Ansel was trembling now, and his two brothers looked ready to flee. “Great demon,” he said, “I didn’t mean to intrude. It’s just that Dr. Parvenu said it would be so simple. What do you want us to do now?”
“Unstop the bottle,” Azzie said.
Ansel and his brothers tugged out the stopper. Azzie stepped out. He adjusted his height so that he was about one and a half feet taller than Ansel, the tallest of the three.
“Now then, my children,” Azzie said. “The first thing to learn about dealing with supernatural creatures is this – despite the folklore to the contrary, they will get the better of you every time. So don’t try to trick them or cheat them. Note how you opened the bottle for me when actually I was helpless.”
The brothers exchanged looks.
After a moment, Ansel asked, “You mean we actually had you at our mercy?”
“Indeed you did,” Azzie replied.
“That you were a helpless prisoner?”
“That is correct.”
“Sure fooled us,” one of the others observed, nodding slowly.
Another round of glances was exchanged.
Ansel cleared his throat then. “You know,” he said, “at your present size, great demon, I don’t see any way you could be gotten into that bottle. I daresay your excellency couldn’t even put yourself into it now if you wanted to.”
“But you’d like to see me try, is that it?”
“Not at all,” Ansel said. “We are entirely at your orders. I just wish you would show me that you can do it again.”
“If I did,” Azzie said, “would you play fair with me and not close the stopper?”
“Yes, sir, that I would.”
“Would you swear it?”
“On my immortal soul,” Ansel said.
“And the other brothers?”
“We also swear,” they said.
“Okay, then,” Azzie said. “Watch this.” He stepped into the bottle and maneuvered so that he fit entirely inside. As soon as he was all the way in the brothers put in the stopper.
Azzie looked out at them. “Okay, quit horsing around and unplug this bottle!”
The brothers chuckled; Ansel motioned to them. Chor and Hald took up a flagstone from the floor, revealing a stone-lined well. From far below came the sound of water.
“Take note, demon,” Ansel said. “We’ll push you, bottle and all, into the well, and cover it up, and paint a skull and crossbones on it so people will think it’s poisoned. Fat chance your friends will have of finding you then.”
“You broke your word,” Azzie said.
“Well, what of it? Nothing much you can do about it, is there?”
“All I can do,” Azzie said, “is tell you a story.”
“Come on, let’s get away from here,” the two other brothers said. But Ansel said, “No, let’s hear him out. Then we can laugh and go away.”
Azzie said, “Bottles to contain demons have been in constant use for several thousand years. Indeed, the first man to ever make a bottle – a Chinaman, by the way – did so in order to trap one of us. The ancient Assyrians and Hittites kept their demons in clay pots. Certain African tribes keep us in tightly woven baskets. We are aware of this, and of how the customs for trapping us vary from one part of the world to another. In Europe, demons always wear these.”
He held up his hand. On his forefinger, or foreclaw, there glistened a brilliant diamond.
“And with it we do this.” Azzie swung his arm in an arc, the point of the diamond in contact with the greenish glass. Azzie swung a circle, then pushed against the glass. The circle he had cut fell out. He stepped through.
Ansel, his face frozen with fear, said, “We were only kidding, boss. Isn’t that right, boys?”
“That’s right,” said Chor and Hald, both of them grinning from ear to ear, sweat dripping from their rudimentary brows.
“Then you’ll like this,” Azzie said. He waved his fingers and muttered under his breath. There was a flash of light and a puff of smoke. When it cleared, a very small demon with horn-rim glasses became visible, sitting nearby, writing something with a quill pen, on a parchment.