grinning faces that looked quite out of place.
Parents were yel ing and trying to pul their children away, but they weren’t having
much luck. The children were gravitating towards it like flies to jam.
Mr Crumley ran towards the terrible thing, waving his hands.
‘Stop that! Stop that!’ he screamed. ‘You’l frighten the Kiddies!’
He heard a smal boy behind him say, ‘They ‘ve got tusks! Cool!’
His sister said, ‘Hey, look, that one’s doing a wee!’ A tremendous cloud of yel ow
steam arose. ‘Look, it’s going al the way to the stairs! Al those who can’t swim hold
onto the banisters!’
‘They eat you if you’re bad, you know,’ said a smal girl with obvious approval. ‘Al up.
Even the bones. They crunch them.’
Another, older, child opined: ‘Don’t be childish. They’re not real. They’ve just got a
wizard in to do the magic. Or it’s al done by clockwork. Everyone knows they’re not
real y r—‘
One of the boars turned to look at him. The boy moved behind his mother.
Mr Crumley, tears of anger streaming clown his face, fought through the mil ing
crowd until he reached the Hogfather’s Grotto. He grabbed a frightened pixie.
‘It’s the Campaign for Equal Heights that’ve done this, isn’t it!’ he shouted. ‘They’re
out to ruin me! And they’re ruining it for al the Kiddies! Look at the lovely dol s!’
The pixie hesitated. Children were clustering around the pigs, despite the continued
efforts of their mothers. The smal girl was giving one of them an orange.
But the animated display of Dol s of Al Nations was definitely in trouble. The musical
box underneath was stil playing ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice If Everyone Was Nice’ but the
rods that animated the figures had got twisted out of shape, so that the Klatchian boy
was rhythmical y hitting the Omnian girl over the head with his ceremonial spear, while
the girl in Agatean national costume was kicking a smal Llamedosian druid repeatedly
in the ear. A chorus of smal children was cheering them on indiscriminately.
‘There’s, er, there’s more trouble in the Grotto, Mr Crum’ the pixie began.
A red and white figure pushed its way through the crush and rammed a false beard
into Mr Crumley’s hands.
‘That’s it,’ said the old man in the Hogfather costume. ‘I don’t mind the smel of
oranges and the damp trousers but I ain’t putting up with this.’
He stamped off through the queue. Mr Crumley heard him add, ‘And he’s not even
doin’ it right!’
Mr Crumley forced his way onward.
Someone was sitting in the big chair. There was a child on his knee. The figure was
… strange.
It was definitely in something like a Hogfather costume but Mr Crumley’s eye kept
slipping, it wouldn’t focus, it skittered away and tried to put the figure on the very edge
of vision. It was like trying to look at your own ear.
‘What’s going on here? What’s going on here?’ Crumley demanded.
A hand took his shoulder firmly. He turned round and looked into the face of a Grotto
Pixie. At least, it was wearing the costume of a Grotto Pixie, although somewhat
askew, as if it had been put on in a hurry.
‘Who are you?’
The pixie took the soggy cigarette end out of its mouth and leered at him.
‘Cal me Uncle Heavy,’ he said.
‘You’re not a pixie!’
‘Nah, I’m a fairy cobbler, mister.’
Behind Crumley, a voice said:
AND WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR HOGSWATCH, SMALL HUMAN?
Mr Crumley turned in horror.
In front of – wel , he had to think of it as the usurping Hogfather – was a smal child of
indeterminate sex who seemed to be mostly wool en bobble hat.
Mr Crumley knew how it was supposed to go. It was supposed to go like this: the
child was always struck dumb and the attendant mother would lean forward and catch
the Hogfather’s eye and say very pointedly, in that voice adults use when they’re
conspiring against children:
‘You want a Baby Tinkler Dol , don’t you, Doreen? And the Just Like Mummy
Cookery Set you’ve got in the window. And the Cut-Out Kitchen Range Book. And
what do you say?’
And the stunned child would murmur “nk you’ and get given a bal oon or an orange.
This time, though, it didn’t work like that.
Mother got as far as ‘You want a—’
WHY ARE YOUR HANDS ON BITS OF STRING, CHILD?
The child looked down the length of its arms to the dangling mittens affixed to its
sleeves. It held them up for inspection.
‘Clubs,’ it said.
I SEE. VERY PRACTICAL.
‘Are you weal?’ said the bobble hat.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
The bobble hat sniggered. ‘I saw your piggie do a wee!’ it said, and implicit in the
tone was the suggestion that this was unlikely to be dethroned as the most enthral ing
thing the bobble hat had ever seen.
OH. ER … GOOD.
‘It had a gwate big-‘
WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR HOGSWATCH? said the Hogfather hurriedly.
Mother took her economic cue again, and said briskly: ‘She wants a-‘
The Hogfather snapped his fingers impatiently. The mother’s mouth slammed shut.
The child seemed to sense that here was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and spoke
quickly.
‘I wanta narmy. Anna big castle wif pointy bits,’ said the child. ‘Anna swored.’
WHAT DO YOU SAY? prompted the Hogfather.
‘A big swored?’ said the child, after a pause for deep cogitation.
THAT’S RIGHT.
Uncle Heavy nudged the Hogfather.
‘They’re supposed to thank you,’ he said.
ARE YOU SURE? PEOPLE DON’T, NORMALLY.
‘I meant they thank the Hogfather,’ Albert hissed. ‘Which is you, right?’
YES, OF COURSE. AHEM. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SAY THANK YOU.
‘ ‘nk you.’
AND BE GOOD. THIS IS PART OF THE ARRANGEMENT.
‘ ‘es.’
THEN WE HAVE A CONTRACT. The Hogfather reached into his sack and produced
-a very large model castle with, as correctly interpreted, pointy blue cone roofs on
turrets suitable for princesses to be locked in
-a box of several hundred assorted knights and warriors
-and a sword. It was four feet long and glinted along the blade.
The mother took a deep breath.
‘You can’t give her that!’ she screamed. ‘It’s not safe!’
IT’S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY’RE NOT
MEANT TO BE SAFE.
‘She’s a child!’ shouted Crumley.
IT’S EDUCATIONAL.
‘What if she cuts herself?’
THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.
Uncle Heavy whispered urgently.
REALLY? OH, WELL. IT’S NOT FOR ME TO ARGUE, I SUPPOSE.
The blade went wooden.
‘And she doesn’t want al that other stuff!’ said Doreen’s mother, in the face of
previous testimony. ‘She’s a girl! Anyway, I can’t afford big posh stuff like that!’
I THOUGHT I GAVE IT AWAY, said the Hogfather, sounding bewildered.
‘You do?’ said the mother.
‘You do?’ said Crumley, who’d been listening in horror. ‘You don’t! That’s our
Merchandise! You can’t give it away! Hogswatch isn’t about giving it al away! I mean
… yes, of course, of course things are given away,’ he corrected himself, aware that
people were watching, ‘but first they have to be bought, d’you see, I mean … haha.’ He
laughed nervously, increasingly aware of the strangeness around him and the rangy
look of Uncle Heavy. ‘It’s not as though the toys are made by little elves at the Hub,
ahaha . – .’
‘Damn right,’ said Uncle Heavy sagely. ‘You’d have to be a maniac even to think of
giving an elf a chisel, less’n you want their initials carved on your forehead.’
‘You mean this is al free?’ said Doreen’s mother sharply, not to be budged from what
she saw as the central point.
Mr Crumley looked helplessly at the toys. They certainly didn’t look like any of his
stock.
Then he tried to look hard at the new Hogfather. Every cel in his brain was tel ing
him that here was a fat jol y man in a red and white suit.
Wel … nearly every cel . A few of the sparkier ones were saying that his eyes were
reporting something else, but they couldn’t agree on what. A couple had shut down
completely.
The words escaped through his teeth.
‘It … seems to be,’ he said.
Although it was Hogswatch the University buildings were bustling. Wizards didn’t go
to bed early in any case,14 and of course there was the Hogswatchnight Feast to look
forward to at midnight.
It would give some idea of the scale of the Hogswatchnight Feast that a light snack
at UU consisted of a mere three or four courses, not counting the cheese and nuts.
Some of the wizards had been practising for weeks. The Dean in particular could
now lift a twenty-pound turkey on one fork. Having to wait until midnight merely put a
healthy edge on appetites already professional y honed.
There was a general air of pleasant expectancy about the place, a general sizzling of