It was a large, metal-bound chest. It had fallen on its curved lid. After a while it started to rock violently, and then it extended hundreds of little pink legs and with considerable effort flipped itself over.

Finally it shuffled around until it was watching the pair of them. It was all the more disconcerting because it was staring without having any eyes to do it with.

Eric moved first. He grasped the home-made magic sword, which flapped wildly.

"You are a demon!" he said. "I nearly believed you when you said you weren't!"

"Wheee!" said the parrot.

"It's just my luggage," said Rincewind desperately. "It's a sort of... well. it goes everywhere with me, there's nothing demonic about it... er." He hesitated. "Not much, anyway," he finished lamely.

"Avaunt!"

"Oh, not again."

The boy looked at the open book. "My commands earlier resume," he said firmly. "The most beautiful woman who has ever lived, mastery of all the kingdoms of the world, and to live forever. Get on with it."

Rincewind stood frozen.

"Well, go on," said Eric. "You're supposed to disappear in a puff of smoke."

"Listen, do you think I can just snap my fingers -"

Rincewind snapped his fingers.

There was a puff of smoke.

Rincewind gave his fingers a long shocked stare, as one might regard a gun that has been hanging on the wall for decades and has suddenly gone off and perforated the cat.

"They've hardly ever done that before," he said.

He looked down.

"Aargh," he said, and closed his eyes.

It was a better world in the darkness behind his eyelids. If he tapped his foot he could persuade himself that he could feel the floor, he could know that he was really standing in the room, and that the urgent signals from all his other senses, which were telling him that he was suspended in the air some thousand miles or so above the Disc, were just a bad dream he'd wake up from. He hastily cancelled that thought. If he was asleep he'd prefer to stay that way. You could fly in dreams. If he woke up, it was a long way to fall.