'I didn't mean that! I just meant . . . well, then everything will be real. Just one kiss, you said. I can't see why that's so hard to arrange.'
'The right kiss at the right time,' said Lilith. 'It has to be at the right time, otherwise it won't work.' She smiled. He was trembling, partly out of lust, mainly out of terror, and slightly out of heredity.
'Don't worry,' she said. 'It can't not happen.'
'And these witches you showed me?'
'They're just . . . part of the story. Don't worry about them. The story will just absorb them. And you'll get her because of stories. Won't that be nice? And now . . . shall we go? I expect you've got some ruling to do?'
He picked up the inflexion. It was an order. He stood up, extended an arm to take hers, and together they went down to the palace's audience chamber.
Lilith was proud of the Duc. Of course, there was his embarrassing little nocturnal problem, because his morphic field weakened when he slept, but that wasn't yet a major difficulty. And there was the trouble with mirrors, which showed him as he really was, but that was easily overcome by banning all mirrors save hers. And then there were his eyes. She couldn't do anything about the eyes. There was practically no magic that could do anything about someone's eyes. All she had been able to come up with there were the smoked glasses.
Even so, he was a triumph. And he was so grateful. She'd been good for him.
She'd made a man of him, for a start.
Some way downriver from the waterfall, which was the second highest anywhere on the Disc and had been discovered in the Year of the Revolving Crab by the noted explorer Guy de Yoyo,* Granny Weatherwax sat in front of a small fire with a towel around her shoulders and steamed.
'Still, look on the bright side,' said Nanny Ogg. 'At least I was holding my broom and you at the same time. And Magrat had hers. Otherwise we'd all be looking at the waterfall from underneath.'
'Oh, good. A silver lining,' said Granny, her eyes glinting evilly.
'Bit of an adventure, really,' said Nanny, grinning encouragingly. 'One day we'll look back on this and laugh.'
'Oh, good,' said Granny.
Nanny dabbed at the claw marks on her arm. Greebo, with a cat's true instinct for self-preservation, had clawed his way up his mistress and taken a flying leap to safety from the top of her head. Now he was curled up by the fire, dreaming cat dreams.
A shadow passed over them. It was Magrat, who had been combing the riverbanks.
'I think I've got nearly everything,' she said as she landed.'Here's Granny's broomstick. And. . .oh, yes. . .
* Of course, lots of dwarfs, trolls, native people, trappers, hunters and the merely badly lost had discovered it on an almost daily basis for thousands of years. But they weren't explorers and didn't count.
the wand.' She gave a brave little smile. 'Little pumpkins were bobbing to the surface. That's how I found it.'
'My word, that was lucky,' said Nanny Ogg encouragingly. 'Hear that, Esme? We shan't be wanting for food, at any rate.'
'And I've found the basket with the dwarf bread in it,' said Magrat, 'although I'm afraid it might be spoilt.'
'It won't be, take it from me,' said Nanny Ogg. 'You can't spoil dwarf bread. Well, well,' she said, sitting down again. 'We've got quite a little picnic, haven't we ... and a nice bright fire and . . . and a nice place to sit and . . . I'm sure there's lots of poor people in places like Howondaland and suchlike who'd give anything to be here right now . . .'
'If you don't stop being so cheerful, Gytha Ogg, I shall give you such a ding around the ear with the flat of my hand,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'You sure you're not catching a chill?' said Nanny Ogg.
'I'm dryin' out,' said Granny Weatherwax, 'from the inside.'
'Look, I'm really sorry,' said Magrat. 'I said I was sorry.'
Not that she was quite certain what for, she told herself. The boat wasn't her idea. She hadn't put the waterfall there. She hadn't even been in a position to see it coming. She'd turned the boat into a pumpkin, but she hadn't meant to. It could have happened to anyone.
'I managed to save Desiderata's notebooks, too,' she said.
'Well, that's a blessing,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Now we know where we're lost.'
She looked around. They were through the worst of the mountains, but there were still peaks around and high meadows stretching to the snowline. From somewhere in the distance came the clonking of goat bells.