‘A loophole,’ said Susan.
YES.
‘Well, why can’t you find one too?’
I AM THE GRIM REAPER. I DO NOT THINK PEOPLE WISH ME TO GET… CREATIVE. THEY WOULD WISH ME TO DO THE TASK ASSIGNED TO ME AT THIS TIME, BY CUSTOM AND PRACTICE.
‘And that’s just… riding out?’
YES.
‘Where to?’
EVERYWHERE, I THINK. IN THE MEANTIME, YOU WILL NEED THIS.
Death handed her a lifetimer.
It was one of the special ones, slightly bigger than normal. She took it reluctantly. It looked like an hourglass, but all those little glittering shapes tumbling through the pinch were seconds.
‘You know I don’t like doing the… the whole scythe thing,’ she said. ‘It’s not- Hey, this is really heavy!’
HE IS LU-TZE, A HISTORY MONK. EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS OLD. HE HAS AN APPRENTICE. I HAVE LEARNED THIS. BUT I CANNOT FEEL HIM, I CANNOT SEE HIM. HE IS THE ONE. BINKY WILL TAKE YOU TO THE MONK, YOU WILL FIND THE CHILD.
‘And then what?’
I SUSPECT HE WILL NEED SOMEONE. WHEN YOU HAVE FOUND HIM, LET BINKY GO. I SHALL NEED HIM.
Susan’s lips moved as a memory collided with a thought.
‘To ride out on?’ she said. ‘Are you really talking about the Apocalypse? Are you serious? No one believes in that sort of thing any more!’
I DO.
Susan’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re really going to do that? Knowing everything you know?’
Death patted Binky on the muzzle.
YES, he said.
Susan gave her grandfather a sideways look.
‘Hold on, there’s a trick, isn’t there… ? You’re planning something and you’re not even going to tell me, right? You’re not really going to just wait for the world to end and celebrate it, are you?’
WE WILL RIDE OUT .
‘No!’
YOU WILL NOT TELL THE RIVERS NOT TO FLOW. YOU WILL NOT TELL THE SUN NOT TO SHINE. YOU WILL NOT TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT DO.
‘But it’s so-‘ Susan’s expression changed, and Death flinched. ‘I thought you cared!’
TAKE THIS ALSO.
Without wanting to, Susan took a smaller lifetimer from her grandfather.
SHE MAY TALK TO YOU .
‘And who is this?’
THE MIDWIFE, said Death. NOW… FIND THE SON .
He faded.
Susan looked down at the lifetimers in her hands. He’s done it to you again! she screamed at herself. You don’t have to do this and you can put this thing down and you can go back to the classroom and you can be normal again and you just know that you won’t, and so does he-
SQUEAK?
The Death of Rats was sitting between Binky’s ears, grasping a lock of the white mane and giving the general impression of someone anxious to be going. Susan raised a hand to slap him off, and then stopped herself. Instead, she pushed the heavy lifetimers into the rat’s paws.
‘Make yourself useful,’ she said, grasping the reins. ‘Why do I do this?’
SQUEAK.
‘I have not got a nice nature!’
Tick
There was not, surprisingly, a great deal of blood. The head rolled into the snow, and the body slowly toppled forward.
‘Now you’ve killed-‘ Lobsang began.
‘Just a second,’ said Lu-Tze. ‘Any moment now…’
The headless body vanished. The kneeling yeti turned his head to Lu-Tze, blinked and said, ‘Thaat stung a biit.’
‘Sorry.’
Lu-Tze turned to Lobsang. ‘Now, hold on to that memory!’ he commanded. ‘It’ll try to vanish, but you’ve had training. You’ve got to go on remembering that you saw something that now did not happen, understand? Remember that time’s a lot less unbending than people think, if you get your head right! Just a little lesson! Seeing is believing!’
‘How did it do that?’
‘Good question. They can save their life up to a certain point and go back to it if they get killed,’ said Lu-Tze. ‘How it’s done… well, the abbot spent the best part of a decade working that one out. Not that anyone else can understand it. There’s a lot of quantum involved.’ He took a pull of his permanent foul cigarette. ‘Gotta be good working-out, if no one else can understand it.'[14]
‘How is der abboott these daays?’ said the yeti, getting to its feet again and picking up the pilgrims.
‘Teething.’
‘Ah. Reincarnation’s alwaays a problem,’ said the yeti, falling into its long, ground-eating lope.
‘Teeth are the worst, he says. Always coming or going.’
‘How fast are we going?’ said Lobsang.
The yeti’s stride was more like a continuous series of leaps from one foot to the other; there was so much spring in the long legs that each landing was a mere faint rocking sensation. It was almost restful.
‘I reckon we’re doing thirty miles an hour or so, clock time,’ said Lu-Tze. ‘Get some rest. We’ll be above Copperhead in the morning. It’s all downhill from there.’
‘Coming back from the dead…’ Lobsang murmured.
‘It’s more like not actually ever going in the first place,’ said Lu-Tze. ‘I’ve studied them a bit, but… well, unless it’s built in you’d have to learn how to do it, and would you want to bet on getting it right first time? Tricky one. You’d have to be desperate. I hope I’m never that desperate.’
Tick
Susan recognized the country of Lancre from the air, a little bowl of woods and fields perched like a nest on the edge of the Ramtop mountains. And she found the cottage, too, which was not the corkscrew-chimneyed compost-heap kind of witch’s house popularized by Grim Fairy Tales and other books, but a spanking new one with gleaming thatch and a manicured front lawn.
There were more ornaments – gnomes, toadstools, pink bunnies, big-eyed deer – around a tiny pond than any sensible gardener should have allowed. Susan spotted one brightly painted gnome fishi- No, that wasn’t a rod he was holding, was it? Surely a nice old lady wouldn’t put something like that in her garden, would she? Would she?
Susan was bright enough to go round to the back, because witches were allergic to front doors. The door was opened by a small, fat, rosy-cheeked woman whose little currant eyes said, yep, thars my gnome all right, and be thankful he’s only widdling in the pond.
‘Mrs Ogg? The midwife?’
There was a pause before Mrs Ogg said, ‘The very same.’
‘You don’t know me, but-‘ said Susan, and realized that Mrs Ogg was looking past her at Binky, who was standing by the gate. The woman was a witch, after all.
‘Maybe I do know you,’ said Mrs Ogg. ‘O’course, if you just stole that horse, you just don’t know how much trouble you’re in.’
‘I borrowed it. The owner is… my grandfather.’
Another pause, and it was disconcerting how those friendly little eyes could bore into yours like an auger.
‘You’d better come in,’ said Mrs Ogg.
The inside of the cottage was as clean and new as the outside. Things gleamed, and there were a lot of them to gleam. The place was a shrine to bad but enthusiastically painted china ornaments, which occupied every flat surface. What space was left was full of framed pictures. Two harassed-looking women were polishing and dusting.
‘I got comp’ny,’ said Mrs Ogg sternly, and the women left with such alacrity that the word ‘fled’ might have been appropriate.
‘My daughters-in-law,’ said Mrs Ogg, sitting down in a plump armchair which, over the years, had shaped itself to fit her. ‘They like to help a poor old lady who’s all alone in the world.’
Susan took in the pictures. If they were all family members, Mrs Ogg was head of an army. Mrs Ogg, unashamedly caught out in a flagrant lie, went on: ‘Sit down, girl, and say what’s on your mind. There’s tea brewing.’
‘I want to know something.’
‘Most people do,’ said Mrs Ogg. ‘And they can go on wantin’.’
‘I want to know about… a birth,’ said Susan, persevering.
‘Oh, yes? Well, I done hundreds of confinements. Thousands, prob’ly.’
‘I imagine this one was difficult.’
‘A lot of them are,’ said Mrs Ogg.
‘You’d remember this one. I don’t know how it started, but I’d imagine that a stranger came knocking.’
‘Oh?’ Mrs Ogg’s face became a wall. The black eyes stared out at Susan as if she was an invading army.
‘You’re not helping me, Mrs Ogg.’
‘That’s right. I ain’t,’ said Mrs Ogg. ‘I think I know about you, miss, but I don’t care who you are, you see. You can go and get the other one, if you like. Don’t think I ain’t seen him, neither. I’ve been at plenty of deathbeds, too. But deathbeds is public, mostly, and birthbeds ain’t. Not if the lady don’t want them to be. So you get the other one, and I’ll spit in his eye.’
‘This is very important, Mrs Ogg.’
‘You’re right there,’ said Mrs Ogg firmly.
‘I can’t say how long ago it was. It may have been last week, even. Time, that’s the key.’