Granny has a’ innerestin’ cottage bu’ wee prefers yon ‘shrooms…ye ken.
Rincewind, Twoflower, and The Luggage meet in the highly magical Forest of Skund, where the trees talk to you whether you believe it or not. They meet a gnome named Swires, who lives in a mushroom – a red and white fly agaric, we’d call it. He leads them to Granny Whitlow’s gingerbread house – apparently the infamous cottage once visited by Hansel and Gretel or their Discworld counterparts.
Meanwhile, the head wizards have learned from Death that the Eight Great Spells must be said together on the next Hogswatchnight or the Disc will be destroyed. Since they know that all but one of the Eight are in The Octavo, each Order of wizards sets out to find Rincewind, who houses the eighth Spell inside his brain.
All the Orders, that is, except the one to which Galder Weatherwax and Ymper Trymon belong.
Galder has another plan involving a bow and arrow accompanied by a strand of carefully forged magic. Galder intends to shoot the arrow and have the it find Rincewind and drag him back to UU.
He misses. That is, he hits The Luggage instead.
Two of our three heroes are hiding in a broom closet from members of three other Orders who have simultaneously discovered them in the Whitlow place. After the arrow hits The Luggage and takes it away, Rincewind and Twoflower follow on Granny Whitlow’s magical flying broomstick. Well, it was a broom closet, wasn’t it?
In just this brief description of one section of The Light Fantastic, you can see several references to other familiar stories that Terry pulls into his narrativium.
- Talking trees
- A gnome
- Gingerbread cottage
- A flying broomstick
Those are just the most obvious ones. I think I’ll eventually try to compile a list of all “real world” references in the Discworld novels. That said, I’m not certain such a list would ever by complete (or correct). It would sure be fun to try though.
Terry must have been very well-read. Though how he found the time to both read so much and write to much, I don’t know.
