Moving Pictures - Terry Pratchett [123]
There was a crash, and the chair erupted from the barn in a shower of chickens and headed madly toward the road.
The farmers looked at one another.
“Well, dang me,” said one of them.
Holy Wood was a glow on the horizon. The earth tremors were stronger now.
The flickering chariot came out of a stand of trees and paused at the top of the incline that led down to the town.
Mist wreathed Holy Wood. From out of it spears of light criss-crossed the sky.
“We’re too late?” said Ginger hopefully.
“Almost too late,” said Victor.
“Oook,” said the Librarian. His fingernail raced back and forth as he read the ancient pictograms—right to left, right to left.
“I knew there was something not right,” Victor had said.
“That sleeping statue…the guard. The old priests sang songs and did ceremonies to keep him awake. They remembered Holy Wood as best they could.”
“But I don’t know anything about a guard!”
“Yes, you do. Like, deep down inside.”
“Oook,” said the Librarian, tapping a page. “Oook!”
“He says you’re probably descended from the original High Priestess. He thinks everyone in Holy Wood is descended from…you see…I mean, the first time the Things broke through the entire city was destroyed and the survivors fled everywhere, you see, but everyone had this way of remembering even things that happened to their ancestors, I mean, it’s like there’s this great big pool of memory and we’re linked up to it and when it all started happening again we were all called to the place, and you tried to put it right, only it was weak so it couldn’t get through to you unless you were asleep—”
He trailed off helplessly.
“‘Oook’?” said Ginger suspiciously. “You got all this from ‘oook’?”
“Well, not just one,” Victor admitted.
“I’ve never heard such a lot of—” Ginger began, and stopped. A hand softer than the softest leather was pushed into hers. She looked around into a face that compared badly to a deflated football.
“Oook,” said the Librarian.
Ginger locked eyes with him for a moment.
Then she said, “But I’ve never felt the least bit like a high priestess…”
“That dream you told me about,” said Victor. “It sounded pretty high priestessy to me. Very…very—”
“Oook.”
“Sacerdotal. Yeah,” Victor translated.
“It’s just a dream,” said Ginger nervously. “I’ve dreamed it occasionally as far back as I can remember.”
“Oook, oook.”
“What’d he say?” said Ginger.
“He says that’s probably a lot further back than you think.”
Ahead of them Holy Wood glittered like frost, like a city made of congealed starlight.
“Victor?” said Ginger.
“Yes?”
“Where is everybody?”
Victor looked down the road. Where there should have been people, refugees, desperately fleeing…was nothing.
Just silence, and the light.
“Where are they?” she repeated.
He looked at her expression.
“But the tunnel fell down!” he said, saying it loudly in the hope that this would make it true. “It was all sealed off!”
“It wouldn’t take trolls long to clear a way through, though,” said Ginger.
Victor thought about the—the Cthinema. And the first house, which had been going on for thousands of years. And all the people he knew, sitting there, for another thousand years. While overhead the stars changed.
“Of course, they might just be…well…somewhere else,” he lied.
“But they’re not,” said Ginger. “We both know that.”
Victor stared helplessly at the city of lights.
“Why us?” he said. “Why is it happening to us?”
“Everything has to happen to someone,” said Ginger.
Victor shrugged. “And you only get one chance,” he said.
“Right?”
“Just when you need to save the world, there’s a world for you to save,” said Ginger.
“Yeah,” said Victor. “Lucky old us.”
The two farmers peered in through the barn doors. Stacks of cabbage waited stolidly in the gloom.
“Told you it were cabbage,” said one of them. “Knew it weren’t chickens. Oi knows a cabbage when I sees one, and oi believes what I sees.”
From far above came voices, getting closer:
“For gods’ sake, man, can’t you steer?”
“Not with you throwing your weight about, Archchancellor!”
“Where the hell