Hogfather

‘Why?’

‘Why? It's their job.’

‘I meant why, where do they take the teeth after they collect them?’

‘I don't know! They just… well, they just take the teeth and leave the money,’ said Susan. ‘What sort of question is that — “Where do they take the teeth?”?’

‘I just wondered, that's all. Probably all humans know, I'm probably very silly for asking, it's probably a wellknown fact.’

Susan looked thoughtfully at the Death of Rats.

‘Actually… where do they take the teeth?’

SQUEAK?

‘He says search him,’ said the raven. ‘Maybe they sell 'em?’ It pecked at another jar. ‘How about these, these look nice and wrinkl—’

‘Pickled walnuts,’ said Susan absently. ‘What do they do with the teeth? What use is there for a lot of teeth? But… what harm can a tooth fairy do?’

‘Have we got time to find one and ask her?’ said the oh god.

‘Time isn't the problem,’ said Susan.

There are those who believe knowledge is something that is acquired — a precious ore hacked, as it were, from the grey strata of ignorance.

There are those who believe that knowledge can only be recalled, that there was some Golden Age in the distant past when everything was known and the stones fitted together so you could hardly put a knife between them, you know, and it's obvious they had flying machines, right, because of the way the earthworks can only be seen from above, yeah? and there's this museum I read about where they found a pocket calculator under the altar of this ancient temple, you know what I'm saying? but the government hushed it up… [18]

Mustrum Ridcully believed that knowledge could be acquired by shouting at people, and was endeavouring to do so. The wizards were sitting around the Uncommon Room table, which was piled high with books.

‘It is Hogswatch, Archchancellor,’ said the Dean reproachfully, thumbing through an ancient volume.

‘Not until midnight,’ said Ridcully. ‘Sortin' this out will give you fellows an appetite for your dinner.’

‘I think I might have something, Archchancellor,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘This is Woddeley's Basic Gods. There's some stuff here about lares and penates that seems to fit the bill.’

‘Lares and penates? What were they when they were at home?’ said Ridcully.

‘Hahaha,’ said the Chair.

‘What?’ said Ridcully.

‘I thought you were making a rather good joke, Archchancellor,’ said the Chair.

‘Was I? I didn't mean to,’ said Ridcully.

‘Nothing new there,’ said the Dean, under his breath.

‘What was that, Dean?’

‘Nothing, Archchancellor.’

‘I thought you made the reference “at home” because they are, in fact, household gods. Or were, rather. They seemed to have faded away long ago. They were… little spirits of the house, like, for example—’

Three of the other wizards, thinking quite fast for wizards, clapped their hands over his mouth.

‘Careful!’ said Ridcully. ‘Careless talk creates lives! That's why we've got a big fat God of Indigestion being ill in the privy. By the way, where's the Bursar?’

‘He was in the privy, Archchancellor,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

‘What, when the—?’

‘Yes, Archchancellor.’

‘Oh, well, I'm sure he'll be all right,’ said Ridcully, in the matter-of-fact voice of someone contemplating something nasty that was happening to someone else out of earshot. ‘But we don't want any more of these… what're they, Chair?’

‘Lares and penates, Archchancellor, but I wasn't suggesting—’

‘Seems clear to me. Something's gone wrong and these little devils are coming back. All we have to do is find out what's gone wrong and put it right.’

‘Oh, well, I'm glad that's all sorted out,’ said the Dean.

‘Household gods,’ said Ridcully. ‘That's what they are, Chair?’ He opened the drawer in his hat and took out his pipe.

‘Yes, Archchancellor. It says here they used to be the… local spirits, I suppose. They saw to it that the bread rose and the butter churned properly.’

‘Did they eat pencils? What was their attitude in the socks department?’

‘This was back in the time of the First Empire,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Sandals and togas and so on.’

‘Ah. Not noticeably socked?’

‘Not excessively so, no. And it was nine hundred years before Osric Pencillium first discovered, in the graphite-rich sands of the remote island of Sumtri, the small bush which, by dint of careful cultivation, he induced to produce the long—’

‘Yes, we can all see you've got the encyclopaedia open under the table, Chair,’ said Ridcully. ‘But I daresay things have changed a bit. Moved with the times. Bound to have been a few developments. Once they looked after the bread rising, now we have things that eat pencils and socks and see to it that you can never find a clean towel when you want one—’

There was a distant tinkling.

He stopped.

‘I just said that, didn't I?’ he said.

The wizards nodded glumly.

‘And this is the first time anyone's mentioned it?’

The wizards nodded again.

‘Well, dammit, it's amazing, you can never find a clean towel when—’

There was a rising wheeee noise. A towel went by at shoulder height. There was a suggestion of many small wings.

‘That was mine,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes reproachfully. The towel disappeared in the direction of the Great Hall.

‘Towel Wasps,’ said the Dean. ‘Well done, Archchancellor.’

‘Well, I mean, dammit, it's human nature, isn't it?’ said Ridcully hotly. ‘Things go wrong, things get lost, it's natural to invent little creatures that — All right, all right, I'll be careful. I'm just saying man is naturally a mythopoeic creature.’

‘What's that mean?’ said the Senior Wrangler.

‘Means we make things up as we go along,’ said the Dean, not looking up.

‘Um… excuse me, gentlemen,’ said Ponder Stibbons, who had been scribbling thoughtfully at the end of the table. ‘Are we suggesting that things are coming back? Do we think that's a viable hypothesis?’

The wizards looked at one another around the table.

‘Definitely viable.’

‘Viable, right enough.’

‘Yes, that's the stuff to give the troops.’

‘What is? Whats the stuff to give the troops?’

‘Well… tinned rations? Decent weapons, good boots… that sort of thing.’

‘What's that got to do with anything?’

‘Don't ask me. He was the one who started talking about giving stuff to the troops.’

‘Will you lot shut up? No one's giving anything to the troops!’