‘Ouch! Search me,’ said the oh god. ‘It’s only a mercy I wasn’t holding a traffic sign and wearing a—’ he winced and paused ‘—having some kind of women’s underwear about my person.’ He sighed. ‘Someone somewhere has a lot of fun,’ he said wistfully. ‘I wish it was me.’
‘Get a drink inside you, that’s my advice,’ said the raven. ‘Have a hair of the dog that bit someone else.’
‘But why
The oh god stopped trying to glare at the raven. ‘I don’t know, where was
Susan looked back at where the castle had been. It was entirely gone.
‘There was a very important building there a moment ago,’ she said.
The oh god nodded carefully.
‘I often see things that weren’t there a moment ago,’ he said. ‘And they often aren’t there a moment later. Which is a blessing in most cases, let me tell you. So I don’t usually take a lot of notice.’
He folded up and landed in the snow again.
There’s just snow now, Susan thought. Nothing but snow and the wind. There’s not even a ruin.
The certainty stole over her again that the Hogfather’s castle wasn’t
It had been an odd enough place. It was where the Hogfather lived, according to the legends. Which was odd, when you thought about it. It
The wind soughed in the trees behind them. Snow slid off branches. Somewhere in the dark there was a flurry of hooves.
A spidery little figure leapt off a snowdrift and landed on the oh god’s head. It turned a beady eye up towards Susan.
‘All right by you, is it?’ said the imp, producing its huge hammer. ‘Some of us have a job to do, you know, even if we are of a metaphorical, nay, folkloric persuasion.’
‘Oh, go
‘If you think
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘They come out of his ears and fly around his head making tweeting noises.’
‘Ah,’ said the raven, sagely. ‘That sounds more like robins. I wouldn’t put anything past
The oh god grunted.
Susan suddenly felt that she didn’t want to leave him. He was human. Well, human shaped. Well, at least he had two arms and legs. He’d freeze to death here. Of course, gods, or even oh gods, probably couldn’t, but humans didn’t think like that. You couldn’t just
Besides, he might have some answers, if she could make him stay awake enough to understand the questions.
From the edge of the frozen forest, animal eyes watched them go.
Mr Crumley sat on the damp stairs and sobbed. He couldn’t get any nearer to the toy department. Every time he tried he got lifted off his feet by the mob and dumped at the edge of the crowd by the current of people.
Someone said, ‘Top of the evenin’, squire,’ and he looked up blearily at the small yet irregularly formed figure that had addressed him thusly.
‘Are you one of the pixies?’ he said, after mentally exhausting all the other possibilities.
‘No, sir. I am not in fact a pixie, sir, I am in fact Corporal Nobbs of the Watch. And this is Constable Visit, sir.’ The creature looked at a piece of paper in its paw. ‘You Mr Crummy?’
‘Crumley!’
‘Yeah, right. You sent a runner to the Watch House and we have hereby responded with commendable speed, sir,’ said Corporal Nobbs. ‘Despite it being Hogswatchnight and there being a lot of strange things happening and most importantly it being the occasion of our Hogswatchly piss-up, sir. But this is all right because Washpot, that’s Constable Visit here, he doesn’t drink, sir, it being against his religion, and although I
Unfortunately, Mr Crumley wasn’t in the right receptive frame of mind. He stood up and waved a shaking finger towards the top of the stairs.
‘I want you to go up there,’ he said, ‘and arrest him!’
‘Arrest who, sir?’ said Corporal Nobbs.
‘The Hogfather!’
‘What for, sir?’
‘Because he’s sitting up there as bold as brass in his Grotto, giving away presents!’
Corporal Nobbs thought about this.
‘You haven’t been having a festive drink, have you, sir?’ he said hopefully.
‘I do not drink!’
‘Very wise, sir,’ said Constable Visit. ‘Alcohol is the tarnish of the soul. Ossory, Book Two, Verse Twenty-four.’
‘Not quite up to speed here, sir,’ said Corporal Nobbs, looking perplexed. ‘I thought the Hogfather is
This time Mr Crumley had to stop and think. Up until now he hadn’t quite sorted things out in his head, other than recognizing their essential wrongness.