Hogfather

apart.’

‘Oh, me…’

She managed to get one of his arms around her neck.

‘Can you walk?’

‘Oh, me…’

‘It might help if you stopped saying that and tried walking.’

‘I'm sorry, but I seem to have too many legs. Ow.’

Susan did her best to prop him up as, swaying and slipping, they made their way back to the exit.

‘My head,’ said the boy. ‘My head. My head. My head. Feels awful. My head. Feels like someone's hitting it. My head. With a hammer.’

Someone was. There was a small green and purple imp sitting amid the damp curls and holding a very large mallet. It gave Susan a friendly nod and brought the hammer down again.

‘Oh, me…’

‘That wasn't necessary!’ said Susan.

‘You telling me my job?’ said the imp. ‘I suppose you could do it better, could you?’

‘I wouldn't do it at all!’

‘Well, someone's got to do it,’ said the imp.

‘He's part. Of the. Arrangement,’ said the boy.

‘Yeah, see?’ said the imp. ‘Can you hold the hammer while I go and coat his tongue with yellow gunk?’

‘Get down right now!’

Susan made a grab for the creature. It leapt away, still clutching the hammer, and grabbed a pillar.

‘I'm part of the arrangement, I am!’ it yelled.

The boy clutched his head.

‘I feel awful,’ he said. ‘Have you got any ice?’ Whereupon, because there are conventions stronger than mere physics, the building fell in.

The collapse of the Castle of Bones was stately and impressive and seemed to go on for a long time. Pillars fell in, the slabs of the roof slid down, the ice crackled and splintered. The air above the tumbling wreckage filled with a haze of snow and ice crystals.

Susan watched from the trees. The boy, who she'd leaned against a handy trunk, opened his eyes.

‘That was amazing,’ he managed.

‘Why, you mean the way it's all turning bark into snow?’

‘The way you just picked me up and ran.’

‘Oh, that.’

The grinding of the ice continued. The fallen pillars didn't stop moving when they collapsed, but went on tearing themselves apart.

When the fog of ice settled there was nothing but drifted snow.

‘As though it was never there,’ said Susan, aloud. She turned to the groaning figure.

‘All right, what were you doing there?’

‘I don't know. I just opened my. Eyes and there I was.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I… think my name is Bilious. I'm the… I'm the oh God of Hangovers.’

‘There's a God of Hangovers?’

‘An oh god,’ he corrected. ‘When people witness me, you see, they clutch their head and say, “Oh God …” How many of you are standing here?’

‘What? There's just me!’

‘Ah. Fine. Fine.’

‘I've never heard of a God of Hangovers…’

‘You've heard of Bibulous, the God of Wine?

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Big fat man, wears vine leaves round his head, always pictured with a glass in his hand… Ow. Well, you know why he's so cheerful? Him and his big face? It's because he knows he's going to feel good in the morning! It's because it's me that—’

‘—gets the hangovers?’ said Susan.

‘I don't even drink! Ow! But who is it who ends up head down in the privy every morning? Arrgh.’ He stopped and clutched at his head. ‘Should your skull feel like it's lined with dog hair?’

‘I don't think so.’

‘Ah.’ Bilious swayed. ‘You know when people say 'I had fifteen lagers last night and when I woke up my head was clear as a bell'?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Bastards! That's because I was the one who woke up groaning in a pile of recycled chill Just once, I mean just once, I'd like to open my eyes in the morning without my head sticking to something.’ He paused. ‘Are there any giraffes in this wood?’

‘Up here? I shouldn't think so.’

He looked nervously past Susan's head.

‘Not even indigo-coloured ones which are sort of stretched and keep flashing on and off?’

‘Very unlikely.’

‘Thank goodness for that.’ He swayed back and forth. ‘Excuse me, I think I'm about to throw up my breakfast.’

‘It's the middle of the evening!’

‘Is it? In that case, I think I'm about to throw up my dinner.’

He folded up gently in the snow behind the tree.

‘He's a long streak of widdle, isn't he?’ said a voice from a branch. It was the raven. ‘Got a neck with a knee in it.’

The oh god reappeared after a noisy interlude.

‘I know I must eat,’ he mumbled. ‘It's just that the only time I remember seeing my food it's always going the other way…’

‘What were you doing in there?’ said Susan.

‘Ouch! Search me,’ said the oh god. ‘It's only a mercy I wasn't holding a traffic sign and wearing a—’ he winced and paused '—having some kind of women's underwear about my person.’ He sighed. ‘Someone somewhere has a lot of fun,’ he said wistfully. ‘I wish it was me.’

‘Get a drink inside you, that's my advice,’ said the raven. ‘Have a hair of the dog that bit someone else.’

‘But why there?’ Susan insisted.

The oh god stopped h-ling to glare at the raven. ‘I don't know, where was there exactly?’

Susan looked back at where the castle had been. It was entirely gone.

‘There was a very important building there a moment ago,’ she said.

The oh god nodded carefully.

‘I often see things that weren't there a moment ago,’ he said. ‘And they often aren't there a moment later. Which is a blessing in most cases, let me tell you. So I don't usually take a lot of notice.’

He folded up and landed in the snow again.

There's just snow now, Susan thought. Nothing but snow and the wind. There's not even a ruin.

The certainty stole over her again that the Hogfather's castle wasn't simply not there any more. No… it had never been there. There was no ruin, no trace.

It had been an odd enough place. It was where the Hogfather lived, according to the legends. Which was odd, when you thought about it. It didn't look like the kind of place a cheery old toymaker would live in.

The wind soughed in the trees behind them. Snow slid off branches. Somewhere in the dark there was a flurry of hooves.

A spidery little figure leapt off a snowdrift and landed on the oh gods head. It turned a beady eye up towards