‘Now, miss, you know the rules! I don't get bitten, I don't get me froat torn out and no one hides behind me door! And you don't try your granddad's voice on me! I could ban you for messin' me about like that!’
‘Sorry, it's important,’ said Susan. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that the raven had crept on to the shelves and was pecking the top off a jar.
‘Yeah, well, suppose one of the vampires decides it's important he's missed his tea?’ grumbled Igor, putting the club away.
There was a plink from the direction of the pickled egg jar. Susan tried hard not to look.
‘Can we go?’ said the oh god. ‘All this alcohol makes me nervous.’
Susan nodded and hurried out.
Igor grunted. Then he went back to watching the frost, because Igor never demanded much out of life. After a while he heard a muffled voice say:
‘I 'ot 'un! I 'ot 'un!’
It was indistinct because the raven had speared a pickled egg with its beak.
Igor sighed, and picked up his club. And it would have gone very hard for the raven if the Death of Rats hadn't chosen that moment to bite Igor on the ear.
DOWN THERE, said Death.
The reins were hauled so sharply so quickly that the hogs ended up facing the other way.
Albert fought his way out of a drift of teddy bears, where he'd been dozing.
‘What's up? What's up? Did we hit something?’ he said.
Death pointed downwards. An endless white snowfield lay below, only the occasional glow of a window candle or a half-covered hut indicating the presence on this world of brief mortality.
Albert squinted, and then saw what Death had spotted.
‘'s some old bugger trudging through the snow,’ he said. ‘Been gathering wood, by the look of it. A bad night to be out,’ he said. ‘And I'm out in it too, come to that. Look, master, I'm sure you've done enough now to make sure—’
SOMETHING'S HAPPENING DOWN THERE. HO. HO. HO.
‘Look, he's all right,’ said Albert, hanging on as the sleigh tumbled downwards. There was a brief wedge of light below as the wood-gatherer opened the door of a snow-drifted hovel. ‘See, over there, there's a couple of blokes catching him up, look they're weighed down with parcels and stuff, see? He's going to have a decent Hogswatch after all, no problem there. Now can we go—’
Death's glowing eye sockets took in the scene in minute detail.
IT'S WRONG.
‘Oh, no… here we go again.’
The oh god hesitated.
‘What do you mean, you can't walk through the door?’ said Susan. ‘You walked through the door in the bar.’
‘That was different. I have certain god-like powers in the presence of alcohol. Anyway, we've knocked and she hasn't answered and whatever happened to Mr Manners?’
Susan shrugged, and walked through the cheap woodwork. She knew she probably shouldn't. Every time she did something like this she used up a certain amount of, well, normal. And sooner or later she'd forget what doorknobs were for, just like Grandfather.
Come to think of it, he'd never found out what doorknobs were for.
She opened the door from the inside. The oh god stepped in and looked around. This did not take long. It was not a large room. It had been subdivided from a room that itself hadn't been all that big to start with.
‘This is where the Tooth fairy lives?’ Bilious said. ‘It's a bit… poky, isn't it? Stuff all over the floor… What're these things hanging from this line?’
‘They're… women's clothes,’ said Susan, rummaging through the paperwork on a small rickety table.
‘They're not very big,’ said the oh god. ‘And a bit thin…’
‘Tell me,’ said Susan, without looking up. ‘These memories you arrived here with… They weren't very complicated, were they …? Ah…’
He looked over her shoulder as she opened a small red notebook.
‘I've only talked to Violet a few times,’ she said. ‘I think she delivers the teeth somewhere and gets a percentage of the money. It's not a highly paid line of work. You know, they say you can Earn $$$ in Your Spare Time but she says really she could earn more money waiting on tables — All, this looks right —’
‘What's that?’
‘She said she gets given the names every week.’
‘What, of the children where going to lose teeth?’
‘Yes. Names and addresses,’ said Susan, flicking through the pages.
‘That doesn't sound very likely.’
‘Pardon me, but are you the God of Hangovers? Oh, look here's Twyla's tooth last month.’ She smiled at the neat grey writing. ‘She practically hammered it out because she needed the half-dollar.’
‘Do you like children?’ said the oh god.
She gave him a look. ‘Not raw,’ she said. ‘Other people's are OK. Hold on…’
She flicked some pages back and forth.
‘There's just blank days,’ she said. ‘Look, the last few days, all unticked. No names. But if you go back a week or two, look they're all properly marked off and the money added up at the bottom of the page, see? And… this can't be right, can it?’
There were only five names entered on the first unticked night, for the previous week. Most children instinctively knew when to push their luck and only the greedy or dentally improvident called out the Tooth Fairy around Hogswatch.
‘Read the names,’ said Susan.
‘William Wittles, a.k.a. Willy (home), Tosser (school), 2nd flr bck bdrm, 68 Kicklebury Street;
Sophie Langtree, a.k.a. Daddy's Princess, attic bdrm, 5 The Hippo;
The Hon. Jeffrey Bibbleton, a.k.a. Trouble in Trousers (home), Foureyes (school), 1st fir bck, Scrote
Manor, Park Lane—’
He stopped. ‘I say, this is a bit intrusive, isn't it?’
‘It's a whole new world,’ said Susan. ‘You haven't got there yet. Keep going.’
‘Nuhakme Icta, a.k.a. Little Jewel, basement, The Laughing Falafel, Klatchistan Take-Away and All Nite Grocery, cnr. Soake and Dimwell;
Reginald Lilywhite, a.k.a. Banjo, The Park Lane Bully, Have You Seen This Man? The Goose Gate Grabber, The Nap Hill Lurker, Rm 17, YMPA.
‘YMPA?’
‘It's what we generally call the Young-Men's-Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God-Bel-Shamharoth-Association,’ said Susan. ‘Does that sound to you like someone who'd expect a visit from a tooth fairy?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither. He sounds like someone who'd expect a visit from the Watch.’
Susan looked around. It really was a crummy room, the sort rented by someone who probably took it never intending to stay long, the sort where walking across the floor in the middle of the night would be accompanied by the crack of cockroaches in a death flamenco. It was amazing how many people spent their whole fives in places where they never intended to stay.
Cheap, narrow bed, crumbling plaster, tiny window. She opened the window and fished around below the ledge, and felt satisfied when her questing fingers closed on a piece of string which was attached to an oilcloth bag. She hauled it in.
‘What's that?’ said the oh god, as she opened it on the table.
‘Oh, you see them a lot,’ said Susan, taking out some packages wrapped in second-hand waxed paper. ‘You live alone, mice and roaches eat everything, there's nowhere to store food — but outside the window it's cold and safe. More or less safe. It's an old trick. Now… look at this. Leathery bacon, a green loaf and a bit of cheese you could shave. She hasn't been back home for some time, believe me.’
‘Oh dear. What now?’
‘Where would she take the teeth?’ said Susan, to the world in general but mainly to herself. ‘What the hell does the Tooth Fairy do with—’
There was a knock at the door. Susan opened it.
Outside was a small bald man in a long brown coat. He was holding a clipboard and blinked nervously at the sight of her.
‘Er…’ he began.
�
��Can I help you?’ said Susan.
‘Er, I saw the light, see. I thought Violet was in,’ said the little man. He twiddled the pencil that was attached to his clipboard by a piece of string. ‘Only she's a bit behind with the teeth and there's a bit of money owing and Ernie's cart ain't come back and it's got to go in my report and I come round in case… in case she was ill or something, it not being nice being alone and ill at Hogswatch—’
‘She's not here,’ said Susan.
The man gave her a worried look and shook his head sadly.
‘There's nearly thirteen dollars in pillow money, see. I'll have to report it.’
‘Who to?’
‘It has to go higher up, see. I just hope it's not going to be like that business in Quirm where the girl started robbing houses. We never heard the end of that one—’
‘Report to who?’
‘And there's the ladder and the pliers,’ the man went on, in a litany against a world that had no understanding of what it meant to have to fill in an AF17 report in triplicate. ‘How can I keep track of stocktaking if people go around taking stock?’ He shook his head. ‘I dunno, they get the job, they think it's all nice sunny nights, they get a bit of sharp weather and suddenly it's goodbye Charlie I'm off to be a waitress in the warm. And then there's Ernie. I know him. It's a nip to keep out the cold, and then another one to keep it company, and then a third in case the other two get lost… It's all going to have to go down in my report, you know, and who's going to get the blame? I'll tell you—’
‘It's going to be you, isn't it?’ said Susan. She was almost hypnotized. The man even had a fringe of worried hair and a small, worried moustache. And the voice suggested exactly that here was a man who, at the end of the world, would worry that it would be blamed on him.
‘That's right,’ he said, but in a slightly grudging voice. He was not about to allow a bit of understanding to lighten his day. ‘And the girls all go on about the job but I tell them they've got it easy, it's just basic'ly ladder work, they don't have to spend their evenings knee-deep in paper and making shortfalls good out of their own money, I might add—’
‘You employ the tooth fairies?’ said Susan quickly. The oh god was still vertical but his eyes had glazed over.
The little man preened slightly. ‘Sort of,’ he said. ‘Basic'ly I run Bulk Collection and Despatch—’
‘Where to?’
He stared at her. Sharp, direct questions weren't his forte.
‘I just sees to it they gets on the cart,’ he mumbled. ‘When they're on the cart and Ernie's signed the CV19 for 'em, that's it done and finished, only like I said he ain't turned up this week and—’
‘A whole cart for a handful of teeth?’
‘Well, there's the food for the guards, and— 'ere, who are you, anyway? What're you doing here?’
Susan straightened up. ‘I don't have to put up with this,’ she said sweetly, to no one in particular. She leaned forward again.
WHAT CART ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE, CHARLIE?’ The oh god jolted away. The man in the brown coat shot backwards and splayed against the corridor wall as Susan advanced.
‘Comes Tuesdays,’ he panted. ‘'ere, what—’
‘AND WHERE DOES IT GO?’
‘Dunno! Like I said, when he's—’
‘Signed the GV19 for them it's you done and finished,’ said Susan, in her normal voice. ‘Yes. You said. What's Violet's full name? She never mentioned it.’
The man hesitated.
‘I SAID—’
‘Violet Bottler!’
‘Thank you.’
‘An' Ernie's gorn too,’ said Charlie, continuing more or less on auto-pilot. ‘I call that suspicious. I mean, he's got a wife and everything. Won't be the first man to get his head turned by thirteen dollars and a pretty ankle and, o' course, no one thinks about muggins who has to carry the can, I mean, supposing we was all to get it in our heads to run off with young wimmin?’
He gave Susan the stern look of one who, if it was not for the fact that the world needed him, would even now be tiring of painting naked young ladies on some tropical island somewhere.
‘What happens to the teeth?’ said Susan.
He blinked at her. A bully, thought Susan. A very small, weak, very dull bully, who doesn't manage any real bullying because there's hardly anyone smaller and weaker than him, so he just makes everyone's lives just that little bit more difficult …
‘What sort of question is that?’ he managed, in the face of her stare.
‘You never wondered?’ said Susan, and added to herself, I didn't. Did anyone?
‘Well, 's not my job, I just—’
‘Oh, yes. You said,’ said Susan. ‘Thank you. You've been very helpful. Thank you very much.’
The man stared at her, and then turned and ran down the stairs.
‘Drat,’ said Susan.
‘That's a very unusual swearword,’ said the oh god nervously.
‘It's so easy,’ said Susan. ‘If I want to, I can find anybody. It's a family trait.’
‘Oh. Good.’
‘No. Have you any idea how hard it is to be normal? The things you have to remember? How to go to sleep? How to forget things? What doorknobs are for?’
Why ask him, she thought, as she looked at his shocked face. All that's normal for him is remembering to throw up what someone else drank.
‘Oh, come on,’ she said, and hurried towards the stairs.
It was so easy to slip into immortality, to ride the horse, to know everything. And every time you did, it brought closer the day when you could never get off and never forget.
Death was hereditary.
You got it from your ancestors.
‘Where are we going now?’ said the oh god.
‘Down to the YMPA,’ said Susan.
The old man in the hovel looked uncertainly at the feast spread in front of him. He sat on his stool as curled up on himself as a spider in a flame.
‘I'd got a bit of a mess of beans cooking,’ he mumbled, looking at his visitors through filmy eyes.
‘Good heavens, you can't eat beans at Hogswatch,', said the king, smiling hugely. ‘That's terribly unlucky, eating beans at Hogswatch. My word, yes!’
‘Di'nt know that,’ the old man said, looking down desperately at his lap.
‘We've brought you this magnificent spread. Don't you think so?’
‘I bet you're incredibly grateful for it, too,’ said the page, sharply.
‘Yes, well, o' course, it's very kind of you gennelmen,’ said the old man, in a voice the size of a mouse. He blinked, uncertain of what to do next.
‘The turkey's hardly been touched, still plenty of meat on it,’ said the king. ‘And do have some of this cracking good widgeon stuffed with swan's liver.’
‘—only I'm partial to a bowl of beans and I've never been beholden to no one nor nobody,’ the old man said, still staring at his lap.
‘Good heavens, man, you don't need to worry about that,’ said the king heartily. ‘It's Hogswatch! I was only just now looking out of the window and I saw you plodding through the snow and I said to young Jermain here, I said, “Who's that chappie?” and he said, “Oh, he's some peasant fellow who lives up by the forest,” and I said, “Well, I couldn't eat another thing and it's Hogswatch, after all,” and so we just bundled everything up and here we are!’
‘And I expect you're pathetically thankful,’ said the page. ‘I expect we've brought a ray of light into your dark tunnel of a life, hmm?’
‘—yes, well, o' course, only I'd been savin' 'em for weeks, see, and there's some bakin' potatoes under the fire, I found 'em in the cellar 'n' the mice'd hardly touched 'em.’
The old man never raised his eyes from knee level. ‘Our dad brought me up never to ask for—’
‘Listen,’ said the king, raising his voice a little, ‘I've walked miles tonight and I bet you've never seen food like this in your whole life, eh?’
Tears of humiliated embarrassment wer
e rolling down the old man's face.
‘—well, I'm sure it's very kind of you fine gennelmen but I ain't sure I knows how to eat swans and suchlike, but if you want a bit o' my beans you've only got to say—’
‘Let me make myself absolutely clear,’ said the king sharply. ‘This is some genuine Hogswatch charity, d'you understand? And we're going to sit here and watch the smile on your grubby but honest face, is that understood?’
‘And what do you say to the good king?’ the page prompted.
The peasant hung his head.
‘'nk you.’
‘Right,’ said the king, sitting back. ‘Now, pick up your fork—’
The door burst open. An indistinct figure strode into the room, snow swirling around it in a cloud.
WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
The page started to stand up, drawing his sword. He never worked out how the other figure could have got behind him, but there it was, pressing him gently down again.
‘Hello, son, my name is Albert,’ said a voice by his ear. ‘Why don't you put that sword back very slowly? People might get hurt.’
A finger prodded the king, who had been too shocked to move.
WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING, SIRE?
The king tried to focus on the figure. There was an impression of red and white, but black, too.
To Albert's secret amazement, the man managed to get to his feet and draw himself up as regally as he could.
‘What is going on here, whoever you are, is some fine old Hogswatch charity! And who—’
NO, IT'S NOT.
‘What? How dare you—’
WERE YOU HERE LAST MONTH? WILL YOU BE HERE NEXT WEEK? NO. BUT TONIGHT YOU WANTED TO FEEL ALL WARM INSIDE. TONIGHT YOU WILL WANT THEM TO SAY: WHAT A GOOD KING HE IS.
‘Oh, no, he's going too far again—’ muttered Albert under his breath. He pushed the page down again. “No, you stay still, sonny. Else you'll just be a paragraph.’
‘Whatever it is, it's more than he's got!’ snapped the king. ‘And all we've had from him is ingratitude—’
YES, THAT DOES SPOIL IT, DOESN'T IT? Death leaned forward. GO AWAY.
To the kings's own surprise his body took over and marched him out of the door.
Albert patted the page on the shoulder. ‘And you can run along too,’ he said.
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