The History Monks had done their job well, but their biggest ally was the human ability to think narratively. And humans had risen to the occasion. They'd say things like “Thursday already? What happened to the week?” and “Time seems to go a lot faster these days…” and “It seems like only yesterday…”
But some things remained.
The Monks had carefully wiped out the time when the Glass Clock had struck. It had been surgically removed from history. Almost…
Susan picked up Grim Fairy Tales again. Her parents hadn't bought her books like this when she was a child. They'd tried to bring her up normally; they knew that it is not entirely a good idea for humans to be too close to Death. They taught her that facts were more important than fancy. And then she'd grown up and found out that the real fantasies weren't the Pale Rider or the Tooth Fairy or bogeymen—they were all solid facts. The big fantasy was that the world was the place where the toast didn't care if it came butter side down or not, where logic was sensible, and where things could be made not to have happened.
Something like the Glass Clock had been too big to hide. It had leaked out via the dark, hidden labyrinths of the human mind, and had become a folk tale. People had tried to coat it with sugar and magic swords, but its true nature still lurked like a rake in an overgrown lawn, ready to rise up at the incautious foot.
Now someone was treading on it again, and the point, the key point, was that the chin it was rising to meet belonged to…
…someone like me.
She sat and stared at nothing for a while. Around her, historians climbed library ladders, fumbled books onto their lecterns and generally rebuilt the image of the past to suit the eyesight of today. One of them was in fact looking for his glasses.
Time had a son, she thought, someone who walks in the world.
There was a man who devoted himself to the study of time so wholeheartedly that, for him, time became real. He learned the ways of time and Time noticed him, Death had said. There was something there like love.
And Time had a son.
How? Susan had the kind of mind that would sour a narrative with a question like that. Time and a mortal man. How could they ever…? Well, how could they?
Then she thought: my grandfather is Death. He adopted my mother. My father was his apprentice for a while. That's all that happened. They were both human, and I turned up in the normal way. There is no way I should be able to walk through walls and live outside time and be a little bit immortal, but I am, and so this is not an area where logic and, let's face it, basic biology have any part to play.
In any case, time is constantly creating the future. The future contains things that didn't exist in the past. A small baby should be easy for something… someone who rebuilds the universe once every instant.
Susan sighed. And you had to remember that Time probably wasn't time, in the same way that Death wasn't exactly the same as death and War wasn't exactly the same as war. She'd met War, a big fat man with an inappropriate sense of humour and a habit of losing the thread, and he certainly didn't personally attend every minor fracas. She disliked Pestilence, who gave her funny looks, and Famine was just wasted and weird. None of them ran their… call it their discipline. They personified it.
Given that she'd met the Tooth Fairy, the Soul Cake Duck and Old Man Trouble, it amazed Susan that she had grown up to be mostly human, nearly normal.
As she stared at her notes, her hair unwound itself from its tight bun and took up its ground-state position, which was the hair of someone who had just touched something highly electrical. It spread out around her head like a cloud, with one black streak of nearly normal hair.
Grandfather might be an ultimate destroyer of worlds and the final truth of the universe, but that wasn't to say he didn't take an interest in the little people. Perhaps Time did, too.
She smiled.
Time waited for no man, they said.
Perhaps she'd waited for one, once.
Susan was aware that someone was looking at her, turned and saw the Death of Rats peering through the lens of the glasses belonging to the mildly distracted man searching for them on the other side of the room. Up on a long-disregarded bust of a former historian the raven preened itself.
“Well?” she said.
SQUEAK!
“Oh, he is, is he?”
The doors of the library were nuzzled open and a white horse walked in. There is a terrible habit amongst horsy people to call a white horse “grey”, but even one of that bowlegged fraternity would have had to admit that this horse, at least, was white—not as white as snow, which is a dead white, but at least as white as milk, which is alive. His bridle and reins were black, and so was the saddle, but all of them were in a sense just for show. If the horse of Death was inclined to let you ride him, then you'd stay on, saddle or no. And there was no upper limit to the number of people he could carry. After all, plagues sometimes happened suddenly.
The historians paid him no attention. Horses did not walk into libraries.
Susan mounted. There were plenty of times when she wished she'd been born completely human and wholly normal, but the reality was that she'd give it all up tomorrow—
–apart from Binky.
A moment later, four hoofprints glowed like plasma in the air above the library, and then faded away.
Tick
The crunch-crunch of the yeti's feet over the snow and the eternal wind of the mountains were the only sounds.
Then Lobsang said, “By ‘cut off his head’, you actually mean…?”
“Sever the head from the body,” said Lu-Tze.
“And,” said Lobsang, still in the tones of one carefully exploring every corner of the haunted cave, “he doesn't mind?”
“Waal, it's a nuisance,” said the yeti. “A bit of a paarty trick. But it's okaay, if it helps. The sweeper haas alwaays been a goood friend to us. We owe him faavours.”
“I've tried teaching 'em the Way,” said Lu-Tze proudly.
“Yaas. Ver' usefuul. ‘A washed pot never boils,’” said the yeti.
Curiosity vied with annoyance in Lobsang's head, and won.
“What have I missed here?” he said. “You don't die?”
“I doon't die? Wit my head cut off? For laughing! Ho. Ho,” said the yeti. “Of course I die. But this is not such a sizeaable traansaaction.”
“It took us years to work out what the yetis were up to,” said Lu-Tze. “Their loops played hob with the Mandala until the abbot worked out how to allow for them. They've been extinct three times.”
“Three times, eh?” said Lobsang. “That's a lot of times to go extinct. I mean, most species only manage it once, don't they?”
The yeti was entering taller forest now, of ancient pines.
“This'd be a good place,” said Lu-Tze. “Put us down, sir.”
“And we'll chop your head off,” said Lobsang weakly. “What am I saying? I'm not going to chop anyone's head off!”
“You heard him say it doesn't worry him,” said Lu-Tze, as they were gently lowered to the ground.
“That's not the point!” said Lobsang hotly.
“It's his head,” Lu-Tze pointed out.
“But I mind!”
“Oh, well, in that case,” said Lu-Tze, “is it not written, ‘If you want a thing done properly you've got to do it yourself’?”
“Yaas, it is,” said the yeti.
Lu-Tze took the sword out of Lobsang's hand. He held it carefully, like someone unused to weapons. The yeti obligingly knelt.
“You're up to date?” said Lu-Tze.
“Yaas.”
“I cannot believe you're really doing this!” said Lobsang.
“Interesting,” said Lu-Tze. “Mrs Cosmopilite says, ‘Seeing is believing,’ and, strangely enough, the Great Wen said, ‘I have seen, and I believe’!”
He brought the sword down and cut off the yeti's head.
Tick
There was a sound rather like a cabbage being sli
ced in half, and then a head rolled into the basket to cheers and cries of “Oh, I say, well done!” from the crowd. The city of Quirm was a nice, peaceful, law-abiding place and the city council kept it that way with a penal policy that combined the maximum of deterrence with the minimum of re-offending.
GRIPPER “THE BUTCHER” SMARTZ?
The late Gripper rubbed his neck.
“I demand a retrial!” he said.
THIS MAY NOT BE A GOOD TIME, said Death.
“It couldn't possibly have been murder because the…” The soul of Gripper Smartz fumbled in its spectral pockets for a ghostly piece of paper, unfolded it and continued, in a voice of those to whom the written word is an uphill struggle, “…because the bal-ance of my mind was d… dess-turbed.”
REALLY, said Death. He found it best to let the recently departed get things off their chest.
“Yes, 'cos I really, really wanted to kill him, right? And you can't tell me that's a normal frame of mind, right? He was a dwarf, anyway, so I don't think that should count as manslaughter.”
I UNDERSTAND THAT WAS THE SEVENTH DWARF YOU KILLED, said Death.
“I'm very prone to being dess-turbed,” said Gripper. “Really, it's me who's the victim here. All I needed was a bit of understanding, someone to see my point of view for five minutes…”
WHAT WAS YOUR POINT OF VIEW?
“All dwarfs need a damn good kicking, in my opinion. 'Ere, you're Death, right?”
YES INDEED.
“I'm a big fan! I've always wanted to meet you, y'know? I've got a tattoo of you on my arm, look here. Done it meself.”
The benighted Gripper turned at the sound of hooves. A young woman in black, entirely unregarded by the crowd, who were gathered around the food stalls and souvenir stands and the guillotine, was leading a large white stallion towards them.
“And you've even got valet parking!” said Gripper. “Now that's what I call style!” and with that he faded.
WHAT A CURIOUS PERSON, said Death. AH, SUSAN. THANK YOU FOR COMING. OUR SEARCH NARROWS.
“Our search?”
YOUR SEARCH, IN FACT.
“It's just mine now, is it?”
I HAVE SOMETHING ELSE TO ATTEND TO.
“More important than the end of the world?”
IT IS THE END OF THE WORLD. THE RULES SAY THAT THE HORSEMEN SHALL RIDE OUT.
“That old legend? But you don't have to do that!”
IT IS ONE OF MY FUNCTIONS. I HAVE TO OBEY THE RULES.
“Why? They're breaking the rules!”
BENDING THEM. THEY HAVE FOUND A LOOPHOLE. I DO NOT HAVE THAT KIND OF IMAGINATION.
It was like Jason and the Battle for the Stationery Cupboard, Susan told herself. You soon learned that “No one is to open the door of the Stationery Cupboard” was a prohibition that a seven year-old simply would not understand. You had to think, and rephrase it in more immediate terms, like, “No one, Jason, no matter what, no, not even if they thought they heard someone shouting for help, no one—are you paying attention, Jason?—is to open the door of the Stationery Cupboard, or accidentally fall on the door handle so that it opens, or threaten to steal Richenda's teddy bear unless she opens the door of the Stationery Cupboard, or be standing nearby when a mysterious wind comes out of nowhere and blows the door open all by itself, honestly, it really did, or in any way open, cause to open, ask anyone else to open, jump up and down on the loose floorboard to open or in any other way seek to obtain entry to the Stationery Cupboard, Jason!”
“A loophole,” said Susan.
YES.
“Well, why can't you find one too?”
I AM THE GRIM REAPER. I DO NOT THINK PEOPLE WISH ME TO GET… CREATIVE. THEY WOULD WISH ME TO DO THE TASK ASSIGNED TO ME AT THIS TIME, BY CUSTOM AND PRACTICE.
“And that's just… riding out?”
YES.
“Where to?”
EVERYWHERE, I THINK. IN THE MEANTIME, YOU WILL NEED THIS.
Death handed her a lifetimer.
It was one of the special ones, slightly bigger than normal. She took it reluctantly. It looked like an hourglass, but all those little glittering shapes tumbling through the pinch were seconds.
“You know I don't like doing the… the whole scythe thing,” she said. “It's not—Hey, this is really heavy!”
HE IS LU-TZE, A HISTORY MONK. EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS OLD. HE HAS AN APPRENTICE. I HAVE LEARNED THIS. BUT I CANNOT FEEL HIM, I CANNOT SEE HIM. HE IS THE ONE. BINKY WILL TAKE YOU TO THE MONK, YOU WILL FIND THE CHILD.
“And then what?”
I SUSPECT HE WILL NEED SOMEONE. WHEN YOU HAVE FOUND HIM, LET BINKY GO. I SHALL NEED HIM.
Susan's lips moved as a memory collided with a thought.
“To ride out on?” she said. “Are you really talking about the Apocalypse? Are you serious? No one believes in that sort of thing any more!”
I DO.
Susan's jaw dropped. “You're really going to do that? Knowing everything you know?”
Death patted Binky on the muzzle.
YES, he said.
Susan gave her grandfather a sideways look.
“Hold on, there's a trick, isn't there…? You're planning something and you're not even going to tell me, right? You're not really going to just wait for the world to end and celebrate it, are you?”
WE WILL RIDE OUT.
“No!”
YOU WILL NOT TELL THE RIVERS NOT TO FLOW. YOU WILL NOT TELL THE SUN NOT TO SHINE. YOU WILL NOT TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT DO.
“But it's so—” Susan's expression changed, and Death flinched. “I thought you cared!”
TAKE THIS ALSO.
Without wanting to, Susan took a smaller lifetimer from her grandfather.
SHE MAY TALK TO YOU.
“And who is this?”
THE MIDWIFE, said Death. NOW… FIND THE SON.
He faded.
Susan looked down at the lifetimers in her hands. He's done it to you again! she screamed at herself. You don't have to do this and you can put this thing down and you can go back to the classroom and you can be normal again and you just know that you won't, and so does he—
SQUEAK?
The Death of Rats was sitting between Binky's ears, grasping a lock of the white mane and giving the general impression of someone anxious to be going. Susan raised a hand to slap him off, and then stopped herself. Instead, she pushed the heavy lifetimers into the rat's paws.
“Make yourself useful,” she said, grasping the reins. “Why do I do this?”
SQUEAK.
“I have not got a nice nature!”
Tick
There was not, surprisingly, a great deal of blood. The head rolled into the snow, and the body slowly toppled forward.
“Now you've killed—” Lobsang began.
“Just a second,” said Lu-Tze. “Any moment now…”
The headless body vanished. The kneeling yeti turned his head to Lu-Tze, blinked and said, “Thaat stung a biit.”
“Sorry.”
Lu-Tze turned to Lobsang. “Now, hold on to that memory!” he commanded. “It'll try to vanish, but you've had training. You've got to go on remembering that you saw something that now did not happen, understand? Remember that time's a lot less unbending than people think, if you get your head right! Just a little lesson! Seeing is believing!”
“How did it do that?”
“Good question. They can save their life up to a certain point and go back to it if they get killed,” said Lu-Tze. “How it's done… well, the abbot spent the best part of a decade working that one out. Not that anyone else can understand it. There's a lot of quantum involved.” He took a pull of his permanent foul cigarette. “Gotta be good working-out, if no one else can understand it.”14
“How is der abboott these daays?” said the yeti, getting to its feet again and picking up the pilgrims.
“Teething.”
“Ah. Reincarnation's alwaays a problem,” said the yeti, falling into its long, ground-eating lope.<
br />
“Teeth are the worst, he says. Always coming or going.”
“How fast are we going?” said Lobsang.
The yeti's stride was more like a continuous series of leaps from one foot to the other; there was so much spring in the long legs that each landing was a mere faint rocking sensation. It was almost restful.
“I reckon we're doing thirty miles an hour or so, clock time,” said Lu-Tze. “Get some rest. We'll be above Copperhead in the morning. It's all downhill from there.”
“Coming back from the dead…” Lobsang murmured.
“It's more like not actually ever going in the first place,” said Lu-Tze. “I've studied them a bit, but… well, unless it's built in you'd have to learn how to do it, and would you want to bet on getting it right first time? Tricky one. You'd have to be desperate. I hope I'm never that desperate.”
Tick
Susan recognized the country of Lancre from the air, a little bowl of woods and fields perched like a nest on the edge of the Ramtop mountains. And she found the cottage, too, which was not the corkscrew-chimneyed compost-heap kind of witch's house popularized by Grim Fairy Tales and other books, but a spanking new one with gleaming thatch and a manicured front lawn.
There were more ornaments—gnomes, toadstools, pink bunnies, big-eyed deer—around a tiny pond than any sensible gardener should have allowed. Susan spotted one brightly painted gnome fishi—No, that wasn't a rod he was holding, was it? Surely a nice old lady wouldn't put something like that in her garden, would she? Would she?
Susan was bright enough to go round to the back, because witches were allergic to front doors. The door was opened by a small, fat, rosy-cheeked woman whose little currant eyes said, yep, that's my gnome all right, and be thankful he's only widdling in the pond.
“Mrs Ogg? The midwife?”
There was a pause before Mrs Ogg said, “The very same.”
“You don't know me, but—” said Susan, and realized that Mrs Ogg was looking past her at Binky, who was standing by the gate. The woman was a witch, after all.
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