Reaper Man

"They've been there ever since I was a girl. Mr. Simnel's great-great-grandad made them," said Miss Flitworth. "I always wondered what they did between chimes, you know. I thought they had a little house in there, or something."

I DON'T THINK SO. THEY'RE JUST A THING. THEY'RE NOT ALIVE.

"Hmm. Well, they've been there for hundreds of years. Maybe life is something you sort of acquire?"

YES.

They waited in silence, except for the occasional thud as the minute hand climbed the night.

"It's been quite nice having you around the place, Bill Door."

He didn't reply.

"Helping me with the harvest and everything."

IT WAS... INTERESTING.

"It was wrong of me to delay you, just for a lot of corn."

NO. THE HARVEST IS IMPORTANT.

Bill Door unfolded his palm. The timer appeared.

"I still can't work out how you do that."

IT IS NOT DIFFICULT.

The hiss of the sand grew until it filled the square.

"Have you got any last words?"

YES. I DON'T WANT TO GO.

"Well. Succinct, anyway."

Bill Door was amazed to find she was trying to hold his hand.

Above him the hands of midnight came together. There was a whirring from the clock. The door opened. The automata marched out. They clicked to a halt on either side of the hour bell, bowed to one another, and raised their hammers.

Dong.

And then there was the sound of a horse trotting.

Miss Flitworth found the edge of her vision filling with purple and blue blotches, like the flashes of after-image with no image to come after.

If she jerked her head quickly and peered out of the tail of her eye, she could see small greyclad shapes hovering around the walls.

The Revenooers, she thought. They've come to make sure it all happens.

"Bill?" she said.

He closed his palm over the gold timer.

NOW IT STARTS.

The hoofbeats grew louder, and echoed off the buildings behind them.

REMEMBER: YOU ARE IN NO DANGER.

Bill Door stepped back into the gloom.

Then he reappeared momentarily.

PROBABLY, he added, and retreated into the darkness.

Miss Flitworth sat down on the steps of the clock, cradling the body of the girl across her knees.

"Bill?" she ventured.

A mounted figure rode into the square.

It was, indeed on a skeletal horse. Blue flame crackled over the creature's bones as it trotted forward; Miss Flitworth found herself wondering whether it was a real skeleton, animated in some way, something that had once been the inside of a horse, or a skeletal creature in its own right. It was a ridiculous chain of thought to follow, but it was better than dwelling on the ghastly reality that was approaching.

Did it get rubbed down, or just given a good polish?

Its rider dismounted. It was much taller than Bill Door had been, but the darkness of its robe hid any details; It held something that wasn't exactly a scythe but which might have had a scythe in its ancestry in the same way that even the most cunningly-fashioned surgical implement has a stick somewhere in its past. It was a long way from any implement that ever touched a straw.

The figure stalked towards Miss Flitworth, scythe over its shoulder, and stopped.

Where is He?

"Don't know who you're talking about," said Miss Flitworth. "And if I was you, young man, I'd feed my horse."

The figure appeared to have trouble digesting this information, but finally it seemed to reach a conclusion. It unshipped the scythe and looked down at the child.

I will find Him, it said. But first -

It stiffened.

A voice behind it said:

DROP THE SCYTHE. AND TURN AROUND SLOWLY.

Something within the city, Windle thought. Cities grow up full of people, but they're also full of commerce and shops and religions and...

This is stupid, he told himself. They're just things. They're not alive.

Maybe life is something you acquire.

Parasites and predators, but not like the sort affecting animals and vegetables. They were some kind of big, slower, metaphorical lifeform, living off cities.

But they incubate in the cities, like those, what are they? those icky newman wasp things. He could remember now, just as he could remember everything, reading as a student about creatures that laid their eggs inside other creatures. For months after he'd refused omelettes and caviar, just in case.

And the eggs would... look like the city, in a way, so that citizens would carry them home. Like cuckoo eggs.

I wonder how many cities died in the past? Ringed by parasites, like a coral reef surrounded by starfish.

They'd just become empty, they'd lose whatever spirit they had.

He stood up.

"Where's everyone gone, Librarian?"

"Oook oook."

"Just like them. I'd have done that. Rush off without thinking. May the gods bless them and help them, if they can find the time from their eternal family squabbles."

And then he thought: well, what now? I've thought, and what am I going to do? Rush off, of course. But slowly.