Hogfather

‘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. ‘That’s 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?^{41} 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.’