Hogfather (39 page)

I
HAVE MADE THIS FOR YOU
.

She reached out and took a square of damp cardboard. Water dripped off the bottom. Somewhere in the middle, a few brown feathers seemed to have been glued on.

“Thank you. Er…what is it?”

A
LBERT SAID THERE OUGHT TO BE SNOW ON IT, BUT IT APPEARS TO HAVE MELTED
, said Death. I
T IS, OF COURSE, A
H
OGSWATCH CARD
.

“Oh…”

T
HERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A ROBIN ON IT AS WELL, BUT
I
HAD CONSIDERABLE DIFFICULTY IN GETTING IT TO STAY ON
.

“Ah…”

I
T WAS NOT AT ALL CO-OPERATIVE
.

“Really…?”

I
T DID NOT SEEM TO GET INTO THE
H
OGSWATCH SPIRIT AT ALL
.

“Oh. Er. Good. Granddad?”

Y
ES
?

“Why? I mean, why did you do all this?”

He stood quite still for a moment, as if he was trying out sentences in his mind.

I
THINK IT’S SOMETHING TO DO WITH HARVESTS
, he said at last. Y
ES
. T
HAT’S RIGHT
. A
ND BECAUSE HUMANS ARE SO INTERESTING THAT THEY HAVE EVEN INVENTED DULLNESS
. Q
UITE ASTONISHING
.

“Oh.”

W
ELL THEN
…H
APPY
H
OGSWATCH
.

“Yes. Happy Hogswatch.”

Death paused again, at the window.

A
ND GOOD NIGHT, CHILDREN…EVERYWHERE
.

The raven fluttered down onto a log covered in snow. Its prosthetic red breast had been torn and fluttered uselessly behind it.

“Not so much as a lift home,” it muttered. “Look at this, willya? Snow and frozen wastes, everywhere. I couldn’t fly another damn inch. I could starve to death here, you know? Hah! People’re going on about recycling the whole time, but you just try a bit of practical ecology and they just…don’t…want…to…know. Hah! I bet a
robin
’d have a lift home. Oh, yes.”

S
QUEAK
, said the Death of Rats sympathetically, and sniffed.

The raven watched the small hooded figure scrabble at the snow.

“So I’ll just freeze to death here, shall I?” it said gloomily. “A pathetic bundle of feathers with my little feet curled up with the cold. It’s not even as if I’m gonna make anyone a good meal, and let me tell you it’s a disgrace to die thin in my spec—”

It became aware that under the snow was a rather grubbier whiteness. Further scraping by the rat exposed something that could very possibly have been an ear.

The raven stared. “It’s a
sheep
!” it said.

The Death of Rats nodded.

“A
whole
sheep!”
*

S
QUEAK
.

“Oh, wow!” said the raven, hopping forward with its eyes spinning. “Hey, it’s barely cool!”

The Death of Rats patted it happily on a wing.

S
QUEAK-EEK. EEK-SQUEAK
…

“Why, thanks. And the same to you…”

Far, far away and a long, long time ago, a shop door opened. The little toy maker bustled in from the workshop in the rear, and then stopped, with amazing foresight, dead.

Y
OU HAVE A BIG WOODEN ROCKING HORSE IN THE WINDOW
, said the new customer.

“Ah, yes, yes, yes.” The shopkeeper fiddled nervously with his square-rimmed spectacles. He hadn’t heard the bell, and this was worrying him. “But I’m afraid that’s just for show, that is a special order for Lord—”

N
O
. I
WILL BUY IT
.

“No, because, you see—”

T
HERE ARE OTHER TOYS
?

“Yes, indeed, but—”

T
HEN
I
WILL TAKE THE HORSE
. H
OW MUCH WOULD THIS LORDSHIP HAVE PAID YOU
?

“Er, we’d agreed twelve dollars but—”

I
WILL GIVE YOU FIFTY
, said the customer.

The little shopkeeper stopped in mid-remonstrate and started up in mid-greed. There
were
other toys, he told himself quickly. And this customer, he thought with considerable prescience, looked like someone who did not take no for an answer and seldom even bothered to ask the question. Lord Selachii would be angry, but Lord Selachii wasn’t here. The stranger, on the other hand, was here. Incredibly here.

“Er…well, in the circumstances…er…shall I wrap it up for you?”

N
O
. I
WILL TAKE IT AS IT IS
. T
HANK YOU
. I
WILL LEAVE VIA THE BACK WAY, IF IT’S ALL THE SAME TO YOU
.

“Er…how did you get
in
?” said the shopkeeper, pulling the horse out of the window.

T
HROUGH THE WALL
. S
O MUCH MORE CONVENIENT THAN CHIMNEYS, DON’T YOU THINK
?

The apparition dropped a small clinking bag on the counter and lifted the horse easily. The shopkeeper wasn’t in a position to hold onto anything. Even yesterday’s dinner was threatening to leave him.

The figure looked at the other shelves.

Y
OU MAKE GOOD TOYS
.

“Er…thank you.”

I
NCIDENTALLY
, said the customer, as he left, T
HERE IS A SMALL BOY OUT THERE WITH HIS NOSE FROZEN TO THE WINDOW
. S
OME WARM WATER SHOULD DO THE TRICK
.

Death walked out to where Binky was waiting in the snow and tied the toy horse behind the saddle.

A
LBERT WILL BE VERY PLEASED
. I
CAN’T WAIT TO SEE HIS FACE
. H
O
. H
O
. H
O
.

As the light of Hogswatch slid down the towers of Unseen University, the Librarian slipped into the Great Hall with some sheet music clenched firmly in his feet.

As the light of Hogswatch lit the towers of Unseen University, the Archchancellor sat down with a sigh in his study and pulled off his boots
.

It had been a damn long night, no doubt about it. Lots of strange things. First time he’d ever seen the Senior Wrangler burst into tears, for one thing
.

Ridcully glanced at the door to the new bathroom. Well, he’d sorted out the teething troubles, and a nice warm shower would be very refreshing. And then he could go along to the organ recital all nice and clean
.

He removed his hat, and someone fell out of it with a tinkling sound. A small gnome rolled across the floor
.

“
Oh
, another
one. I thought we’d got rid of you fellows,” said Ridcully. “And what are you
?”

The gnome looked at him nervously
.

“
Er…you know whenever there was another magical appearance you heard the sound of, er, bells?” it said. Its expression suggested it was owning up to something it just knew was going to get it a smack
.

“
Yes
?”

The gnome held up some rather small hand bells and waved them nervously. They went glingleglingleglingle, in a very sad way
.

“
Good, eh? That was me. I’m the Glingleglingleglingle Fairy
.”

“
Get out
.”

“
I also do sparkly fairy dust effects that go
twing
too, if you like
…”

“
Go away
!”

“
How about ‘The Bells of St. Ungulant’s’?” said the gnome desperately. “Very seasonal. Very nice. Why not join in? It goes: ‘The bells [
clong
] of St. [
clang
]
…’”

Ridcully scored a direct hit with the rubber duck, and the gnome escaped through the bath overflow. Cursing and spontaneous hand bell ringing echoed away down the pipes
.

In perfect peace at last, the Archchancellor pulled off his robe
.

The organ’s storage tanks were wheezing at the rivets by the time the Librarian had finished pumping. Satisfied, he knuckled his way up to the seat and paused to survey, with great satisfaction, the keyboards in front of him.

Bloody Stupid Johnson’s approach to music was similar to his approach in every field that was caressed by his genius in the same way that a potato field is touched by a late frost. Make it loud, he said. Make it wide. Make it all-embracing. And thus the Great Organ of Unseen University was the only one in the world where you could play an entire symphony scored for thunderstorm and squashed toad noises.

Warm water cascaded off Mustrum Ridcully’s pointy bathing cap
.

Mr. Johnson had, surely not on purpose, designed a perfect bathroom—at least, perfect for singing in. Echoes and resonating pipeways smoothed out all those little imperfections and gave even the weediest singer a rolling, dark brown voice
.

And so Ridcully sang
.

“—
as I walked out one dadadadada for to something or other and to take the dadada, I did espy a fair pretty may-ay-den I think it was, and I
—”

The organ pipes hummed with pent-up energy. The Librarian cracked his knuckles. This took some time. Then he pulled the pressure release valve.

The hum became an urgent thrumming.

Very carefully, he let in the clutch.

Ridcully stopped singing as the tones of the organ came through the wall
.

Bath-time music, eh? he thought. Just the job
.

It was a shame it was muffled by all the bathroom fixtures, though
.

It was at this point he espied a small lever marked “Musical pipes
.”

Ridcully, never being a man to wonder what any kind of switch did when it was so much easier and quicker to find out by pulling it, did so. But instead of the music he was expecting he was rewarded simply with several large panels sliding silently aside, revealing row upon row of brass nozzles
.

The Librarian was lost now, dreaming on the wings of music. His hands and feet danced over the keyboards, picking their way toward the crescendo which ended the first movement of Bubbla’s Catastrophe Suite.

One foot kicked the “Afterburner” lever and the other spun the valve of the nitrous oxide cylinder.

Ridcully tapped the nozzles
.

Nothing happened. He looked at the controls again, and realized that he’d never pulled the little brass lever marked “Organ Interlock
.”

He did so. This did not cause a torrent of pleasant bath-time accompaniment, however. There was merely a thud and a distant gurgling, which grew in volume
.

He gave up, and went back to soaping his chest
.

“—
running of the deer, the playing of…huh? What
—”

Later that day he had the bathroom nailed up again and a notice placed on the door, on which was written:

“Not to be used in any circumstances. This is IMPORTANT.”

However, when Modo nailed the door up he didn’t hammer the nails in all the way but left just a bit sticking up so that his pliers would grip later on, when he was told to remove them. He never presumed and he never complained, he just had a good working knowledge of the wizardly mind.

They never did find the soap.

Ponder and his fellow students watched Hex carefully.

“It can’t just, you know,
stop
,” said Adrian “Mad Drongo” Turnipseed.

“The ants are just standing still,” said Ponder. He sighed. “All right, put the wretched thing back.”

Adrian carefully replaced the small fluffy teddy bear above Hex’s keyboard. Things immediately began to whir. The ants started to trot again. The mouse squeaked.

They’d tried this three times.

Ponder looked again at the single sentence Hex had written.

+++ Mine! Waaaah! +++

“I don’t actually think,” he said, gloomily, “that I want to tell the Archchancellor that this machine stops working if we take its fluffy teddy bear away. I just don’t think I want to live in that kind of world.”

“Er,” said Mad Drongo, “you could always, you know, sort of say it needs to work with the FTB enabled…?”

“You think that’s better?” said Ponder, reluctantly. It wasn’t as if it was even a very realistic interpretation of a bear.

“You mean, better than ‘fluffy teddy bear’?”

Ponder nodded. “It’s better,” he said.

Of all the presents
he
got from the Hogfather, Gawain told Susan, the best of all was the marble.

And she’d said, what marble?

And he’d said, the glass marble I found in the fireplace. It wins all the games. It seems to move in a different way.

The beggars walked their erratic and occasionally backward walk along the city streets, while fresh morning snow began to fall.

Occasionally one of them belched happily. They all wore paper hats, except for Foul Ole Ron, who’d eaten his.

A tin can was passed from hand to hand. It contained a mixture of fine wines and spirits and something in a can that Arnold Sideways had stolen from behind a paint factory in Phedre Road.

“The goose was good,” said the Duck Man, picking his teeth.

“I’m surprised you et it, what with that duck on your head,” said Coffin Henry, picking his nose.

“What duck?” said the Duck Man.

“What were that greasy stuff?” said Arnold Sideways.

“That, my dear fellow, was
pâté de foie gras
. All the way from Genua, I’ll wager. And very good, too.”

“Dun’arf make you fart, don’t it?”

“Ah, the world of haute cuisine,” said the Duck Man happily.

They reached, by fits and starts, the back door of their favorite restaurant. The Duck Man looked at it dreamily, eyes filmy with recollection.

“I used to dine here almost every night,” he said.

“Why’d you stop?” said Coffin Henry.

“I…I don’t really know,” said the Duck Man. “It’s…rather a blur, I’m afraid. Back in the days when I…think I was someone else. But still,” he said, patting Arnold’s head, “as they say, ‘Better a meal of old boots where friendship is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.’ Forward, please, Ron.”