Hogfather

by Terry Pratchett

Page 7

 

  The turnips were pocketed and so, to the Death of Rats annoyance, was the pork pie. He was pretty sure it was meant to be eaten here, not taken away. The figure scanned the dripping note for a moment, and then turned around and approached the mantelpiece. The Death of Rats pulled back slightly behind Seafons Greetings! A red-gloved hand took down a stocking. There was some creaking and rustling and it was replaced, looking a lot fatter - the larger box sticking out of the top had, just visible, the words Victim Figures Not Included. 3-10 yrs. The Death of Rats couldnt see much of the donor of this munificence. The big red hood hid all the face, apart from a long white beard. Finally, when the figure finished, it stood back and pulled a list out of its pocket. It held it up to the hood and appeared to be consulting it. It waved its other hand vaguely at the fireplace, the sooty footprints, the empty sherry glass and the stocking. Then it bent forward, as if reading some tiny print. AH, YES, it said. ER. . . HO. HO. HO. With that, it ducked down and entered the chimney. There was some scrabbling before its boots gained a purchase, and then it was gone. The Death of Rats realized hed begun to knaw his little scythes handle in sheer shock. SQUEAK? He landed in the ashes and swarmed up the sooty cave of the chimney. He emerged so fast that he shot out with his legs still scrabbling and landed in the snow on the roof. There was a sledge hovering in the air by the gutter. The red-hooded figure had just climbed in and appeared to be talking to someone invisible behind a pile of sacks. HERES ANOTHER PORK PIE. Any mustard? said the sacks. Theyre a treat with mustard. IT DOES NOT APPEAR SO. Oh, well. Pass it over anyway. IT LOOKS VERY BAD. Nah, s just where somethings nibbled it--- I MEAN THE SITUATION. MOST OF THE LETTERS . . . THEY DONT REALLY BELIEVE. THEY PRETEND TO BELIEVE, JUST IN CASE 7 . I FEAR IT MAY BE TOO LATE. IT HAS SPREAD SO FAST AND BACK IN TIME, TOO. Never say die, master. Thats our motto, eh? said the sacks, apparently with their mouth full. I CANT SAY ITS EVER REALLY BEEN MINE. I meant were not going to be intimidated by the certain prospect of complete and utter failure, master. ARENT WE? OH, GOOD. WELL, I SUPPOSE WED BETTER BE GOING. The figure picked up the reins. UP, GOUGER! UP, ROOTER! UP, TUSKER! UP, SNOUTER! GIDDYUP! The four large boars harnessed to the sledge did not move. WHY DOESNT THAT WORK? said the figure in a puzzled, heavy voice. Beats me, master, said the sacks. IT WORKS ON HORSES. You could try “Pig-hooey! ” 7 This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If its all true youll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isnt then youve lost nothing, right? When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, Were going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts . . .

  PIG-HOOEY. They waited. NO . . . DOESNT SEEM TO REACH THEM. There was some whispering. REALLY? YOU THINK THAT WOULD WORK? Itd bloody well work on me if I was a pig, master. VERY WELL, THEN. The figure gathered up the reins again. APPLE! SAUCE! The pigs legs blurred. Silver light flicked across them, and exploded outwards. They dwindled to a dot, and vanished. SQUEAK? The Death of Rats skipped across the snow, slid down a drainpipe and landed on the roof of a shed. There was a raven perched there. It was staring disconsolately at something. SQUEAK! Look at that, willya? said the raven rhetorically. It waved a claw at a bird table in the garden below. They hangs up half a bloody coconut, a lump of bacon rind, a handful of peanuts in a bit of wire and they think theyre the gods gift to the natral world. Huh. Do I see eyeballs? Do I see entrails? I think not. Most intelligent bird in the temperate latitudes an I gets the cold shoulder just because I cant hang upside down and go twit, twit. Look at robins, now. Stroppy little evil buggers, fight like demons, but all they got to do is go bob-bob-bobbing along and they cant move for breadcrumbs. Whereas me myself can recite poems and repeat many humrous phrases-- SQUEAK! Yes? What? The Death of Rats pointed at the roof and then the sky and jumped up and down excitedly. The raven swivelled one eye upwards. Oh, yes. Him, he said. Turns up at this time of year. Tends to be associated distantly with robins, which- SQUEAK! SQUEE IK IR IK! The Death of Rats pantomimed a figure landing in a grate and walking around a room. SQUEAK EEK IK IK, SQUEAK HEEK HEEK HEEK! IK IK SQUEAK! Been overdoing the Hogswatch cheer, have you? Been rustling around in the brandy butter? SQUEAK? The ravens eyes revolved. Look, Deaths Death. Its a full-time job right? its not as though you can run, like, a window cleaning round on the side or nip round after work cutting peoples lawns. SQUEAK! Oh, please yourself. The raven crouched a little to allow the tiny figure to hop on to its back, and then lumbered into the air. Of course, they can go mental, your occult types, it said, as it swooped over the moonlit garden. Look at Old Man Trouble, for one- SQUEAK. Oh, Im not suggestin--- Susan didnt like Biers but she went there anyway, when the pressure of being normal got too much. Biers, despite the smell and the drink and the company, had one important virtue. In Biers no one took any notice. Of anything. Hogswatch was traditionally supposed to be a time for families but the people who drank in Biers probably didnt have families; some of them looked as

  though they might have had litters, or clutches. Some of them looked as though theyd probably eaten their relatives, or at least someones relatives. Biers was where the undead drank. And when Igor the barman was asked for a Bloody Mary, he didnt mix a metaphor. The regular customers didnt ask questions, and not only because some of them found anything above a growl hard to articulate. None of them was in the answers business. Everyone in Biers drank alone. even when they were in groups. Or packs. Despite the decorations put up inexpertly by Igor the barman to show willing, 8 Biers was not a family place. Family was a subject Susan liked to avoid. Currently she was being aided in this by a gin and tonic. In Biers, unless you werent choosy, it paid to order a drink that was transparent because Igor also had undirected ideas about what you could stick on the end of a cocktail stick. If you saw something spherical and green, you just had to hope that it was an olive. She felt hot breath on her ear. A bogeyman had sat down on the stool beside her. Woss a normo doin in a place like this, then? it rumbled, causing a cloud of vaporized alcohol and halitosis to engulf her. Hah, you fink its cool comin down here an swannin around in a black dress wid all the lost boys, eh? Dabblin in a bit of designer darkness, eh? Susan moved her stool away a little. The bogeyman grinned. Want a bogeyman under yer bed, eh?

  Now then, Shlimazel, said Igor, without looking up from polishing a glass. Well, woss she down here for, eh? said the bogeyman. A huge hairy hand grabbed Susans arm. O course, maybe what she wants is-

  I aint telling you again, Shlimazel, said Igor. He saw the girl turn to face Shlimazel. Igor wasnt in a position to see her face fully, but the bogeyman was. He shot back so quickly that he fell off his stool. And when the girl spoke, what she said was only partly words but also a statement, written in stone, of how the future was going to be. GO AWAY AND STOP BOTHERING ME. She turned back and gave Igor a polite and slightly apologetic smile. The bogeyman struggled frantically out of the wreckage of his stool and loped towards the door. Susan felt the drinkers turn back to their private preoccupations. It was amazing what you could get away with in Biers. Igor put down the glass and looked up at the window. For a drinking den that relied on darkness it had rather a large one but, of course, some customers did arrive by air. Something was tapping on it now. Igor lurched over and opened it. Susan looked up. Oh, no . . . The Death of Rats leapt down onto the counter, with the raven fluttering after it. SQUEAK SQUEAK EEK! EEK! SQUEAK IK IK HEEK HEEK HEEK! SQ Go away, said Susan coldly. Im not interested. Youre just a figment of my imagination. The raven perched on a bowl behind the bar and said, Ah, great. SQUEAK! Whatre these? said the raven, flicking something off the end of its beak. Onions? Pfah! 8 Hed done his best. But black and purple and vomit yellow werent a good colour combination for paperchains, and no Hogswatch fairy doll should be nailed up by its head

  Go on, go away, the pair of you, said Susan. The rat says your granddads gone mad, said the
raven. Says hes pretending to be the Hogfather.

  Listen, I just dont- What?

  Red cloak, long beard-’ HEEK! HEEK! HEEK! -going “Ho, ho, ho”, driving around in the big sledge drawn by the four piggies, the whole thing . . .

  Pigs? What happened to Binky?

  Search me. O course, it can happen, as I was telling the rat only just now- Susan put her hands over her ears, more for desperate theatrical effect than for the muffling they gave. I dont want to know! I dont have a grandfather! She had to hold on to that. The Death of Rats squeaked at length. The rat says you must remember, hes tall, not what youd call fleshy, he carries a scythe-

  Go away! And take the . . . the rat with you! She waved her hand wildly and, to her horror and shame, knocked the little hooded skeleton over an ashtray. EEK? The raven took the rats cowl in its beak and tried to drag him away, but a tiny skeletal fist shook its scythe. EEK IK EEK SQUEAK! He says, you dont mess with the rat, said the raven. In a flurry of wings they were gone. Igor dosed the window. He didnt pass any comment. They werent real, said Susan, hurriedly. Well, that is . . . the ravens probably real, but he hangs around with the rat--’ Which isnt real, said Igor. Thats right! said Susan, gratefully. You probably didnt see a thing.

  Thats right, said Igor. Not a thing.

  Now . . . how much do I owe you? said Susan. Igor counted on his fingers. Thatll be a dollar for the drinks, he said, and fivepence because the raven that wasnt here messed in the pickles. It was the night before Hogswatch. In the Archchancellors new bathroom Modo wiped his hands on a piece of rag and looked proudly at his handiwork. Shining porcelain gleamed back at him. Copper and brass shone in the lamplight. He was a little worried that he hadnt been able to test everything, but Mr Ridcully had said, Ill test it when I use it, and Modo never argued with the Gentlemen, as he thought of them. He knew that they all knew a lot more than he knew, and was quite happy knowing this. He didnt meddle with the fabric of time and space, and they kept out of his greenhouses. The way he saw it, it was a partnership. Hed been particularly careful to scrub the floors. Mr Ridcully had been very specific about that. Verruca Gnome, he said to himself, giving tap a last polish. What an imagination the Gentlemen do have. ’ Far off, unheard by anyone, was a faint little noise, like the ringing of tiny silver bells.

  Glingleglingleglingle. . . And someone landed abruptly in a snowdrift and said, Bugger!, which is a terrible thing to say as your first word ever. Overhead, heedless of the new and somewhat angry life that was even now dusting itself off, the sledge soared onwards through time and space. IM FINDING THE BEARD A BIT OF A TRIAL, said Death. Whyve you got to have the beard? said the voice from among the sacks. I thought you said people see what they expect to see. CHILDREN DONT. TOO OFTEN THEY SEE WHATS THERE. Well, at least its keeping you in the right frame of mind, master. In character, sort of thing. BUT GOING DOWN THE CHIMNEY? WHERES THE SENSE IN THAT? I CAN JUST WALK THROUGH THE WALLS. Walking through the walls is not right, neither, said the voice from the sacks. IT WORKS FOR ME. Its got to be chimneys. Same as the beard, really. A head thrust itself out from the pile. It appeared to belong to the oldest, most unpleasant pixie in the universe. The fact that it was underneath a jolly little green hat with a bell on it did not do anything to improve matters. It waved a crabbed hand containing a thick wad of letters, many of them on pastel-coloured paper, often with bunnies and teddy bears on them, and written mostly in crayon. You reckon these little buggersd be writing to someone who walked through walls? it said. And the “Ho, ho, ho” could use some more work, if you dont mind my saying so. HO. HO. HO. No, no, no! said Albert. You got to put a bit of life in it, sir, no offence intended. Its got to be a big fat laugh. You got to . . . you got to sound like youre pissing brandy and crapping plum pudding, sir, excuse my Klatchian. REALLY? HOW DO YOU KNOW ALL THIS? I was young once, sir. Hung up my stocking like a good boy every year. For to get it filled with toys, just like youre doing. Mind you, in those days basically it was sausages and black puddings if you were lucky. But you always got a pink sugar piglet in the toe. It wasnt a good Hogswatch unless youd eaten so much you were sick as a pig, master. Death looked at the sacks. It was a strange but demonstrable fact that the sacks of toys carried by the Hogfather, no matter what they really contained, always appeared to have sticking out of the top a teddy bear, a toy soldier in the kind of colourful uniform that would stand out in a disco, a drum and a red-and- white candy cane. The actual contents always turned out to be something a bit garish and costing $5. 99. Death had investigated one or two. There had been a Real Agatean Ninja, for example, with Fearsome Death Grip, and a Captain Carrot One-Man Night Watch with a complete wardrobe of toy weapons, each of which cost as much as the original wooden doll in the first place. Mind you, the stuff for the girls was just as depressing. It seemed to be nearly all horses. Most of them were grinning. Horses, Death felt, shouldnt grin- Any horse that was grinning was planning something. He sighed again. Then there was this business of deciding whod been naughty or nice. Hed never had to think about that sort of thing before. Naughty or nice, it was ultimately all the same.