Hogfather

step over here for a moment?’

He beckoned him up close.

‘There's got to be a lot of belief sloshing around to let her be created,’ he said. ‘She's a good fourteen stone, if I'm any judge. If we wanted to contact the Hogfather, how would we go about it? Letter up chimney?’

‘Yes, but not tonight, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘He'll be out delivering.’

‘No telling where he'll be, then,’ said Ridcully. ‘Blast.’

‘Of course, he might not have come here yet,’ said Ponder.

‘Why should he come here?’ said Ridcully.

The Librarian pulled the blankets over himself and curled up.

As an orang-utan he hankered for the warmth of the rainforest. The problem was that he'd never even seen a rainforest, having been turned into an orang-utan when he was already a fully grown human. Something in his bones knew about it, though, and didn't like the cold of winter at all. But he was also a librarian in those same bones and he flatly refused to allow fires to be lit in the library. As a result, pillows and blankets went missing everywhere else in the University and ended up in a sort of cocoon in the reference section, in which the ape lurked during the worst of the winter.

He turned over and wrapped himself in the Bursar's curtains.

There was a creaking outside his nest, and some whispering.

‘No, don't light the lamp.’

‘I wondered why I hadn't seen him all evening.’

‘Oh, he goes to bed early on Hogswatch Eve, sir. Here we are…’

There was some rustling.

‘We're in luck. It hasn't been filled,’ said Ponder. ‘Looks like he's used one of the Bursar's.’

‘He puts it up every year?’

‘Apparently.’

‘But it's not as though he's a child. A certain child-like simplicity, perhaps.’

‘It might be different for orang-utans, Archchancellor.’

‘Do they do it in the jungle, d'you think?’

‘I don't imagine so, sir. No chimneys, for one thing.’

‘And quite short legs, of course. Extremely underfunded in the sock area, orang-utans. They'd be quids in if they could hang up gloves, of course. Hogfather'd be on double shifts if they could hang up their gloves. On account of the length of their arms.’

‘Very good, Archchancellor.’

‘I say, what's this on the… my word, a glass of sherry. Well, waste not, want not.’ There was a damp glugging noise in the darkness.

‘I think that was supposed to be for the Hogfather, sir.’

‘And the banana?’

‘I imagine that's been left out for the pigs, sir.’

‘Pigs?’

‘Oh, you know, sir. Tusker and Snouter and Gouger and Rooter. I mean,’ Ponder stopped, conscious that a grown man shouldn't be able to remember this sort of thing, ‘that's what children believe.’

‘Bananas for pigs? That's not traditional, is it? I'd have thought acorns, perhaps. Or apples or swedes.’

‘Yes, sir, but the Librarian likes bananas, sir.’

‘Very nourishin' fruit, Mr Stibbons.’

‘Yes, sir. Although, funnily enough it's not actually a fruit, sir.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, sir. Botanically, it's a type of fish, sir. According to my theory it's cladistically associated with the Krullian pipefish, sir, which of course is also yellow and goes around in bunches or shoals.’

‘And lives in trees?’

‘Well, not usually, sir. The banana is obviously exploiting a new niche.’

‘Good heavens, really? It's a funny thing, but I've never much liked bananas and I've always been a bit suspicious of fish, too. That'd explain it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do they attack swimmers?’

‘Not that I've heard, sir. Of course, they may be clever enough to only attack swimmers who're far from land.’

‘What, you mean sort of… high up? In the trees, as it were?’

‘Possibly, sir.’

‘Cunning, eh?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, we might as well make ourselves comfortable, Mr Stibbons.’

‘Yes, sir.’

A match flared in the darkness as Ridcully lit his pipe.

The Ankh-Morpork wassailers had practised for weeks.

The custom was referred to by Anaglypta Huggs, organizer of the best and most select group of the city's singers, as an occasion for fellowship and good cheer.

One should always be wary of people who talk unashamedly of ‘fellowship and good cheer’ as if it were something that can be applied to life like a poultice. Turn your back for a moment and they may well organize a Maypole dance and, frankly, there's no option then but to try and make it to the treeline.

The singers were halfway down Park Lane now, and halfway through ‘The Red Rosy Hen’ in marvellous harmony.[19] Their collecting tins were already full of donations for the poor of the city, or at least those sections of the poor who in Mrs Huggs' opinion were suitably picturesque and not too smelly and could be relied upon to say thank you. People had come to their doors to listen. Orange light spilled on to the snow. Candle lanterns glowed among the tumbling flakes. If you could have taken the lid off the scene, there would have been chocolates inside. Or at least an interesting biscuit assortment.

Mrs Huggs had heard that wassailing was an ardent ritual, and you didn't need anyone to tell you what that meant, but she felt she'd carefully removed all those elements that would affront the refined ear.

And it was only gradually that the singers became aware of the discord.

Around the corner, slipping and sliding on the ice, came another band of singers.

Some people march to a different drummer. The drummer in question here must have been trained elsewhere, possibly by a different species on another planet.

In front of the group was a legless man on a small wheeled trolley, who was singing at the top of his voice and banging two saucepans together. His name was Arnold Sideways. Pushing him along was Coffin Henry, whose croaking progress through an entirely different song was punctuated by bouts of off-the-beat coughing. He was accompanied by a perfectly ordinary-looking man in torn, dirty and yet expensive clothing, whose pleasant tenor voice was drowned out by the quacking of a duck on his head. He answered to the name of Duck Man, although he never seemed to understand why, or why he was always surrounded by people who seemed to see ducks where no ducks could be. And finally, being towed along by a small grey dog on a string, was Foul Ole Ron, generally regarded in Ankh-Morpork as the deranged beggars' deranged beggar. He was probably incapable of singing, but at least he was attempting to swear in time to the beat, or beats.

The wassailers stopped and watched them in horror.

Neither party noticed, as the beggars oozed and ambled up the street, that little smears of black and grey were spiralling out of drains and squeezing out from under tiles and buzzing off into the night. People have always had the urge to sing and clang things at the dark stub of the year, when all sorts of psychic nastiness has taken advantage of the long grey days and the deep shadows to lurk and breed. Lately people had taken to singing harmoniously, which rather lost the effect. Those who really understood just clanged something and shouted.

The beggars were not in fact this well versed in folkloric practice. They were just making a din in the well-