Ridcully picked up a mallet.
Windle sat up again.
‘Everyone’s going to so much trouble -‘
‘Yes, right,’ said Ridcully, looking around.
‘Now – who’s got the stake?’
Everyone looked at the Bursar.
The Bursar looked unhappy.
He fumbled in a bag.
‘I couldn’t get any, ‘ he said.
The Archchancellor put his hand over his eyes.
‘All right,’ he said quietly.‘You know, I’m not surprised? Not surprised at all. What did you get? Lamb chops? A nice piece of pork?’
‘Celery, ‘ said the Bursar.
‘It’s his nerves, ‘ said the Dean, quickly.
‘Celery,’ said the Archchancellor, his self-control rigid enough to bend horseshoes around.’ Right.’
The Bursar handed him a soggy green bundle.
Ridcully took it.
‘Now, Windle, ‘ he said, ‘I ‘d like you to imagine that what I have in my hand -‘
‘It’s quite all right, ‘ said Windle.
‘I’m not actually sure I can hammer -‘
‘I don’t mind, I assure you, ‘ said Windle.
‘You don’t?’
‘The principle is sound,’ said Windle.‘If you just hand me the celery but think hammering a stake, that’s probably sufficient.’
‘That’s very decent of you,’ said Ridcully.‘That shows a very proper spirit.’
‘Esprit de corpse,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
Ridcully glared at him, and thrust the celery dramatically towards Windle.
‘Take that!’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ said Windle.
‘And now let’s put the lid on and go and have some lunch,’ said Ridcully.‘Don’t worry, Windle. It’s bound to work. Today is the last day of the rest of your life.’
Windle lay in the darkness, listening to the hammering. There was a thump and a muffled imprecation against the Dean for not holding the end properly.
And then the patter of soil on the lid, getting fainter and more distant.
After a while a distant rumbling suggested that the commerce of the city was being resumed. He could even hear muffled voices.
He banged on the coffin lid.
‘Can you beep it down?’ he demanded.‘There’s people down here trying to be dead!’
He heard the voices stop. There was the sound of feet hurrying away.
Windle lay there for some time. He didn’t know how long. He tried stopping all functions, but that just made things uncomfortable. Why was dying so difficult? Other people seemed to manage it, even without practice.
Also, his leg itched.
He tried to reach down to scratch it, and his hand
touched something small and irregularly shaped. He managed to get his fingers around it.
It felt like a bundle of matches.
In a coffin? Did anyone think he’d smoke a quiet cigar to pass the time?
After a certain amount of effort he managed to push one boot off with the other boot and ease it up until he could just grasp it. This gave him a rough surface to strike the match on.
Sulphurous light filled his tiny oblong world.
There was a tiny scrap of cardboard pinned to the inside of the lid.
He read it.
He read it again.
The match went out.
He lit another one, just to check that what he had read really did exist.
The message was still as strange, even third time round:
Dead? Depressed?
Feel like starting it all again?
Then why not come along to the
FRESH START CLUB
Thursdays, 12 pm. 668 Elm Street
EVERY BODY WELCOME
The second match went out, taking the last of the oxygen with it.
Windle lay in the dark for a while, considering his next move and finishing off the celery.
Who’d have thought it?
And it suddenly dawned on the late Windle Poons that there was no such thing as somebody else’s problem, and that just when you thought the world had pushed you aside it turned out to be full of
strangeness. He knew from experience that the living never found out half of what was really happening, because they were too busy being the living. The onlooker sees most of the game, he told himself.
It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane. But it was strange. It had things in it like screws that unscrewed themselves, and little written messages to the dead.
He resolved to find out what was going on. And then … if Death wasn’t going to come to him, he’d go to Death. He had his rights, after all. Yeah. He’d lead the biggest missing-person hunt of all time.
Windle grinned in the darkness.
Missing – believed Death.
Today was the first day of the rest of his life.
And Ankh-Morpork lay at his feet. Well, metaphorically. The only way was up.
He reached up, felt for the card in the dark, and pulled it free. He stuck it between his teeth.
Windle Poons braced his feet against the end of the box, pushed his hands past his head, and heaved.
The soggy loam of Ankh-Morpork moved slightly.
Windle paused out of habit to take a breath, and realised that there was no point. He pushed again. The end of the coffin splintered.
Windle pulled it towards him and tore the solid pine like paper. He was left with a piece of plank which would have been a totally useless spade for anyone with un-zombie-like strength.
Turning on to his stomach, tucking the earth around him with his impromptu spade and ramming it back with his feet, Windle Poons dug his way towards a fresh start.
Picture a landscape, a plain with rolling curves.
It’s late summer in the octarine grass country below the towering peaks of the high Ramtops, and the predominant
colours are umber and gold. Heat sears the landscape. Grasshoppers sizzle, as in a frying pan. Even the air is too hot to move. It’s the hottest summer in living memory and, – in these parts, that’s a long, long time.
Picture a figure on horseback, moving slowly along a road that’s an inch deep in dust between fields of corn that already promise an unusually rich harvest.
Picture a fence of baked, dead wood. There’s a notice pinned to it. The sun has faded the letters, but they are still readable.
Picture a shadow, falling across the notice. You can almost hear it reading both the words.
There’s a track leading off the road, towards a small group of bleached buildings.
Picture dragging footsteps.
Picture a door, open.
Picture a cool, dark room, glimpsed through the open doorway. This isn’t a room that people live in a lot. It’s a room for people who live outdoors but have to come inside sometimes, when it gets dark. It’s a room for harnesses and dogs, a room where oilskins are hung up to dry. There’s a beer barrel by the door. There are flagstones on the floor
and, along the ceiling beams, hooks for bacon. There’s a scrubbed table that thirty hungry men could sit down at.
There are no men. There are no dogs. There is no beer.
There is no bacon.
There was silence after the knocking, and then the flap flap of slippers on flagstones. Eventually a skinny old woman with a face the colour and texture of a walnut peered around the door.
‘Yes?’ she said.
THE NOTICE SAID ‘MAN WANTED’.
‘Did it? Did it? That’s been up there since before last winter!’
I AM SORRY? YOU NEED NO HELP?
The wrinkled face looked at him thoughtfully.
‘I can’t pay more’n sixpence a week, mind,’ it said.
The tall figure looming against the sunlight appeared to consider this.
YES. it said, eventually.
‘I wouldn’t even know where to start you workin’, either. We haven’t had any proper help here for three years. I just hire the lazy goodfornothin’s from the village when I want ‘em.’
YES?
‘You don’t mind, then?’
I HAVE A HORSE.
The old woman peered around the stranger. In the yard was the most impressive horse she’d ever seen. Her eyes narrowed.
‘And that’s your horse. is it?’
YES.
‘With all that silver on the harness and everything?’
YES.
‘And you want to work for sixpence a week?’
YES.
The old woman pursed her lips. She looked from the stranger to the horse to the dilapidation around the farm.
She appeared to reach a decision, possibly on the lines that someone who owned no horses probably didn’t have much to fear from a horse thief.
‘You’re to sleep in the barn, understand?’ she said.
SLEEP? YES. OF COURSE. YES, I WILL HAVE TO SLEEP.
‘Couldn’t have you in the house anyway. It wouldn’t be right.’
THE BARN WILL BE QUITE ADEQUATE, I ASSURE YOU.
‘But you can come into the house for your meals.’
THANK YOU.
‘My name’s Miss Flitworth.’
YES.
She waited.
‘I expect you have a name, too,’ she prompted.
YES. THAT’S RIGHT.
She waited again.
I’M SORRY?
‘What is your name?’
The stranger stared at her for a moment, and then looked around wildly.
‘Come on,’ said Miss Flitworth.‘l ain’t employing no-one without no name. Mr … ?’