Hogfather

if the rail hadn’t managed to catch her instead.
    Teatime swung from her arm, staring upward with a thoughtful expression. She saw him grip the sword hilt in his teeth and reach down to his belt—
    The question “Is this person mad enough to try to kill someone holding him?” was asked and answered very, very fast…She kicked down and hit him on the ear.
    The cloth of her sleeve began to tear. Teatime tried to get another grip. She kicked again and the dress ripped. For an instant he held onto nothing and then, still wearing the expression of someone trying to solve a complex problem, he fell away, spinning, getting smaller…
    He hit the pile of teeth, sending them splashing across the marble. He jerked for a moment…
    And vanished.
    A hand like a bunch of bananas pulled Susan back over the rail.
    “You can get into trouble, hittin’ girls,” said Banjo. “No playin’ with girls.”
    There was a click behind them.
    The doors had swung open. Cold white mist rolled out across the floor.
    “Our mam—” said Banjo, trying to work things out. “Our mam was here—”
    “Yes,” said Susan.
    “But it weren’t our mam, ’cos they buried our mam—”
    “Yes.”
    “We watched ’em fill in the grave and everything.”
    “Yes,” said Susan, and added to herself, I bet you did .
    “And where’s our Davey gone?”
    “Er…somewhere else, Banjo.”
    “Somewhere nice?” said the huge man hesitantly.
    Susan grasped with relief the opportunity to tell the truth, or at least not definitely lie.
    “It could be,” she said.
    “Better’n here?”
    “You never know. Some people would say the odds are in favor.”
    Banjo turned his pink piggy eyes on her. For a moment a thirty-five-year-old man looked out through the pink clouds of a five-year-old face.
    “That’s good,” he said. “He’ll be able to see our mam again.”
    This much conversation seemed to exhaust him. He sagged.
    “I wanna go home,” he said.
    She stared at his big, stained face, shrugged hopelessly, pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and held it up to his mouth.
    “Spit,” she commanded. He obeyed.
    She dabbed the handkerchief over the worst parts and then tucked it into his hand.
    “Have a good blow,” she suggested, and then carefully leaned out of range until the echoes of the blast had died away.
    “You can keep the hanky. Please,” she added, meaning it wholeheartedly. “Now tuck your shirt in.”
    “Yes, miss.”
    “Now, go downstairs and sweep all the teeth out of the circle. Can you do that?”
    Banjo nodded.
    “What can you do?” Susan prompted.
    Banjo concentrated. “Sweep all the teeth out of the circle, miss.”
    “Good. Off you go.”
    Susan watched him plod off, and then looked at the white doorway. She was sure the wizard had only got as far as the sixth lock.
    The room beyond the door was entirely white, and the mist that swirled at knee level deadened even the sound of her footsteps.
    All there was was a bed. It was a large four-poster, old and dusty.
    She thought it was unoccupied and then she saw the figure, lying among the mounds of pillows. It looked very much like a frail old lady in a mobcap.
    The old woman turned her head and smiled at Susan.
    “Hello, my dear.”
    Susan couldn’t remember a grandmother. Her father’s mother had died when she was young, and the other side of the family…well, she’d never had a grandmother. But this was the sort she’d have wanted.
    The kind, the nasty realistic side of her mind said, that hardly ever existed.
    Susan thought she heard a child laugh. And another one. Somewhere almost out of hearing, children were at play. It was always a pleasant, lulling sound.
    Always provided, of course, you couldn’t hear the actual words.
    “No,” said Susan.
    “Sorry, dear?” said the old lady.
    “You’re not the Tooth Fairy.” Oh, no…there was even a damn patchwork quilt…
    “Oh, I am , dear.”
    “Oh, Grandma, what big teeth you have…Good grief, you’ve even got a shawl, oh dear.”
    “I don’t understand, lovey—”
    “You forgot the rocking chair,” said Susan. “I always thought there’d be a rocking chair…”
    There was a pop behind her, and then a dying creak-creak. She didn’t even turn round.
    “If you’ve included a kitten playing with a ball of wool it’ll go very hard with you,” she said sternly, and picked up the candlestick by the bed. It seemed heavy enough.
    “I don’t think you’re real,” she said levelly.