Hogfather

began one of his volcanic bouts of coughing, which even sounded green. “No charge, of course.”
    “It being Hogswatch,” said Arnold.
    The beggars, despite being too disreputable even to belong to the Beggars’ Guild, lived quite well by their own low standards. This was generally by careful application of the Certainty Principle. People would give them all sorts of things if they were certain to go away.
    A few minutes later they wandered off again, pushing a happy Arnold who was surrounded by hastily wrapped packages.
    “People can be so kind,” said the Duck Man.
    “Millennium hand and shrimp.”
    Arnold started to investigate the charitable donations as they maneuvered his trolley through the slush and drifts.
    “Tastes…sort of familiar,” he said.
    “Familiar like what?”
    “Like mud and old boots.”
    “Garn! That’s posh grub, that is.”
    “Yeah, yeah…” Arnold chewed for a while. “You don’t think we’ve become posh all of a sudden?”
    “Dunno. You posh, Ron?”
    “Buggrit.”
    “Yep. Sounds posh to me.”
    The snow began to settle gently on the River Ankh.
    “Still…Happy New Year, Arnold.”
    “Happy New Year, Duck Man. And your duck.”
    “What duck?”
    “Happy New Year, Henry.”
    “Happy New Year, Ron.”
    “Buggrem!”
    “And god bless us, every one,” said Arnold Sideways.
    The curtain of snow hid them from view.
    “Which god?”
    “Dunno. What’ve you got?”
    “Duck Man?”
    “Yes, Henry?”
    “You know that stalled ox you mentioned?”
    “Yes, Henry?”
    “How come it’d stalled? Run out of grass, or something?”
    “Ah…it was more a figure of speech, Henry.”
    “Not an ox?”
    “Not exactly . What I meant was—”
    And then there was only the snow.
    After a while, it began to melt in the sun.

About the Author
    Terry Pratchett’s novels have sold more than thirty million (give or take a few million) copies worldwide. He lives in England.
    www.terrypratchettbooks.com
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Praise for Terry Pratchett’s DISCWORLD
    “Smart and funny.”
    Denver Post
    “Humorously entertaining (and subtly thought-provoking) fantasy…Pratchett’s Discworld books are filled with humor and magic, but they’re rooted in, of all things, real life and cold, hard, reason.”
    Contra Costa Times
    “Terry Pratchett may still be pegged as a comic novelist but…he’s a lot more. In his range of invented characters, his adroit storytelling, and his clear-eyed acceptance of humankind’s foibles, he reminds us of no one in English literature as much as Geoffrey Chaucer. No kidding.”
    Washington Post Book World
    “Terry Pratchett seems constitutionally unable to write a page without at least a twitch of the grin muscles…. [But] the notions Pratchett plays with are nae so narrow or nae so silly as your ordinary British farce. Seriously.”
    San Diego Union-Tribune
    “A master of laugh-out-loud fiction…Pratchett’s ‘Monty Python’-like plots are almost impossible to describe.”
    Chicago Tribune
    “Discworld is more complicated and satisfactory than Oz…. It has the energy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the inventiveness of Alice in Wonderland . It also has an intelligent wit and a truly original grim and comic grasp of the nature of things.”
    A.S. Byatt
    “Think J.R.R. Tolkien with a sharper, more satiric edge.”
    Houston Chronicle
    “What makes Terry Pratchett’s fantasies so entertaining is that their humor depends on the characters first, on the plot second, rather than the other way around. The story isn’t there simply to lead from one slapstick pratfall to another pun. Its humor is genuine and unforced.”
    Ottawa Citizen
    “Pratchett, for those not yet lucky enough to have discovered him, is one of England’s most highly regarded satirists. Nothing—not religion, not politics, not anything—is safe from him.”
    South Bend Tribune
    “He is head and shoulders above the best of the rest. He is screamingly funny. He is wise. He has style.”
    Daily Telegraph (London)
    “Pratchett’s writing is hilarious.”
    Cleveland Plain Dealer
    “The Discworld novels are a phenomenon.”
    Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
    “Consistently, inventively mad…wild and wonderful.”
    Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
    “Pratchett has now moved beyond the limits of humorous fantasy and should be recognized as one of the most significant