‘Amazin',’ he said again. ‘He just looks as though he's thinking, right?’
‘Er… yes.’
‘But he's not actually thinking?’
‘Er… no.’
‘So… he just gives the impression of thinking but really it's just a show?’
‘Er… yes.’
‘Just like everyone else, then, really,’ said Ridcully.
The boy gave the Hogfather an appraising stare as he sat down on the official knee.
‘Let's be absolutely clear. I know you're just someone dressed up,’ he said. ‘The Hogfather is a biological and temporal impossibility. I hope we understand one another.’
AH. SO I DON'T EXIST?
‘Correct. This is just a bit of seasonal frippery and, I may say, rampantly commercial. My mother's already bought my presents. I instructed her as to the right ones, of course. She often gets things wrong.’
The Hogfather glanced briefly at the smiling, worried image of maternal ineffectiveness hovering nearby.
HOW OLD ARE YOU, BOY?
The child rolled his eyes. ‘You're not supposed to say that,’ he said. ‘I have done this before, you know. You have to start by asking me my name.’
AARON FIDGET, ‘THE PINES’, EDGEWAY ROAD, ANKHMORPORK.
‘I expect someone told you,’ said Aaron. ‘I expect these people dressed up as pixies get the information from the mothers.’
AND YOU ARE EIGHT, GOING ON… OH, ABOUT FORTY-FIVE, said the Hogfather.
‘There's forms to fill in when they pay, expect,’ said Aaron.
AND YOU WANT WALNUT'S INOFFENSIVE REPTILES OF THE STO PLAINS, A DISPLAY CABINET, A COLLECTOR'S ALBUM, A KILLING JAR AND A LIZARD PRESS. WHAT IS A LIZARD PRESS?
‘You can't glue them in when they're still fat, or didn't you know that? I expect she told you about them when I was momentarily distracted by the display of pencils. Look, shall we end this charade? just give me my orange and we'll say no more about it.’
I CAN GIVE FAR MORE THAN ORANGES.
‘Yes, yes, I saw all that. Probably done in collusion with accomplices to attract gullible customers. Oh dear, you've even got a false beard. By the way, old chap, did you know that your pig—’
YES.
‘All done by mirrors and string and pipes, I expect. It all looked very artificial to me.’
The Hogfather snapped his fingers.
‘That's probably a signal, I expect,’ said the boy, getting down. ‘Thank you very much.’
HAPPY HOGSWATCH, said the Hogfather as the boy walked away.
Uncle Heavy patted him on the shoulder.
‘Well done, master,’ he said. ‘Very patient. I'd have given him a clonk athwart the earhole, myself.’
OH, I'M SURE HE'LL SEE THE ERROR OF HIS WAYS. The red hood turned so that only Albert could see into its depths. RIGHT AROUND THE TIME HE OPENS THOSE BOXES HIS MOTHER WAS CARRYING …
HO. HO. HO.
‘Don't tie it so tight! Don't tie it so tight!’
SQUEAK.
There was a bickering behind Susan as she sought along the shelves in the canyons of Death's huge library, which was so big that clouds would form in it if they dared.
‘Right, right,’ said the voice she was trying to ignore. ‘That's about right. I've got to be able to move my wings, right?’
SQUEAK.
‘Ah,’ said Susan, under her breath. ‘The Hogfather…’
He had several shelves, not just one book. The first volume seemed to be written on a roll of animal skin. The Hogfather was old.
‘OK, OK. How does it look?’
SQUEAK.
‘Miss?’ said the raven, seeking a second opinion.
Susan looked up. The raven bounced past, its breast bright red.
‘Twit, twit,’ it said. ‘Bobbly bobbly bob. Hop hop hopping along…’
‘You're fooling no one but yourself,’ said Susan. ‘I can see the string.’
She unrolled the scroll.
‘Maybe I should sit on a snowy log,’ mumbled the raven behind her. ‘Thats probably the trick, right enough.’
‘I can't read this!’ said Susan. ‘The letters are all… odd…’
‘Ethereal runes,’ said the raven. ‘The Hogfather ain't human, after all.’
Susan ran her hands over the thin leather. The… shapes flowed around her fingers.
She couldn't read them but she could feel them. There was the sharp smell of snow, so vivid that her breath condensed in the air. There were sounds, hooves, the snap of branches in a freezing forest…
A bright shining ball …
Susan jerked awake and thrust the scroll aside. She unrolled the next one, which looked as though it was made of strips of bark. Characters hovered over the surface. Whatever they were, they had never been designed to be read by the eye; you could believe they were a Braille for the touching mind. Images ribboned across her senses — wet fur, sweat, pine, soot, iced air, the tang of damp ash, pig… manure, her governess mind hastily corrected. There was blood… and the taste of ….beans? It was all images without words. Almost… animal.
‘But none of this is right! Everyone knows he's a jolly old fat man who hands out presents to kids!’ she said aloud.
‘Is. Is. Not was. You know how it is,’ said the raven.
‘Do I?’
‘It's like, you know, industrial re-training,’ said the bird. ‘Even gods have to move with the times, am I right? He was probably quite different thousands of years ago. Stands to reason. No one wore stockings, for one thing.’ He scratched at his beak.
‘Yersss,’ he continued expansively, ‘he was probably just your basic winter demi-urge. You know… blood on the snow, making the sun come up. Starts off with animal sacrifice, y'know, hunt some big hairy animal to death, that kind of stuff. You know there's some people up on the Ramtops who kill a wren at Hogswatch and walk around from house to house singing about it? With a whack-fol-oh-diddle-dildo. Very folkloric, very myffic.’
‘A wren? Why?’
‘I dunno. Maybe someone said, hey, how'd you like to hunt this evil bastard of an eagle with his big sharp beak and great ripping talons, sort of thing, or how about instead you hunt this wren, which is basically about the size of a pea and goes “twit”? Go on, you choose. Anyway, then later on it sinks to the level of religion and then they start this business where some poor bugger finds a special bean in his tucker, oho, everyone says, you're king, mate, and he thinks “This is a bit of all right” only they don't say it wouldn't be a good idea to start any long books, 'cos next thing he's legging it over the snow with a dozen other buggers chasing him with holy sickles so's the earth'll come to life again and all this snow'll go away. Very, you know… ethnic. Then some bright spark thought, hey, looks like that damn sun comes up anyway, so how come we're giving those druids all this free grub? Next thing you know, there's a job vacancy. That's the thing about gods. They'll always find a way to, you know… hang on.’
‘The damn sun comes up anyway,’ Susan repeated. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Oh, observation. It happens every morning. I seen it.’
‘I meant all that stuff about holy sickles and things.’
The raven contrived to look smug.
‘Very occult bird, your basic raven,’ he said. ‘Blind Io the Thunder God used to have these myffic ravens that flew everywhere and told him everything that was going on.’
‘Used to?’
‘WeeeW… you know how he's not got eyes in his face, just these, like, you know, free-floating eyeballs that go and zoom around…’ The raven coughed in species embarrassment. ‘Bit of an accident waiting to happen, really.’
‘Do you ever think of anything except eyeballs?’
‘Well… there's entrails.’
SQUEAK.
‘He's right, though,’ said Susan. ‘Gods don't die. Never completely die…’
There's always somewhere, she told herself. Inside some stone, perhaps, or the words of a song, or ridin
g the mind of some animal, or maybe in a whisper on the wind. They never entirely go, they hang on to the world by the tip of a fingernail, always fighting to find a way back. Once a god, always a god. Dead, perhaps, but only like the world in winter.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let's see what happened to him…’
She reached out for the last book and tried to open it at random …
The feeling lashed at her out of the book, like a whip …
…hooves, fear, blood, snow, cold, night …
She dropped the scroll. It slammed shut.
SQUEAK?
‘I'm… all right.’
She looked down at the book and knew that she'd been given a friendly warning, such as a pet animal might give when it was crazed with pain but just still tame enough not to claw and bite the hand that fed it — this time. Wherever the Hogfather was — dead, alive, somewhere — he wanted to be left alone …
She eyed the Death of Rats. His little eye sockets flared blue in a disconcertingly familiar way.
SQUEAK. EEK?
‘The rat says, if he wanted to find out about the Hogfather, he'd go to the Castle of —
‘Oh, that's just a nursery tale,’ said Susan. ‘That's where the letters are supposed to go that are posted up the chimney. That's just an old story.’
She turned. The rat and the raven were staring at her. And she realized that she'd been too normal.
SQUEAK?
‘The rat says, “What d'you mean, just?”’ said the raven.
Chickenwire sidled towards Medium Dave in the garden. If you could call it a garden. It was the land round the… house. If you could call it a house. No one said much about it, but every so often you just had to get out. It didn't feel right, inside.
He shivered. ‘Where's himself?’ he said.
‘Oh, up at the top,’ said Medium Dave. ‘Still trying to open that room.’
‘The one with all the locks?’
‘Yeah.’
Medium Dave was rolling a cigarette. Inside the house… or tower, or both, or whatever… you couldn't smoke, not properly. When you smoked inside it tasted horrible and you felt sick.
‘What for? We done what we came to do, didn't we? Stood there like a bunch of kids and watched that wet wizard do all his chanting it was all I could do to keep a straight face. What's he after now?’
‘He just said if it was locked that bad he wanted to see inside.’
‘I thought we were supposed to do what we came for and go!’
‘Yeah? You tell him. Want a roll-up?’
Chickenwire took the bag of tobacco and relaxed. ‘I've seen some bad places in my time, but this takes the serious biscuit.’
‘Yeah.’
‘It's the cute that wears you down. And there's got to be something else to eat than apples.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And that damn sky. That damn sky is really getting on my nerves.’
‘Yeah.’
They kept their eyes averted from that damn sky. For some reason, it made you feel that it was about to fall on you. And it was worse if you let your eyes stray to the gap where a gap shouldn't be. The effect was like getting toothache in your eyeballs.
In the distance Banjo was swinging on a swing. Odd, that, Dave thought. Banjo seemed perfectly happy here.
‘He found a tree that grows lollipops yesterday,’ he said moodily. ‘Well, I say yesterday, but how can you tell? And he follows the man around like a dog. No one ever laid a punch on Banjo since our mam died. He's just like a little boy, you know. Inside. Always has been. Looks to me for everything. Used to be, if I told him “punch someone”, he'd do it.’
‘And they stayed punched.’
‘Yeah. Now he follows him around everywhere. It makes me sick.’
‘What are you doing here, then?’
‘Ten thousand dollars. And he says there's more, you know. More than we can imagine.’
He was always Teatime.
‘He ain't just after money.’
‘Yeah, well, I didn't sign up for world domination,’ said Medium Dave. ‘That sort of thing gets you into trouble.’
‘I remember your mam saying that sort of thing,’ said Chickenwire. Medium Dave rolled his eyes. Everyone remembered Ma Lilywhite. ‘Very straight lady, was your ma. Tough but fair.’
‘Yeah… tough.’
‘I recall that time she strangled Glossy Ron with his own leg,’ Chickenwire went on. ‘She had a wicked right arm on her, your mam.’
‘Yeah. Wicked.’
‘She wouldn't have stood for someone like Teatime.’
‘Yeah,’ said Medium Dave.
‘That was a lovely funeral you boys gave her. Most of the Shades turned up. Very respectful. All them flowers. An' everyone looking so…’ Chickenwire floundered ‘…happy. In a sad way, o' course.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Have you got any idea how to get back home?’
Medium Dave shook his head.
‘Me neither. Find the place again, I suppose.’ Chickenwire shivered. ‘I mean, what he did to that carter… I mean, well, I wouldn't even act like that to me own dad—’
‘Yeah.’
‘Ordinary mental, yes, I can deal with that. But he can be talking quite normal, and then—’
‘Yeah.’
‘Maybe the both of us could creep up on him and—’
‘Yeah, yeah. And how long'll we live? In seconds!
‘We could get lucky —’ Chickenwire began.
‘Yeah? You've seen him. This isn't one of those blokes who threatens you. This is one of those blokes who'd kill you soon as look at you. Easier, too. We got to hang on, right? It's like that saying about riding a tiger.’
‘What saying about riding a tiger?’ said Chickenwire suspiciously.
‘Well…’ Medium Dave hesitated. ‘You… well, you get branches slapping you in the face, fleas, that sort of thing. So you got to hang on. Think of the money. There's bags of it in there. You saw it.’
‘I keep thinking of that glass eye watching me. I keep thinking it can see right in my head.’
‘Don't worry, he doesn't suspect you of anything.’
‘How d'you know?’
‘You're still alive, yeah?’
In the Grotto of the Hogfather, a round-eyed child.
HAPPY HOGSWATCH. HO. HO. HO. AND YOUR NAME IS… EUPHRASIA COAT, CORRECT?
‘Go on, dear, answer the nice man.’
‘'s.’
AND YOU ARE SIX YEARS OLD.
‘Go on, dear. They're all the same at this age, aren't they…’
‘'s.’
AND YOU WANT A PONY
‘'s.’ A small hand pulled the Hogfather's hood down to mouth level. Heavy Uncle Albert heard a ferocious whispering. Then the Hogfather leaned back.
YES, I KNOW. WHAT A NAUGHTY PIG IT WAS, INDEED.
His shape flickered for a moment, and then a hand went into the sack.
HERE IS A BRIDLE FOR YOUR PONY, AND A SADDLE, AND A RATHER STRANGE HARD HAT AND A PAIR OF THOSE TROUSERS THAT MAKE YOU LOOK AS THOUGH YOU HAVE A LARGE RABBIT IN EACH POCKET.
‘But we can't have a pony, can we, Euffie, because we live on the third floor…’
OH, YES. IT'S IN THE KITCHEN.
‘I'm sure you're making a little joke, Hogfather,’ said Mother, sharply.
HO. HO. YES. WHAT A JOLLY FAT MAN I AM. IN THE KITCHEN? WHAT A JOKE. DOLLIES AND SO ON WILL BE DELIVERED LATER AS PER YOUR LETTER.
‘What do you say, Euffie?’
‘' nk you.’
‘'ere, you didn't really put a pony in their kitchen, did you?’ said Heavy Uncle Albert as the line moved on.
DON'T BE FOOLISH, ALBERT. I SAID THAT TO BE JOLLY.
‘Oh, right. Hah, for a minute—’
IT'S IN THE BEDROOM.
‘Ah…’
MORE HYGIENIC.
‘Well, it'll make sure of one thing,’ said Albert. ‘Third floor? They're going to believe all right.’
; YES. YOU KNOW, I THINK I'M GETTING THE HANG OF THIS. HO. HO. HO.
At the Hub of the Discworld, the snow burned blue and green. The Aurora Corealis hung in the sky, curtains of pale cold fire that circled the central mountains and cast their spectral light over the ice.
They billowed, swirled and then trailed a ragged arm on the end of which was a tiny dot that became, when the eye of imagination drew nearer, Binky.
He trotted to a halt and stood on the air. Susan looked down.
And then found what she was looking for. At the end of a valley of snow-mounded trees something gleamed brightly, reflecting the sky.
The Castle of Bones.
Her parents had sat her down one day when she was about six or seven and explained how such things as the Hogfather did not really exist, how they were pleasant little stories that it was fun to know, how they were not real. And she had believed it. All the fairies and bogeymen, all those stories from the blood and bone of humanity, were not really real.
They'd lied. A seven-foot skeleton had turned out to be her grandfather. Not a flesh and blood grandfather, obviously. But a grandfather, you could say, in the bone.
Binky touched down and trotted over the snow.
Was the Hogfather a god? Why not? thought Susan. There were sacrifices, after all. All that sherry and pork pie. And he made commandments and rewarded the good and he knew what you were doing. If you believed, nice things happened to you. Sometimes you found him in a grotto, and sometimes he was up there in the sky …
The Castle of Bones loomed over her now. It certainly deserved the capital letters, up this close.
She'd seen a picture of it in one of the children's books. Despite its name, the woodcut artist had endeavoured to make it look… sort of jolly.
It wasn't jolly. The pillars at the entrance were hundreds of feet high. Each of the steps leading up was taller than a man. They were the greygreen of old ice.
Ice. Not bone. There were faintly familiar shapes to the pillars, possibly a suggestion of femur or skull, but it was made of ice.
Binky was not challenged by the high stairs. It wasn't that he flew. It was simply that he walked on a ground level of his own devising.
Snow had blown over the ice. Susan looked down at the drifts. Death left no tracks, but there were the faint outlines of booted footprints. She'd be prepared to bet they belonged to Albert. And… yes, half obscured by the snow… it looked as though a sledge had stood here. Animals had milled around. But the snow was covering everything.
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