‘I’ve been pedal ing for ages!’ panted the oh god
‘Wel , “A” is a very popular letter.
Susan stared up at the shelves. A was for Anon, among other things. Al those
people who, for one reason or another, never official y got a name
They tended to be short books
‘M … Bo … Bod … Bog … turn left .
The library tower squeaked ponderously around the next corner
‘Ah, Bo … blast, the Bots are at least twenty shelves up.
‘Oh, how nice,’ said the oh god grimly
He heaved on the lever that moved the drive chain from one sprocket to another, and
started to pedal again
Very ponderously, the creaking tower began to telescope upwards
‘Right, we’re there,’ Susan shouted down, after a few minutes of slow rise. ‘Here’s …
let’s see … Aabana Bottler. . .
‘I expect Violet wil be a lot further,’ said the oh god, trying out irony
‘Onwards!
Swaying a little, the tower headed down the Bs until
‘Stop!
It rocked as the oh god kicked the brake block against a wheel
‘I think this is her,’ said a voice from above. ‘OK, you can lower away.
A big wheel with ponderous lead weights on it spun slowly as the tower concertina’d
back, creaking and grinding. Susan climbed down the last few feet
‘ Everyone’s in here?’ said the oh god, as she thumbed through the pages
‘Yes.
‘Even gods?
‘Anything that’s alive and self-aware,’ said Susan, not looking up. ‘This is … odd. It
looks as though she’s in some sort of … prison. Who’d want to lock up a tooth fairy?
‘Someone with very sensitive teeth?
Susan flicked back a few pages. ‘It’s al … hoods over her head and people carrying
her and so on. But . . .’ she turned a page ‘. . . it says the last job she did was on Banjo
and … yes, she got the tooth … and then she felt as though someone was behind her
and … there’s a ride on a cart … and the hood’s come off … and there’s a causeway …
and. . .
‘Al that’s in a book?
‘The autobiography. Everyone has one. It writes down your life as you go along.
‘I’ve got one?
‘I expect so.
‘Oh, dear. “Got up, was sick, wanted to die.” Not a gripping read, real y.
Susan turned the page
‘A tower,’ she said. ‘She’s in a tower. Fro!
what she saw, it was tal and white inside … but not outside? It didn’t look real. There
were apple trees around it, but the trees, the trees didn’t look right. And a river, but that
wasn’t right either. There were goldfish in it … but they were on top of the water.
‘Ah. Pol ution,’ said the oh god
‘I don’t think so. It says here she saw them swimming”
‘Swimming on top of the water?
‘That’s how she thinks she saw it.
‘Real y? You don’t think she’d been eating any of that mouldy cheese, do you?
‘And there was blue sky but … she must have got this wrong … it says here there
was only blue sky above . . .
‘Yep. Best place for the sky,’ said the oh god. ‘Sky underneath you, that probably
means trouble.
Susan flicked a page back and forth. ‘She means … sky overhead but not around the
edges, I think No sky on the horizon.
‘Excuse me,’ said the oh god. ‘I’m not long in this world, I appreciate that, but I think
you have, to have sky on the horizon. That’s how you ca
tel it’s the horizon.
A sense of familiarity was creeping up on Susan, but surreptitiously, dodging behind
things whenever she tried to concentrate on it
‘I’ve seen this place,’ she said, tapping the page. ‘If only she’d looked harder at the
trees … She says they’ve got brown trunks and green leave
and it says here she thought they were odd. And … She concentrated on the next
paragraph. ‘Flowers. Growing in the grass. With big round petals.
She stared unseeing at the oh god again
‘This isn’t a proper landscape,’ she said
‘It doesn’t sound too unreal to me,’ said the oh god. ‘Sky. Trees. Flowers. Dead fish.
‘ Brown tree trunks? Real y they’re mostly a sort of greyish mossy colour. You only
ever see brown tree trunks in one place,’ said Susan. ‘And it’s the same place where
the sky is only ever overhead. The blue never comes down to the ground.
She looked up. At the far end of the corridor was one of the very tal , very thin
windows. It looked out on to the black gardens. Black bushes, black grass, black trees.
Skeletal fish cruising ‘m the black waters of a pool, under black water lilies
There was colour, in a sense, but it was the kind of colour you’d get if you could
shine a beam of black through a prism. There were hints of tints, here and there a
black you might persuade yourself was a very deep purple or a midnight blue. But it
was basical y black, under a black sky, because this was the world belonging to Death
and that was al there was to it
The shape of Death was the shape people had created for him, over the centuries.
Why bony? Because bones were associated with death. He’d got a scythe because
agricultural people coul
spot a decent metaphor. And he lived in a sombre land because the human
imagination would be rather stretched to let him live somewhere nice with flowers
People like Death lived in the human imagination, and got their shape there, too. He
wasn’t the only one ..
… but he didn’t like the script, did he? He’d started to take an interest in people. Was
that a thought, or just a memory of something that hadn’t happened yet
The oh god fol owed her gaze
‘Can we go after her?’ said the oh god. ‘I say we, I think I’ve just got drafted in
because I was in the wrong place.
‘She’s alive. That means she is mortal,’ said Susan. ‘That means I can find her, too.’
She turned and started to walk out of the library
‘If she says the sky is just blue overhead, what’s between it and the horizon?’ said
the oh god, running to keep up
‘You don’t have to come,’ said Susan. ‘It’s not your problem.
‘Yes, but given that my problem is that my whole purpose in life is to feel rotten,
anything’s an improvement.
‘It could be dangerous. I don’t think she’s there of her own free wil . Would you be
any good in a fight?
‘Yes. I could be sick on people.
It was a shack, somewhere out on the outskirts of the Plains town of Scrote. Scrote
had a lot of outskirts, spread so widely – a busted cart here, a dead dog there that often
people went through it without even knowing it was there, and real y it only appeared
on the maps because cartographers get embarrassed about big empty spaces
Hogswatch came after the excitement of the cabbage harvest when it was pretty
quiet in Scrote and there was nothing much to look forward to until the fun of the sprout
festival
This shack had an iron stove, with a pipe that went up through the thick cabbage-leaf
thatch
Voices echoed faintly within the pipe
THIS IS REALLY, REALLY STUPID
‘I think the tradition got started when everyone had them big chimneys, master.’ This
voice sounded as though it was coming from someone standing on the roof and
shouting down the pipe
INDEED? IT’S ONLY A MERCY IT’S UNLIT
There was some muffled scratching and banging, and then a thump from within the
pot bel y of the stove
DAMN
‘What’s up, master?
THE DOOR HAS NO HANDLE ON THE INSIDE. I CALL THAT INCONSIDERATE
There were some more bumps, and then a scrape as the stove lid was lifted up and
pushed sideways. An arm came out and felt around the front of the stove until it found
the handle
It played with it for a while, but it was obvious that the hand did not belong to a
person used to opening things
In short, Death came out of the stove. Exactly how would be difficult to describe
without folding the page. Time and space were, from Death’s point of view, merely
things that he’d heard described. When it came to Death, they ticked the box marked
Not Applicable. It might help to think of the universe as a rubber sheet, or perhaps not
‘Let us in, master,’ a pitiful voice echoed down from the roof. ‘It’s brass monkeys out
here.
Death went over to the door. Snow was blowing underneath it. He peered nervously
at the woodwork. There was a thump outside and Albert’s voice sounded a lot closer