Hogfather

‘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.’^{42}

‘Used to?’

‘Weeelll … 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 riding 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 Bones.’^{43}

‘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.’