Hogfather

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.