Read Online Hogfather by Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online

Binky?”
    “Search me. O’ course, it can happen, as I was telling the rat only just now—”
    Susan put her hands over her ears, more for desperate theatrical effect than for the muffling they gave.
    “I don’t want to know! I don’t have a grandfather!”
    She had to hold onto that.
    The Death of Rats squeaked at length.
    “The rat says you must remember, he’s tall, not what you’d call fleshy, he carries a scythe—”
    “Go away! And take the…the rat with you!”
    She waved her hand wildly and, to her horror and shame, knocked the little hooded skeleton over an ashtray.
    EEK?
    The raven took the rat’s cowl in its beak and tried to drag him away, but a tiny skeletal fist shook its scythe.
    EEK IK EEK SQUEAK!
    “He says, you don’t mess with the rat,” said the raven.
    In a flurry of wings they were gone.
    Igor closed the window. He didn’t pass any comment.
    “They weren’t real,” said Susan, hurriedly. “Well, that is…the raven’s probably real, but he hangs around with the rat—”
    “Which isn’t real,” said Igor.
    “That’s right!” said Susan, gratefully. “You probably didn’t see a thing.”
    “That’s right,” said Igor. “Not a thing.”
    “Now…how much do I owe you?” said Susan.
    Igor counted on his fingers.
    “That’ll be a dollar for the drinks,” he said, “and five pence because the raven that wasn’t here messed in the pickles.”

    It was the night before Hogswatch.
    In the Archchancellor’s new bathroom Modo wiped his hands on a piece of rag and looked proudly at his handiwork. Shining porcelain gleamed back at him. Copper and brass shone in the lamplight.
    He was a little worried that he hadn’t been able to test everything, but Mr. Ridcully had said, “I’ll test it when I use it,” and Modo never argued with the Gentlemen, as he thought of them. He knew that they all knew a lot more than he knew, and was quite happy knowing this. He didn’t meddle with the fabric of time and space, and they kept out of his greenhouses. The way he saw it, it was a partnership.
    He’d been particularly careful to scrub the floors. Mr. Ridcully had been very specific about that.
    “Verruca Gnome,” he said to himself, giving a tap a last polish. “What an imagination the Gentlemen do have…”
    Far off, unheard by anyone, was a faint little noise, like the ringing of tiny silver bells.
    Glingleglingleglingle…
    And someone landed abruptly in a snow drift and said, “Bugger!” which is a terrible thing to say as your first word ever.

    Overhead, heedless of the new and somewhat angry life that was even now dusting itself off, the sleigh soared onward through time and space.
    I’M FINDING THE BEARD A BIT OF A TRIAL, said Death.
    “Why’ve you got to have the beard?” said the voice from among the sacks. “I thought you said people see what they expect to see.”
    CHILDREN DON’T. TOO OFTEN THEY SEE WHAT’S THERE.
    “Well, at least it’s keeping you in the right frame of mind, master. In character, sort of thing.”
    BUT GOING DOWN THE CHIMNEY? WHERE’S THE SENSE IN THAT? I CAN JUST WALK THROUGH THE WALLS.
    “Walking through the walls is not right, neither,” said the voice from the sacks.
    IT WORKS FOR ME.
    “It’s got to be chimneys. Same as the beard, really.”
    A head thrust itself out from the pile. It appeared to belong to the oldest, most unpleasant pixie in the universe. The fact that it was underneath a jolly little green hat with a bell on it did not do anything to improve matters.
    It waved a crabbed hand containing a thick wad of letters, many of them on pastel-colored paper, often with bunnies and teddy bears on them, and written mostly in crayon.
    “You reckon these little buggers’d be writing to someone who walked through walls?” it said. “And the ‘Ho, ho, ho’ could use some more work, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
    HO. HO. HO.
    “No, no, no!” said Albert. “You got to put a bit of life in it, sir, no offense