Free Hogfather by Terry Pratchett Page A

shelves on the other side of the room. There was a clicking noise and the raven’s voice added, “These damn eyeballs are hard, aren’t they?”
    Susan raced across the room and snatched the bowl away so fast that the raven somersaulted and landed on its back.
    “They’re walnuts!” she shouted, as they bounced around her. “Not eyeballs! This is a schoolroom! And the difference between a school and a-a-a raven deli catessen is that they hardly ever have eyeballs lying around in bowls in case a raven drops in for a quick snack! Understand? No eyeballs! The world is full of small round things that aren’t eyeballs! okay?”
    The raven’s own eyes revolved.
    “’n’ I suppose a bit of warm liver’s out of the question—”
    “Shut up! I want both of you out of here right now! I don’t know how you got in here—”
    “There’s a law against coming down the chimney on Hogswatchnight?”
    “—but I don’t want you back in my life, understand?”
    “The rat said you ought to be warned even if you were crazy,” said the raven sulkily. “I didn’t want to come, there’s a donkey dropped dead just outside the city gates, I’ll be lucky now if I get a hoof—”
    “Warned?” said Susan.
    There it was again. The change in the weather of the mind, a sensation of tangible time…
    The Death of Rats nodded.
    There was a scrabbling sound far overhead. A few flakes of soot dropped down the chimney.
    SQUEAK, said the rat, but very quietly.
    Susan was aware of a new sensation, as a fish might be aware of a new tide, a spring of fresh water flowing into the sea. Time was pouring into the world.
    She glanced up at the clock. It was just on half past six.
    The raven scratched its beak.
    “The rat says…The rat says: you’d better watch out…”

    There were others at work on this shining Hogswatch Eve. The Sandman was out and about, dragging his sack from bed to bed. Jack Frost wandered from window pane to window pane, making icy patterns.
    And one tiny hunched shape slid and slithered along the gutter, squelching its feet in slush and swearing under its breath.
    It wore a stained black suit and, on its head, the type of hat known in various parts of the multiverse as “bowler,” “derby” or “the one that makes you look a bit of a twit.” The hat had been pressed down very firmly and, since the creature had long pointy ears, these had been forced out sideways and gave it the look of a small malignant wing nut.
    The thing was a gnome by shape but a fairy by profession. Fairies aren’t necessarily little twinkly creatures. It’s purely a job description, and the commonest ones aren’t even visible. * A fairy is simply any creature currently employed under supernatural laws to take things away or, as in the case of the small creature presently climbing up the inside of a drain pipe and swearing, to bring things.
    Oh, yes. He does. Someone has to do it, and he looks the right gnome for the job.
    Oh, yes.

    Sideney was worried. He didn’t like violence, and there had been a lot of it in the last few days, if days passed in this place. The men…well, they only seemed to find life interesting when they were doing something sharp to someone else and, while they didn’t bother him much in the same way that lions don’t trouble themselves with ants, they certainly worried him.
    But not as much as Teatime did. Even the brute called Chickenwire treated Teatime with caution, if not respect, and the monster called Banjo just followed him around like a puppy.
    The enormous man was watching him now.
    He reminded Sideney too much of Ronnie Jenks, the bully who’d made his life miserable at Gammer Wimblestone’s dame school. Ronnie hadn’t been a pupil. He was the old woman’s grandson or nephew or something, which gave him a license to hang around the place and beat up any kid smaller or weaker or brighter than he was, which more or less meant he had the whole world to choose from. In those circumstances, it was