Hogfather

'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 Im 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 Susan. 'All right by you, is it?' said the imp, producing its huge hammer. 'Some of us have a job to do, you know, even if we are of a metaphorical, nay, folkloric persuasion.'



'Oh, go away.'



'If you think I'm bad, wait until you see the little pink elephants,' said the imp. 'I don't believe you.'



'They come out of his ears and fly around his head making tweeting noises.'



'Ah,' said the raven, sagely. 'That sounds more like robins. I wouldn't put anything past them.' The oh god grunted. Susan suddenly felt that she didn't want to leave him. He was human. Well, human shaped. Well, at least he had two arms and legs. He'd freeze to death here. Of course, gods, or even oh gods, probably couldn't, but humans didn't think like that. You couldn't just leave someone. She prided herself on this bit of normal thinking. Besides, he might have some answers, if she could make him stay awake enough to understand the questions. From the edge of the frozen forest.. animal eyes watched them go. Mr Crumley sat on the damp stairs and sobbed. He couldn't get any nearer to the toy department. Every time he tried he got lifted off his feet by the mob and dumped at the edge of the crowd by the current of people. Someone said, 'Top of the evenin', squire,' and he looked up blearily at the small yet irregularly formed figure that had addressed him thusly. 'Are you one of the pixies?' he said, after mentally exhausting all the other possibilities. 'No, sir. I am not in fact a pixie, sir, I am in fact Corporal Nobbs of the Watch. And this is Constable Visit, sir.' The creature looked at a piece of paper in its paw. 'You Mr Crummy?'



'Crumley!'



'Yeah, right. You sent a runner to the Watch House and we have hereby responded with commendable speed, sir,' said Corporal Nobbs. 'Despite it being Hogswatchnight and there being a lot of strange things happening and most importantly it being the occasion of our Hogswatchly piss-up, sir. But this is all right because Washpot, that's Constable Visit here, he doesn't drink, sir, it being against his religion, and although I do drink, sir, I volunteered to come because it is my civic duty, sir.' Nobby tore off a salute, or what he liked to believe was a salute. He did not add, 'And turning out for a rich bugger such as your good self is bound to put the officer concerned in the way of a seasonal bottle or two or some other tangible evidence of gratitude,' because his entire stance said it for him Even Nobby's ears could look suggestive. Unfortunately, Mr Crumley wasn't in the right receptive frame of mind. He stood up and waved a shaking finger towards the top of the stairs. 'I want you to go up there,' he said, 'and arrest him!'



'Arrest who, sir?' said Corporal Nobbs. 'The Hogfather!'



'What for, sir?'



'Because he's sitting up there as bold as brass in his Grotto, giving away presents!' Corporal Nobbs thought about this. 'You haven't been having a festive drink, have you, sir?' he said hopefully. 'I do not drink!'



'Very wise, sir,' said Constable Visit. 'Alcohol is the tarnish of the soul. Ossory, Book Two, Verse Twentyfour.'



'Not quite up to speed here, sir,' said Corporal Nobbs, looking perplexed. 'I thought the Hogfather is s'posed to give away stuff, isn't he?' This time Mr Crumley had to stop and think. Up until now he hadn't quite sorted things out in his head, other than recognizing their essential wrongness. 'This one is an Impostor!' he declared. 'Yes, that's right! He smashed his way into here!'



'Y'know, I always thought that,' said Nobby. 'I thought, every year, the Hogfather spends a fortnight sitting in a wooden grotto in a shop in Ankh-Morpork? At his busy time, too? Hah! Not likely! Probably just some old man in a beard, I thought.'



'I meant ... he's not the Hogfather we usually have,' said Crumley, struggling for firmer ground. 'He just barged in here" 'Oh, a different impostor? Not the real impostor at all?'



'Well ... yes ... no. . .'



'And started giving stuff away?' said Corporal Nobbs. 'That's what I said! That's got to be a Crime, hasn't it?' Corporal Nobbs rubbed his nose. 'Well, nearly,' he conceded, not wishing to totally relinquish the chance of any festive remuneration. Realization dawned. 'He's giving away your stuff, sir?'



'No! No, he brought it in with him!'



'Ah? Giving away your stuff, now, if he was doing that, yes, I could see the problem. That's a sure sign of crime, stuff going missing. Stuff turning up, weerlll, that's a tricky one. Unless it's stuff like arms and legs, o' course. We'd be on safer ground if he was nicking stuff, sir, to tell you the truth.'



'This is a shop,' said Mr Crumley, finally getting to the root of the problem. 'We do not give Merchandise away. How can we expect people to buy things if some Person is giving them away? Now please go and get him out of here.'



'Arrest the Hogfather, style of thing?'



'Yes!'



'On Hogswatchnight?'



'Yes!'



'In your shop?'



'Yes!'



'In front of all those kiddies?'



'Y--' Mr Crumley hesitated. To his horror, he realized that Corporal Nobbs, against all expectation, had a point. 'You think that will look bad?' he said. 'Hard to see how it could look good, sir.'



'Could you not do it surreptitiously?' he said. 'Ah, well, surreptition, yes, we could give that a try,' said Corporal Nobbs. The sentence hung in the air with its hand out. 'You won't find me ungrateful,' said Mr Crumley, at last. 'Just you leave it to us,' said Corporal Nobbs, magnanimous in victory. 'You just nip down to your office and treat yourself to a nice cup of tea and we'll sort this out in no time. You'll be ever so grateful.' Crumley gave him a look of a man in the grip of serious doubt, but staggered away nonetheless. Corporal Nobbs rubbed his hands together. 'You don't have Hogswatch back where you come from do you, Washpot?' he said, as they climbed the stairs to the first floor. 'Look at this carpet, you'd think a pig'd pissed on it . . .'



'We call it the Fast of St Ossory,' said Visit, who was from Omnia. 'But it is not an occasion for superstition and crass commercialism. We simply get together in family groups for a prayer meeting and a fast.'