Windle Poons helped him out.
‘I’m thinking of coming back as a woman,’ he said conversationally.
The Bursar opened and shut his mouth a few times.
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Poons went on.‘I think it might, mm, be jolly good fun.’
The Bursar riffled desperately through his limited
repertoire of small talk relating to women. He leaned down to Windle’s gnarled ear.
‘Isn’t there rather a lot of, ‘ he struck out aimlessly, ‘washing things? And making beds and cookery and all that sort of thing?’
‘Not in the kind of, mm, life I have in mind,’ said Windle firmly.
The Bursar shut his mouth. The Archchancellor banged on a table with a spoon.
‘Brothers -‘ he began, when there was something approaching silence. This prompted a loud and ragged chorus of cheering.
‘- As you all know we are here tonight to mark the, ah, retirement’ – nervous laughter – ‘of our old friend and colleague Windle Poons. You know, seeing old Windle sitting here tonight puts me in mind, as luck would have it, of the story of the cow with three wooden legs. It appears that there was this cow, and -‘
The Bursar let his mind wander. He knew the story.
The Archchancellor always mucked up the punch line, and in any case he had other things on his mind.
He kept looking back at the little table.
The Bursar was a kindly if nervous soul, and quite enjoyed his job. Apart from anything else, no other wizard wanted it. Lots of wizards wanted to be Archchancellor, for example, or the head of one of the eight orders of magic, but practically no wizards wanted to spend lots of time in an office shuffling bits of paper and doing sums. All the paperwork of the University tended to accumulate in the Bursar’s office, which meant that he went to bed tired at nights but at least slept soundly and didn’t have to check very hard for unexpected scorpions in his night-shirt.
Killing off a wizard of a higher grade was a recognised way of getting advancement in the orders.
However, the only person likely to want to kill the Bursar was someone else who derived a quiet pleasure from columns of numbers, all neatly arranged, and
people like that don’t often go in for murder. *
He recalled his childhood, long ago, in the Ramtop Mountains. He and his sister used to leave a glass of wine and a cake out every Hogswatchnight for the Hogfather. Things had been different, then. He’d been a lot younger and hadn’t known much and had probably been a lot happier.
For example, he hadn’t known that he might one day be a wizard and join other wizards in leaving a glass of wine and a cake and a rather suspect chicken vol-au-vent and a paper party hat for …
… someone else.
There’d been Hogswatch parties, too, when he was a little boy. They’d always follow a certain pattern.
Just when all the children were nearly sick with excitement, one of the grown-ups would say, archly, ‘I think we’re going to have a special visitor!’ and, amazingly ?oq cue?, there’d be a suspicious ringing of hog bells outside the window and in would come …
… in would come …
The Bursar shook his head. Someone’s granddad in false whiskers, of course. Some jolly old boy with a sack of toys, stamping the snow off his boots. Someone who gave you something.
Whereas tonight …
Of course, old Windle probably felt different about it. After one hundred and thirty years, death probably had a certain attraction. You probably became quite interested in finding out what happened next.
The Archchancellor’s convoluted anecdote wound jerkily to its close. The assembled wizards laughed dutifully, and then tried to work out the joke.
The Bursar looked surreptitiously at his watch. It was now twenty minutes past nine.
________________________________________________________________
* At least, until the day they suddenly pick up a paperknife and carve their way out through Cost Accounting and into forensic history.
Windle Poons made a speech. It was long and rambling and disjointed and went on about the good old days and he seemed to think that most of the people around him were people who had been, in fact, dead for about fifty years, but that didn’t matter because you
got into the habit of not listening to old Windle.
The Bursar couldn’t tear his eyes away from his watch. From inside came the squeak of the treadle as the demon patiently pedalled his way towards infinity.
Twenty-five minutes past the hour.
The Bursar wondered how it was supposed to happen. Did you hear – I think we’re going to have a very special visitor – hoofbeats outside?
Did the door actually open or did He come through it? Silly question. He was renowned for His ability to get into sealed places – especially into sealed places, if you thought about it logically. Seal yourself in anywhere and it was only a matter of time.
The Bursar hoped He’d use the door properly. His nerves were twanging as it was.
The conversational level was dropping. Quite a few other wizards, the Bursar noticed, were glancing at the door.
Windle was at the centre of a very tactfully widening circle. No-one was actually avoiding him, it was just that an apparent random Brownian motion was gently moving everyone away.
Wizards can see Death. And when a wizard dies, Death arrives in person to usher him into the Beyond. The Bursar wondered why this was considered a plus –
‘Don’t know what you’re all looking at,’ said Windle, cheerfully.
The Bursar opened his watch.
The hatch under the 12 snapped up.
‘Can you knock it off with all this shaking around?’ squeaked the demon.‘I keeps on losing count.’
‘Sorry, ‘ the Bursar hissed. It was nine twenty-nine.
The Archchancellor stepped forward.
“Bye, then, Windle,’ he said, shaking the old man’s parchment-like hand.‘The old place won’t seem the same without you.’
‘Don’t know how we’ll manage,’ said the Bursar, thankfully.
‘Good luck in the next life,’ said the Dean.‘Drop in if you’re ever passing and happen to, you know, remember who you’ve been.’
‘Don’t be a stranger, you hear?’ said the Archchancellor.
Windle Poons nodded amiably. He hadn’t heard what they were saying. He nodded on general principles.
The wizards, as one man, faced the door.
The hatch under the 12 snapped up again.
‘Bing bing bong bing,’ said the demon.‘Bingely-bingely bong bing bing.’
‘What?’ said the Bursar, jolted.
‘Half past nine, ‘ said the demon.
The wizards turned to Windle Poons. They looked faintly accusing.
‘What’re you all looking at?’ he said.
The seconds hand on the watch squeaked onwards.
‘How are you feeling?’ said the Dean loudly.
‘Never felt better,’ said Windle.‘Is there any more of that, mm, rum left?’
The assembled wizards watched him pour a generous measure into his beaker.
‘You want to go easy on that stuff,’ said the Dean nervously.
‘Good health!’ said Windle Poons.
The Archchancellor drummed his fingers on the table.
‘Mr Poons, ‘ he said, ‘are you quite sure?’
Windle had gone off at a tangent.‘Any more of these toturerillas? Not that I call it proper food,’ he said, ‘dippin’ bits of hard bikky in sludge, what’s so special
about that? What I could do with right now ?is? one of Mr Dibbler’s famous meat pies -‘
And then he died.
The Archchancellor glanced at his fellow wizards, and then tiptoed across to the wheelchair and lifted a blueveined wrist to check the pulse. He shook his head.
‘That’s the way I want to go, ‘ said the Dean.
‘What, muttering about meat pies?’ said the Bursar.
‘No. Late.’
‘Hold on. Hold on,’ said the Archchancellor.‘This isn’t right, you know. According to tradition, Death himself turns up for the death of a wiz – ‘
‘Perhaps He was busy, ‘ said the Bursar hurriedly.
‘That’s right,’ said the Dean.‘Bit of a serious flu epidemic over Quirm way, I’m told.’
‘Quite a storm last night, too. Lots of shipwrecks, I daresay, ‘ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
‘And of course it’s springtime, when you get a great many avalanches in the mountains.’
‘And plagues.’
The Archchancellor stroked his beard thoughtfully.
‘Hmm, ‘ he said.
Alone of all the creatures in the world, trolls believe that all living things go through Time backwards. If the past is visible and the future is hidden, they say, then it means you must be facing the wrong way. Everything alive is going through life back to front. And this is a very interesting idea. considering it was invented by a race who spend most of their time hitting one another on the head with rocks.
Whichever way around it is, Time is something that living creatures possess.
Death galloped down through towering black clouds.
And now he had Time, too.
The time of his life.
Windle Poons peered into the darkness.