Hogfather (21 page)

“Lares and penates? What were they when they were at home?” said Ridcully.

“Hahaha,” said the Chair.

“What?” said Ridcully.

“I thought you were making a rather good joke, Archchancellor,” said the Chair.

“Was I? I didn’t
mean
to,” said Ridcully.

“Nothing new there,” said the Dean, under his breath.

“What was that, Dean?”

“Nothing, Archchancellor.”

“I thought you made the reference ‘at home’ because they are, in fact, household gods. Or were, rather. They seemed to have faded away long ago. They were…little spirits of the house, like, for example—”

Three of the other wizards, thinking quite fast for wizards, clapped their hands over his mouth.

“Careful!” said Ridcully. “Careless talk creates lives! That’s why we’ve got a big fat God of Indigestion being ill in the privy. By the way, where’s the Bursar?”

“He was in the privy, Archchancellor,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

“What, when the—?”

“
Yes
, Archchancellor.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure he’ll be all right,” said Ridcully, in the matter-of-fact voice of someone contemplating something nasty that was happening to someone else out of earshot. “But we don’t want any more of these…what’re they, Chair?”

“Lares and penates, Archchancellor, but I wasn’t suggesting—”

“Seems clear to me. Something’s gone wrong and these little devils are coming back. All we have to do is find out what’s gone wrong and put it right.”

“Oh, well, I’m glad that’s all sorted out,” said the Dean.

“Household gods,” said Ridcully. “That’s what they are, Chair?” He opened the drawer in his hat and took out his pipe.

“Yes, Archchancellor. It says here they used to be the…local spirits, I suppose. They saw to it that the bread rose and the butter churned properly.”

“Did they eat pencils? What was their attitude in the socks department?”

“This was back in the time of the First Empire,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “Sandals and togas and so on.”

“Ah. Not noticeably socked?”

“Not excessively so, no. And it was nine hundred years before Osric Pencillium first discovered, in the graphite-rich sands of the remote island of Sumtri, the small bush which, by dint of careful cultivation, he induced to produce the long—”

“Yes, we can all see you’ve got the encyclopedia open under the table, Chair,” said Ridcully. “But I daresay things have changed a bit. Moved with the times. Bound to have been a few developments. Once they looked after the bread rising, now we have things that eat pencils and socks and see to it that you can never find a clean towel when you want one—”

There was a distant tinkling.

He stopped.

“I just said that, didn’t I?” he said.

The wizards nodded glumly.

“And this is the first time anyone’s mentioned it?”

The wizards nodded again.

“Well, dammit, it’s amazing, you
can
never find a clean towel when—”

There was a rising
wheeee
noise. A towel went by at shoulder height. There was a suggestion of many small wings.

“That was mine,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes reproachfully. The towel disappeared in the direction of the Great Hall.

“Towel Wasps,” said the Dean. “Well done, Archchancellor.”

“Well, I mean,
dammit
, it’s human nature, isn’t it?” said Ridcully hotly. “Things go wrong, things get lost, it’s
natural
to invent little creatures that—All right, all right, I’ll be careful. I’m just saying man is naturally a mythopoeic creature.”

“What’s that mean?” said the Senior Wrangler.

“Means we make things up as we go along,” said the Dean, not looking up.

“Um…excuse me, gentlemen,” said Ponder Stibbons, who had been scribbling thoughtfully at the end of the table. “Are we suggesting that things are coming back? Do we think that’s a viable hypothesis?”

The wizards looked at one another around the table.

“Definitely viable.”

“Viable, right enough.”

“Yes, that’s the stuff to give the troops.”

“What is? What’s the stuff to give the troops?”

“Well…tinned rations? Decent weapons, good boots…that sort of thing.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Don’t ask
me. He
was the one who started talking about giving stuff to the troops.”

“Will you lot shut up? No one’s giving anything to the troops!”

“Oh, shouldn’t they have something? It’s Hogswatch, after all.”

“Look, it was just a figure of speech, all right? I just meant I was fully in agreement. It’s just colorful language. Good grief, you surely can’t think I’m actually suggesting giving stuff to the troops, at Hogswatch or any other time!”

“You weren’t?”

“No!”

“That’s a bit mean, isn’t it?”

Ponder just let it happen. It’s because their minds are so often involved with deep and problematic matters, he told himself, that their mouths are allowed to wander around making a nuisance of themselves.

“I don’t hold with using that thinking machine,” said the Dean. “I’ve said this before. It’s meddling with the cult. The
oc
cult has always been good enough for me, thank you very much.”

“On the other hand it’s the only person round here who can think straight and it does what it’s told,” said Ridcully.

The sleigh roared through the snow, leaving rolling trails in the sky.

“Oh, what fun,” muttered Albert, hanging on tightly.

The runners hit a roof near the University and the pigs trotted to a halt.

Death looked at the hourglass again.

O
DD
, he said.

“It’s a scythe job, then?” said Albert. “You won’t be wanting the false beard and the jolly laugh?” He looked around, and puzzlement replaced sarcasm. “Hey…how could anyone be dead up here?”

Someone was. A corpse lay in the snow.

It was clear that the man had only just died. Albert squinted up at the sky.

“There’s nowhere to fall from and there’s no footprints in the snow,” he said, as Death swung his scythe. “So where did he come from? Looks like someone’s personal guard. Been stabbed to death. Nasty knife wound there, see?”

“It’s not good,” agreed the spirit of the man, looking down at himself.

Then he stared from himself to Albert to Death and his phantom expression went from shock to concern.

“They got the teeth! All of them! They just walked in…and…they…no, wait…”

He faded and was gone.

“Well, what was
that
all about?” said Albert.

I
HAVE MY SUSPICIONS
.

“See that badge on his shirt? Looks like a drawing of a tooth.”

Y
ES
. I
T DOES
.

“Where’s that come from?”

A
PLACE
I
CANNOT GO
.

Albert looked down at the mysterious corpse and then back up at Death’s impassive skull.

“I keep thinking it was a funny thing, us bumping into your granddaughter like that,” he said.

Y
ES
.

Albert put his head on one side. “Given the large number of chimneys and kids in the world, ekcetra.”

I
NDEED
.

“Amazing coincidence, really.”

I
T JUST GOES TO SHOW
.

“Hard to believe, you might say.”

L
IFE CERTAINLY SPRINGS A FEW SURPRISES
.

“Not just life, I reckon,” said Albert. “And she got
real
worked up, didn’t she? Flew right off the ole handle. Wouldn’t be surprised if she started asking questions.”

T
HAT’S PEOPLE FOR YOU
.

“But Rat is hanging around, ain’t he? He’ll probably keep an eye socket on her. Guide her path, prob’ly.”

H
E IS A LITTLE SCAMP, ISN’T HE
?

Albert knew he couldn’t win. Death had the ultimate poker face.

I’
M SURE SHE’LL ACT SENSIBLY
.

“Oh, yeah,” said Albert, as they walked back to the sleigh. “It runs in the family, acting sensibly.”

Like many barmen, Igor kept a club under the bar to deal with those little upsets that occurred around closing time, although in fact Biers never closed and no one could ever remember not seeing Igor behind the bar. Nevertheless, things sometimes got out of hand. Or paw. Or talon.

Igor’s weapon of choice was a little different. It was tipped with silver (for werewolves), hung with garlic (for vampires) and wrapped around with a strip of blanket (for bogeymen). For everyone else the fact that it was two feet of solid bog-oak usually sufficed.

He’d been watching the window. The frost was creeping across it. For some reason the creeping fingers were forming into a pattern of three little dogs looking out of a boot.

Then someone had tapped him on the shoulder. He spun around, club already in his hand, and relaxed.

“Oh…it’s you, miss. I didn’t hear the door.”

There hadn’t been the door. Susan was in a hurry.

“Have you seen Violet lately, Igor?”

“The tooth girl?” Igor’s one eyebrow writhed in concentration. “Nah, haven’t seen her for a week or two.”

The eyebrow furrowed into a V of annoyance as he spotted the raven, which tried to shuffle behind a half-empty display card of beer nuts.

“You can get that out of here, miss,” he said. “You
know
the rule ’bout pets and familiars. If it can’t turn back into human on demand, it’s out.”

“Yeah, well, some of us have more brain cells than fingers,” muttered a voice from behind the beer nuts.

“Where does she live?”

“Now, miss, you know I never answers questions like that—”

“W
HERE DOES SHE LIVE
, I
GOR
?”

“Shamlegger Street, next to the picture framers,” said Igor automatically. The eyebrow knotted in anger as he realized what he’d said.

“Now,
miss
, you
know
the rules! I don’t get bitten, I don’t get me froat torn out and no one hides behind me door! And
you
don’t try your granddad’s voice on me! I could ban you for messin’ me about like that!”

“Sorry, it’s important,” said Susan. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that the raven had crept onto the shelves and was pecking the top off a jar.

“Yeah, well, suppose one of the vampires decides it’s important he’s missed his tea?” grumbled Igor, putting the club away.

There was a
plink
from the direction of the pickled egg jar. Susan tried hard not to look.

“Can we go?” said the oh god. “All this alcohol makes me nervous.”

Susan nodded and hurried out.

Igor grunted. Then he went back to watching the frost, because Igor never demanded much out of life. After a while he heard a muffled voice say:

“I ’ot ’un! I ’
ot
’un!”

It was indistinct because the raven had speared a pickled egg with its beak.

Igor sighed, and picked up his club. And it would have gone very hard for the raven if the Death of Rats hadn’t chosen that moment to bite Igor on the ear.

D
OWN THERE
, said Death.

The reins were hauled so sharply so quickly that the hogs ended up facing the other way.

Albert fought his way out of a drift of teddy bears, where he’d been dozing.

“What’s up? What’s up? Did we hit something?” he said.

Death pointed downward. An endless white snow field lay below, only the occasional glow of a window candle or a half-covered hut indicating the presence on this world of brief mortality.

Albert squinted, and then saw what Death had spotted.

“’s some old bugger trudging through the snow,” he said. “Been gathering wood, by the look of it. A bad night to be out,” he said. “And I’m out in it, too, come to that. Look, master, I’m sure you’ve done enough now to make sure—”

S
OMETHING’S HAPPENING DOWN THERE
. H
O
. H
O
. H
O
.

“Look, he’s all
right
,” said Albert, hanging on as the sleigh tumbled downward. There was a brief wedge of light below as the wood-gatherer opened the door of a snow-drifted hovel. “See, over there, there’s a couple of blokes catching him up, look, they’re weighed down with parcels and stuff, see? He’s going to have a decent Hogswatch after all, no problem there.
Now
can we go—”

Death’s glowing eye sockets took in the scene in minute detail.

I
T’S WRONG
.

“Oh, no…here we go
again
.”

The oh god hesitated.

“What do you mean, you can’t walk through the door?” said Susan. “You walked through the door in the bar.”

“That was different. I have certain god-like powers in the presence of alcohol. Anyway, we’ve knocked and she hasn’t answered and whatever happened to Mr. Manners?”

Susan shrugged, and walked through the cheap woodwork. She knew she probably shouldn’t. Every time she did something like this she used up a certain amount of, well,
normal
. And sooner or later she’d forget what doorknobs were for, just like Grandfather.

Come to think of it, he’d never found
out
what doorknobs were for.

She opened the door from the inside. The oh god stepped in and looked around. This did not take long. It was not a large room. It had been subdivided from a room that itself hadn’t been all that big to start with.

“
This
is where the Tooth Fairy lives?” Bilious said. “It’s a bit…poky, isn’t it? Stuff all over the floor…What’re these things hanging from this line?”

“They’re…women’s clothes,” said Susan, rummaging through the paperwork on a small rickety table.

“They’re not very big,” said the oh god. “And a bit thin…”

“Tell me,” said Susan, without looking up. “These memories you arrived here with…They weren’t very complicated, were they…? Ah…”

He looked over her shoulder as she opened a small red notebook.

“I’ve only talked to Violet a few times,” she said. “I think she delivers the teeth somewhere and gets a percentage of the money. It’s not a highly paid line of work. You know, they say you can Earn $$$ in Your Spare Time but she says really she could earn more money waiting on tables—Ah, this looks right…”