though it were a week, and in the time it takes a monkey-lizard brain to think and say one word, we’ve composed a sentence out of ten words.

To compensate for our small stature, nature gave us outsize brains and accelerated nerves.

I grew up on Salacious Crumb. When Salacious first decided to leave Kowak to seek his fortune, my colony held a meeting and decided that they didn’t want to go into the uncertainties of space. Instead, members of the colony would scatter to join their relatives on other hosts. I was the only one who decided to accompany Salacious on his adventure.

“I want a full partnership,” I told him.

He cackled for five minutes. I took that as an inept expression of gratitude.

See, here’s the thing: Salacious was a natural performer, and he was blessed with a panoply of physical features suitable for a crowd-pleasing clown: floppy ears, messy hair, wide-and-oh-so-hypnotic eyes, gangly limbs, clumsy movements, and an infectious cackle. But he didn’t possess much of a brain between those outsize ears.

He couldn’t write any jokes, because he was dumber than a newborn rancor.

I was the one who came up with all his material, including the monkey poodoo jokes. I also had to sit in the nest of hair on top of his head and whisper the jokes into his big ears because he couldn’t memorize them.

So why didn’t I go into the comedy business myself if I was so clever? you ask. Comedy requires a certain willingness to look like a fool, to suffer humiliation, to scrape and bow, to use small words. You’ve heard my eloquence—I don’t have the temperament for it.

That’s why I thought the two of us would make a great team.

The trouble was, few outside of Kowak understood the screeching language of the monkey-lizards, and working through an interpreter was death for any comedian. (You’ve dealt with protocol droids, haven’t you? They’re insufferable.)

To rescue Salacious’s nonexistent career, I advised him to turn himself into a physical comedian. Pratfalls and slapstick are the universal language of comedy. I came up with a whole routine of tumbles, slips, falls, leaps, twirls, handstands, spit takes, fake choking, and pantomimed shocks.

But Salacious was a terrible student. He was so uncoordinated and clumsy that he couldn’t do many of the flips and slides I had choreographed for him. After many seconds of hard thinking, I came up with the idea of sitting on top of his head, like the pilot of one of those AT-AT walkers we once saw at a spaceport under martial law, and sending him signals for how to move by biting him in different spots on his head. That was the only way he could move with enough coordination to chew a snapping fish bladder while also dancing like an inebriated Gamorrean—trust me, it was a funny move.

He couldn’t help cackling at his own jokes though, which ruined a lot of the effect.

But humor is subjective, and despite all odds, the gangster boss Jabba the Hutt took a liking to him—particularly his cackling. Salacious took credit for the whole thing and never even mentioned me to His August Corpulency. Some partner he turned out to be.

Then again, considering Salacious had to amuse Jabba at least once a day to get his food and drink—and I got to share in the crumbs—lest the oversize slug kill him, maybe it was a good thing that I was beneath Jabba’s notice.

For a long time I lived in Salacious’s hair and helped him survive at the crime lord’s pleasure. At night I hopped about the palace and listened to the talk of bounty hunters and smugglers who came to bargain with the oily oversize sausage. I learned a lot about the galaxy, even if I didn’t get to see every corner of it. It wasn’t the life of adventure I was promised, but I thought I was content.

Until the day Skywalker showed up.

Picture me in my nest, woven from thick vines, each of which was the width of my legs. Instead of plant fibers, the vines were made from keratin, colored the same shade of tannish puce that dominated everything on the desert planet of Tatooine. The vines were hard to work with: stubborn, inflexible, and utterly lacking in the kind of yielding softness desirable in good bedding. The thick strands emerged from the dry, leathery ground, and I had to introduce some pliancy into that most uncooperative material with judicious nicks from my teeth.

My teeth were hurting that morning because I’d had to chew through several extra-thick keratin vines to soften them up—maintaining the structural integrity of my nest was a constant struggle as the strands grew without cease, and new cuts had to be made every few days lest my nest unwind itself.

Might as well give you a climate and seismic activity report. The sky was its usual, perpetually hazy murk unbroken by the light of the twin suns or the twinkle of stars—since Mount Jabba didn’t like being outside much, Salacious Ridge, my host and habitat, couldn’t go outside, either. Earlier that day, chunks of the remains of some unfortunate creature slathered in slime and digestive juices had rained down in the vine forest, and a flash storm consisting of sour wine and fermented fruit juices had carved rivulets in the dry ground. Despite my disgust, I emerged from my nest to scavenge what edible bits of flesh I could find—oh, how shameful I would appear in the eyes of my home tribe! And then I had to scramble to clear out what I couldn’t eat or drink by tossing the excess chunks off the sheer cliff face beyond the vine forest, lest the nest turn into a smelly, swampy mess. To get a bit of exercise, I hop-climbed Left-Ear Peak and Right-Ear Peak with some rotting carrion as free weights.

A vile-smelling mist rolled in and clouded over everything. All I could do was retreat into my nest and hold my breath, coughing in fits when it got to be too much. Overhead, thunderous snores and roaring laughter alternated in unpredictable waves, forcing me to cover my delicate ears as my whiskers twitched in annoyance. Under me, my host reacted by quaking like the deck of some storm-tossed ship, with a high-pitched cackling that sounded like the ground itself was being torn asunder.

All in all, just a typical day in the tangled hair-jungle atop the head of Salacious Crumb and beneath the looming mountain of flesh and fat that was Jabba the Hutt.

“Can’t you shield me from the hookah smoke?” I begged Salacious. “Put on a hat or something.” Of all Jabba’s disgusting habits, that was the worst. The smoke got into Salacious’s hair and there was nothing I could do to get the smell out.

Salacious made no reply except stamping his foot, grinding it into the ground, and then cackling maniacally. The message was clear: if I made myself known, he would do nothing to protect me, and I would be squashed like a common, insensate flea.

I was thinking of some clever insult for Salacious—sometimes it took him days to work out what I meant—when a flash of lightning split the murk in the distance and a gargantuan, glowing man-star flickered into existence like an exploding supernova, lighting up half the sky. He was so huge that he loomed over the bulk of Jabba like the ten-thousand-year-old pasol tree shading the slick rock that was Salacious Crumb’s hideout back on Kowak. He was like an ancient god from the creation myths, there in the flesh. I hopped onto the tip of Salacious’s ear to get a better look.

“Greetings, Exalted One….”

I had never heard a voice like that: sonorous and resonant, at once pleading and threatening, suffused with a confidence that seemed indistinguishable from swagger. The hubbub of Jabba’s court quieted as I had never remembered the place quieting, and the glowing man-star went on.

“I am Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight and friend of Captain Solo. I seek an audience with Your Greatness, to bargain for his life….”

The booming figure flickered. I realized that this Luke Skywalker was not real but an illusion projected from the top of a dome-headed blue-and-silver droid standing next to a golden human-formed droid companion. They were gifts to Jabba from this Skywalker, apparently. He was submitting to Jabba before even arriving; I couldn’t help being disappointed.

My time in Jabba’s palace had shown me plenty of sycophants and frauds and con artists. This Skywalker, however, presented a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, he wasn’t even brave enough to show up in person and was just as cloying and meek in his approach to the Hutt gangster as any lowlife criminal. On the other hand, he wasn’t there to bargain for profit or some unsavory favor from Jabba but to plead for his friend, which endeared him to me a little.

Was he just foolhardy or running some big con? I wondered.

He was an uncertainty wrapped within an enigma hidden within a mystery.

After Luke made a splash with his hologram, nothing new happened for a while, and life in Jabba’s palace fell back into its usual routine of disgusting food, smelly smoke, and an endless stream of obsequious toadies. I tried to get Salacious Crumb to vary his routine a bit—I was sick of the old slapstick—but he adamantly refused.

“Trying something new could get you a promotion,” I whispered in his left ear.

He cackled at some idiotic, witless comment from Jabba and scratched at his ear to make me go away.

My host had no ambition. Sigh.

I took to roaming the palace, even during the day. One could take only so much of living under the dripping chin of that mountain of malignant flesh. I felt the ground shake as Jabba’s band shifted from one musical style to another in a vain effort to excite that sluggish brain. I held my tongue as I clung to the wall and observed the grotesque henchmen vying with one another to laugh the loudest as Jabba tortured his hapless slave, Oola the dancer. Salacious had the dubious honor of being the leader in that competition. I hopped through Jabba’s treasury and examined his collection of exquisite loot—unfortunately marred by the slime from his grubby hands.

And then everything turned topsy-turvy with the arrival of Leia.

Never mind the bold gambit with the Wookiee prisoner, the preposterous disguise, and the clicking thermal detonator. Never mind the sheer audacity of navigating Jabba’s palace in the dark and stealing his most prized possession from right under Jabba’s nose. Never mind the fact that by the standards of most sapient creatures, Leia’s plan was absolutely mad.

The thing I most admired about her? How calm she was after her plan failed.

The absurd outfit that Jabba made her wear was designed to wear her down, break her resistance. It was too cold for the ambient temperature of the palace, and it exposed her to constant harassment from the Hutt. Jabba was practically an artist when it came to using disgust and humiliation as weapons. Countless enemies who would never have given in to mere pain broke down under the Hutt lord’s vile mind games.

But watching her, you’d never know Leia was bothered by any of it. She was utterly calm. Reclining at the center of the hectic, repugnant maelstrom that was Jabba’s court, she was an untouchable center of tranquility. Though she was Jabba’s prisoner, she acted like a princess, a queen.

I had never seen such grace in a human. Jabba could not defeat her.

Later, in the darkness, as Jabba, Salacious, and the rest of the court lay asleep, I hopped out of my nest atop the monkey-lizard. With a single bound, I landed in Leia’s hair, which, I noted with some wistfulness, seemed far more comfortable and reminded me of the soft moss back on Kowak that I used to mix with Salacious’s rough hair to give myself a homey touch. That intricate bun on top of her head would make a nice bell tower, and the long braid would be a fantastic staircase.

But enough real estate fantasies. I had a mission.

“Pssst,” I whispered into Leia’s ear. “You awake?”

Her eyes snapped open in the dark. “Who’s there?”

“Your mistake,” I said, “was to see Jabba as an equal.” I didn’t answer her question directly because in my experience, as soon as people saw me, they stopped listening.

“Explain yourself.” Her tone wasn’t defensive or angry. “And slow down. I can barely understand you.”

Right. I kept on forgetting how slow these big creatures were. I had to slow down my speech by a factor of ten to make my Galactic Basic comprehensible to the average human.

I enunciated each syllable deliberately, dragging my words out. I thought I sounded like a glitchy holo recording that skipped and stuttered, but I couldn’t afford to be impatient. “You wan-der-ed through his pa-la-ce like a thief, but you for-got that he is a great thief. Of course he caught you.”

“That’s a reasonable point,” she said. “What would you have done?”

“A flea can drink the blood of a fathier because the flea is almost invisible to the great beast,” I said.

“Show yourself,” she said. “I like to see who I’m talking to.”

I hopped onto the tip of her nose, ready to leap away if she swatted at me, as I fully expected her to.

She didn’t. Instead, she gazed at me, cross-eyed in the darkness, and smiled.

So that was how one of the most unlikely of alliances, between a mole-flea of Kowak and a princess of the House of Organa, was struck.

She told me about stars that dealt death, about the darkness deeper than space that was the Empire, about the nascent pinpricks of light of the Rebel Alliance, about the grand vision of a free galaxy.

“There will be a seat for everyone in the Senate chamber, no matter their wealth, power, or language,” she declared. “Or size,” she added after a second.

And I imagined colonies of mole-fleas spreading across the galaxy, advising hosts who were generals, senators, moguls, opera singers, perhaps even princesses. I told her of my wish.

“I’m not sure I would be the most suitable host,” she said diplomatically. “If you were living on me, my scalp would get awfully itchy. But…I’m certain we can find you another willing host.”

Mollified, I offered her my aid.

“Luke is coming,” she said. “Give him your aid. He’s our best hope.”

“The illusion-man?” I asked skeptically.

“He’ll grow on you,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “You’ll see.”

“I must be allowed to speak,” the hooded figure said from the shadows. His voice was odd, toneless. The monsters of Jabba’s court stirred uneasily in the murk.

Jabba’s eyes snapped open in the haze above me like Tatooine’s twin suns. A torrent of slimy drool poured out of the cavernous mouth overhead and splashed into the dirty hair atop Salacious, who let out a half-hearted cackle.

It was no time for comedy. I jumped out of the way at the last second and landed on Leia’s shoulder. As Jabba continued to thunder bombastically above me, I scrambled to a perch right below Leia’s right ear.

“He must be allowed to speak,” said Bib Fortuna, the Hutt’s craven majordomo.

There was something wrong with his voice. It sounded even more soulless than usual.

“He’s using an old Jedi mind trick,” roared the Hutt. He tossed Bib Fortuna out of the way.

I was confused. The Jedi were figures of legend, and I never really believed they had magical powers. But it was possible that they knew something about hypnosis—something I had seen street magicians perform for the crowd. Maybe Luke had learned such a trick. I just hoped he didn’t have an overinflated opinion of its efficacy.

Jabba was speaking so slowly that I had enough time to dodge a few more drops of drool, each bigger than I was. How Leia could stand the stench was beyond me.

“You will bring Captain Solo and the Wookiee to me,” said the hooded figure in that same toneless voice. He took a step forward into the light and removed the cowl hiding his face.

Like other humans, he was gigantic—though only in an average sort of way. Also, like all large creatures, his face was pockmarked by imperfections—perfect footholds and handholds if I were to choose to scale the cliff of his cheeks to get to his hair for nesting. Unlike the hologram version, in real life he had a boyish look and a sort of easy confidence that told me right away he was doomed.

“He has no idea what he’s doing, does he?” I whispered into Leia’s ear.

Leia tensed. I could see that she wasn’t sure what Luke was planning, either.

“You sound like a buzzing mosquito,” she hissed. “I can’t understand a thing you’re saying.”

Right. I had forgotten again. “He knows one trick, and he thinks that’s e-nough.” I forced myself to slow down and really articulate. “O-ver-con-fi-dent. He’s ma-king the same mis-take you made.”

Above me came the thunderclaps of Jabba’s roaring laughter, heartier than any Salacious had ever caused. The poor monkey-lizard tried to cackle to support his master’s mirth, but the pitiful noises were drowned out by Jabba’s dominant guffaws.

“Jabba makes his living by devouring forgers, con men, and liars. He knows more mind tricks than anyone.”

By the way Leia’s jaws clenched, I could tell that she understood the trouble Luke was in.

I saw Luke catch Leia’s gaze, and the glow of confidence went out of his eyes. He looked like a little boy, lost. I felt a wave of pity for him.

Why were members of the large sentient species so foolish? So arrogant? Why were they blind to what was so obvious to me?

Jabba mocked the young Skywalker for his foolhardy nonplan, and as his fetid breath washed over her in waves, Leia flinched. I knew that faith was dying in her heart, as well.

I feared the worst as Luke took another step forward, moving even closer to Leia and Jabba. “Nevertheless, I’m taking Captain Solo and his friends. You can either profit by this or be destroyed.” His expression was determined, as if he fully believed every word he was saying.

Even if he was foolish and overconfident, I admired the fact that he wouldn’t give up. In that, he and Leia were very much alike.

“I told you he’ll grow on you,” said Leia. Her voice was so low that only I could hear her.

“The only thing growing is my confidence that he’s in over his head,” I said, my eyes focused on the spot Luke was standing on. “Don’t you understand what’s happening? Jabba is reeling him in; he’s—”

“Master Luke,” C-3PO, the protocol droid, broke in. “You’re standing on—”

Leia’s own warning as she realized the truth was choked off as Jabba jerked the chain attached to her collar.

“I shall enjoy watching you die,” said Jabba, guffawing.

Confused and desperate, Luke lunged at one of the guards standing next to Bib Fortuna and somehow—to this day, I’m still not sure how he did it—the guard’s blaster flew out of its holster and leapt into Luke’s hand.

Now, I’m sure plenty of people hearing my story will tell you this was proof that Luke had facility with “the Force,” that mysterious, magical power that everyone loves to drone on and on about (“Oh, it pervades the galaxy!” “Oooo, it allowed the Jedi to protect the Republic!” “Ahhhh, it can do anything!”). But the truth is, there’s no such thing as “the Force.” I’m a consummate rationalist, and I believe only what can be seen and touched.

My best working theory is that the guard was another one of Luke’s friends who infiltrated Jabba’s palace; you wouldn’t believe how many of his co-conspirators managed to make their way in there just like Leia. But anyway, I digress.

Here’s what happened next, in the span of about a second:

Luke grabbed the blaster ineptly, as if it were a hot thermal detonator, and—

Before he could even get off a single shot, one of Jabba’s Gamorrean guards grabbed him from behind—

Jabba slammed home the switch that released the trapdoor at the foot of his throne—

There followed a clumsy struggle between the colossal Gamorrean and the gigantic Luke that seemed to last forever—a frustrating scene for a nimble-footed, agile athlete like me to watch—

A bolt shot out of Luke’s blaster and struck the ceiling, setting off a shower of sparks, which I had no trouble dodging since I was so quick, but it did burn Leia’s skin. She gritted her teeth—

Luke fell through the yawning hole in the ground—

Salacious cackled insipidly—

The Gamorrean, his prey having suddenly slipped out of his grasp, lost his balance and held on precariously to the edge of Jabba’s throne—

But that second was plenty of time for a quick mind like mine to work through the implications. Princess Leia was going to lose her champion unless I did something. This was my one and only chance to change the odds in her favor and prove my worth as an ally. Also, since I had always thought of myself as the brains of the partnership between Salacious and me, maybe it was time I proved that I could perform as big as I talked.

Well, maybe big wasn’t quite the right word.

As the Gamorrean teetered precariously above the pit, I made up my mind to go on my quest to save Luke Skywalker. He was a clumsy, foolish, and rash boy, but he was brave and his heart was in the right place.

I leapt from Leia’s shoulder onto the back of the Gamorrean, and as soon as I landed, the porcine beast fell through the trapdoor after Luke.

Salacious cackled maniacally, not yet realizing he had lost the only brain that mattered.

Down, down, down we fell into the darkness.

And abruptly, we emerged into the dank, dim dungeon below Jabba’s throne, where only a few rays managed to filter through the grille in the high ceiling through which Jabba enjoyed watching his victims die.

With an earsplitting screech, the heavy door at the end of the dungeon rose to reveal the horror hidden behind: Jabba’s rancor.

Imagine a creature half of whose body mass is taken up by a massive, cave-like maw filled with stalactites and stalagmites of teeth. Imagine also a pair of powerful arms ending in sharp claws taking up half of the rest. Finally, imagine that this nightmarish creature dwarfed a human as much as Salacious Crumb dwarfed me.

Luke scrambled to his feet, the bravado on his face replaced by helpless terror. The Gamorrean guard I was riding completely forgot about his duty. All he wanted was to climb back up the slick chute through which he had fallen.

You probably think I was so terrified that all I could do was hold on to the Gamorrean and pray to die as quickly as possible.

On the contrary, I had never been so delighted.

Remember, you are thinking at your scale, not mine.

A flea can drink the blood of a fathier because the flea is almost invisible to the great beast.

At my size, the rancor was nothing but a lumbering mountain that was more habitat than threat. If it had tried to bite me, I would have run laps around the gaps between its teeth. If it had tried to step on me, I would have taken a nap in the deep grooves and wrinkles that marred its leathery skin. Long before it could have gotten a chance to see me, much less catch me, I would have leapt onto its back and built a new home in the folds above its oblivious, swimming-pool eyes.

I was ready to show the rancor who was boss.

But no matter how much I shouted in his ear to stop, turn around, and stand his ground, the Gamorrean wouldn’t listen. It was impossible to reason with a Gamorrean—one of many flaws with that species.

So of course the rancor reached down, grabbed him, and swallowed him in a few bites like a juicy frog-fruit.

Above us, Jabba laughed, Salacious cackled, Leia gasped, and Jabba’s monstrous court erupted into raucous jeers.

Five easy hops later, I was on Luke’s shoulder, and one more leap put me next to his ear. He was still backing up, his terrified gaze focused on the looming monster.

The rancor, having finished its Gamorrean snack, turned clumsily to regard Luke.

“Don’t worry,” I said into Luke’s ear. “You’ve got this.”

I had a whole routine prepared to calm the startled youth after hearing a disembodied voice. I was going to jump onto his nose so he could get a good look at me, and I was going to explain to him all about the deal I had made with Princess Leia to help the Rebellion. All he had to do was trust me.

But he didn’t react the way I thought he would at all. After a momentary shiver from being startled, his body immediately relaxed. He squatted down into a fighting stance, and a smile appeared on his face.

Confused, I asked, “Aren’t you going to ask who I am?”

“No,” he said. “I know you’re the spirit of a Jedi, and you’re going to tell me to use the Force.”

Oh, dear me.

Before I could explain, the rancor took a shambling step forward. But instead of running, Luke just stayed there.

“I’m so ready,” he said. “Tell me what to do. Maybe I should use my Jedi mind trick? ‘This is not the food you’re looking for.’ Or how about if I use my air-grab powers and call two of those teeth from its mouth into my hands and then stab them into its eyes? Oh! I know, I should find a rock and toss it right into its throat just so and have it lodge in its gullet so it chokes—”

My whiskers trembled in disbelief, and I slapped my pincers against my forehead.

But there was no time to cure the young man of his delusions. “Step back, back!” I shouted into his ear.

He stumbled back a couple of steps. That wasn’t what he was expecting from his ghost Jedi guide, and I could tell by the way he trembled that he was getting nervous.

At least he can follow directions, I thought. Then I realized that this wouldn’t be so bad. I could still make it work. Instead of fighting against his instincts, I had to work with them. If I could manage the vapid Salacious Crumb, surely I could do the same with the overeager Luke.

A quick scan around the distant cave floor from my vantage point gave me a plan.

“Now, reach out with all of your senses, Luke.” It was distasteful to play into superstition, but I had to soothe his nerves and gain his trust. “Let the Force move through you and over you.…Feel how the Force guides you through your…er…scalp….”

I jumped onto the top of his head. Bracing myself by grabbing strands of his hair in each of my pincer hands, I sank my microscopic mouthparts—that would be a pair of epidermis-piercing barbs, six sucking tubes, three stirring tentacles, five regurgitation ducts, and seven feeding agitators—gently into Luke’s skin. No point in going too fast when you bite a host for the first time.

“Wait! I can feel it,” he said, his voice full of awe. “I can feel the Force tickling me in the back of my head!”

Good. Good. I sank my mouthparts deeper. I wasn’t just referring to the fact that my plan was going to work. He actually tasted pretty good.

He turned around; behind us, the rancor had taken another step forward.

“This wasn’t quite how it worked the last time,” he said. “Obi-Wan never made my scalp itch—Ouch!”

I was too far from his ear to make myself heard, so I just pulled my mouth-barbs out, jumped over to his forehead, and sank them into his skin as hard as I could. It was, I imagine, exactly how a jockey got an untamed fathier to behave.

Luke finally understood what I wanted and leapt forward to grab a massive femur bone from one of the rancor’s previous victims off the cave floor. Two quick bites on the back of his head later, he turned around and held up the bone like a club.

“Use the Force.…Use the Force…” I heard him mumble. “Have to use the Force….”

The rancor lumbered forward. One step. Another step.

Luke’s legs trembled, and the top of his head quaked like the deck of a ship caught in a solar storm. The boy was scared.

I had no choice but to leap to his ear again. “Let him grab you and move you closer to his mouth. Then stick the bone in his jaws.”

He froze for a second before relaxing again. “Oh, like sticking a proton torpedo down the exhaust port of the Death Star,” he said. “I understand.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but as long as he obeyed my directions…“Sure. Whatever.”

I have to give the kid credit. Rash and clumsy as he was, he was brave. As the rancor’s claws wrapped around him, he didn’t faint with terror or give in to the pain of being squeezed by those crushing, thick fingers. He winced but held on to the thigh bone, and as the rancor lifted him closer and closer to its jaw, he raised the bone and aimed it steady and straight down the gullet of the creature despite waves of hot breath filled with the stench of rotting meat.

“Now!” I shouted, and bit into his forehead before hanging on for dear life.

Luke crammed the bone right into the creature’s jaws, lodging the two ends firmly against the roof and floor. Howling with pain, the rancor dropped him. Its yawning jaws were jammed open.

“Go, go, go!” I bit into the right side of his scalp.

Curled up on the ground, Luke was breathing hard and fast. He looked up and saw a small opening to the right, under a jutting ledge. The space was just big enough to fit him. He scrambled into it.

“I used the Force!” he whispered gleefully. Oh, that goofy boy.

The rancor, its primary weapon rendered useless, howled at the grille far above. Jabba cursed in his rumbling, groundquake-like voice; Leia looked like she was ready to faint; and the whole court jeered some more.

Salacious, true to form, summoned some more weak cackles. Without me, he had no idea how to make a joke out of the wacky situation.

But we weren’t out of danger yet. With a grunt, the rancor managed to put enough pressure into its jaws to snap the thigh bone like a measly toothpick. The enraged predator then returned to the task of hunting down its surprisingly thorny prey as it lumbered toward the ledge under which Luke was hiding.

Closer and closer the monster came, and then it leaned down to dig Luke out from his hidey-hole. A sharp claw swiped dangerously close to Luke’s face.

“Now would be a good time to use force!” I hopped over and screamed into Luke’s ear.

“How? How do I use the Force?”

“Not the Force, just use some force!” I was so mad that I bit his earlobe, and Luke winced.

The pain seemed to finally get my point across.

Luke grabbed a rock off the cave floor and smashed it down, hard, on the probing claw. The rancor recoiled and reared back, howling in pain.

I looked through the arch formed by the creature’s bowed legs. In the far distance, I saw the opening through which it had emerged earlier.

Time for another ride.

I jumped back on top of Luke’s head and bit his forehead. “Get up!” I growled.

Thank the Great Mole-Flea that Luke had blind trust in this “Force” controlling him. He scrambled out from his hiding place and ran under the rearing rancor. I picked two spots over his forehead and sank my mouth-barbs into them rhythmically: left, right, left, right.…The quicker I alternated my bites, the faster his legs pumped. I doubt any AT-AT pilot could claim to have steered her mount with more precision than I did as I guided Luke toward his destination.

I maneuvered Luke into a full sprint until he ran under the door that had released the rancor and slammed into the control panel at the other end of the dungeon. A small door lifted to reveal…an iron lattice that barred the way.

Gaghhh! I cried out in frustration. I thought I had found an escape route, but of course it wouldn’t be so easy. Luke grabbed on to the lattice and flopped helplessly like a hooked fish.

“All right,” he muttered to himself. “It just looks hopeless, but I bet now is the time you show me what to do to take that thing down!”

He was talking to me, the voice of the Force. Even now he wasn’t giving up hope. That was pretty touching, actually. He might not be very smart, but he sure was determined and trusting.

All right, I said to myself, I’m not giving up, either. There has to be another way.

By then, the rancor had turned around and was stomping back toward its lair, intent on its still-alive dinner.

Jabba’s rancor keepers came up to the lattice and jeered at Luke, poking at him with their sticks to force him back into the dungeon.

Luke stumbled back and leaned against the wall, gasping, as the rancor was only a few meters away.

Time slowed down.

A single red light glowed through the gloomy, dank dungeon air from the opposite wall, mocking my plans. I had come so close to saving the foolish boy, to fulfilling my promise to the princess. And all my hard work would come to naught.

I wished I had full control of Luke’s muscles. What wouldn’t I be able to accomplish if I had that body? I could picture myself leaping onto the back of that lumbering beast and gouging out its eyes, biting into its skin to draw blood. If only…if only…

The rancor took another step forward and opened its slimy jaws, pawing the air with its menacing claws….

Luke froze.

“I believe in you,” he said. “Use the Force.”

The universe was not fair. I had such good reflexes; I could lift forty times my body weight. And yet, because we mole-fleas were so diminutive, we were prey for the mantis-crows, and the mantis-crows were prey for the monkey-lizards. The monkey-lizards, in turn, had to avoid annoying the Gamorreans lest they become snacks for the porcine brutes, and the Gamorreans were helpless against the mindless rancors. As each link in the food chain got bigger, it also seemed to become less intelligent.

Wait a minute, I thought. We just need an even bigger mouth.

I glanced up at the jagged metal teeth at the bottom edge of the door that had released the rancor. Each of them was the size of a mountain peak, far bigger than the stalactite teeth of the rancor standing under them.

Time snapped back to its regular flow.

I bit down into Luke’s scalp determinedly. Left, left, right, left, right…

He stumbled forward and knelt. I jumped to his ear and screamed at him. “Pick it up! Pick it up!”

He picked up the rock in front of him.

“Now throw it!” I commanded him in the voice of the Force.

His arms moved jerkily, and the rock flew out of his hands and crashed into the single red light on the opposite wall. It was the control panel for the gate.

The door slammed down like a giant jaw and instantly crushed the skull of the rancor. With a few final spasms, the humongous body stopped moving.

“I knew it!” Luke said. “I never doubted.”

The jeers coming from above quieted. A surprised gasp from Jabba. Even Salacious had enough presence of mind to figure out that it was not a good time to cackle. I heard Leia’s momentary laugh of delight before it was choked off.

The rancor’s keeper, a burly cliff of a man, stumbled into the lair and sobbed as he saw the lifeless body of his charge. I suppose I could understand him. After all, even I was coming to like that clumsy, stubborn deluded man-mountain called Luke Skywalker. Whatever his faults, he had an endless supply of hope, and that was no small thing. He really was growing on me.

Luke slumped against the wall, and I slumped against his skull, both of us exhausted but delirious with joy.

You might think that the perspicacious thing for Jabba to do after his pet rancor was killed would be to investigate what happened and possibly offer a good contract to the killer—I would have preferred to be directly credited, but I was willing to share some of the credit with my mount. After all, if someone was able to neutralize your fiercest killing machine in such short order, chances are you’d want them working for you.

But instead of the logical thing, Jabba decided that the Wookiee, Captain Solo, and Luke Skywalker—with me still riding on his pate—would all be taken deep into the Dune Sea on his sail barge, where we’d be tossed into the Pit of Carkoon to feed the all-powerful Sarlacc, who would digest us slowly over a thousand years.

Like I said, the bigger they are, the less brains they possess.

There was nothing to do but train Luke for the task ahead. (I wasn’t exactly scared, since I could always leap away at the last minute—I did have powerful legs. And even if that didn’t work, I decided that if the Sarlacc swallowed Luke and me together, I’d jump in his mouth and make myself a home in his belly. If it took the Sarlacc a thousand years to digest its victims, surely I’d be protected inside Luke and would live out the rest of my life in relative comfort. But I didn’t tell Luke that—large creatures rarely appreciate being informed of the ways we small creatures can take advantage of them.)

While we rode through the Dune Sea on a skiff alongside the sail barge, I drilled Luke on a detailed set of hair-pulling commands. It was hard work. The guards had Luke pinned in place, that fool Solo insisted on distracting him with nonsense small talk, and the wind whipped by Luke’s ears, making a howling ruckus. I had to cling to the swirly ridge around Luke’s left ear canal with all six of my limbs and shout into it to give him instructions on what he was supposed to do based on each distinct pattern of bites. A few times, the wind almost tore me away from him. But I hung on and climbed right back to my piloting perch.

At least I was in the sun. After Jabba’s dank palace, bathing in sunlight felt divine.

“The Force is with me,” Luke muttered, his innocent eyes wide open as he nodded at my instructions.

By the time we got to the sedentary Sarlacc, it was almost anticlimactic. One surprise: Luke’s little astromech droid tossed him his laser sword when they finally freed the young man to push him into the monster’s mouth. Does he even know how to use that thing? I wondered, and I immediately took control.

“Just shut up and do what your tingling scalp tells you,” I told him.

He nodded vigorously. “Right. Use the Force. Listen to the Force. I’ve been through this training.”

As deluded as the kid was, he did have good reflexes and strong muscles—for a human. Even though everything was slightly delayed because I had to relay my orders through his scalp, it was no trouble for me to keep Luke alive and defeat his enemies, because everyone was basically moving in slow motion compared with my quick mind.

One hard bite at the very center of his head, and he launched himself straight up, out of the way of the yawning mouth of the Sarlacc; another quick series of nips later, he was tumbling through the air, heading straight for the sail barge. Up-up-down-down I pulled and pushed my sucking tubes, and woosh-zing-woosh-zing went his laser sword, cutting down Jabba’s henchmen like giant pasol trees being felled. I pressed my tentacles in deeper and leaned left-right-left-right, and Luke swung his laser sword into precisely the right positions to block incoming blaster bolts.

“Bam!” I shouted, but it came out as a gurgle, as I had forgotten that my mouth was still firmly embedded in his skin. “Achoo!” my mount sneezed. Apparently he was the sort who sneezed when his scalp tingled a certain way. “Good to know,” I said after I pulled my regurgitation ducts free. “We’ll avoid that in the future. Let’s start again!”

Piloting him was overall a pretty amazing experience. I wouldn’t say that he was leaping with anywhere near my grace or swinging that sword even one-fortieth as hard as I could have (proportionately speaking), but he was imitating my movements with reasonable accuracy.

I even started making laser-sword humming noises in my head as I drove Luke around. It just felt right.

We landed on the sail barge and wreaked more havoc. I peeked inside and saw Princess Leia wrapping her chain around Jabba’s neck and choking him. “Attagirl!” I shouted. In sympathy I gave Luke’s forehead a celebratory bite, and he yelped.

“Sorry!” I shouted. It was fun to see my partner Leia turn the instrument of her enslavement around on that arrogant criminal. I felt Leia and I were spiritual mates, both of us able to impose our will on creatures much larger than we were.

Under my guidance, Luke soon cleared the decks. Monsters spilled from the sail barge as they decided it was preferable to try their luck at fleeing the always-hungry Sarlacc on foot rather than being cut down by the hot fury of the mole-flea-guided spinning Jedi.

Let me amend that. Smart monsters jumped ship.

As Luke passed one of the portholes in the barge, I peeked in and was shocked by the sight. There was Salacious Crumb, my former mount, trying to tear out the photoreceptors of that supercilious protocol droid Luke had gifted to Jabba. Instead of leaving the vicinity of the rampaging Luke Skywalker–Lugubrious Mote combo, Salacious had apparently decided that moment was the perfect time to demonstrate his loyalty to His Exalted Blubber—even though Leia had already strangled the gangster boss.

Without me, the monkey-lizard didn’t even have a mote of political sense.

“Run! Salacious, run!” I shouted. I knew then just how Jabba’s rancor keeper felt.

But he couldn’t hear me. Luke’s little astromech ran up at that moment to save his gold-plated friend and zapped Salacious with a buzzing electric wand.

Let me tell you, I had never seen Salacious jump that high that fast, or heard him scream in as high-pitched a tone. I laughed and laughed. It was the funniest bit of comedy he had ever performed, albeit he didn’t come up with the idea.

With Jabba dead and Leia freed, I had Luke grab Leia, shoot the deck gun at the barge itself, and swing off the barge onto the skiff, where Captain Solo, the Wookiee Chewie, and another one of Luke’s friends, Lando Calrissian, had taken control. We took off just as the barge exploded into a fiery ball of flames. I hope Salacious had a chance to get out. He might have been a bubble-headed brute, but he was my bubble-headed brute.

I jumped from Luke’s head onto Leia’s nose.

“You’re right,” I said. “He did grow on me.”

Leia gave me a cross-eyed grin.

Despite the loss of my home on Salacious, Leia refused to let me resettle on her.

“Come on,” I said, “it will be fun! Two girls together to take on the galaxy!”

She mumbled something about being allergic to furry feet and suggested that I move in on Luke.

“He’s a good kid,” I said, “and I really do like him. But it will be too exhausting, having to do all his thinking for him.”

And I told Leia never to mention me to Luke—the kid was so joyous about having used the Force to save his friends that I didn’t have the heart to let him know the truth. I didn’t mind not getting credit for the part I’d played; I had given him smarts, but he had given me hope, and I counted myself ahead in that deal.

So Leia found a nice woolly hopwell beast who agreed to take me in as a guest. We traveled around the galaxy for a while before I decided to join the circus. It’s a nice life: I get my name on the posters, in bigger font than anyone else’s (I insisted on that), and kids love my act.

Leia has done well, of course, but sometimes I think about what happened to Luke. All these stories about him…I hope he has learned to think for himself instead of just trusting the voices in his head.