Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett [46]
“I invite you to think hard about the word ‘Miss,’” she said. “We takes things like that seriously in these parts.”
MY APOLOGIES.
“No, Rufus was his name. He was a smuggler, like dad. Not as good, though. I got to admit that. He was more artistic. He used to give me all sorts of things from foreign parts, you know. Bits of jewelry and suchlike. And we used to go dancing. He had very good calves, I remember. I like to see good legs on a man.”
She stared at the fire for a while.
“See…he never come back one day. Just before we were going to be wed. Dad said he never should have tried to run the mountains that close to winter, but I know he wanted to do it so’s he could bring me a proper present. And he wanted to make some money and impress dad, because dad was against—”
She picked up the poker and gave the fire a more ferocious jab than it deserved.
“Anyway, some folk said he ran away to Farferee or Ankh-Morpork or somewhere, but I know he wouldn’t have done something like that.”
The penetrating look she gave Bill Door nailed him to the chair.
“What do you think, Bill Door?” she said sharply.
He felt quite proud of himself for spotting the question within the question.
MISS FLITWORTH, THE MOUNTAINS CAN BE VERY TREACHEROUS IN THE WINTER.
She looked relieved. “That’s what I’ve always said,” she said. “And do you know what, Bill Door? Do you know what I thought?”
NO, MISS FLITWORTH.
“It was the day before we were going to be wed, like I said. And then one of his pack ponies came back by itself and then the men went and found the avalanche…and you know what I thought? I thought, that’s ridiculous. That’s stupid. Terrible, isn’t it? Oh, I thought other things afterward, naturally, but the first thing was that the world shouldn’t act as if it was some kind of book. Isn’t that a terrible thing to have thought?”
I MYSELF HAVE NEVER TRUSTED DRAMA, MISS FLITWORTH.
She wasn’t really listening.
“And I thought, what life expects me to do now is moon around the place in the wedding dress for years and go completely doolally. That’s what it wants me to do. Hah! Oh, yes! So I put the dress in the ragbag and we still invited everyone to the wedding breakfast, because it’s a crime to let good food go to waste.”
She attacked the fire again, and then gave him another megawatt stare.
“I think it’s always very important to see what’s really real and what isn’t, don’t you?”
MISS FLITWORTH?
“Yes?”
DO YOU MIND IF I STOP THE CLOCK?
She glanced up at the boggle-eyed owl.
“What? Oh. Why?”
I AM AFRAID IT GETS ON MY NERVES.
“It’s not very loud, is it?”
Bill Door wanted to say that every tick was like the hammering of iron clubs on bronze pillars.
IT’S JUST RATHER ANNOYING, MISS FLITWORTH.
“Well, stop it if you want to, I’m sure. I only keep it wound up for the company.”
Bill Door got up thankfully, stepped gingerly through the forest of ornaments, and grabbed the pine-cone shaped pendulum. The wooden owl glared at him and the ticking stopped, at least in the realm of common sound. He was aware that, elsewhere, the pounding of Time continued none the less. How could people endure it? They allowed Time in their houses, as though it was a friend.
He sat down again.
Miss Flitworth had started to knit, ferociously.
The fire rustled in the grate.
Bill Door leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling.
“Your horse enjoying himself?”
PARDON?
“Your horse. He seems to be enjoying himself in the meadow,” prompted Miss Flitworth.
OH. YES.
“Running around as if he’s never seen grass before.”
HE LIKES GRASS.
“And you like animals. I can tell.”
Bill Door nodded. His reserves of small talk, never very liquid, had dried up.
He sat silently for the next couple of hours, hands gripping the arms of the chair, until Miss Flitworth announced that she was going to bed. Then he went back to the barn, and slept.
Bill Door hadn’t been aware of it coming. But there it was, a gray figure floating in the darkness of the barn.
Somehow it had got hold of the golden timer.
It told him, Bill Door, there had been a mistake.
The glass