Hogfather

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 Gammer 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