Hogfather (37 page)

There was nothing there.

She told herself,
He’ll catch me if I fall, he’ll catch me if I fall, he’ll catch me if I fall
…

Powdered ice made her eyes sting. A flailing trotter almost slammed against her head.

An older voice said,
No, he won’t. If I fall now I don’t deserve to be caught
.

The creature’s eye was inches away. And then she knew…

…Out of the depths of eyes of all but the most unusual of animals comes an echo. Out of the dark eye in front of her, someone looked back…

A foot caught the rock and she concentrated her whole being on it, kicking herself upward in one last effort. Pig and woman rocked for a moment and then a trotter caught a footing and the boar plunged forward along the ridge.

Susan risked a look behind.

The dogs still moved oddly. There was a slight jerkiness about their movements, as if they flowed from position to position rather than moved by ordinary muscles.

Not dogs, she thought. Dog shapes.

There was another shock underfoot. Snow flew up. The world tilted. She felt the shape of the boar change when its muscles bunched and sent it soaring as a slab of ice and rock came away and began the long slide into darkness.

Susan was thrown off when the creature landed, and tumbled into deep snow. She flailed around madly, expecting at any minute to begin sliding.

Instead her hand found a snow-encrusted branch. A few feet away the boar lay on its side, steaming and panting.

She pulled herself upright. The spur here had widened out into a hill, with a few frosted trees on it.

The dogs had reached the gap and were milling round, struggling to prevent themselves slipping.

They could easily clear the distance, she could see. Even the boar had managed it with her on its back. She put both hands around the branch and heaved; it came away with a crack, like a broken icicle, and she waved it like a club.

“Come on,” she said. “Jump! Just you try it! Come
on
!”

One did. The branch caught it as it landed, and then Susan spun and brought the branch back on the upswing, lifting the dazed animal off its feet and out over the edge.

For a moment the shape wavered and then, howling, it dropped out of sight.

She danced a few steps of rage and triumph.

“Yes! Yes! Who wants some? Anyone else?”

The other dogs looked her in the eye, decided that no one did, and that there wasn’t. Finally, after one or two nervous attempts, they managed to turn, still sliding, and tried to make it back to the plateau.

A figure barred their way.

It hadn’t been there a moment ago but it looked permanent now. It seemed to have been made of snow, three balls of snow piled on one another. It had black dots for eyes. A semicircle of more dots formed the semblance of a mouth. There was a carrot for the nose.

And, for the arms, two twigs.

At this distance, anyway.

One of them was holding a curved stick.

A raven wearing a damp piece of red paper landed on one arm.

“Bob bob bob?” it suggested. “Merry Solstice? Tweetie tweet? What are you waiting for? Hogswatch?”

The dogs backed away.

The snow broke off the snowman in chunks, revealing a gaunt figure in a flapping black robe.

Death spat out the carrot.

H
O
. H
O
. H
O
.

The gray bodies smeared and rippled as the hounds sought desperately to change their shape.

YOU COULDN’T RESIST IT
? I
N THE END
? A
MISTAKE
, I
FANCY
.

He touched the scythe. There was a click as the blade flashed into life.

I
T GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN, LIFE
, said Death, stepping forward. S
PEAKING METAPHORICALLY, OF COURSE
. I
T’S A HABIT THAT’S HARD TO GIVE UP
. O
NE PUFF OF BREATH IS NEVER ENOUGH
. Y
OU’LL FIND YOU WANT TO TAKE ANOTHER
.

A dog started to slip on the snow and scrabbled desperately to save itself from the long, cold drop.

A
ND, YOU SEE, THE MORE YOU STRUGGLE FOR EVERY MOMENT, THE MORE ALIVE YOU STAY
…W
HICH IS WHERE
I
COME IN, AS A MATTER OF FACT
.

The leading dog managed, for a moment, to become a gray cowled figure before being dragged back into shape.

F
EAR, TOO, IS AN ANCHOR
, said Death. A
LL THOSE SENSES, WIDE OPEN TO EVERY FRAGMENT OF THE WORLD
. T
HAT BEATING HEART
. T
HAT RUSH OF BLOOD
. C
AN YOU NOT FEEL IT, DRAGGING YOU BACK
?

Once again the Auditor managed to retain a shape for a few seconds, and managed to say: You cannot do this, there are rules!

Y
ES
. T
HERE ARE RULES
. B
UT YOU BROKE THEM
. H
OW DARE YOU
?
H
OW DARE YOU
?

The scythe blade was a thin blue outline in the gray light.

Death raised a thin finger to where his lips might have been, and suddenly looked thoughtful.

A
ND NOW THERE REMAINS ONLY ONE FINAL QUESTION
, he said.

He raised his hands, and seemed to grow. Light flared in his eye sockets. When he spoke next, avalanches fell in the mountains.

H
AVE YOU BEEN NAUGHTY…OR NICE
?

H
O
. H
O
. H
O
.

Susan heard the wails die away.

The boar lay in white snow that was now red with blood. She knelt down and tried to lift its head.

It was dead. One eye stared at nothing. The tongue lolled.

Sobs welled up inside her. The tiny part of Susan that watched, the inner baby-sitter, said it was just exhaustion and excitement and the backwash of adrenaline. She couldn’t be crying over a dead pig.

The rest of her drummed on its flank with both fists.

“No, you can’t! We
saved
you! Dying isn’t how it’s supposed to go!”

A breeze blew up.

Something stirred in the landscape, something under the snow. The branches on the ancient trees shook gently, dislodging little needles of ice.

The sun rose.

The light streamed over Susan like a silent gale. It was dazzling. She crouched back, raising her forearm to cover her eyes. The great red ball turned frost to fire along the winter branches.

Gold light slammed into the mountain peaks, making every one a blinding, silent volcano. It rolled onward, gushing into the valleys and thundering up the slopes, unstoppable…

There was a groan.

A man lay in the snow where the boar had been.

He was naked except for an animal skin loincloth. His hair was long and had been woven into a thick plait down his back, so matted with blood and grease that it looked like felt. And he was bleeding everywhere the hounds had caught him.

Susan watched for a moment, and then, thinking with something other than her head, methodically tore some strips from her petticoat to bandage the more unpleasant wounds.

Capability, said the small part of her mind. A rational head in emergencies.

Rational something, anyway.

It’s probably some kind of character flaw
.

The man was tattooed. Blue whorls and spirals haunted his skin, under the blood.

He opened his eyes and stared at the sky.

“Can you get up?”

His gaze flicked to her. He tried moving and then fell back.

Eventually she managed to pull the man up into a sitting position. He swayed as she put one of his arms across her shoulders and then heaved him to his feet. She did her best to ignore the stink, which had an almost physical force.

Downhill seemed the best option. Even if his brain wasn’t working yet, his feet seemed to get the idea.

They lurched down through the freezing woods, the snow glowing orange in the risen sun. Cold blue gloom lurked in hollows like little cups of winter.

Beside her, the tattooed man made a gurgling sound. He slipped out of her grasp and landed on his knees in the snow, clutching at his throat and choking. His breath sounded like a saw.

“What
now
? What’s the matter? What’s the matter?”

He rolled his eyes at her and pawed at his throat again.

“Something stuck?” She slapped him as hard as she could on the back, but now he was on his hands and knees, fighting for breath.

She put her hands under his shoulders and pulled him upright, and put her arms around his waist. Oh, gods, how was it supposed to go, she’d gone to
classes
about it, now, didn’t you have to bunch up one fist and then put the other hand around it and then pull
up
and
in
like
this
—

The man coughed and something bounced off a tree and landed in the snow.

She knelt down to have a look.

It was a small black bean.

A bird trilled, high on a branch. She looked up. A wren bobbed at her and fluttered to another twig.

When she looked back, the man was different. He had clothes now, heavy furs, with a fur hood and fur boots. He was supporting himself on a stone-tipped spear, and looked a lot stronger.

Something hurried through the wood, barely visible except by its shadow. For a moment she glimpsed a white hare before it sprang away on a new path.

She looked back. Now the furs had gone and the man looked older, although he had the same eyes. He was wearing thick white robes, and looked very much like a priest.

When a bird called again she didn’t look away. And she realized that she’d been mistaken in thinking that the man changed like the turning of pages. All the images were there at once, and many others, too. What you saw depended on how you looked.

Yes. It’s a good job I’m cool and totally used to this sort of thing, she thought. Otherwise I’d be rather worried…

Now they were at the edge of the forest.

A little way off, four huge boars stood and steamed, in front of a sleigh that looked as if it had been put together out of crudely trimmed trees. There were faces in the blackened wood, possibly carved by stone, possibly carved by rain and wind.

The Hogfather climbed aboard and sat down. He’d put on weight in the last few yards and now it was almost impossible to see anything other than the huge, red-robed man, ice crystals settling here and there on the cloth. Only in the occasional sparkle of frost was there a hint of hair or tusk.

He shifted on the seat and then reached down to extricate a false beard, which he held up questioningly.

S
ORRY
, said a voice behind Susan. T
HAT WAS MINE
.

The Hogfather nodded at Death, as one craftsman to another, and then at Susan. She wasn’t sure if she was being thanked—it was more a gesture of recognition, of acknowledgment that something that needed doing had indeed been done. But it felt like thanks.

Then he shook the reins and clicked his teeth and the sleigh slid away.

They watched it go.

“I remember hearing,” said Susan distantly, “that the idea of the Hogfather wearing a red and white outfit was invented quite recently.”

N
O
. I
T WAS REMEMBERED
.

Now the Hogfather was a red dot on the other side of the valley.

“Well, that about wraps it up for
this
dress,” said Susan. “I’d just like to ask, just out of academic interest…you were sure I was going to survive, were you?”

I
WAS QUITE CONFIDENT
.

“Oh,
good
.”

I
WILL GIVE YOU A LIFT BACK
, said Death, after a while.

“Thank you. Now…tell me…”

W
HAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN’T SAVED HIM
?

“Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?”

N
O
.

“Oh, come
on
. You can’t expect me to believe
that
. It’s an astronomical
fact
.”

T
HE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN
.

She turned on him.

“It’s been a long night, Grandfather! I’m tired and I need a bath! I don’t need silliness!”

T
HE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN
.

“Really? Then what would have happened, pray?”

A
MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD
.

They walked in silence for a moment.

“Ah,” said Susan dully. “Trickery with words. I would have thought you’d have been more literal-minded than that.”

I
AM NOTHING IF NOT LITERAL-MINDED
. T
RICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE
HUMANS
LIVE
.

“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need…
fantasies
to make life bearable.”

R
EALLY
? A
S IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL
? N
O
. H
UMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN
. T
O BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE
.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”

Y
ES
. A
S PRACTICE
. Y
OU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE
LITTLE
LIES
.

“So we can believe the big ones?”

Y
ES
. J
USTICE
. M
ERCY
. D
UTY
. T
HAT SORT OF THING
.

“They’re not the same at all!”

Y
OU THINK SO
? T
HEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN
SHOW
ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY
. A
ND YET
—Death waved a hand. A
ND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME
RIGHTNESS
IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED
.