'I meant we're not going to be intimidated by the certain prospect of complete and utter failure, master.'

AREN'T WE? OH, GOOD. WELL, I SUPPOSE WE'D BETTER BE GOING. The figure picked up the reins. UP, GOUGER! UP, ROOTER! UP, TUSKER! UP, SNOUTER! GIDDYUP!

The four large boars harnessed to the sledge did not move.

WHY DOESN'T THAT WORK? said the figure in a puzzled, heavy voice.

'Beats me, master,' said the sacks.

IT WORKS ON HORSES.

'You could try "Pig-hooey! "'

PIG-HOOEY. They waited. NO ... DOESN'T SEEM TO REACH THEM.

There was some whispering.

REALLY? YOU THINK THAT WOULD WORK?

'It'd bloody well work on me if I was a pig, master.'

VERY WELL, THEN.

The figure gathered up the reins again.

APPLE! SAUCE!

The pigs' legs blurred. Silver light flicked across them, and exploded outwards. They dwindled to a dot, and vanished.

SQUEAK?

The Death of Rats skipped across the snow, slid down a drainpipe and landed on the roof of a shed.

There was a raven perched there. It was staring disconsolately at something.

SQUEAK!

'Look at that, willya?' said the raven rhetorically. It waved a claw at a bird table in the garden below. 'They hangs up half a bloody coconut, a lump of bacon rind, a handful of peanuts in a bit of wire and they think they're the gods' gift to the nat'ral world. Huh. Do I see eyeballs? Do I see entrails? I think not. Most intelligent bird in the temperate latitudes an' I gets the cold shoulder just because I can't hang upside down and go twit, twit. Look at robins, now. Stroppy little evil buggers, fight like demons, but all they got to do is go bob-bob-bobbing along and they can't move for breadcrumbs. Whereas me myself can recite poems and repeat many hum'rous phrases--'

SQUEAK!

'Yes? What?'

The Death of Rats pointed at the roof and then the sky and jumped up and down excitedly. The raven swivelled one eye upwards.

'Oh, yes. Him,' he said. 'Turns up at this time of year. Tends to be associated distantly with robins, which-'

SQUEAK! SQUEE IK IR IK! The Death of Rats pantomimed a figure landing in a grate and walking around a room. SQUEAK EEK IK IK, SQUEAK 'HEEK HEEK HEEK'! IK IK SQUEAK!

'Been overdoing the Hogswatch cheer, have you? Been rustling around in the brandy butter?'

SQUEAK?

The raven's eyes revolved.

'Look, Death's Death. It's a full-time job right?

it's not as though you can run, like, a window cleaning round on the side or nip round after work cutting people's lawns.'

SQUEAK!

'Oh, please yourself.'

The raven crouched a little to allow the tiny figure to hop on to its back, and then lumbered into the air.

'Of course, they can go mental, your occult types,' it said, as it swooped over the moonlit garden. 'Look at Old Man Trouble, for one-'

SQUEAK.

'Oh, I'm not suggestin---'

Susan didn't like Biers but she went there anyway, when the pressure of being normal got too much. Biers, despite the smell and the drink and the company, had one important virtue. In Biers no one took any notice. Of anything. Hogswatch was traditionally supposed to be a time for families but the people who drank in Biers probably didn't have families; some of them looked as though they might have had litters, or clutches. Some of them looked as though they'd probably eaten their relatives, or at least someone's relatives.

Biers was where the undead drank. And when Igor the barman was asked for a Bloody Mary, he didn't mix a metaphor.

The regular customers didn't ask questions, and not only because some of them found anything above a growl hard to articulate. None of them was in the answers business. Everyone in Biers drank alone. even when they were in groups. Or packs.

Despite the decorations put up inexpertly by Igor the barman to show willing,[8] Biers was not a family place.

Family was a subject Susan liked to avoid.

Currently she was being aided in this by a gin and tonic. In Biers, unless you weren't choosy, it paid to order a drink that was transparent because Igor also had undirected ideas about what you could stick on the end of a cocktail stick. If you saw something spherical and green, you just had to hope that it was an olive.

She felt hot breath on her ear. A bogeyman had sat down on the stool beside her.

'Woss a normo doin' in a place like this, then?' it rumbled, causing a cloud of vaporized alcohol and halitosis to engulf her. 'Hah, you fink it's cool comin' down here an' swannin' around in a black dress wid all the lost boys, eh? Dabblin' in a bit of designer darkness, eh?'

Susan moved her stool away a little. The bogeyman grinned.

'Want a bogeyman under yer bed, eh?'

'Now then, Shlimazel,' said Igor, without looking up from polishing a glass.

'Well, woss she down here for, eh?' said the bogeyman. A huge hairy hand grabbed Susan's arm. 'O' course, maybe what she wants is-'

'I ain't telling you again, Shlimazel,' said Igor.

He saw the girl turn to face Shlimazel.

Igor wasn't in a position to see her face fully, but the bogeyman was. He shot back so quickly that he fell off his stool.

And when the girl spoke, what she said was only partly words but also a statement, written in stone, of how the future was going to be.

' GO AWAY AND STOP BOTHERING ME.'

She turned back and gave Igor a polite and slightly apologetic smile. The bogeyman struggled frantically out of the wreckage of his stool and loped towards the door.

Susan felt the drinkers turn back to their private preoccupations. It was amazing what you could get away with in Biers.

Igor put down the glass and looked up at the window. For a drinking den that relied on darkness it had rather a large one but, of course, some customers did arrive by air.

Something was tapping on it now.

Igor lurched over and opened it.

Susan looked up.

'Oh, no . . . '

The Death of Rats leapt down onto the counter, with the raven fluttering after it.

SQUEAK SQUEAK EEK! EEK! SQUEAK IK IK 'HEEK HEEK HEEK'! SQ

'Go away,' said Susan coldly. 'I'm not interested. You're just a figment of my imagination.'

The raven perched on a bowl behind the bar and said, 'Ah, great.'

SQUEAK!

'What're these?' said the raven, flicking something off the end of its beak. 'Onions? Pfah!'

'Go on, go away, the pair of you,' said Susan.

'The rat says your granddad's gone mad,' said the raven. 'Says he's pretending to be the Hogfather.'

'Listen, I just don't- What?'

'Red cloak, long beard-’

HEEK! HEEK! HEEK!

-going "Ho, ho, ho", driving around in the big sledge drawn by the four piggies, the whole thing . . .'

'Pigs? What happened to Binky?'

'Search me. O' course, it can happen, as I was telling the rat only just now-'

Susan put her hands over her ears, more for desperate theatrical effect than for the muffling they gave.

'I don't want to know! I don't have a grandfather!'

She had to hold on to that.

The Death of Rats squeaked at length.

'The rat says you must remember, he's tall, not what you'd call fleshy, he carries a scythe-'

'Go away! And take the ... the rat with you!'

She waved her hand wildly and, to her horror and shame, knocked the little hooded skeleton over an ashtray.

EEK?      

The raven took the rat's cowl in its beak and tried to drag him away, but a tiny skeletal fist shook its scythe.

EEK IK EEK SQUEAK!

'He says, you don't mess with the rat,' said the raven.

In a flurry of wings they were gone.

Igor dosed the window. He didn't pass any comment.

'They weren't real,' said Susan, hurriedly. 'Well, that is ... the raven's probably real, but he hangs around with the rat--’

'Which isn't real,' said Igor.

'That's right!' said Susan, gratefully. 'You probably didn't see a thing.'

'That's right,' said Igor. 'Not a thing.'

'Now ... how much do I owe you?' said Susan.

Igor counted on his fingers.

'That'll be a dollar for the drinks,' he said, 'and fivepence because the raven that wasn't here messed in the pickles.'

It was the night before Hogswatch.

In the Archchancellor's new bathroom Modo wiped his hands on a piece of rag and looked proudly at his handiwork. Shining porcelain gleamed back at him. Copper and brass shone in the lamplight.

He was a little worried that he hadn't been able to test everything, but Mr Ridcully had said, 'I'll test it when I use it,' and Modo never argued with the Gentlemen, as he thought of them. He knew that they all knew a lot more than he knew, and was quite happy knowing this. He didn't meddle with the fabric of time and space, and they kept out of his greenhouses. The way he saw it, it was a partnership.

He'd been particularly careful to scrub the floors. Mr Ridcully had been very specific about that.

'Verruca Gnome,' he said to himself, giving

tap a last polish. 'What an imagination the Gentlemen do have.’

Far off, unheard by anyone, was a faint little noise, like the ringing of tiny silver bells.

Glingleglingleglingle...

And someone landed abruptly in a snowdrift and said, 'Bugger!', which is a terrible thing to say as your first word ever.

Overhead, heedless of the new and somewhat angry life that was even now dusting itself off, the sledge soared onwards through time and space.

I'M FINDING THE BEARD A BIT OF A TRIAL, said Death.

'Why've you got to have the beard?' said the voice from among the sacks. 'I thought you said people see what they expect to see.'

CHILDREN DON'T. TOO OFTEN THEY SEE WHAT'S THERE.

'Well, at least it's keeping you in the right

frame of mind, master. In character, sort of thing.'

BUT GOING DOWN THE CHIMNEY? WHERE'S THE SENSE IN THAT? I CAN JUST WALK THROUGH THE WALLS.

'Walking through the walls is not right, neither,' said the voice from the sacks.

IT WORKS FOR ME.

'It's got to be chimneys. Same as the beard, really.'

A head thrust itself out from the pile. It appeared to belong to the oldest, most unpleasant pixie in the universe. The fact that it was underneath a jolly little green hat with a bell on it did not do anything to improve matters.

It waved a crabbed hand containing a thick wad of letters, many of them on pastel-coloured paper, often with bunnies and teddy bears on them, and written mostly in crayon.

'You reckon these little buggers'd be writing to someone who walked through walls?' it said. 'And the "Ho, ho, ho" could use some more work, if you don't mind my saying so.'

HO. HO. HO.

'No, no, no!' said Albert. 'You got to put a bit of life in it, sir, no offence intended. It's got to be a big fat laugh. You got to ... you got to sound like you're pissing brandy and crapping plum pudding, sir, excuse my Klatchian.'

REALLY? HOW DO YOU KNOW ALL THIS?

'I was young once, sir. Hung up my stocking like a good boy every year. For to get it filled with toys, just like you're doing. Mind you, in

those days basically it was sausages and black puddings if you were lucky. But you always got a pink sugar piglet in the toe. It wasn't a good Hogswatch unless you'd eaten so much you were sick as a pig, master.'

Death looked at the sacks.

It was a strange but demonstrable fact that the sacks of toys carried by the Hogfather, no matter what they really contained, always appeared to have sticking out of the top a teddy bear, a toy soldier in the kind of colourful uniform that would stand out in a disco, a drum and a red-and-white candy cane. The actual contents always turned out to be something a bit garish and costing $5.99.

Death had investigated one or two. There had been a Real Agatean Ninja, for example, with Fearsome Death Grip, and a Captain Carrot One-Man Night Watch with a complete wardrobe of toy weapons, each of which cost as much as the original wooden doll in the first place.

Mind you, the stuff for the girls was just as depressing. It seemed to be nearly all horses. Most of them were grinning. Horses, Death felt, shouldn't grin- Any horse that was grinning was planning something.

He sighed again.

Then there was this business of deciding who'd been naughty or nice. He'd never had to think about that sort of thing before. Naughty or nice, it was ultimately all the same.

Still, it had to be done right. Otherwise it wouldn't work.

The pigs pulled up alongside another chimney.

'Here we are, here we are,' said Albert. 'James Riddle, aged eight.'

HAH, YES. HE ACTUALLY SAYS IN HIS LETTER, 'I BET YOU DON'T EXIST 'COS EVERYONE KNOWS ITS YORE PARENTS.' OH YES, said Death, with what almost sounded like sarcasm, I'M SURE HIS PARENTS ARE JUST IMPATIENT TO BANG THEIR ELBOWS IN TWELVE FEET OF NARROW UNSWEPT CHIMNEY, I DON'T THINK. I SHALL TREAD EXTRA SOOT INTO HIS CARPET.

'Right, sir. Good thinking. Speaking of which - down you go, sir.'

HOW ABOUT IF I DON'T GIVE HIM ANYTHING AS A PUNISHMENT FOR NOT BELIEVING?

'Yeah, but what's that going to prove?'

Death sighed. I SUPPOSE YOU'RE RIGHT.

'Did you check the list?'

YES. TWICE. ARE YOU SURE THAT'S ENOUGH?

'Definitely.'

COULDN'T REALLY MAKE HEAD OR TAIL OF IT, TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH. HOW CAN I TELL IF HE'S BEEN NAUGHTY OR NICE, FOR EXAMPLE?

'Oh, well ... I don't know ... Has he hung his clothes up, that sort of thing. '

AND IF HE HAS BEEN GOOD I MAY GIVE HIM THIS KLATCHIAN WAR CHARIOT WITH REAL SPINNING SWORD BLADES?

'That's right.'

AND IF HE'S BEEN BAD?

Albert scratched his head. 'When I was a lad, you got a bag of bones. 's'mazing how kids got better behaved towards the end of the year.'

OH DEAR. AND NOW?

Albert held a package up to his ear and rustled it. 'Sounds like socks.'

SOCKS.

'Could be a woolly vest.'

SERVE HIM RIGHT, IF I MAY VENTURE TO EXPRESS AN OPINION...

Albert: looked across the snowy rooftops and sighed. This wasn't right. He was helping because, well, Death was his master and that's all there was to it, and if the master had a heart it would be in the right place. But...

'Are you sure we ought to be doing this, master?'

Death stopped, halfway out of the chimney.

CAN YOU THINK OF A BETTER ALTERNATIVE, ALBERT?

And that was it. Albert couldn't.

Someone had to do it.

There were bears on the street again.

Susan ignored them and didn't even make a point of not treading on the cracks.

They just stood around, looking a bit puzzled and slightly transparent, visible only to children and Susan. News like Susan gets around. The bears had heard about the poker. Nuts and berries, their expressions seemed to say. That's

what we're here for. Big sharp teeth? What big shar--- Oh, these big sharp teeth? They're just for, er, cracking nuts. And some of these berries can be really vicious.

The city's clocks were striking six when she got back to the house. She was allowed her own key. It wasn't as if she was a servant, exactly.

You couldn't be a duchess and a servant. But it was all right to be a governess. It was understood that it wasn't exactly what you were, it was merely a way of passing the time until you did what every girl, or gel, was supposed to do in life, i.e., marry some man. It was understood that you were playing.

The parents were in awe of her. She was the daughter of a duke whereas Mr Gaiter was a man to be reckoned with in the wholesale boots and shoes business. Mrs Gaiter was bucking for a transfer into the Upper Classes, which she currently hoped to achieve by reading books on etiquette. She treated Susan with the kind of worried deference she thought was due to anyone who'd known the difference between a serviette and a napkin from birth.

Susan had never before come across the idea that you could rise in Society by, as it were, gaining marks, especially since such noblemen as she'd met in her father's house had used neither serviette nor napkin but a state of mind, which was 'Drop it on the floor, the dogs'll eat it.'

When Mrs Gaiter had tremulously asked her how one addressed the second cousin of a queen,

Susan had replied without thinking, 'We called him Jamie, usually,' and Mrs Gaiter had had to go and have a headache in her room.

Mr Gaiter just nodded when he met her in a passage and never said very much to her. He was pretty sure he knew where he stood in boots and shoes and that was that.

Gawain and Twyla, who'd been named by people who apparently loved them, had been put to bed by the time Susan got in, at their own insistence. It's a widely held belief at a certain age that going to bed early makes tomorrow come faster.

She went to tidy up the schoolroom and get things ready for the morning, and began to pick up the things the children had left lying around. Then something tapped at a window pane.

She peered out at the darkness, and then opened the window. A drift of snow fell down outside.

In the summer the window opened into the branches of a cherry tree. In the winter dark, they were little grey fines where the snow had settled on them.

'Who's that?' said Susan.

Something hopped through the frozen branches.

'Tweet tweet tweet, would you believe?' said the raven.

'Not you again?'

'You wanted maybe some dear little robin? Listen, your grand-'

'Go away! '

Susan slammed the window and pulled the curtains across. She put her back to them, to make sure, and tried to concentrate on the room. It helped to think about ... normal things.

There was the Hogswatch tree, a rather smaller version of the grand one in the hall. She'd helped the children to make paper decorations for it. Yes. Think about that.

There were the paperchains. There were the bits of holly, thrown out from the main rooms for not having enough berries on them, and now given fake modelling clay berries and stuck in anyhow on shelves and behind pictures.

There were two stockings hanging from the mantelpiece of the small schoolroom grate. There were Twyla's paintings, all blobby blue skies and violently green grass and red houses with four square windows. There were ...

Normal things ...

She straightened up and stared at them, her fingernails beating a thoughtful tattoo on a wooden pencil case.

The door was pushed open. It revealed the tousled shape of Twyla, hanging onto the doorknob with one hand.

'Susan, there's a monster under my bed again . . .'

The click of Susan's fingernails stopped.

'. . . I can hear it moving about . . .'

Susan sighed and turned towards the child.

'All right, Twyla. I'll be along directly.'

The girl nodded and went back to her room, leaping into bed from a distance as a precaution against claws.

There was a metallic tzing as Susan withdrew the poker from the little brass stand it shared with the tongs and the coal shovel.

She sighed. Normality was what you made it.

She went into the children's bedroom and leaned over as if to tuck Twyla up. Then her hand darted down and under the bed. She grabbed a handful of hair. She pulled.

The bogeyman came out like a cork but before it could get its balance it found itself spreadeagled against the wall with one arm behind its back. But it did manage to turn its head, to see Susan's face glaring at it from a few inches away.

Gawain bounced up and down on his bed.

'Do the Voice on it! Do the Voice on it!' he shouted.

'Don't do the Voice, don't do the Voice!' pleaded the bogeyman urgently.

'Hit it on the head with the poker!'

'Not the poker! Not the poker!'

'It's you, isn't it,' said Susan. 'From this afternoon . . .'

'Aren't you going to poke it with the poker?' said Gawain.

'Not the poker!' whined the bogeyman.

'New in town?' whispered Susan.

'Yes!' The bogeyman's forehead wrinkled with puzzlement. 'Here, how come you can see me?'

'Then this is a friendly warning, understand? Because it's Hogswatch.'

The bogeyman tried to move. 'You call this friendly?'

'Ah, you want to try for unfriendly?' said Susan, adjusting her grip.

'No, no, no, I like friendly!'

'This house is out of bounds, right?'

'You a witch or something?' moaned the bogeyman.

' I'm just ... something. Now ... you won't be around here again, will you? Otherwise it'll be the blanket next time.'

'No!'

'I mean it. We'll put your head under the blanket.'

'No!'

'It's got fluffy bunnies on it. '

'No!'

'Off you go, then.'

The bogeyman half fell, half ran towards the door.

i's not right,' it mumbled. 'You're not s'posed to see us if you ain't dead or magic. 's not fair. . .'

'Try number nineteen,' said Susan, relenting a little. 'The governess there doesn't believe in bogeymen.'

'Right?' said the monster hopefully.

'She believes in algebra, though.'

'Ah. Nice.' The bogeyman grinned hugely. It was amazing the sort of mischief that could becaused in a house where no one in authority thought you existed.

'I'll be off, then,' it said. 'Er. Happy Hogswatch.'

'Possibly,' said Susan, as it slunk away.

'That wasn't as much fun as the one last month,' said Gawain, getting between the sheets again. 'You know, when you kicked him in the trousers-'

'Just you two get to sleep now,' said Susan.

'Verity said the sooner we got to sleep the sooner the Hogfather would come,' said Twyla conversationally.

'Yes,' said Susan. 'Unfortunately, that might be the case.'

The remark passed right over their heads. She wasn't sure why it had gone through hers, but she knew enough to trust her senses.

She hated that kind of sense. It ruined your life. But it was the sense she had been born with.

The children were tucked in, and she closed the door quietly and went back to the schoolroom.

Something had changed.

She glared at the stockings, but they were unfulfilled. A paperchain rustled.

She stared at the tree. Tinsel had been twined around it, badly pasted-together decorations had been hung on it. And on top was the fairy made of

She crossed her arms, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed theatrically.

'It's you, isn't it?' she said.

SQUEAK?

'Yes, it is. You're sticking out your arms like a scarecrow and you've stuck a little star on your scythe, haven't you...?'

The Death of Rats hung his head guiltily.

SQUEAK.

'You're not fooling anyone.'

SQUEAK.

'Get down from there this minute!'

SQUEAK.

'And what did you do with the fairy?'

'It's shoved under a cushion on the chair,' said a voice from the shelves on the other side of the room. There was a clicking noise and the raven's voice added, 'These damn eyeballs are hard, aren't they?'

Susan raced across the room and snatched the bowl away so fast that the raven somersaulted and landed on its back.

'They're walnuts!' she shouted, as they bounced around her. 'Not eyeballs! This is a schoolroom! And the difference between a school and a-a-a raven delicatessen is that they hardly ever have eyeballs lying around in bowls in case a raven drops in for a quick snack! Understand? No eyeballs! The world is full of small round things that aren't eyeballs! OK?'

The raven's own eyes revolved.

' ' n' I suppose a bit of warm liver's out of the question---’

'Shut up! I want both of you out of here right now! I don't know how you got in here-’

'There's a law against coming down the chimney on Hogswatchnight?'

'-but I don't want you back in my life, understand?'

'The rat said you ought to be warned even if you were crazy,' said the raven sulkily. 'I didn't want to come, there's a donkey dropped dead just outside the city gates, I'll be lucky now if I get a hoof---’

'Warned?' said Susan.

There it was again. The change in the weather of the mind, a sensation of tangible time ...

The Death of Rats nodded.

There was a scrabbling sound far overhead. A few flakes of soot dropped down the chimney.

SQUEAK, said the rat, but very quietly.

Susan was aware of a new sensation, as a fish might be aware of a new tide, a spring of fresh water flowing into the sea. Time was pouring into the world.

She glanced up at the clock. It was just on half past six.

The raven scratched its beak.

'The rat says ... The rat says: you'd better watch out . . .'

There were others at work on this shining Hogswatch Eve. The Sandman was out and about, dragging his sack from bed to bed. Jack Frost wandered from window pane to window pane, making icy patterns.

And one tiny hunched shape slid and slithered along the gutter, squelching its feet in slush and swearing under its breath.

It wore a stained black suit and, on its head, the type of hat known in various parts of the multiverse as 'bowler', 'derby' or 'the one that makes you look a bit of a tit'. The hat had been pressed down very firmly and, since the creature had long pointy ears, these had been forced out sideways and gave it the look of a small malignant wing-nut.

The thing was a gnome by shape but a fairy by profession. Fairies aren't necessarily little twinkly creatures. It's purely a job description, and the commonest ones aren't even visible.[9] A fairy is simply any creature currently employed under supernatural laws to take things away or, as in the case of the small creature presently climbing up the inside of a drainpipe and swearing, to bring things.

Oh, yes. He does. Someone has to do it, and he looks the right gnome for the job.

Oh, yes.

Sideney was worried. He didn't like violence, and there had been a lot of it in the last few days, if days passed in this place. The men ... well, they

only seemed to find life interesting when they were doing something sharp to someone else and, while they didn't bother him much in the same way that lions don't trouble themselves with ants, they certainly worried him.

But not as much as Teatime did. Even the brute called Chickenwire treated Teatime with caution, if not respect, and the monster called Banjo just followed him around like a puppy.

The enormous man was watching him now.

He reminded Sideney too much of Ronnie Jenks, the bully who'd made his life miserable at Cammer Wimblestone's dame school. Ronnie hadn't been a pupil. He was the old woman's grandson or nephew or something, which gave him a licence to hang around the place and beat up any kid smaller or weaker or brighter than he was, which more or less meant he had the whole world to choose from. In those circumstances, it was particularly unfair that he always chose Sideney.

Sideney hadn't hated Ronnie. He'd been too frightened. He'd wanted to be his friend. Oh, so much. Because that way, just possibly, he wouldn't have his head trodden on such a lot and would actually get to eat his lunch instead of having it thrown in the privy. And it had been a good day when it had been his lunch.

And then, despite all Ronnie's best efforts, Sideney had grown up and gone to university. Occasionally his mother told him how Ronnie was getting on (she assumed, in the way of

mothers, that because they had been small boys at school together they had been friends). Apparently he ran a fruit stall and was married to a girl called Angie.[10] This was not enough punishment, Sideney considered.

Banjo even breathed like Ronnie, who had to concentrate on such an intellectual exercise and always had one blocked nostril. And his mouth open all the time. He looked as though he was living on invisible plankton.

He tried to keep his mind on what he was doing and ignore the laboured gurgling behind him. A change in its tone made him look up.

'Fascinating,' said Teatime. 'You make it look so easy.'

Sideney sat back, nervously.

'Urn ... it should be fine now, sir,' he said. 'It just got a bit scuffed when we were piling up the

He couldn't bring himself to say it, he even had to avert his eyes from the heap, it was the sound they'd made. '. . . the things,' he finished.

'We don't need to repeat the spell?' said Teatime.

'Oh, it'll keep going for ever,' said Sideney.

'The simple ones do. It's just a state change, powered by the ... the ... it just keeps going

He swallowed.

'So,' he said, 'I was thinking ... since you don't actually need me, sir, perhaps . . .'

'Mr Brown seems to be having some trouble with the locks on the top floor,' said Teatime. 'That door we couldn't open, remember? I'm sure you'll want to help.'

Sideney's face fell.

'Urn, I'm not a locksmith. '

'They appear to be magical.'

Sideney opened his mouth to say, 'But I'm very bad at magical locks,' and then thought much better of it. He had already fathomed that if Teatime wanted you to do something, and you weren't very good at it, then your best plan, in fact quite possibly your only plan, was to learn to be good at it very quickly. Sideney was not a fool. He'd seen the way the others reacted around Teatime, and they were men who did things he'd only dreamed of.[11]

At which point he was relieved to see Medium Dave walk down the stairs, and it said a lot for the effect of Teatime's stare that anyone could be relieved to have it punctuated by someone like Medium Dave.

'We've found another guard, sir. Up on the sixth floor. He's been hiding.'

Teatime stood up. 'Oh dear,' he said. 'Not trying to be heroic, was he?'

'He's just scared. Shall we let him go?'

'Let him go?' said Teatime. 'Far too messy. I'll go up there. Come along, Mr Wizard.'

Sideney followed him reluctantly up the stairs.

The tower - if that's what it was, he thought; he was used to the odd architecture at Unseen University and this made UU look normal was a hollow tube. No fewer than four spiral staircases climbed the inside, criss-crossing on landings and occasionally passing through one another in defiance of generally accepted physics. But that was practically normal for an alumnus of Unseen University, although technically Sideney had not alumed. What threw the eye was the absence of shadows. You didn't notice shadows, how they delineated things, how they gave texture to the world, until they weren't there. The white marble, if that's what it was seemed to glow from the inside. Even when the impossible sun shone through a window it barely caused faint grey smudges where honest shadows should be. The tower seemed to avoid darkness.

That was even more frightening than the times when, after a complicated landing, you found yourself walking up by stepping down the underside of a stair and the distant floor now hung overhead like a ceiling. He'd noticed that even

the other men shut their eyes when that happened. Teatime, though, took those stairs three at a time, laughing like a kid with a new toy.

They reached an upper landing and followed a corridor. The others were gathered by a closed door.

'He's barricaded himself in,' said Chickenwire.

Teatime tapped on it. 'You in there,' he said. 'Come on out. You have my word you won't be harmed.'

'No!'

Teatime stood back. 'Banjo, knock it down,' he said.

Banjo lumbered forward. The door withstood a couple of massive kicks and then burst open.

The guard was cowering behind an overturned cabinet. He cringed back as Teatime stepped over it. 'What're you doing here?' he shouted. 'Who are you?'

'Ah, I'm glad you asked. I'm your worst nightmare!' said Teatime cheerfully.

The man shuddered.

'You mean ... the one with the giant cabbage and the sort of whirring knife thing?'

'Sorry?' Teatime looked momentarily nonplussed.

'Then you're the one about where I'm falling, only instead of ground underneath it's all-'

'No, in fact I'm---'

The guard sagged. 'Awww, not the one where there's all this kind of, you know, mud and then everything goes blue---’

'No, I'm---'

'Oh, shit, then you're the one where there's this door only there's no floor beyond it and then there's these claws-'

'No,' said Teatime. 'Not that one.' He withdrew a dagger from his sleeve. 'I'm the one where this man comes out of nowhere and kills you stone dead.'

The guard grinned with relief. 'Oh, that one,' he said. 'But that one's not very-'

He crumpled around Teatime's suddenly outthrust fist. And then, just like the others had done, he faded.

'Rather a charitable act there, I feel,' Teatime said as the man vanished. 'But it is nearly Hogswatch, after all.'

Death, pillow slipping gently under his red robe, stood in the middle of the nursery carpet . . .

It was an old one. Things ended up in the nursery when they had seen a complete tour of duty in the rest of the house. Long ago, someone had made it by carefully knotting long bits of brightly coloured rag into a sacking base, giving it the look of a deflated Rastafarian hedgehog. Things lived among the rags. There were old rusks, bits of toy, buckets of dust. It had seen life. It may even have evolved some.

Now the occasional lump of grubby melting snow dropped onto it.

Susan was crimson with anger.

'I mean, why?' she demanded, walking around the figure. 'This is Hogswatch! It's supposed to be jolly, with mistletoe and holly, and - and other things ending in olly! It's a time when people want to feel good about things and eat until they explode! It's a time when they want to see all their relatives-'

She stopped that sentence.

'I mean it's a time when humans are really human,' she said. 'And they don't want a ... a skeleton at the feast! Especially one, I might add, who's wearing a false beard and has got a damn cushion shoved up his robe! I mean, why?'

Death looked nervous.

ALBERT SAID IT WOULD HELP ME GET INTO THE SPIRIT OF THE THING. ER

AGAIN

There was a small squelchy noise.

Susan spun around, grateful right now for any distraction.

'Don't think I can't hear you! They're grapes, understand? And the other things are satsumas! Get out of the fruit bowl!'

'Can't blame a bird for trying,' said the raven sulkily, from the table.

'And you, you leave those nuts alone! They're for tomorrow!'

SKQUEAF, said the Death of Rats, swallowing hurriedly.

Susan turned back to Death. The Hogfather's artificial stomach was now at groin level.

'This is a nice house,' she said. 'And this is a

. IT'S GOOD TO SEE YOU

good job. And it's real, with normal people. And I was looking forward to a real life, where normal things happen! And suddenly the old circus comes to town. Look at yourselves. Three Stooges, No Waiting! Well, I don't know what's going on, but you can all leave again, right? This is my life. It doesn't belong to any of you. It's not going to-'

There was a muffled curse, a rush of soot, and a skinny old man landed in the grate.

'Bum!' he said.

'Good grief! ' raged Susan. 'And here is Pixie Albert! Well, well, well! Come along in, do! If the real Hogfather doesn't come soon there's not going to be room.'

HE WON'T BE JOINING US, said Death. The pillow slid softly on to the rug.

'Oh, and why not? Both of the children did letters to him,' said Susan. 'There's rules, you know.'

YES. THERE ARE RULES. AND THEY'RE ON THE LIST. I CHECKED IT.

Albert pulled the pointy hat off his head and spat out some soot.

'Right. He did. Twice,' he said. 'Anything to drink around here?'

'So what have you turned up for?' Susan demanded. 'And if it's for business reasons, I will add, then that outfit is in extremely poor taste--'

THE HOGFATHER IS ... UNAVAILABLE.

'Unavailable? At Hogswatch?'

YES.

'Why?'

HE IS . . . LET ME SEE . . . THERE ISN'T AN ENTIRELY APPROPRIATE HUMAN WORD, SO ... LET'S SETTLE FOR ... DEAD. YES. HE IS DEAD.

Susan had never hung up a stocking. She'd never looked for eggs laid by the Soul Cake Duck. She'd never put a tooth under her pillow in the serious expectation that a dentally inclined fairy would turn up.

It wasn't that her parents didn't believe in such things. They didn't need to believe in them. They knew they existed. They just wished they didn't.

Oh, there had been presents, at the right time, with a careful label saying who they were from. And a superb egg on Soul Cake Morning, filled with sweets. Juvenile teeth earned no less than a dollar each from her father, without argument.[12] But it was all straightforward.

She knew now that they'd been trying to protect her. She hadn't known then that her father had been Death's apprentice for a while, and that her mother was Death's adopted daughter. She'd had very dim recollections of being taken a few times to see someone who'd been quite, well, jolly, in a strange, thin way. And the visits had suddenly stopped. And she'd met him later and, yes, he had his good side, and for a while she'd wondered why her parents had been so unfeeling and

She knew now why they'd tried to keep her away. There was far more to genetics than little squirmy spirals.

She could walk through walls when she really had to. She could use a tone of voice that was more like actions than words, that somehow reached inside people and operated all the right switches. And her hair ...

That had only happened recently, though. It used to be unmanageable, but at around the age of seventeen she had found it more or less managed itself.

That had lost her several young men. Someone's hair rearranging itself into a new style, the tresses curling around themselves like a nest of kittens, could definitely put the crimp on any relationship.

She'd been making good progress, though. She could go for days now without feeling anything other than entirely human.

But it was always the case, wasn't it? You could go out into the world, succeed on your own terms, and sooner or later some embarrassing old relative was bound to turn up.

Grunting and swearing, the gnome clambered out of another drainpipe, jammed its hat firmly on its head, threw its sack onto a snowdrift and jumped down after it.

' 's a good one,' he said. 'Ha, take 'im weeks to get rid of that one!'

He took a crumpled piece of paper out of a pocket and examined it closely. Then he looked at an elderly figure working away quietly at the next house.

It was standing by a window, drawing with great concentration on the glass.

The gnome wandered up, interested, and watched critically.

'Why just fern patterns?' he said, after a while. 'Pretty, yeah, but you wouldn't catch me puttin' a penny in your hat for fern patterns.'

The figure turned, brush in hand.

'I happen to like fern patterns,' said jack Frost coldly.

'It's just that people expect, you know, sad big-eyed kids, kittens lookin' out of boots, little doggies, that sort of thing.'

'I do ferns.'

'Or big pots of sunflowers, happy seaside scenes... '

'And ferns.'

'I mean, s'posing some big high priest wanted you to paint the temple ceiling with gods 'n' angels and suchlike, what'd you do then?'

'He could have as many gods and angels as he liked, provided they-'

'-looked like ferns?'

'I resent the implication that I am solely fernfixated,' said Jack Frost. 'I can also do a very nice paisley pattern.'

'What's that look like, then?'

'Well . . . it does, admittedly, have a certain ferny quality to the uninitiated eye.' Frost leaned forward. 'Who're you?'

The gnome took a step backwards.

'You're not a tooth fairy, are you? I see more and more of them about these days. Nice girls.'

'Nah. Nah. Not teeth,' said the gnome, clutching his sack.

'What, then?'

The gnome told him.

'Really?' said Jack Frost. 'I thought they just turned up.'

'Well, come to that, I thought frost on the windows just happened all by itself,' said the gnome. "ere, you don't half look spiky. I bet You go through a lot of bedsheets.'

'I don't sleep,' said Frost icily, turning away. 'And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a large number of windows to do. Ferns aren't easy. You need a steady hand.'

'What do you mean dead?' Susan demanded. 'How can the Hogfather be dead? He's ... isn't he what you are? An-'

ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION. YES. HE HAS BECOME SO. THE SPIRIT OF HOGSWATCH.

'But ... how? How can anyone kill the Hogfather? Poisoned sherry? Spikes in the chimney?'

THERE ARE ... MORE SUBTLE WAYS.

'Coff. Coff. Coff. Oh dear, this soot,' said Albert loudly. 'Chokes me up something cruel.'

'And you've taken over?' said Susan, ignoring him. 'That's sick!'

Death contrived to look hurt.

'I'll just go and have a look somewhere,' said Albert, brushing past her and opening the door.

She pushed it shut quickly.

'And what are you doing here, Albert?' she said, clutching at the straw. 'I thought you'd die if you ever came back to the world!'

AH, BUT WE ARE NOT IN THE WORLD, said Death. WE ARE IN THE SPECIAL CONGRUENT REALITY CREATED FOR THE HOGFATHER. NORMAL RULES HAVE TO BE SUSPENDED. HOW ELSE COULD ANYONE GET AROUND THE ENTIRE WORLD IN ONE NIGHT?

' 's right,' said Albert, leering. 'One of the Hogfather's Little Helpers, me. Official. Cot the pointy green hat and everything.' He spotted the glass of sherry and couple of turnips that the children had left on the table, and bore down on them.

Susan looked shocked. A couple of days earlier she'd taken the children to the Hogfather's Grotto in one of the big shops in The Maul. Of course, it wasn't the real one, but it had turned out to be a fairly good actor in a red suit. There had been people dressed up as pixies, and a picket

outside the shop by the Campaign for Equal Heights.[13]

None of the pixies had looked anything like Albert. If they had, people would have only gone into the grotto armed.

'Been good, 'ave yer?' said Albert, and spat into the fireplace.

Susan stared at him.

Death leaned down. She stared up into the blue glow of his eyes.

YOU ARE KEEPING WELL? he said.

'Yes.'

SELF-RELIANT? MAKING YOUR OWN WAY IN THE WORLD?

'Yes!'

GOOD. WELL, COME, ALBERT. WE WILL LOAD THE STOCKINGS AND GET ON WITH THINGS.

A couple of letters appeared in Death's hand.

SOMEONE CHRISTENED THE CHILD TWYLA?

'I m afraid so, but why-'

AND THE OTHER ONE GAWAIN?

'Yes. But look, how-'

WHY GAWAIN?

'I . . . suppose it's a good strong name for a fighter . . .'

A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY, I SUSPECT. I SEE THE GIRL WRITES IN GREEN CRAYON ON PINK PAPER WITH A MOUSE IN THE CORNER. THE MOUSE IS WEARING A DRESS.

'I ought to point out that she decided to do that so the Hogfather would think she was sweet,' said Susan. 'Including the deliberate bad spelling. But look, why are you-'

SHE SAYS SHE IS FIVE YEARS OLD.

'In years, yes. In cynicism, she's about thirtyfive. Why are you doing the-'

BUT SHE BELIEVES IN THE HOGFATHER?

'She'd believe in anything if there was a dolly in it for her. But you're not going to leave without telling me---'

Death hung the stockings back on the mantelpiece.

NOW WE MUST BE GOING. HAPPY HOGSWATCH. ER ... OH, YES: HO. HO. HO.

'Nice sherry,' said Albert, wiping his mouth.

Rage overtook Susan's curiosity. It had to travel quite fast.

'You've actually been drinking the actual drinks little children leave out for the actual Hogfather?' she said.

'Yeah, why not? He ain't drinking 'em. Not where he's gone.'

'And how many have you had, may I ask?'

'Dunno, ain't counted,' said Albert happily.

ONE MILLION, EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND, SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIX, said Death. AND SIXTY

EIGHT THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN PORK PIES. AND ONE TURNIP.

'It looked pork-pie shaped,' said Albert. 'Everything does, after a while.'

'Then why haven't you exploded?'

'Dunno. Always had a good digestion.'

TO THE HOGFATHER, ALL PORK PIES ARE AS ONE PORK PIE. EXCEPT THE ONE LIKE A TURNIP. COME, ALBERT. WE HAVE TRESPASSED ON SUSAN'S TIME.

'Why are you doing this?' Susan screamed.

I AM SORRY. I CANNOT TELL YOU. FORGET YOU

SAW ME. IT'S NOT YOUR BUSINESS.

'Not my business? How can-'

AND NOW ... WE MUST BE GOING...

'Nighty-night,' said Albert.

The clock struck, twice, for the half-hour. It was still half past six.

And they were gone.

The sledge hurtled across the sky.

'She'll try to find out what this is all about, you know,' said Albert.

OH DEAR.

'Especially after you told her not to.'

YOU THINK SO?

'Yeah,' said Albert.

DEAR ME. I STILL HAVE A LOT TO LEARN ABOUT HUMANS, DON'T I?

'Oh ... I dunno... ' said Albert.

OBVIOUSLY IT WOULD BE QUITE WRONG TO INVOLVE A HUMAN IN ALL THIS. THAT IS WHY, YOU WILL RECALL, I CLEARLY FORBADE HER TO TAKE AN INTEREST.

'Yeah ... you did. .

BESIDES, IT'S AGAINST THE RULES.

'You said them little grey buggers had already broken the rules.'

YES, BUT I CAN'T JUST WAVE A MAGIC WAND AND MAKE IT ALL BETTER. THERE MUST BE PROCEDURES. Death stared ahead for a moment and then shrugged. AND WE HAVE SO MUCH TO DO. WE HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP.

'Well, the night is young,' said Albert, sitting back in the sacks.

THE NIGHT IS OLD. THE NIGHT IS ALWAYS OLD.

The pigs galloped on. Then, 'No, it ain't.'

I'M SORRY?

'The night isn't any older than the day, master. It stands to reason. There must have been a day before anyone knew what the night was.'

YES, BUT IT'S MORE DRAMATIC.

'Oh. Right, then.'

Susan stood by the fireplace.

It wasn't as though she disliked Death. Death considered as an individual rather than life's final curtain was someone she couldn't help liking, in a strange kind of way.

Even so ...

The idea of the Grim Reaper filling the

Hogswatch stockings of the world didn't fit well in her head, no matter which way she twisted it. It was like trying to imagine Old Man Trouble as the Tooth Fairy. Oh, yes. Old Man Trouble ... now there was a nasty one for you...

But honestly, what kind of sick person went round creeping into little children's bedrooms all night?

Well, the Hogfather, of course, but...

There was a little tinkling sound from somewhere near the base of the Hogswatch tree.

The raven backed away from the shards of one of the glittering balls.

'Sorry,' it mumbled. 'Bit of a species reaction there. You know . . . round, glittering

sometimes you just gotta peck-'

'That chocolate money belongs to the children!'

SQUEAK? said the Death of Rats, backing away from the shiny coins.

'Why's he doing this?'

SQUEAK.

'You don't know either?'

SQUEAK.

'Is there some kind of trouble? Did he do something to the real Hogfather?'

SQUEAK.

'Why won't he tell me?'

SQUEAK.

'Thank you. You've been very helpful.'

Something ripped, behind her. She turned and saw the raven carefully removing a strip of red wrapping paper from a package.

'Stop that this minute!'

It looked up guiltily.

'It's only a little bit,' it said. 'No one's going to miss it.'

'What do you want it for, anyway?'

'We're attracted to bright colours, right? Automatic reaction.'

'That's jackdaws!'

'Damn. Is it?'

The Death of Rats nodded. SQUEAK.

'Oh, so suddenly you're Mr Ornithologist, are you?' snapped the raven.

Susan sat down and held out her hand.

The Death of Rats leapt onto it. She could feel its claws, like tiny pins.

It was just like those scenes where the sweet and pretty heroine sings a little duet with Mr Bluebird.

Similar, anyway.

In general outline, at least. But with more of a PG rating.

'Has he gone funny in the head?'

SQUEAK. The rat shrugged.

'But it could happen, couldn't it? He's very old, and I suppose he sees a lot of terrible things.'

SQUEAK.

'All the trouble in the world,' the raven translated.

'I understood,' said Susan. That was a talent, too. She didn't understand what the rat said. She just understood what it meant.

'There's something wrong and he won't tell me?' said Susan.

That made her even more angry.

'But Albert is in on it too,' she added.

She thought: thousands, millions of years in the same job. Not a nice one. It isn't always cheerful old men passing away at a great age. Sooner or later, it was bound to get anyone down.

Someone had to do something. It was like that time when Twyla's grandmother had started telling everyone that she was the Empress of Krull and had stopped wearing clothes.

And Susan was bright enough to know that the phrase 'Someone ought to do something' was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used it never added the rider 'and that someone is me'. But someone ought to do something, and right now the whole pool of someones consisted of her, and no one else.

Twyla's grandmother had ended up in a nursing home overlooking the sea at Quirm. That sort of option probably didn't apply here. Besides, he'd be unpopular with the other residents.

She concentrated. This was the simplest talent of them all. She was amazed that other people couldn't do it. She shut her eyes, placed her hands palm down in front of her at shoulder height, spread her fingers and lowered her hands.

When they were halfway down she heard the clock stop ticking. The last tick was longdrawn-out, like a death rattle.

Time stopped.

But duration continued.

She'd always wondered, when she was small, why visits to her grandfather could go on for days and yet, when they got back, the calendar was still plodding along as if they'd never been away.

Now she knew the why, although probably no human being would ever really understand the how. Sometimes, somewhere, somehow, the numbers on the clock did not count.

Between every rational moment were a billion irrational ones. Somewhere behind the hours there was a place where the Hogfather rode, the tooth fairies climbed their ladders, jack Frost drew his pictures, the Soul Cake Duck laid her chocolate eggs. In the endless spaces between the clumsy seconds Death moved like a witch dancing through raindrops, never getting wet.

Humans could liv- No, humans couldn't live here, no, because even when you diluted a glass of wine with a bathful of water you might have more liquid but you still have the same amount of wine. A rubber band was still the same rubber band no matter how far it was stretched.

Humans could exist here, though.

It was never too cold, although the air did prickle like winter air on a sunny day. But out of human habit Susan got her cloak out of the closet.

SQUEAK.

'Haven't you got some mice and rats to see to, then?'

'Nah, 's pretty quiet just before Hogswatch,' said the raven, who was trying to fold the red paper between his claws. 'You get a lot of gerbils and hamsters and that in a few days, mind. When the kids forget to feed them or try to find out what makes them go.'

Of course, she'd be leaving the children. But it wasn't as if anything could happen to them. There wasn't any time for it to happen to them in.

She hurried down the stairs and let herself out of the front door.

Snow hung in the air. It was not a poetic description. It hovered like the stars. When flakes touched Susan they melted with little electric flashes.

There was a lot of traffic in the street, but it was fossilized in Time. She walked carefully between it until she reached the entrance to the park.

The snow had done what even wizards and the Watch couldn't do, which was clean up AnkhMorpork. It hadn't had time to get dirty. In the morning it'd probably look as though the city had been covered in coffee meringue, but for now it mounded the bushes and trees in pure white.

There was no noise. The curtains of snow shut out the city lights. A few yards into the park and she might as well be in the country.

She stuck her fingers into her mouth and whistled.

Yknow, that could've been done with a bit more ceremony,' said the raven, who'd perched on a snowencrusted twig.

'Shut up.'

' 's good, though. Better than most women could do.'

'Shut up.'

They waited.

'Why have you stolen that piece of red paper from a little girl's present?' said Susan.

'I've got plans,' said the raven darkly.

They waited again.

She wondered what would happen if it didn't work. She wondered if the rat would snigger. It had the most annoying snigger in the world.

Then there were hoofbeats and the floating snow burst open and the horse was there.

Binky trotted round in a circle, and then stood and steamed.

He wasn't saddled. Death's horse didn't let you fall.

If I get on, Susan thought, it'll all start again. I'll be out of the light and into the world beyond this one. I'll fall off the tightrope.

But a voice inside her said, You want to, though

. don't you . . . ?

Ten seconds later, there was only the snow.

The raven turned to the Death of Rats.

'Any idea where I can get some string?'

SQUEAK.

She was watched.

One said, Who is she?

One said, Do we remember that Death adopted a daughter? The young woman is her daughter.

One said, She is human?

One said, Mostly.

One said, Can she be killed?

One said, Oh, yes.

One said, Well, that's all right, then.

One said, Er ... we don't think we're going to get into trouble over this, do we? All this is not exactly ... authorized. We don't want questions asked.

One said, We have a duty to rid the universe of sloppy thinking.

One said, Everyone will be grateful when they find out.

Binky touched down lightly on Death's lawn.

Susan didn't bother with the front door but went round the back, which was never locked.

There had been changes. One significant change, at least.

There was a cat-flap in the door.

She stared at it.

After a second or two a ginger cat came through the flap, gave her an I'm-not-hungryand-you're-notinteresting look, and padded off into the gardens.

Susan pushed open the door into the kitchen.

Cats of every size and colour covered every surface. Hundreds of eyes swivelled to watch her.

It was Mrs Gammage all over again, she thought. The old woman was a regular in Biers for the company and was quite gaga, and one of the symptoms of those going completely yoyo was that they broke out in chronic cats. Usually cats who'd mastered every detail of feline existence except the whereabouts of the dirt box.

Several of them had their noses in a bowl of cream.

Susan had never been able to see the attraction in cats. They were owned by the kind of people who liked puddings. There were actual people in the world whose idea of heaven would be a chocolate cat.

'Push off, the lot of you,' she said. 'I've never known him have pets.'

The cats gave her a look to indicate that they were intending to go somewhere else in any case and strolled off, licking their chops.

The bowl slowly filled up again.

They were obviously living cats. Only life had colour here. Everything else was created by Death. Colour, along with plumbing and music, were arts that escaped the grasp of his genius.

She left them in the kitchen and wandered along to the study.

There were changes here, too. By the look of it, he'd been trying to learn to play the violin again. He'd never been able to understand why he couldn't play music.

The desk was a mess. Books lay open, piled on one another. They were the ones Susan had never learned to read. Some of the characters hovered above the pages or moved in complicated little patterns as they read you while you read them.

Intricate devices had been scattered across the top. They looked vaguely navigational, but on what oceans and under which stars?

Several pages of parchment had been filled up with Death's own handwriting. It was immediately recognizable. No one else Susan had ever met had handwriting with serifs.

It looked as though he'd been trying to work something out.

NOT KLATCH. NOT HOWOWONDALAND. NOT THE EMPIRE.

LET US SAY 20 MILLION CHILDREN AT 2LB OF TOYS PER CHILD.

EQUALS 17,857 TONS. 1,785 TONS PER HOUR.

MEMO: DON'T FORGET THE SOOTY FOOTPRINTS. MORE PRACTICE ON THE HO HO HO.

CUSHION.

She put the paper back carefully.

Sooner or later it'd get to you. Death was fascinated by humans, and study was never a one-way thing. A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was or where he was, but not both. Death had picked

up ... humanity. Not the real thing, but something that might pass for it until you examined it closely.

The house even imitated human houses. Death had created a bedroom for himself, despite the fact that he never slept. If he really picked things up from humans, had he tried insanity? It was very popular, after all.

Perhaps, after all these millennia, he wanted to be nice.

She let herself into the Room of Lifetimers. She'd liked the sound of it, when she was a little girl. But now the hiss of sand from millions of hourglasses, and the little pings and pops as full ones vanished and new empty ones appeared, was not so enjoyable. Now she knew what was going on. Of course, everyone died sooner or later. It just wasn't right to be listening to it happening.

She was about to leave when she noticed the open door in a place where she had never seen a door before.

It was disguised. A whole section of shelving, complete with its whispering glasses, had swung out.

Susan pushed it back and forth with a finger. When it was shut, you'd have to look hard to see the crack.

There was a much smaller room on the other side. It was merely the size of, say, a cathedral. And it was lined floor to ceiling with more hourglasses that Susan could just see dimly in the

light from the big room. She stepped inside and snapped her fingers.

'Light,' she commanded. A couple of candles sprang into life.

The hourglasses were ... wrong.

The ones in the main room, however metaphorical they might be, were solid-looking things of wood and brass and glass. But these looked as though they were made of highlights and shadows with no real substance at all.

She peered at a large one.

The name in it was: OFFLER.

'The crocodile god?' she thought.

Well, gods had a life, presumably. But they never actually died, as far as she knew. They just dwindled away to a voice on the wind and a footnote in some textbook on religion.

There were other gods lined up. She recognized a few of them.

But there were smaller lifetimers on the shelf. When she saw the labels she nearly burst out laughing.

'The Tooth Fairy? The Sandman? John Barleycorn? The Soul Cake Duck? The God of what?'

She stepped back, and something crunched under her feet.

There were shards of glass on the floor. She reached down and picked up the biggest. Only a few letters remained of the name etched into the glass

HOGFA...

'Oh, no ... it's true. Granddad, what have you done?'

When she left, the candles winked out. Darkness sprang back.

And in the darkness, among, the spilled sand, a faint sizzle and a tiny spark of light…

Mustrum Ridcully adjusted the towel around his waist.

'How're we doing, Mr Modo?'

The University gardener saluted.

'The tanks are full, Mr Archchancellor sir!' he said brightly. 'And I've been stoking the hotwater boilers an day!'

The other senior wizards clustered in the doorway.

'Really, Mustrum, I really think this is most unwise,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'It was surely sealed up for a purpose.'

'Remember what it said on the door,' said the Dean.

'Oh, they just wrote that on it to keep people out,' said Ridcully, opening a fresh bar of soap.

'Wen, yes,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'That's right. That's what people do.'

'It's a bathroom,' said Ridcully. 'You are all acting as if it's some kind of a torture chamber.'

'A bathroom,' said the Dean, 'designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson. Archchancellor Weatherwax only used it once and then had it sealed up! Mustrum, I beg you to reconsider! It's a Johnson!'

There was something of a pause, because even Ridcully had to adjust his mind around this.

The late (or at least severely delayed) Bergholt Stuttley Johnson was generally recognized as the worst inventor in the world, yet in a very specialized sense. Merely bad inventors made things that failed to operate. He wasn't among these small fry. Any fool could make something that did absolutely nothing when you pressed the button. He scorned such fumble-fingered amateurs. Everything he built worked. It just didn't do what it said on the box. If you wanted a small ground-to-air missile, you asked Johnson to design an ornamental fountain. It amounted to pretty much the same thing. But this never discouraged him, or the morbid curiosity of his clients. Music, landscape gardening, architecture - there was no start to his talents.

Nevertheless, it was a little bit surprising to find that Bloody Stupid had turned to bathroom design. But, as Ridcully said, it was known that he had designed and built several large musical organs and, when you got right down to it, it was all just plumbing, wasn't it?

The other wizards, who'd been there longer than the Archchancellor, took the view that if Bloody Stupid Johnson had built a fully functional bathroom he'd actually meant it to be something else.

'Y'know, I've always felt that Mr Johnson was a much maligned man,' said Ridcully, eventually.

'Well, yes, of course he was,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, clearly exasperated. 'That's like saying that jam attracts wasps, you see.'

'Not everything he made worked badly,' said Ridcully stoutly, flourishing his scrubbing brush. 'Look at that thing they use down in the kitchens for peelin' the potatoes, for example.'

'Ah, you mean the thing with the brass plate on it saying "Improved Manicure Device", Archchancellor?'

'Listen, it's just water,' snapped Ridcully. 'Even Johnson couldn't do much harm with water. Modo, open the sluices!'

The rest of the wizards backed away as the gardener turned a couple of ornate brass wheels.

'I'm fed up with groping around for the soap like you fellows!' shouted the Archchancellor, as water gushed through hidden channels. 'Hygiene. That's the ticket!'

'Don't say we didn't warn you,' said the Dean, shutting the door.

'Er, I still haven't worked out where all the pipes lead, sir,' Modo ventured.

'We'll find out, never you fear,' said Ridcully happily. He removed his hat and put on a shower cap of his own design. In deference to his profession, it was pointy. He picked up a yellow rubber duck.

'Man the pumps, Mr Modo. Or dwarf them, of course, in your case.'

'Yes, Archchancellor.'

Modo hauled on a lever. The pipes started a hammering noise and steam leaked out of a few joints.

Ridcully took a last look around the bathroom.

It was a hidden treasure, no doubt about it. Say what you like, old Johnson must sometimes have got it right, even if it was only by accident. The entire room, including the floor and ceiling, had been tiled in white, blue and green. In the centre, under its crown of pipes, was Johnson's Patent 'Typhoon' Superior Indoor Ablutorium with Automatic Soap Dish, a sanitary poem in mahogany, rosewood and copper.

He'd got Modo to polish every pipe and brass tap until they gleamed. It had taken ages.

Ridcully shut the frosted door behind him.

The inventor of the ablutionary marvel had decided to make a mere shower a fully controllable experience, and one wall of the large cubicle held a marvellous panel covered with brass taps cast in the shape of mermaids and shells and, for some reason, pomegranates. There were separate feeds for salt water, hard water and soft water and huge wheels for accurate control of temperature. Ridcully inspected them with care.

Then he stood back, looked around at the tiles and sang, 'Mi, mi, mi!'

His voice reverberated back at him.

'A perfect echo!' said Ridcully, one of nature's bathroom baritones.

He picked up a speaking tube that had been installed to allow the bather to communicate with the engineer.

'All cisterns go, Mr Modo!'

'Aye, aye, sir!'

Ridcully opened the tap marked 'Spray' and leapt aside, because part of him was still well aware that Johnson's inventiveness didn't just push the edge of the envelope but often went across the room and out through the wall of the sorting office.

A gentle shower of warm water, almost a caressing mist, enveloped him.

'My word!' he exclaimed, and tried another tap.

'Shower' turned out to be a little more invigorating. 'Torrent' made him gasp for breath and 'Deluge' sent him groping to the panel because the top of his head felt that it was being removed. 'Wave' sloshed a wall of warm salt water from one side of the cubicle to the other before it disappeared into the grating that was set into the middle of the floor.

'Are you all right, sir?' Modo called out.

'Marvellous! And there's a dozen knobs I haven't tried yet!'

Modo nodded, and tapped a valve. Ridcully's voice, raised in what he considered to be song, boomed out through the thick clouds of steam.

'Oh, IIIIIII knew a ... er ... an agricultural worker of some description, possibly a thatcher, And I knew him well, and he - he was a farmer, now I come to think of it - and he had a daughter and her name I can't recall at the moment,

And ... Where was P Ah yes. Chorus:

Something something, a humorously shaped vegetable, a turnip, I believe, something something and the sweet nightingaleeeeaarggooooooh-ARGHH oh oh oh-'

The song shut off suddenly. All Modo could hear was a ferocious gushing noise.

'Archchancellor?'

After a moment a voice answered from near the ceiling. It sounded somewhat high and hesitant.

'Er . . . I wonder if you would be so very good as to shut the water off from out there, my dear chap? Er ... quite gently, if you wouldn't

mind. . .'

Modo carefully spun a wheel. The gushing sound gradually subsided.

'Ah. Well done,' said the voice, but now from somewhere nearer floor level. 'Well. Jolly good job. I think we can definitely call it a success. Yes, indeed. Er. I wonder if you could help me walk for a moment. I inexplicably feel a little unsteady on my feet . . . '

Modo pushed open the door and helped Ridcully out and onto a bench. He looked rather pale.

'Yes, indeed,' said the Archchancellor, his eyes a little glazed. 'Astoundingly successful. Er. Just a minor point, Modo-'

'Yes, sir?'

'There's a tap in there we perhaps should leave alone for now,' said Ridcully. 'I'd esteem it a service if you could go and make a little sign to hang on it.'

'Yes, sir?'