But a dreadful suspicion was coming over me. Hadn’t my mortal life been nothing but abysmal struggle and trivia and fear? Wasn’t that the way it was for most mortals? Wasn’t that the message of a score of modern writers and poets—that we wasted our lives in foolish preoccupation? Wasn’t this all a miserable cliché?

I was bitterly shaken. I tried to argue with myself once more, the way I’d been doing all along. But what was the use?

It felt terrible to be in this sluggish human body! It felt terrible not to have my preternatural powers. And the world, look at it, it was dingy and shabby, frayed at the edges and full of accidents. Why, I couldn’t even see most of it. What world?

Ah, but tomorrow! Oh, Lord, another miserable cliché! I started laughing and another fit of coughing caught me. This time the pain was in my throat and quite considerable, and my eyes were watering. Best to sleep, best to rest, better to prepare for my one precious day.

I snapped off the lamp, and pulled back the covers of the bed. It was clean, I was thankful for that. I laid my head on the down pillow, brought up my knees close to my chest, drew the covers up to my chin, and went to sleep. I was vaguely sensible that if the house burned, I would die. If gas fumes came up out of the furnace grilles, I would die. Indeed, someone might come in the open back door to kill me. Indeed, all kinds of disasters were possible. But Mojo was there, wasn’t he? And I was tired, so tired!

Hours later, I woke.

I was coughing violently and bitterly cold. I needed a handkerchief, found a box of paper tissue that would do well enough, and blew my nose perhaps a hundred times. Then, able to breathe again, I fell back into a strange feverish exhaustion, and the deceptive feeling that I was floating as I lay firmly on the bed.

Just a mortal cold, I thought. The result of letting myself become so miserably chilled. It will mar things, but it is also an experience, an experience I must explore.

The next time I woke up, the dog was standing beside the bed, and he was licking my face. I put out my hand, felt his furry nose, and laughed at him, then coughed again, throat burning, and realized I’d been coughing for some time.

The light was awfully bright. Wonderfully bright. Thank God, a bright lamp in this murky world at last. I sat up. For a moment, I was too dazed to rationally acknowledge what I saw.

The sky in the tops of the windows was perfectly blue, vibrantly blue, and the sunlight was pouring in on the polished floor, and all the world appeared glorious in the brightness—the bare tree branches with their white trimming of snow, and the snow-covered roof opposite, and the room itself, full of whiteness and lustrous color, light glancing off the mirror, and the crystal glass on the dresser, off the brass knob of the bathroom door.