Soul Music

There was a clock by the bedside, because Death knew there should be things like bedside clocks. It had skulls and bones and the omega sign on it, and it didn't work. There were no working clocks in the house, except the special one in the hall. Any others got depressed and stopped, or unwound themselves all in one go.

Her room looked as though someone had moved out yesterday. There were hairbrushes on the dressing table, and a few odds and ends of make-up. There was even a dressing-gown on the back of the door. It had a rabbit on the pocket. The cosy effect would have been improved if it hadn't been a skeletal one.

She had a rummage through the drawers. This must have been her mother's room. There was a lot of pink. Susan had nothing against pink in moderation, but this wasn't it; she put on her old school dress.

The important thing, she decided, was to stay calm. There was always a logical explanation for everything, even if you had to make it up.

SQEAUFF.

The Death of Rats landed on the dressing table, claws scrabbling for a purchase. He removed the tiny scythe from his jaws.

'I think,' said Susan carefully, 'that I would like to go home now, thank you.'

The little rat nodded, and leapt.

It landed on the edge of the pink carpet and scurried away across the dark floor beyond.

When Susan stepped off the carpet the rat stopped and looked around in approval. Once again, she felt she'd passed some sort of test.

She followed it out into the hall and then into the smoky cavern of the kitchen. Albert was bent over the stove.

'Morning,' he said, out of habit rather than any acknowledgement of the time of day. 'You want fried bread with your sausages? There's porridge to follow.'

Susan looked at the mess sizzling in the huge fryingpan. It wasn't a sight to be seen on an empty stomach, although it could probably cause one. Albert could make an egg wish it had never been laid.

'Haven't you got any muesli?' she said.

'Is that some kind of sausage?' said Albert suspiciously.

'It's nuts and grains.'

'Any fat in it?'

'I don't think so.'

'How're you supposed to fry it, then?'

'You don't fry it.'

'You call that breakfast?'

'It doesn't have to be fried to be breakfast,' said Susan. 'I mean, you mentioned porridge, and you don't fry porridge—'

'Who says?'

'A boiled egg, then?'

'Hah, boiling's no good, it don't kill off all the germs.'

'BOIL ME AN EGG, ALBERT.'

As the echoes bounced across and died away, Susan wondered where the voice had come from.

Albert's ladle tinkled on the tiles.

'Please?' said Susan.

'You did the voice,' said Albert.

'Don't bother about the egg,' said Susan. The voice had made her jaw ache. It worried her even more than it worried Albert. After all, it was her mouth. 'I want to go home!'

'You are home,' said Albert.

'This place? This isn't my home!'

'Yeah? What's the inscription on the big clock?'

''Too Late',' said Susan promptly.

'Where are the beehives?'

'In the orchard.'

'How many plates've we got?'

'Seven—' Susan shut her mouth firmly.

'See? It's home to part of you,' said Albert.

'Look… Albert,' said Susan, trying sweet reason in case it worked any better this time round, 'maybe there is… someone… sort of… in charge of things, but I'm really no-one special… I mean…'

'Yeah? How come the horse knows you?'

'Yes, but I really am just a normal girl—'

'Normal girls didn't get a My Little Binky set on their third birthday!' snapped Albert. 'Your dad took it away. The Master was very upset about that. He was trying.'

'I mean I'm an ordinary kid!'

'Listen, ordinary kids get a xylophone. They don't just ask their grandad to take his shirt off!'

'I mean I can't help it! That's not my fault! It's not fair!'

'Really? Oh, why didn't you say?' said Albert sourly. 'That cuts a lot of thin ice, that does. I should just go out now, if I was you, and tell the universe that it's not fair. I bet it'll say, oh, all right then, sorry you've been troubled, you're let off.'

'That's sarcasm! You can't talk to me like that! You're just a servant!'

'That's right. And so are you. So I should get started, if I was you. The rat'll help. He mainly does rats, but the principle's the same.'

Susan sat with her mouth open.

'I'm going outside,' she snapped.

'I ain't stopping you.'

Susan stormed out through the back door, across the enormous expanses of the outer room, past the grindstone in the yard, and into the garden.

'Huh,' she said.

If someone had told Susan that Death had a house, she would have called them mad or, even worse, stupid. But if she'd had to imagine one, she'd have drawn, in sensible black crayon, some towering, battlemented, Gothic mansion. It would loom, and involve other words ending in 'oom', like gloom and doom. There would have been thousands of windows. She'd fill odd corners of the sky with bats. It would be impressive.

It wouldn't be a cottage. It wouldn't have a rather tasteless garden. It wouldn't have a mat in front of the door with 'Welcome' on it.

Susan had invincible walls of common sense. They were beginning to melt like salt in a wet wind, and that made her angry.

There was Grandfather Lezek, of course, on his little farm so poor that even the sparrows had to kneel down to eat. He'd been a nice old chap, so far as she could recall; a bit sheepish, now she came to think about it, especially when her father was around.

Her mother had told Susan that her own father had been…

Now she came to think about that, she wasn't sure what her mother had told her. Parents were quite clever at not telling people things, even when they used a lot of words. She'd just been left with the impression that he wasn't around.

Now it was being suggested that he was renowned for being around all the time.

It was like having a relative in trade.

A god, now… a god would be something. Lady Odile Flume, in the fifth form, was always boasting that her great-great-grandmother had once been seduced by the god Blind to in the form of a vase of daisies, which apparently made her a demi-hemi-semi-goddess. She said her mother found it useful to get a table in restaurants. Saying you were a close relative of Death probably would not have the same effect. You probably wouldn't even manage a seat near the kitchen.

If it was all some kind of dream, she didn't seem at any risk of waking up. Anyway, she didn't believe that kind of thing. Dreams weren't like this.

A path led from the stable-yard past a vegetable garden and, descending slightly, into an orchard of black-