Carpe Jugulum (Discworld 23)

'Ah, I can see where that'd make crossing it a bit tricky, then,' said Nanny.

It's just a slab laid over a ditch, Perdita insisted. I could cartwheel over it. Agnes blinked.

'Oh, I understand,' she said. 'This is some sort of test, is it? It is, isn't it? We're worried, so fear makes it a deep gorge. Perdita's always confident, so she hardly notices it...' 'I'd like to notice it's there,' said Magrat. 'It's a bridge.'

'We're wasting time,' said Agnes. She strode out over the slabs of stone and stopped halfway.

'Rocks a bit, but it's not too bad,' she called back. 'You just have to-'

The slab shifted under her, and tipped her off.

She flung out her hands and caught the edge of the stone by sheer luck. But, strong though her fingers were, a lot of Agnes was penduluming underneath.

She looked down. She didn't want to, but it was a direction occupying a lot of the world.

The water's about a foot below you, it really is, said Perdita. All you have to do is drop, and you'd be good at that...

Agnes looked down again. The drop was so long that probably no one would hear the splash. It didn't just look deep, it felt deep. Clammy air rose around her. She could feel the sucking emptiness under her feet.

'Magrat threw a stone down there!' she hissed.

Yes, and I saw it fall a few inches.

'Now, I'm lyin' flat and Magrat's holdin' on to my legs,' said Nanny Ogg conversationally, right above her. 'I'm going to grab your wrists and, you know, I reckon if you swings a little sideways you ought to get your foot on one of the stone pillars and you'll be right as ninepence.'

'You don't have to talk to me as if I'm some kind of frightened idiot!' snapped Agnes.

'Just tryin' to be pleasant.'

'I can't move my hands!'

'Yes, you can. See, I've got your arm now.'

'I can't move my hands!'

'Don't rush, we've got all day,' said Nanny. 'Whenever you're ready.'

Agnes hung for a while. She couldn't even sense her hands now. That presumably meant that she wouldn't feel it when her grip slipped.

The stones groaned.

'Br... Nanny?'

,Yep?,

'Can you talk to me a bit more as if I'm some kind of frightened idiot?'

'Okay.'

'Er... why do they say right as ninepence"? As opposed to, say, tenpence?'

'Interestin'. Maybe it's-'

'And can you speak up? Perdita's shouting at me that if I drop eighteen inches I'll be standing in the stream!'

'Do you think she's right?'

'Not about the eighteen inches!'