‘He says, you don't mess with the rat,’ said the raven.
In a flurry of wings they were gone.
Igor closed the window. He didn't pass any comment.
‘They weren't real,’ said Susan, hurriedly. ‘Well, that is… the raven's probably real, but he hangs around with the rat—’
‘Which isn't real,’ said Igor.
‘That's right!’ said Susan, gratefully. ‘You probably didn't see a thing.’
‘That's right,’ said Igor. ‘Not a thing.’
‘Now… how much do I owe you?’ said Susan.
Igor counted on his fingers.
‘That'll be a dollar for the drinks,’ he said, ‘and fivepence because the raven that wasn't here messed in the pickles.’
It was the night before Hogswatch.
In the Archchancellor's 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 hadn't been able to test everything, but Mr Ridcully had said, ‘I'll 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 didn't meddle with the fabric of time and space, and they kept out of his greenhouses. The way he saw it, it was a partnership.
He'd 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.
I'M FINDING THE BEARD A BIT OF A TRIAL, said Death.
‘Why've 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 DON'T. TOO OFTEN THEY SEE WHAT'S THERE.
‘Well, at least it's keeping you in the right frame of mind, master. In character, sort of thing.’
BUT GOING DOWN THE CHIMNEY? WHERE'S 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.
‘It's 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 buggers'd be writing to someone who walked through walls?’ it said. ‘And the “Ho, ho, ho” could use some more work, if you don't 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. It's got to be a big fat laugh. You got to… you got to sound like you're 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 you're 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 wasn't a good Hogswatch unless you'd 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, shouldn't grin— Any horse that was grinning was planning something.
He sighed again.
Then there was this business of deciding who'd been naughty or nice. He'd never had to think about that sort of thing before. Naughty or nice, it was ultimately all the same.
Still, it had to be done right. Otherwise it wouldn't work.
The pigs pulled up alongside another chimney.
‘Here we are, here we are,’ said Albert. ‘James Riddle, aged eight.’
HAH, YES. HE ACTUALLY SAYS IN HIS LETTER, ‘I BET YOU DON'T EXIST 'COS EVERYONE KNOWS ITS YORE PARENTS.’ OH YES, said Death, with what almost sounded like sarcasm, I'M SURE HIS PARENTS ARE JUST IMPATIENT TO BANG THEIR ELBOWS IN TWELVE FEET OF NARROW UNSWEPT CHIMNEY, I DON'T THINK. I SHALL TREAD EXTRA SOOT INTO HIS CARPET.
‘Right, sir. Good thinking. Speaking of which — down you go, sir.’
HOW ABOUT IF I DON'T GIVE HIM ANYTHING AS A PUNISHMENT FOR NOT BELIEVING?
‘Yeah, but what's that going to prove?’
Death sighed. I SUPPOSE YOU'RE RIGHT.
‘Did you check the list?’
YES. TWICE. ARE YOU SURE THAT'S ENOUGH?
‘Definitely.’
COULDN'T REALLY MAKE HEAD OR TAIL OF IT, TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH. HOW CAN I TELL IF HE'S BEEN NAUGHTY OR NICE, FOR EXAMPLE?
‘Oh, well… I don't know… Has he hung his clothes up, that sort of thing. ’
AND IF HE HAS BEEN GOOD I MAY GIVE HIM THIS KLATCHIAN WAR CHARIOT WITH REAL SPINNING SWORD BLADES?
‘That's right.’
AND IF HE'S BEEN BAD?
Albert scratched his head. ‘When I was a lad, you got a bag of bones. 's'mazing how kids got better behaved towards the end of the year.’
OH DEAR. AND NOW?
Albert held a package up to his ear and rustled it. ‘Sounds like socks.’
SOCKS.
‘Could be a woolly vest.’
SERVE HIM RIGHT, IF I MAY VENTURE TO EXPRESS AN OPINION…
Albert looked across the snowy rooftops and sighed. This wasn't right. He was helping because, well, Death was his master and that's all there was to it, and if the master had a heart it would be in the right place. But…
‘Are you sure we ought to be doing this, master?’
Death stopped, halfway out of the chimney.
CAN YOU THINK OF A BETTER ALTERNATIVE, ALBERT?
And that was it. Albert couldn't.
Someone had to do it.
There were bears on the street again.
Susan ignored them and didn't even make a point of not treading on the cracks.
They just stood around, looking a bit puzzled and slightly transparent, visible only to children and Susan. News like Susan gets around. The bears had heard about the poker. Nuts and berries, their expressions seemed to say. That's what we're here for. Big sharp teeth? What big shar— Oh, these big sharp teeth? They're just for, er, cracking nuts. And some of these berries can be really vicious.
The city's clocks were striking six when she got back to the house. She was allowed her own key. It wasn't as if she was a servant, exactly.
You couldn't be a duchess and a servant. But it was all right to be a governess. It was understood that it wasn't exactly what you were, it was merely a way of passing the time until you did what every girl, o
r gel, was supposed to do in life, i.e. marry some man. It was understood that you were playing.
The parents were in awe of her. She was the daughter of a duke whereas Mr Gaiter was a man to be reckoned with in the wholesale boots and shoes business. Mrs Gaiter was bucking for a transfer into the Upper Classes, which she currently hoped to achieve by reading books on etiquette. She treated Susan with the kind of worried deference she thought was due to anyone who'd known the difference between a serviette and a napkin from birth.
Susan had never before come across the idea that you could rise in Society by, as it were, gaining marks, especially since such noblemen as she'd met in her father's house had used neither serviette nor napkin but a state of mind, which was ‘Drop it on the floor, the dogs'll eat it.’
When Mrs Gaiter had tremulously asked her how one addressed the second cousin of a queen, Susan had replied without thinking, ‘We called him Jamie, usually,’ and Mrs Gaiter had had to go and have a headache in her room.
Mr Gaiter just nodded when he met her in a passage and never said very much to her. He was pretty sure he knew where he stood in boots and shoes and that was that.
Gawain and Twyla, who'd been named by people who apparently loved them, had been put to bed by the time Susan got in, at their own insistence. It's a widely held belief at a certain age that going to bed early makes tomorrow come faster.
She went to tidy up the schoolroom and get things ready for the morning, and began to pick up the things the children had left lying around. Then something tapped at a window pane.
She peered out at the darkness, and then opened the window. A drift of snow fell down outside.
In the summer the window opened into the branches of a cherry tree. In the winter dark, they were little grey fines where the snow had settled on them.
‘Who's that?’ said Susan.
Something hopped through the frozen branches.
‘Tweet tweet tweet, would you believe?’ said the raven.
‘Not you again?’
‘You wanted maybe some dear little robin? Listen, your grand—’
‘Go away! ’
Susan slammed the window and pulled the curtains across. She put her back to them, to make sure, and tried to concentrate on the room. It helped to think about… normal things.
There was the Hogswatch tree, a rather smaller version of the grand one in the hall. She'd helped the children to make paper decorations for it. Yes. Think about that.
There were the paperchains. There were the bits of holly, thrown out from the main rooms for not having enough berries on them, and now given fake modelling clay berries and stuck in anyhow on shelves and behind pictures.
There were two stockings hanging from the mantelpiece of the small schoolroom grate. There were Twyla's paintings, all blobby blue skies and violently green grass and red houses with four square windows. There were …
Normal things …
She straightened up and stared at them, her fingernails beating a thoughtful tattoo on a wooden pencil case.
The door was pushed open. It revealed the tousled shape of Twyla, hanging onto the doorknob with one hand.
‘Susan, there's a monster under my bed again…’
The click of Susan's fingernails stopped.
‘…I can hear it moving about…’
Susan sighed and turned towards the child.
‘All right, Twyla. I'll be along directly.’
The girl nodded and went back to her room, leaping into bed from a distance as a precaution against claws.
There was a metallic tzing as Susan withdrew the poker from the little brass stand it shared with the tongs and the coal shovel.
She sighed. Normality was what you made it.
She went into the children's bedroom and leaned over as if to tuck Twyla up. Then her hand darted down and under the bed. She grabbed a handful of hair. She pulled.
The bogeyman came out like a cork but before it could get its balance it found itself spreadeagled against the wall with one arm behind its back. But it did manage to turn its head, to see Susan's face glaring at it from a few inches away.
Gawain bounced up and down on his bed.
‘Do the Voice on it! Do the Voice on it!’ he shouted.
‘Don't do the Voice, don't do the Voice!’ pleaded the bogeyman urgently.
‘Hit it on the head with the poker!’
‘Not the poker! Not the poker!’
‘It's you, isn't it,’ said Susan. ‘From this afternoon…’
‘Aren't you going to poke it with the poker?’ said Gawain.
‘Not the poker!’ whined the bogeyman.
‘New in town?’ whispered Susan.
‘Yes!’ The bogeyman's forehead wrinkled with puzzlement. ‘Here, how come you can see me?’
‘Then this is a friendly warning, understand? Because it's Hogswatch.’
The bogeyman tried to move. ‘You call this friendly?’
‘Ah, you want to try for unfriendly?’ said Susan, adjusting her grip.
‘No, no, no, I like friendly!’
‘This house is out of bounds, right?’
‘You a witch or something?’ moaned the bogeyman.
‘I'm just… something. Now… you won't be around here again, will you? Otherwise it'll be the blanket next time.’
‘No!’
‘I mean it. We'll put your head under the blanket.’
‘No!’
‘It's got fluffy bunnies on it. ’
‘No!’
‘Off you go, then.’
The bogeyman half fell, half ran towards the door.
‘'s not right,’ it mumbled. ‘You're not s'posed to see us if you ain't dead or magic. 's not fair…’
‘Try number nineteen,’ said Susan, relenting a little. ‘The governess there doesn't believe in bogeymen.’
‘Right?’ said the monster hopefully.
‘She believes in algebra, though.’
‘Ah. Nice.’ The bogeyman grinned hugely. It was amazing the sort of mischief that could be caused in a house where no one in authority thought you existed.
‘I'll be off, then,’ it said. ‘Er. Happy Hogswatch.’
‘Possibly,’ said Susan, as it slunk away.
‘That wasn't as much fun as the one last month,’ said Gawain, getting between the sheets again. ‘You know, when you kicked him in the trousers—’
‘Just you two get to sleep now,’ said Susan.
‘Verity said the sooner we got to sleep the sooner the Hogfather would come,’ said Twyla conversationally.
‘Yes,’ said Susan. ‘Unfortunately, that might be the case.’
The remark passed right over their heads. She wasn't sure why it had gone through hers, but she knew enough to trust her senses.
She hated that kind of sense. It ruined your life. But it was the sense she had been born with.
The children were tucked in, and she closed the door quietly and went back to the schoolroom.
Something had changed.
She glared at the stockings, but they were unfulfilled. A paperchain rustled.
She stared at the tree. Tinsel had been twined around it, badly pasted-together decorations had been hung on it. And on top was the fairy made of—
She crossed her arms, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed theatrically.
‘It's you, isn't it?’ she said.
SQUEAK?
‘Yes, it is. You're sticking out your arms like a scarecrow and you've stuck a little star on your scythe, haven't you…?’
The Death of Rats hung his head guiltily.
SQUEAK.
‘You're not fooling anyone.’
SQUEAK.
‘Get down from there this minute!’
SQUEAK.
‘And what did you do with the fairy?’
‘It's shoved under a cushion on the chair,’ said a voice from the shelves on the other side of the room. There was a clicking noise and the raven's voice added, ‘These damn eyeballs are
hard, aren't they?’
Susan raced across the room and snatched the bowl away so fast that the raven somersaulted and landed on its back.
‘They're walnuts!’ she shouted, as they bounced around her. ‘Not eyeballs! This is a schoolroom! And the difference between a school and a-a-a raven delicatessen is that they hardly ever have eyeballs lying around in bowls in case a raven drops in for a quick snack! Understand? No eyeballs! The world is full of small round things that aren't eyeballs! OK?’
The raven's own eyes revolved.
‘'n' I suppose a bit of warm liver's out of the question—’
‘Shut up! I want both of you out of here right now! I don't know how you got in here—’
‘There's a law against coming down the chimney on Hogswatchnight?’
‘—but I don't want you back in my life, understand?’
‘The rat said you ought to be warned even if you were crazy,’ said the raven sulkily. ‘I didn't want to come, there's a donkey dropped dead just outside the city gates, I'll be lucky now if I get a hoof—’
‘Warned?’ said Susan.
There it was again. The change in the weather of the mind, a sensation of tangible time …
The Death of Rats nodded.
There was a scrabbling sound far overhead. A few flakes of soot dropped down the chimney.
SQUEAK, said the rat, but very quietly.
Susan was aware of a new sensation, as a fish might be aware of a new tide, a spring of fresh water flowing into the sea. Time was pouring into the world.
She glanced up at the clock. It was just on half past six.
The raven scratched its beak.
‘The rat says… The rat says: you'd better watch out…’
There were others at work on this shining Hogswatch Eve. The Sandman was out and about, dragging his sack from bed to bed. Jack Frost wandered from window pane to window pane, making icy patterns.
And one tiny hunched shape slid and slithered along the gutter, squelching its feet in slush and swearing under its breath.
It wore a stained black suit and, on its head, the type of hat known in various parts of the multiverse as ‘bowler’, ‘derby’ or ‘the one that makes you look a bit of a tit’. The hat had been pressed down very firmly and, since the creature had long pointy ears, these had been forced out sideways and gave it the look of a small malignant wing-nut.
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