The Colour of Magic

appearance of ice.
    “My home is down there, perhaps,” he said slowly. “Beyond your silly elephants and that ridiculous turtle. A real world. Sometimes I come out here and look, but somehow I can never bring myself to take that extra step…A real world, with real people. I have wives and little ones, somewhere down there…” He stopped, and blew his nose. “You soon learn what you’re made of, here on the Edge .”
    “Stop saying that. Please,” moaned Rincewind. He turned over and saw Twoflower standing unconcernedly at the very lip of the rock. “Gnah,” he said, and tried to burrow into the stone.
    “There’s another world down there?” said Twoflower, peering over. “Where, exactly?”
    The troll waved an arm vaguely. “Somewhere,” he said. “That’s all I know. It was quite a small world. Mostly blue.”
    “So why are you here?” said Twoflower.
    “Isn’t it obvious?” snapped the troll. “I fell off the edge!”

    He told them of the world of Bathys, somewhere among the stars, where the seafolk had built a number of thriving civilizations in the three large oceans that sprawled across its Disc. He had been a meatman, one of the caste which earned a perilous living in large, sail-powered land yachts that ventured far out to land and hunted the shoals of deer and buffalo that abounded in the storm-haunted continents. His particular yacht had been blown into uncharted lands by a freak gale. The rest of the crew had taken the yacht’s little rowing trolley and had struck out for a distant lake, but Tethis, as master, had elected to remain with his vessel. The storm had carried it right over the rocky rim of the world, smashing it to matchwood in the process.
    “At first I fell,” said Tethis, “but falling isn’t so bad, you know. It’s only the landing that hurts, and there was nothing below me. As I fell I saw the world spin off into space until it was lost against the stars.”
    “What happened next?” said Twoflower breathlessly, glancing toward the misty universe.
    “I froze solid,” said Tethis simply. “Fortunately it is something my race can survive. But I thawed out occasionally when I passed near other worlds. There was one, I think it was the one with what I thought was this strange ring of mountains around it that turned out to be the biggest dragon you could ever imagine, covered in snow and glaciers and holding its tail in its mouth—well, I came within a few leagues of that, I shot over the landscape like a comet, in fact, and then I was off again. Then there was a time I woke up and there was your world coming at me like a custard piethrown by the Creator and, well, I landed in the sea not far from the Circumfence widdershins of Krull. All sorts of creatures get washed up against the Fence, and at the time they were looking for slaves to man the way stations, and I ended up here.” He stopped and stared intently at Rincewind. “Every night I come out here and look down,” he finished, “and I never jump. Courage is hard to come by, here on the Edge .”
    Rincewind began to crawl determinedly toward the shack. He gave a little scream as the troll picked him up, not unkindly, and set him on his feet.
    “Amazing,” said Twoflower, and leaned farther out over the Edge. “There are lots of other worlds out there?”
    “Quite a number, I imagine,” said the troll.
    “I suppose one could contrive some sort of, I don’t know, some sort of a thing that could preserve one against the cold,” said the little man thoughtfully. “Some sort of a ship that one could sail over the Edge and sail to far-off worlds, too. I wonder…”
    “Don’t even think about it!” moaned Rincewind. “Stop talking like that, do you hear?”
    “They all talk like that in Krull,” said Tethis.
    “Those with tongues, of course,” he added.

    “Are you awake?”
    Twoflower snored on. Rincewind jabbed him viciously in the ribs.
    “I said, are you awake?” he snarled.
    “Scrdfngh…”
    “We’ve got to get out of here before this salvage fleet comes!”
    The dishwater light of dawn oozed through the shack’s one window, slopping across the piles of salvaged boxes and bundles that were strewn around the interior. Twoflower grunted again and tried to burrow into the pile of furs and blankets that Tethis had given them.
    “Look, there’s all kinds of weapons and stuff in here,” said Rincewind. “He’s gone out somewhere. When he comes back we could overpower him