There's no better Present than a Future
Disclaimer: I donot own the rights to Terry Pratchett's Discworld characters. Merely their representation. And the punes or play on words.
The big, ball of flaming gas rose over the Disc's edge.(1)
(1)You can tell from the ominous opening that its going to be a tale about Good triumphing over Evil in the end. Not to give it all away of course. Er…right. Carry on.
It touched the ridges of the valleys in Lancre, made half hearted descents into its pitiless, bottomless depths before spreading across the rest of the land. Eventually all the land mass was covered in a thin veneer of crimson light, as usually seen in the aftermath of great battles fought in motion pictures.
Except here.
Between the gnarly woods, just before Lancre's famous standing stone, there were – imbalances of perception. As if the light hesitated to enter these grounds.
It eventually appeared over the invisible line marking the boundaries. There was a millisecond pause before the shadow of the stones appeared on the other side. They say there are Terrible Things in the deep dark woods…
Now let us enter this mysterious mirror and take note of the landscape.
The woods are there in the distance, but these trees have not been touched by real sunlight in a long, long time. It would be easy to say that there is death all around, but in reality, it is really the absence of anything substantial.
It is the eternal winter of the imagination.
Nothing really belongs here. It shouldn't belong here.
And now there are voices on the wind. A tall figure sits astride an impossibly white unicorn, and appears to be listening. There appears to be some thought process going on inside the still figure, weighing options and possibilities.
At last, the queen smiles.
And the war is beginning.
The month of Ick was passing by in a flurry of snow.
This was not a view widely held by the people of Ankh Morpork. Although Ick was the shortest month of the year, a mere snow flurry was hardly going to stop their daily businesses or in the case of the latest visitors, try to find a business that would take them in.
The last of the Hogswatch trees were being unceremoniously dumped in alleyways, sometimes with the odd shiny bauble or paper streamers still attached to the branches. Ankh-Morporkians had a unique approach to subject of recycling, viz, squeeze every possible use from it, and if the Golden King Piss Harry himself didn't take it, then leave it for the next sap to use. Some people might have considered this charity, and there was an unusual amount of that going around recently. Strange, it was almost as if the spirit of Hogswatch had permeated the hardened shell of Ankh-Morpork's natural cynicism. Naaah! couldn't be it, they thought before feeling the strange urge to go home, and write fifty thank you notes to various relatives for their Hogswatch gifts.
The Auditors watched the scene below in gloomy silence.
After the – 'incident', there had been a meeting with the Great Azrael - Lord of all deaths, that in turn led to more meetings with the other concerned deities, all of which involved a lot of Words.
The most worrying ones being "Keeping-Eye-On-You".
The near success of the Belief obliteration operation had a lot of the Gods on Dunmanifestin badly shaken by the news from vine leaf to sandled foot.(2) They were practically falling over themselves to Set Things Right with the masses, clearing their weekly schedules ('Rise, eat/drink/orgy, Meddle with Fate of Menn, eat/drink/orgy,sleep) for long overdue Special Appearances, Manifestations, Visitations and Signs.
(2) The Gods were very rigid on the fashion front. Start making changes in that field and you're yesterdays Diva.
This was not the result that the Auditors were expecting. They had hoped no – it was imperitive that when the project succeeded, there would be an elimination even of those ridiculous fools on the Celestial Plains. Now the Gods were on their guard, and it be ages before another opportunity to control all the Disc's Belief would crop up.
It had been, to use a human term (which they all hurredly disclaimed) a major cock-up.
Speaking of which, there was still the question of Mr Teatime.
It had generally been assumed that Death got him in the end. The question was : What did He do with the body?
"… then Gen'al Tacticus exp-E-dit-E-us-ly led the calvary of six hundred and forty-two men into the valley of Koom ."
The sound of little childrens voices was always pleasant to hear. Even more so, when they overcame a difficult word on their own.
"Good." said Susan after Gawain finished the paragraph . "And if you behave tomorrow, we'll go and see how the war of the valley of Koom was really fought."
"Does that mean I'll have to wear my galoshes?"
"Do you want to explain the presence of blood and mud on your socks later to your mother?"
"No, Susan." came the meek reply.
"Very well, then."
And then it was time for bed. That meant pleasant dreams for the children, and aspirations of Class distinctions for the elder Gaiters.
Not for Susan.
She had taken to going to bed quite late these days. She couldn't seem to settle back into the state of normalcy as easily as before, not with the hairs at the base of her neck in a constant state of static every night. Susan was rather in the position of a seismograph that senses a light reading off the islands of Fiji, only to have a whacking great wave creep up on her from behind.
Something was…it was not off like the wrong chord in a well known song, but rather like the wrong harmony that should have been sung in a lower key.
It was something to do with Hogswatch night, and all the things that had happened. Hah! A lot of things had happened. She discovered that you could ignore the Occult all you liked, but in the end blood will out. Her grandfather came calling, having decided that he preferred the job of the Jolly Giftgiver over his usual job. For one thing, it meant more colourful uniforms. And the hours were less demanding. Of course that meant that in the course of one evening, he had turned her entire world upside down.
Again.
Explaining the absence of the poker to the Gaiters on Hogswatch morning would have gone a lot more smoothly, if Gawain hadn't blown the gaff about the whereabouts and more precisely the whoseabouts of its location. He had gotten an extra lesson from the sixth book of the Campaigns of General Tacticus, ('New revised edition with additional footnotes) while Susan calmly laid Mrs Gaiters worried spirits to rest about Glittering Swords and Glass eyed men stalking her children.
The truth, of course, was entirely out of the question. She knew the Gaiters had enough difficulty adjusting to Susan's severely practical approach to the children's education, as well as her obliviousness to her noble background. To add her- unusual talents to the mix would be too much. It was all she could do to keep a straight face as Mr Gaiter made an ever so tiny lift of the eyebrows, and directed a silent look of enquiry that she pointedly ignored.
And now here she was, sitting wrapped up in her sensible dressing gown, intently watching the frost patterns on her window waiting for – for what? another premonition?a sign ? an angel writing in a book of gold? Perhaps he'd tell her that she was finally losing her mind. Good riddance to bad rubbish sort of thing.
Consumed by these gloomy thoughts, Susan failed to notice the glimmer coming from the corner of her bedroom door. Let the camera of the eye pull into a slow zoom on the solitary object near the post. It is a marble. Nothing more. But if you turn it one way, it is the prized possession of a little boy sleeping a few doors away, for it wins every game that the boy plays. Turn it another way…and it's a spy for its original owner.
An eye with a pin sized pupil watched the figure on the bed.
It was not attached to a substanstial form. Yet.
But stray thoughts still abounded from the consciousness of the mind that was once attached to a body that was once attached to the glass eye. Plans of the whirring, buzzing illogical kind were being made to achieve a physical body soon, but for now the disembodied mind, to use a politer term, was currently brooding.
Beaten by a girl.
That practically made her his nemesis didn't it? The very word irked his finer feelings, that were so fine in detail that they were practically nonexistent.
Still.
To bestow the title on the girl was to give a tangible name to their last encounter.
Mr Teatime wasn't truly annoyed over his recent demise, dear me, no! not at all. It was after all, part and parcel of the cat and mouse game that a true Asssasin played with his target, and he wasn't about to let tradition down.
No.
What truly annoyed him was the unseemly manner with which he had met his end. In the hands of a girl with more luck than skill on her side.
All he had ever wanted for Hogswatch or indeed, out of life was to Up There with the Greats. It is the surest form of immortality. In fact, he had plans to fill the entire wall at the Assassins Guild, dedicated solely to his name. With syllables neatly spaced.
It was the girl's fault of course. Riding into the Tooth fairy's castle, all in designer black lace, armed with nothing more than her Grandfather's rather kitchy looking sword and a lot of false bravado. Oh dear, the Hero syndrome did spread to all quarters, didn't it?
And what did he do?
What any self respecting Assassin does, of course.
Introduced himself with just that right amount of weary boredom and subtle animal magnetism that left the average would-be heroine weak in the knees.
The grand-daughter of Death, he discovered, didn't qualify in this category.
Oh! he cajoled and threatened her and made good on all the known trademarks of a professional Inhumer , viz, get their guard down and then move in for the kill. Literally.
But she kept his eyes on him the entire time, and made sure that he knew it. He pretended not to be a little unnerved by it at the time.
Mr Teatime' extraordinary abilities for speed had nothing to do with skill. Its just that people's eyes started to water from trying to decide which one of his eyes was less appealing to look at. Their mistake, in most cases their last one, was the natural tendency to take their eyes off the hand holding the dagger in the recesses of his cloak. The Hand was quicker than the eye, after all.(3)
(3)People always forgot it, though.
And then, she slapped him.
They were getting along so well, he thought and granted, it was the most human contact he had ever received at the hand of the other – Gender.
Mr Teatime had never been inclined towards female companionship before. It wasn't strictly necessary in the grand scheme of things, and he had a lot of grand schemes to keep him occupied. His first meeting with a couple of Seamstresses, was out of pure curiousity to see what his other companions were up to on their evenings off.
There couldn't be that much sewing repairs to be done.
After realization dawned about the actual nature of their activities, Mr Teatime simply laughed and took off, abruptly leaving his two baffled young female companions behind. They would later discover that sometime during the hasty exit, he had managed to tie their tresses together, and on reaching their rooms had made damaging slits in all their 'work clothes' that was impossible to repair.
Susan wasn't like any of those other girls. In fact, she had something that he would gladly kill for, being a natural talent as far as he was concerned.
If he could coax her, wheedle her, bring her over to the dark side, make the deal….the Disk would be his personal playground.