Hogfather

adult life would hold no fears. Besides, it was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying.

There were lessons later on. These were going a lot better now she'd got rid of the reading books about bouncy balls and dogs called Spot. She'd got Gawain on to the military campaigns of General Tacticus, which were suitably bloodthirsty but, more importantly, considered too difficult for a child. As a result his vocabulary was doubling every week and he could already use words like ‘disembowelled’ in everyday conversation. After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children?

They were naturally good at it.

And she was, to her mild horror, naturally good with them. She wondered suspiciously if this was a family trait. And if, to judge by the way her hair so readily knotted itself into a prim bun, she was destined for jobs like this for the rest of her life.

It was her parents' fault. They hadn't meant it to turn out like this. At least, she hoped charitably that they hadn't.

They'd wanted to protect her, to keep her away from the worlds outside this one, from what people thought of as the occult, from… well, from her grandfather, to put it bluntly. This had, she felt, left her a little twisted up.

Of course, to be fair, that was a parent's job. The world was so full of sharp bends that if they didn't put a few twists in you, you wouldn't stand a chance of fitting in. And they'd been conscientious and kind and given her a good home and even an education.

It had been a good education, too. But it had only been later on that she'd realized that it had been an education in, well, education. It meant that if ever anyone needed to calculate the volume of a cone, then they could confidently call on Susan Sto-Helit. Anyone at a loss to recall the campaigns of General Tacticus or the square root of 27.4 would not find her wanting. If you needed someone who could talk about household items and things to buy in the shops in five languages, then Susan was at the head of the queue. Education had been easy.

Learning things had been harder.

Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.

She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.

After tea she read them a story. They liked her stories. The one in the book was pretty awful, but the Susan version was well received. She translated as she read.

‘…and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, but he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you're a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions. And now,’ she closed the book with a snap, ‘it's time for bed.’

The previous governess had taught them a prayer which included the hope that some god or other would take their soul if they died while they were asleep and, if Susan was any judge, had the underlying message that this would be a good thing.

One day, Susan averred, she'd hunt that woman down.

‘Susan,’ said Twyla, from somewhere under the blankets.

‘Yes?’

‘You know last week we wrote letters to the Hogfather?’

‘Yes?’

‘Only… in the park Rachel says he doesn't exist and it's your father really. And everyone else said she was right.’

There was a rustle from the other bed. Twyla's brother had turned over and was listening surreptitiously.

Oh dear, thought Susan. She had hoped she could avoid this. It was going to be like that business with the Soul Cake Duck all over again.

‘Does it matter if you get the presents anyway?’ she said, making a direct appeal to greed.

‘'es.’

Oh dear, oh dear. Susan sat down on the bed, wondering how the hell to get through this. She patted the one visible hand.

‘Look at it this way, then,’ she said, and took a deep mental breath. ‘Wherever people are obtuse and absurd… and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach… and wherever people are inanely credulous, Pathetically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering… yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather.’

There was silence from under the bedclothes, but she sensed that the tone of voice had worked. The words had meant nothing. That, as her grandfather might have said, was humanity all over.

‘G' night.’

‘Good night,’ said Susan.

It wasn't even a bar. It was just a room where people drank while they waited for other people with whom they had business. The business usually involved the transfer of ownership of something from one person to another, but then, what business doesn't?

Five businessmen sat round a table, lit by a candle stuck in a saucer. There was an open bottle between them. They were taking some care to keep it away from the candle flame.

‘'s gone six,’ said one, a huge man with dreadlocks and a beard you could keep goats in. ‘The clocks struck ages ago. He ain't coming. Let's go.’

‘Sit down, will you? Assassins are always late. ‘cos of style, right?’

‘This one's mental.’

‘Eccentric.’

‘What's the difference?’

‘A bag of cash.’

The three that hadn't spoken yet looked at one another.

‘What's this? You never said he was an Assassin,’ said Chickenwire. ‘He never said the guy was an Assassin, did he, Banjo?’

There was a sound like distant thunder. It was Banjo Lilywhite clearing his throat.

‘Dat's right,’ said a voice from the upper slopes. ‘Youse never said.’

The others waited until the rumble died away. Even Banjo's voice hulked.

‘He's’ — the first speaker waved his hands vaguely, trying to get across the point that someone was a hamper of food, several folding chairs, a tablecloth, an assortment of cooking gear and an entire colony of ants short of a picnic — ‘mental. And he's got a funny eye.’

‘It's just glass, all right?’ said the one known as Catseye, signalling a waiter for four beers and a glass of milk. ‘And he's paying ten thousand dollars each. I don't care what kind of eye he's got.’

‘I heard it was made of the same stuff they make them fortune-telling crystals out of. You can't tell me that's right. And he looks at you with it,’ said the first speaker. He was known as Peachy, although no one had ever found out why[4].

Catseye sighed. Certainly there was something odd about Mister Teatime, there was no doubt about that. But there was something weird about all Assassins. And the man paid well. Lots of Assassins used informers and locksmiths. It was against the rules, technically, but standards were going down everywhere, weren't they? Usually they paid you late and sparsely, as if they were doing the favour. But Teatime was OK. True, after a few minutes talking to him your eyes began to water and you felt you needed to scrub your skin even on the inside, but no one was perfect, were they?