spreadeagled against the wal with one arm behind its back. But it did manage to turn
its head, to see Susan’s face glaring at it from a few inches away.
Gawain bounced up and down on his bed.
‘Do the Voice on it! Do the Voice on it!’ he shouted.
‘Don’t do the Voice, don’t do the Voice!’ pleaded the bogeyman urgently.
‘Hit it on the head with the poker!’
‘Not the poker! Not the poker!’
‘It’s you, isn’t it,’ said Susan. ‘From this afternoon . . .’
‘Aren’t you going to poke it with the poker?’ said Gawain.
‘Not the poker!’ whined the bogeyman.
‘New in town?’ whispered Susan.
‘Yes!’ The bogeyman’s forehead wrinkled with puzzlement. ‘Here, how come you can
see me?’
‘Then this is a friendly warning, understand? Because it’s Hogswatch.’
The bogeyman tried to move. ‘You cal this friendly?’
‘Ah, you want to try for un friendly?’ said Susan, adjusting her grip.
‘No, no, no, I like friendly!’
‘This house is out of bounds, right?’
‘You a witch or something?’ moaned the bogeyman.
‘ I’m just … something. Now … you won’t be around here again, wil you? Otherwise
it’l be the blanket next time.’
‘No!’
‘I mean it. We’l put your head under the blanket.’
‘No!’
‘It’s got fluffy bunnies on it. ‘
‘No!’
‘Off you go, then.’
The bogeyman half fel , half ran towards the door.
i’s not right,’ it mumbled. ‘You’re not s’posed to see us if you ain’t dead or magic. ‘s
not fair. . .’
‘Try number nineteen,’ said Susan, relenting a little. ‘The governess there doesn’t
believe in bogeymen.’
‘Right?’ said the monster hopeful y.
‘She believes in algebra, though.’
‘Ah. Nice.’ The bogeyman grinned hugely. It was amazing the sort of mischief that
could becaused in a house where no one in authority thought you existed.
‘I’l be off, then,’ it said. ‘Er. Happy Hogswatch.’
‘Possibly,’ said Susan, as it slunk away.
‘That wasn’t as much fun as the one last month,’ said Gawain, getting between the
sheets again. ‘You know, when you kicked him in the trousers-‘
‘Just you two get to sleep now,’ said Susan.
‘Verity said the sooner we got to sleep the sooner the Hogfather would come,’ said
Twyla conversational y.
‘Yes,’ said Susan. ‘Unfortunately, that might be the case.’
The remark passed right over their heads. She wasn’t sure why it had gone through
hers, but she knew enough to trust her senses.
She hated that kind of sense. It ruined your life. But it was the sense she had been
born with.
The children were tucked in, and she closed the door quietly and went back to the
schoolroom.
Something had changed.
She glared at the stockings, but they were unfulfil ed. A paperchain rustled.
She stared at the tree. Tinsel had been twined around it, badly pasted-together
decorations had been hung on it. And on top was the fairy made of
She crossed her arms, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed theatrical y.
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ she said.
SQUEAK?
‘Yes, it is. You’re sticking out your arms like a scarecrow and you’ve stuck a little star
on your scythe, haven’t you…?’
The Death of Rats hung his head guiltily.
SQUEAK.
‘You’re not fooling anyone.’
SQUEAK.
‘Get down from there this minute!’
SQUEAK.
‘And what did you do with the fairy?’
‘It’s shoved under a cushion on the chair,’ said a voice from the shelves on the other side of the room. There was a clicking noise and the raven’s voice added, ‘These
damn eyebal s are hard, aren’t they?’
Susan raced across the room and snatched the bowl away so fast that the raven
somersaulted and landed on its back.
‘They’re walnuts!’ she shouted, as they bounced around her. ‘Not eyebal s! This is a
schoolroom! And the difference between a school and a-a-a raven delicatessen is that
they hardly ever have eyebal s lying around in bowls in case a raven drops in for a
quick snack! Understand? No eyebal s! The world is ful of smal round things that
aren’t eyebal s! OK?’
The raven’s own eyes revolved.
‘ ‘ n’ I suppose a bit of warm liver’s out of the question—’
‘Shut up! I want both of you out of here right now! I don’t know how you got in here-’
‘There’s a law against coming down the chimney on Hogswatchnight?’
‘-but I don’t want you back in my life, understand?’
‘The rat said you ought to be warned even if you were crazy,’ said the raven sulkily. ‘ I didn’t want to come, there’s a donkey dropped dead just outside the city gates, I’l be
lucky now if I get a hoof—’
‘Warned?’ said Susan.
There it was again. The change in the weather of the mind, a sensation of tangible
time …
The Death of Rats nodded.
There was a scrabbling sound far overhead. A few flakes of soot dropped down the
chimney.
SQUEAK, said the rat, but very quietly.
Susan was aware of a new sensation, as a fish might be aware of a new tide, a
spring of fresh water flowing into the sea. Time was pouring into the world.
She glanced up at the clock. It was just on half past six.
The raven scratched its beak.
‘The rat says … The rat says: you’d better watch out . . .’
There were others at work on this shining Hogswatch Eve. The Sandman was out
and about, dragging his sack from bed to bed. Jack Frost wandered from window pane
to window pane, making icy patterns.
And one tiny hunched shape slid and slithered along the gutter, squelching its feet in
slush and swearing under its breath.
It wore a stained black suit and, on its head, the type of hat known in various parts of
the multiverse as ‘bowler’, ‘derby’ or ‘the one that makes you look a bit of a tit’. The hat
had been pressed down very firmly and, since the creature had long pointy ears, these
had been forced out sideways and gave it the look of a smal malignant wing-nut.
The thing was a gnome by shape but a fairy by profession. Fairies aren’t necessarily
little twinkly creatures. It’s purely a job description, and the commonest ones aren’t
even visible.9 A fairy is simply any creature currently employed under supernatural
laws to take things away or, as in the case of the smal creature presently climbing up
the inside of a drainpipe and swearing, to bring things.
Oh, yes. He does. Someone has to do it, and he looks the right gnome for the job.
Oh, yes.
9 Such as the Electric Drill Chuck Key Fairy.
Sideney was worried. He didn’t like violence, and there had been a lot of it in the last few days, if days passed in this place. The men … wel , they
only seemed to find life interesting when they were doing something sharp to
someone else and, while they didn’t bother him much in the same way that lions don’t
trouble themselves with ants, they certainly worried him.
But not as much as Teatime did. Even the brute cal ed Chickenwire treated Teatime
with caution, if not respect, and the monster cal ed Banjo just fol owed him around like
a puppy.
The enormous man was watching him now.
He reminded Sideney too much of Ronnie Jenks, the bul y who’d made his life
miserable at Cammer Wimblestone’s dame school. Ronnie hadn’t been a pupil. He
was the old woman’s grandson or nephew or something, which gave him a licence to
hang around the place and beat up any kid smal er or weaker or brighter than he was,
which more or less meant he had the whole world to choose from. In those
circumstances, it was particularly unfair that he always chose Sideney.
Sideney hadn’t hated Ronnie. He’d been too frightened. He’d wanted to be his friend.
Oh, so much. Because that way, just possibly, he wouldn’t have his head trodden on
such a lot and would actual y get to eat his lunch instead of having it thrown in the
privy. And it had been a good day when it had been his lunch.
And then, despite al Ronnie’s best efforts, Sideney had grown up and gone to
university. Occasional y his mother told him how Ronnie was getting on (she assumed,
in the way of
mothers, that because they had been smal boys at school together they had been
friends). Apparently he ran a fruit stal and was married to a girl cal ed Angie.10 This
was not enough punishment, Sideney considered.
Banjo even breathed like Ronnie, who had to concentrate on such an intel ectual
exercise and always had one blocked nostril. And his mouth open al the time. He
looked as though he was living on invisible plankton.
He tried to keep his mind on what he was doing and ignore the laboured gurgling
behind him. A change in its tone made him look up.