Two men staggered out, arm in arm, and zigzagged happily towards the main street. Susan stepped back. No-one bothered her when she didn’t want to be noticed.
The men walked through the ladder.
Either the men weren’t exactly solid, and they certainly sounded solid enough, or there was something wrong with the ladder. But the girl had climbed it…
. . . and was now climbing down again, slipping something into her pocket.
‘Never even woke up, the little cherub,’ she said.
‘Sorry?’ said Susan.
‘Didn’t have Sop on me,’ said the girl. She swung the ladder easily up on to her shoulder. ‘Rules are rules. I had to take another tooth.’
‘Pardon?’
‘It’s all audited, you see. I’d be in real trouble if the dollars and teeth didn’t add up. You know how it is.’
‘I do?’
‘Still, can’t stay here talking all night. Got sixty more to do.’
‘Why should I know? Do what? Whom to?’ said Susan.
‘Children, of course. Can’t disappoint them, can I? Imagine their little faces when they lift up their little pillows, bless them.’
Ladder. Pliers. Teeth. Money. Pillows . . .
‘You don’t expect me to believe you’re the Tooth Fairy?’ said Susan suspiciously.
She touched the ladder. It felt solid enough.
‘Not the,’ said the girl. ‘A. I’m surprised you don’t know that.’
She’d sauntered around the corner before Susan asked, ‘Why me?’
”Cos she can tell,’ said a voice behind her. ‘Takes one to know one.’
She turned. The raven was sitting in a small open window.
‘You’d better come in,’ it said. ‘You can meet all sorts, out in that alley.’
‘I already have.’
There was a brass plate screwed on the wall beside
the door. It said: ‘C V Cheesewaller, DM (Unseen) B. Thau, B.F.’
It was the first time Susan had ever heard metal speak.
‘Simple trick,’ said the raven, dismissively. ‘It senses you looking at it. Just give-‘
‘C V Cheesewaller, DM (Unseen) B. Thau, B.F.’
‘. . . shut up . . . just give the door a push.’
‘It’s locked.’
The raven gave her a beady-eyed look with its head on one side. Then it said: ‘That stops you? Oh, well. I’ll fetch the key.’
It appeared a moment later and dropped a large metal key on to the cobbles.
‘Isn’t the wizard in?’
‘In, yes. In bed. Snoring his head off.’
‘I thought they stayed up all night!’
‘Not this one. Cup of cocoa around nine, dead to the world at five past.’
‘I can’t just let myself into his house!’
‘Why not? You’ve come to see me. Anyway, I’m the brains of the outfit. He just wears the funny hat and does the hand waving.’
Susan turned the key.
It was warm inside. There was the usual wizardly paraphernalia – a forge, a bench with bottles and bundles strewn over it, a bookcase with books rammed in anyhow, a stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling, some very big candles that were just lava streams of wax, and a raven on a skull.
`They get it all out of a catalogue,’ said the raven. ‘Believe me. It all comes in a big box. You think candles get dribbly like that by themselves? That’s three days’ work for a skilled candle dribbler.’
`You’re just making that up,’ said Susan. ‘Anyway, you can’t just buy a skull.’
‘You know best, I’m sure, being educated,’ said the raven.
‘What were you trying to tell me last night?’
‘Tell you?’ said the raven, with a guilty look on its beak.
‘All that dah-dah-dah-DAH stuff.’
The raven scratched its head.
‘He said I wasn’t to tell you. I was just supposed to warn you about the horse. I got carried away. Turned up, has it?’
‘Yes!’
‘Ride it.’
‘I did. It can’t be real! Real horses know where the ground is.’
‘Miss, there’s no horse realer than that one.’
‘I know his name! I’ve ridden him before!’
The raven sighed, or at least made a sort of whistling noise which is as close to a sigh as a beak can get.
‘Ride the horse. He’s decided you’re the one.’
‘Where to?’
‘That’s for me not to know and you to find out.’
‘Just supposing I was stupid enough to do it . . . can you kind of hint about what will happen?’
‘Well . . . you’ve read books, I can see. Have you ever read any about children who go to a magical faraway kingdom and have adventures with goblins and so on?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Susan, grimly.
‘It’d probably be best if you thought along those lines,’ said the raven.
Susan picked up a bundle of herbs and played with them.
‘I saw someone outside who said she was the Tooth Fairy,’ she said.
‘Nah, couldn’t’ve been the Tooth Fairy,’ said the raven. ‘There’s at least three of them.’
‘There’s no such person. I mean . . . I didn’t know, I thought that’s just a . . . story. Like the Sandman or the Hogfather.[8]
‘Ah,’ said the raven. ‘Changing our tone, yes? Not so much of the emphatic declarative, yes? A bit less of the “There’s no such thing” and a bit more of the “I didn’t know”, yes?’
‘Everyone knows – I mean, it’s not logical that there’s an old man in a beard who gives everyone sausages and chitterlings on Hogswatchnight, is it?’
‘I don’t know about logic. Never learned about logic,’ said the raven. ‘Living on a skull ain’t exactly logical, but that’s what I do.’
‘And there can’t be a Sandman who goes around throwing sand in children’s eyes,’ said Susan, but in tones of uncertainty. ‘You’d . . . never get enough sand in one bag.’
‘Could be. Could be.’
‘I’d better be going,’ said Susan. ‘Miss Butts always checks the dorms on the stroke of midnight.’
‘How many dormitories are there?’ said the raven.
‘About thirty, I think.’
‘You believe she checks them all at midnight and you don’t believe in the Hogfather?’
‘I’d better be going anyway,’ said Susan. ‘Um. Thank you.’
‘Lock up behind you and chuck the key through the window,’ said the raven.
The room was silent after she’d gone, except for the crackle as coals settled in the furnace.
Then the skull said: ‘Kids today, eh?’
‘I blame education,’ said the raven.
‘A lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing ‘ said the skull. ‘A lot more dangerous than just a little. I always used to say that, when I was alive.’
‘When was that, exactly?’
‘Can’t remember. I think I was pretty knowledgeable. Probably a teacher or philosopher, something of that kidney. And now I’m on a bench with a bird crapping on my head.’
‘Very allegorical,’ said the raven.
No-one had taught Susan about the power of belief, or at least about the power of belief in a combination of high magical potential and low reality stability such as existed on the Discworld.
Belief makes a hollow place. Something has to roll in to fill it.
Which is not to say that belief denies logic. For example, it’s fairly obvious that the Sandman needs only a small sack.
On the Discworld, he doesn’t bother to take the sand out first.
It was almost midnight.
Susan crept into the stables. She was one of those people who will not leave a mystery unsolved.
The ponies were silent in the presence of Binky. The horse glowed in the darkness.
Susan heaved a saddle down from the rack, and then thought better of it. If she was going to fall off, a saddle wouldn’t be any help. And reins would be about as much use as a rudder on a rock.
She opened the door to the loose-box. Most horses won’t walk backwards voluntarily, because what they can’t see doesn’t exist. But Binky shuffled out by himself and walked over to the mounting block, where he turned and watched her expectantly.
Susan climbed on to his back. It was like sitting on a table.
‘All right,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t have to believe any of this, mind you.’
Binky lowered his head and whinnied. Then he trotted out into the yard and headed for the field. At the gate he broke into a canter, and turned towards the fence.
Susan shut her eyes.
She felt muscles bunch under the velvet skin and then the horse was rising, over the fence, over the field.
Behind it, in the turf, two fiery hoofprints burned for a second or two.
As she passed above the school she saw a light flicker in a window. Miss Butts was on her rounds.
There’s going to be trouble over this, Susan told herself.
And then she thought: I’m on the back of a horse a hundred feet up in the air, being taken somewhere mysterious that’s a bit like a magic land with goblins and talking animals. There’s only so much more trouble I could get into . . .