He took hold of the handles with
both hands, and strained against the stone.
There was a melodious consort on the recorders, but nothing moved.
The Wart let go of the handles,
when they were beginning to bite into the palms of his hands, and stepped back,
seeing stars.
“It is well fixed,” he said.
He took hold of it again and
pulled with all his might. The music
played more strongly, and the light all about the churchyard glowed like
amethysts; but the sword still stuck.
“Oh, Merlyn,” cried the Wart,
“help me to get this weapon.”
There was a kind of rushing
noise, and a long chord played along with it.
All around the churchyard there were hundreds of old friends. They rose over the church wall all together,
like the Punch and Judy ghosts of remembered days, and there were badgers and
nightingales and vulgar crows and hares and wild geese and falcons and fishes
and dogs and dainty unicorns and solitary wasps and corkindrills and hedgehogs
and griffins and the thousand other animals he had met. They loomed round the church wall, the lovers
and helpers of the Wart, and they all spoke solemnly in turn. Some of them had come from the banners in the
church, where they were painted in heraldry, some from the waters and the sky
and the fields about – but all, down to the smallest shrew mouse, had come to
help on account of love. Wart felt his power grow.
“Put your back into it,” said a
Luce (or pike) off one of the heraldic banners, “as you once did when I was
going to snap you up. Remember that
power springs from the nape of the neck.”
“What about those forearms,”
asked a Badger gravely, “that are held together by a chest? Come along, my dear embryo, and find your
tool.”
A Merlin sitting at the top of
the yew tree cried out, “Now then, Captain Wart, what is the first law of the
foot? I thought I once heard something
about never letting go?”
“Don’t work like a stalling
woodpecker,” urged a Tawny Owl affectionately.
“Keep us a steady effort, my duck, and you will have it yet.”
A white-front said, “Now, Wart,
if you were once able to fly the great North Sea, surely you can coordinate a
few little wing-muscles here and there?
Fold your powers together, with the spirit of your mind, and it will
come out like butter. Come along, Homo
sapiens, for all we humble friends of yours are waiting here to cheer.”
The Wart walked up to the great
sword for the third time. He put out his
right hand softly and drew it out as gently as from a scabbard.
T.H. White, The Sword in
the Stone
