EVERYONE’S A CRITIC
Sarah Glenn Marsh
He wasn’t the fastest thing in the galaxy, let alone in the forest, but it must have been his lucky day, because he was just quick enough to scramble on board the impressive starship that was wedged into a break in the trees before whatever had been chasing him could sink its teeth into his stringy flesh. He was also small enough that no one—not the variety of sour-faced humanoids with blasters at their hips or the giant, sluglike creature (majestically nasty, he noted with awe) whose bulk filled the entire hallway without trying—noticed him.
Well, not at first. Not until he found the kitchen. After a couple hours of hanging out unnoticed in a cupboard with the pans and cutlery, he’d had to open more than a few drawers trying to find some crunchy bugs or a furry little thing to snack on to prevent his stomach’s growling from giving away his hidey-hole.
He was just about to claw into a bag of some promising-looking dark, glittering shells when a pale hand grabbed him by the tail and held him up to the harsh overhead lights, much too high above the floor (and the stove) for comfort. “And what do we have on the menu tonight? A big-eared stowaway?” his red-eyed captor sneered. The little monkey-lizard had no idea what had just been snarled in his face, but he was certain enough of one thing: This creature was rude.
The Rude One turned him this way and that as the monkey-lizard thrashed in his hands—cold hands, unpleasantly so, the kind not a lot of beings would be happy to shake. Also, as the monkey-lizard learned a moment later, not tasty. He forgot sometimes that while he didn’t have teeth, his beak had quite an edge, too; the Rude One wasn’t the first to make those high-pitched noises when his beak got ahold of something delicious. The pale being dropped the monkey-lizard so he could suck the blood off his fingers while he hopped up and down through drops of cerulean that had showered the floor, spitting several words that, by their venom alone, were surely some inspired curses.
The monkey-lizard looked at the ridiculous creature who had menaced him, then laughed and started copying him, trying to repeat the curses. What else can you do when someone’s shouting and dancing like no one’s watching, but you happen to be right in front of them? The monkey-lizard’s large ears flopped exactly the way he meant them to, right into his eyes, until the Rude One laughed so hard at the sight that he showed all his small yellow teeth (once again, too many to count).
For a minute, the monkey-lizard felt like he was in for a treat.
However, when the Rude One grabbed him a second time, harder (still laughing—critics take note), and stuffed him in a little cage not unlike the ones he supposed they used to hold his kind elsewhere until they started roasting them—leaving him alone in the kitchen with the cooks, close enough to smell dinner but not near enough to take a bite—the monkey-lizard was sure he had somehow earned himself the opposite of a treat after all. A trick, perhaps, or worse.
He blurted out one of those foul-tasting words he’d just learned from the Rude One because if there was one thing he was good at besides being small and cute, it was repeating things he heard with precision, whether he understood them or not. As soon as the sounds left his beak, a booming laugh—charmingly filthy and so big, bigger than any sound the monkey-lizard could make—filled the room.
Positively famished and bored out of his mind, the little creature tried imitating that, too.
Preceded by his laugh, the giant slug-creature he had seen in the hallway earlier slithered into view, as towering and glorious as the monkey-lizard remembered from his first glimpse, making his way right up to the little cage. The monkey-lizard rattled the bars and danced like he’d just been bitten to the music of the slug-creature’s laughter.
Making this immense being laugh felt good. Though he couldn’t explain why, it made the monkey-lizard laugh harder, too.
The slug-creature exhaled a swampy breath that stirred the littler creature’s hair, his orange eyes narrowing then widening as he studied the monkey-lizard.
The much-smaller creature widened his eyes just the same way, round as moons, flopped his ears forward, and made a soft clicking noise with his beak. It was his cutest face (he even thought of it as The Face for short), the one he used to beg for a good scratch or a free ride—a look that hadn’t, in his limited memory, ever let him down.
“Stowaway,” the vast creature said with a deep, booming voice that radiated power and a whiff of something foul, “I am the Great Jabba…” (Well, actually, he said much more than that, but the monkey-lizard couldn’t understand much. Too many syllables. He recognized the meanings of a few of these sounds, though, from the time someone had tried to train him into a regular old obedient pet; hadn’t ended well for them, he was proud to recall.) “And you are?”
Sensing Jabba wanted some kind of response, but not sure what exactly was being asked, the monkey-lizard quickly flipped through his limited vocabulary of words he had heard often enough to repeat, eager to please this magnificent being if he could. “Salacious!” he cackled, because it was a funny sound. Tasted good on the tongue, too.
Jabba’s wide mouth broke into an even wider grin.
“Salacious. This ship is like home to me. One of many. And you have entered my home without an invitation. An insult I do not take lightly,” he said gravely, his eyes roaming over the cage.
The little creature kept his eyes nice and big, his ears half covering them, giving another little quiver of his beak because he still wasn’t sure from the larger being’s tone whether he was about to be tossed in the cook pot or handed his bag full of shells from earlier to finish his snack.
Jabba sighed at that beak-quiver, his voice softening. “Your Twi’lek friend, Bib Fortuna, thinks we can get a little money for you at our next port of call. But I think…” Those great orange eyes narrowed in thought again as he reached toward the cage door. “You might have better uses than a handful of credits.”
The door sprang open.
The monkey-lizard was confident, at least, in his quickness; he could have made a break for it, really tested his luck and scurried to freedom, but he saw something better right in front of him, this imposing being who had fallen for The Face. He scrambled out and onto Jabba’s outstretched arm.
This time, when his eyes turned into wondering moons, it wasn’t an act—he’d never been in the presence of such Greatness before, and for his tiny mind, it was a lot to take in all at once. Jabba was vast where he was small; he also seemed to be in charge here, commanding a ship stuffed with enough riches for one lifetime, where the monkey-lizard had to beg and steal just to scrape by day-to-day. He made his way over to Jabba’s shoulder, finding a stable perch without sinking his claws in too deep.
Maybe this was his chance to be in charge of something, too.
Jabba reached up and ruffled the monkey-lizard’s hair just the way the little creature liked it. Then the enormous slug scooped some unidentifiable chunk of meat out of a simmering stove pot and tossed it to him. The monkey-lizard gobbled it down eagerly, even though it was too hot, while Jabba kept scratching his head. Bliss.
“Make me laugh like that once a day, little crumb thief,” he said in a tone that was surprisingly sweet for a being of such eminence, “and my palace and all its comforts are yours. All you can eat and drink. A place at my side for as long as I sit on my throne. Whatever you wish. Do you understand?”
The monkey-lizard blinked; he had, at least, caught a few words here and there, like laugh and eat and perhaps—was he being offered a chair? Or told to sit? He hadn’t liked being trained before, but a command from this benevolent creature felt different somehow. Compelling enough to obey.
Suddenly Jabba was pulling on his hair a little too hard, much too hard, bending his neck back roughly until his beak opened in a silent grimace of pain.
“Fail to hold up your end of the bargain, however, and I will feed you to something that will find you delicious,” he crooned, still tugging on the creature’s head. “My pit-pet rancor has eaten hundreds of my enemies and is always hungry. So. Do you accept my offer?”
The monkey-lizard was trying his best to follow along through the haze of heart-pounding panic. Making Jabba laugh: good. Jabba not laughing: very bad. Pain-in-the-neck bad, at the least.
The little creature burst out in a deep, throaty cackle, even though he was still hurting.
He laughed, because it was funny that he had wound up in a kitchen while trying to stay off the menu and also, it turned out, it was pretty easy to make a sound like laughing when he was terrified. So he cackled until he howled and Jabba was laughing again, too, letting go of his hair and even smoothing it back into place—as much as it ever was, anyway.
Before the monkey-lizard knew it, he was chasing Jabba’s tail across the floor of his private quarters, catching scraps of his warm and questionably scrumptious dinner out of the air as they tumbled from Jabba’s careless mouth, and the ship was in flight.
It really was the monkey-lizard’s lucky day; he was trading his home full of sharp teeth for one full of sharp tongues and sharper weapons, but he had it made. All he had to do was stay on the laughing side of the one doing all the stabbing. And someone like Jabba surely did a lot of stabbing, no matter how many enemies his pit-creature gobbled up for him on the side.
Settling in on Tatooine shortly after, the little creature missed the pasol trees he’d traded for sandrock and steel, the music of the jungle at night, the constant chatter and arguments of the other monkey-lizards, and the ocean. Oh, the ocean! There was nothing like it on Tatooine; what they called the Northern Dune Sea was nothing but sand, or else he had misunderstood. Wouldn’t be the last time.
But there were many things he didn’t miss about home: hungry forests and cutthroat slavers, mostly, and of course all the teeth built for crunching up something scrawny like him. Besides, he had fine things here that he never had at home, like a name—just like his new keeper answered to “Jabba,” it only took him a few days to figure out that every time Jabba said “Salacious,” he wanted the monkey-lizard’s attention—and the best seat in the house, not a real chair but something much better, a perch high up on Jabba’s shoulder where for the first time in his life, he was looking down on everyone else for a change. So, he was determined to make the best of things at Jabba’s, even if it was admittedly dim and dank and ocean-less.
Lucky for Salacious, it didn’t take an abundance of smarts to figure out that making fun of everyone in the room was what pleased Jabba most. As long as his target was flustered enough to spark a certain light in Jabba’s luminous orange eyes, he’d avoid the rancor’s pit and live to spend another day chasing Jabba’s tail (which he was pretty sure was a separate creature in itself, one who rode on Jabba’s squishy frame like he did and had a mind of its own for all the trouble it gave him in pinning it down).
Nobody was off limits when it came to Salacious’s merciless mimicry and teasing—not even Jabba—which was just how Jabba liked it.
Yet comedy, it turned out, was a harder gig than stealing from the slavers back on Kowak, harder than the creature would have thought. Everyone’s a critic; they all think they can do it better, pull a sillier face, get a bigger belly laugh, twist a word or phrase just right, but Salacious (perhaps because of how little he understood about those around him) was the only one willing to imitate Bib Fortuna’s snoring face in front of an audience or sway his hips like Jabba’s dancer Oola when she was moving to the music that pulsed through the underground halls. All while making eyes at Jabba and flicking his big, floppy ears just so, of course. And whenever one of his attempts at humor fell a little flat or cut a little too deep like his beak, there was always The Face to fall back on.
Not that he needed to use it too often; most of the time, his nervous laughter was enough to make Jabba lighten up when negotiations in their throne room got tense or he copied the wrong trader’s peculiar mannerisms. And really, it was his pleasure to entertain Jabba; he gave great head scritches and threw down the juiciest morsels for Salacious in return. Jabba was such a hard worker, too, which was one of the first things the monkey-lizard learned about him as he got acquainted with the employees and the finances (which were, like everything else about Jabba and the palace, vast to the point of being incomprehensible). The little creature could sense Jabba’s worry and stress; that was why he needed Salacious, because if the monkey-lizard knew anything, it was how to keep the mood light.
That was also how Salacious knew Jabba would never really feed him to the rancor. Jabba talked tough, but that was just part of Doing Business; underneath the booming insults, he was just a giant ball of love, the best cuddler in town. He was Salacious’s protector, his family, his big friend; the monkey-lizard was his confidant, his right-hand man, his little friend. Together for life, relying on no one but each other at the end of the day. Simple.
Besides, would someone who was going to throw him to a rancor really do thoughtful things like support his hobbies? Not long ago, Jabba had ordered his servants to help find droids—a word he quickly learned meant shiny, loud things that made the funniest noises when he chewed on them—just for Salacious to tear apart, and nothing made the monkey-lizard feel more loved than using his claws and beak to cut through a thick tangle of wiring.
There had been a couple of droids he was bursting to dig into recently, a tall chatty gold one and a short shrill white one who made Jabba laugh with the hologram they played about surrendering one of their prisoners (as if Jabba would hand over their favorite wall hanging, the carbonite slab with the most punchable face, just because somebody had sent a droid to make demands!). But Jabba, true Businessman that he was, found other uses for those droids like he had for Salacious. The monkey-lizard had had to make do with taking apart some other beat-up old astromech instead.
That was just what he was doing in the throne room when the trouble started. He had a bundle of wires tangled around his claws, half a biscuit Jabba had dropped hanging out of his beak, and designs on wrapping those wires around Jabba’s tail to see if he could make it stay still once and for all when a little bounty hunter in full gear and a face-concealing helmet led a much taller, uncombed furry creature in cuffs toward the dais.
Was this one of their associates? Or a hopeful new trading partner whom Salacious wasn’t supposed to mimic? So many beings came and went from Jabba’s throne room that he could rarely remember faces, let alone who was on their side and who was destined for the rancor pit. The details of who Jabba had killed yesterday were already a little fuzzy, even.
But before he could choose whether to mock or keep quiet, Jabba started chuckling throatily at whatever this shrouded bounty hunter was demanding for their prisoner. The monkey-lizard narrowed his eyes and tossed aside his wires; making Jabba laugh was his job, and of all the Types that came and went from their home, ones who fancied themselves comedians were his least favorite.
After a tense pause, his nerves wound tighter than the ball of wires he’d thrown across the dais, Salacious decided this bounty hunter must be one of their people after all; Jabba was still laughing as the furry prisoner was led off to a cell somewhere.
The mood in the palace shifted then; Jabba ordered the band to play again, and Salacious did what he always did: He stood up and took the stage. He danced like a bitten Bib Fortuna to the rhythm of the band, ears flopping into his face, until Jabba laughed so hard through his snack that Salacious knew he could collect enough bites for a whole meal.
Trouble of any kind seemed far away—that is, until Jabba burst into their room in the middle of the night, moaning that they’d lost the wall hanging with the uniquely punchable face. Salacious wasn’t clear on the details of how, but he could tell from the anger rolling off Jabba in hot, pungent waves that it was not their lucky night.
Things in the throne room still smelled like trouble the next day.
The unsmiling man from the droid’s hologram was now here in the flesh, making demands again. Skywalker, the others called him. The monkey-lizard’s beady eyes darted all over the eerily quiet man, searching for something to mimic.
Had he ever heard a word that rhymed with Skywalker?
The conversation was, as usual, too much for Salacious to follow, except he noticed that Jabba seemed to be talking the man in circles—circles that led right over the rancor’s trapdoor.
In a blink, the floor became a yawning mouth, and down went Skywalker.
The rancor roared. It hadn’t eaten yesterday.
Salacious howled and jeered, because watching someone fall through a surprise door is funnier than anything he could have come up with, and Jabba stroked his hair while leering magnificently. Maybe it could be their lucky day after all.
But it was the rancor who started screeching a moment later, not Skywalker. And sure enough, it was Skywalker who emerged from its lair.
Jabba’s face fell. He stopped petting the monkey-lizard.
Not even The Face was any good at cheering his master up right now.
Salacious sat at Jabba’s side and didn’t even cackle once (in honor of the rancor) while Jabba sentenced three enemies—Skywalker, their favorite wall decoration Solo, and their tallest, furriest prisoner—to be eaten by the Sarlacc in the Great Pit of Carkoon.
Bad for them, of course, but good news for Salacious; they would have to take one of their sail barges to reach the pit, and Jabba loved when Salacious pretended to be seasick aboard the big vessel. Surely that had to make him crack a smile.
Yet things didn’t look up even after they’d reached the pit. Skywalker was too calm as he was dropped toward the yawning mouth at the bottom, like he had some trick up his sleeve more powerful than The Face. Impossible, to Salacious’s mind.
The sounds of fighting erupted from below.
But before the monkey-lizard could climb up on Jabba to see what was happening, everything went dark.
Somebody had cut the barge lights.
This made everything louder and busier, someone’s stray fin or limb slapping Salacious hard as they rushed past in an attempt to flee. Then came a sound he knew well by now, seeing as Jabba had so many enemies: the rattling of chains. The monkey-lizard blinked, trying to focus his eyes in the dimness as Jabba made strange, wet gasping sounds. He sounded sick.
Salacious tried cheering up poor Jabba with The Face, but his master didn’t even seem to see him; instead, his eyes, bulging and glassy, gazed out across the pit at nothing and his tongue lolled out like Salacious’s did sometimes after eating too many biscuits. Jabba’s mischievous and often annoying tail didn’t even twitch when Salacious tackled it.
Salacious stared up at Jabba, a mountain as always but no longer a living one, and understood enough to know that nothing was ever going to be funny again.
No more big friend. No more protector. No more family.
Salacious’s insides writhed with anger instead of hunger for once, but he wasn’t seeing red; he was seeing gold and white, flashes of the droids he’d wanted to rip apart earlier. Skywalker’s droids. Surely they had a hand in killing his only friend like Jabba wasn’t a towering fortress designed to withstand blasts, like he wasn’t a whole galaxy with two moons for eyes and an inescapable, immense gravity.
He still wasn’t seeing red as he attacked them; he was seeing black and white and sparks of blue as he thought of all the wires he was going to rip out of this golden droid’s insides for Jabba, starting with one of his round eyes that was bigger than the monkey-lizard’s fist. It would make a nice treasure to throw around in the throne room once he got it out of the droid’s stubborn—
Salacious yelped and let go of the droid’s eye as a current zipped up and down his spine. Something had stung him. Bit him? It was the other droid, the white one; he’d zapped Salacious somehow.
Suddenly there was a deep, rumbling sound, kind of like the victory cry Jabba always gave when they blew up something after somebody crossed them. Only this time, Jabba’s side was the one getting blown up; the barge rocked as it was flung apart into a constellation of burning pieces, sending Salacious flying along with it.
He was—he realized as he saw his tail flapping through the air—a little bit on fire.
More nervous than he had been the time Bib Fortuna held him over the rancor’s lair on a feasting day until Jabba caught him and stopped it, Salacious did what he did best. He cackled. Loudly.
The Sarlacc lashed a tentacle at him, acting like it hadn’t heard.
Everyone’s a critic. Even a tentacled creature with a gaping mouth and too many rows of sharp teeth to count. The Sarlacc probably had its own jokes saved up after living alone in the pit for so long, but Salacious had to try something, because the sand was too slippery for climbing (much more like the ocean than he originally thought, it turned out) and he was going to tumble right down into those jaws if he didn’t get the creature laughing soon.
Salacious slid farther, the opposite of what he was trying to do.
Those teeth were getting awfully close and awfully munchy, and he still couldn’t find anything to grab onto, but there was always The Face. That had never let him down yet. Besides, he’d be such a tiny appetizer for a creature of the Sarlacc’s size. Maybe the Sarlacc didn’t even like roasted monkey-lizard. Maybe today would be his lucky—