Hogfather - Terry Pratchett [107]
So, being of a serious turn of mind under his normal state of sub-critical fear, he slowed down in case he lost his footing.
It was then that he noticed that the steps underfoot weren’t the smooth whiteness they had been everywhere else but were very large, pitted flagstones. And the light had changed, and then they weren’t stairs any more and he staggered as he encountered flat ground where steps should have been.
His outstretched hand brushed against a crumbling brick.
And the ghosts of the past poured in, and he knew where he was. He was in the yard of Gammer Wimblestone’s dame school. His mother wanted him to learn his letters and be a wizard, but she also thought that long curls on a five-year-old boy looked very smart.
This was the hunting ground of Ronnie Jenks.
Adult memory and understanding said that Ronnie was just an unintelligent bullet-headed seven-year-old bully with muscles where his brain should have been. The eye of childhood, rather more accurately, dreaded him as a force like a personalized earthquake with one nostril bunged up with bogies, both knees scabbed, both fists balled and all five brain cells concentrated in a kind of cerebral grunt.
Oh, gods. There was the tree Ronnie used to hide behind. It looked as big and menacing as he remembered it.
But…if somehow he’d ended up back there, gods knew how, well, he might be a bit on the skinny side but he was a damn sight bigger than Ronnie Jenks now. Gods, yes, he’d kick those evil little trousers all the—
And then, as a shadow blotted out the sun, he realized he was wearing curls.
Teatime looked thoughtfully at the door.
“I suppose I should open it,” he said, “after coming all this way…”
“You’re controlling children by their teeth,” said Susan.
“It does sound odd, doesn’t it, when you put it like that,” said Teatime. “But that’s sympathetic magic for you. Is your grandfather going to try to rescue you, do you think? But no…I don’t think he can. Not here, I think. I don’t think that he can come here. So he sent you, did he?”
“Certainly not! He—” Susan stopped. Oh, he had, she told herself, feeling even more of a fool. He certainly had. He was learning about humans, all right. For a walking skeleton, he could be quite clever…
But…how clever was Teatime? Just a bit too excited at his cleverness to realize that if Death—She tried to stamp on the thought, just in case Teatime could read it in her eyes.
“I don’t think he’ll try,” she said. “He’s not as clever as you, Mister Teatime.”
“Teh-ah-tim-eh,” said Teatime, automatically. “That’s a shame.”
“Do you think you’re going to get away with this?”
“Oh dear. Do people really say that?” And suddenly Teatime was much closer. “I’ve got away with it. No more Hogfather. And that’s only the start. We’ll keep the teeth coming in, of course. The possibilities—”
There was a rumble like an avalanche, a long way off. The dormant Banjo had awakened, causing tremors on his lower slopes. His enormous hands, which had been resting on his knees, started to bunch.
“What’s dis?” he said.
Teatime stopped and, for a moment, looked puzzled.
“What’s this what?”
“You said no more Hogfather,” said Banjo. He stood up, like a mountain range rising gently in the squeeze between colliding continents. His hands still stayed in the vicinity of his knees.
Teatime stared at him and then glanced at Medium Dave.
“He does know what we’ve been doing, does he?” he said. “You did tell him?”
Medium Dave shrugged.
“Dere’s got to be a Hogfather,” said Banjo. “Dere’s always a Hogfather.”
Susan looked down. Gray blotches were speeding across the white marble. She was standing in a pool of gray. So was Banjo. And around Teatime the dots bounced and recoiled like wasps around a pot of jam.
Looking for something, she thought.
“You don’t believe in the Hogfather, do you?” said Teatime. “A big boy like you?”
“Yeah,” said Banjo. “So what’s dis ‘no more Hogfather’?”
Teatime pointed at Susan.
“She did it,” he said. “She killed him.”
The sheer playground effrontery of it shocked Susan.
“No I didn’t,” she said.