Hogfather

It’s because it’s me that—”
    “—gets the hangovers?” said Susan.
    “I don’t even drink! Ow! But who is it who ends up head down in the privy every morning? Arrgh.” He stopped and clutched at his head. “Should your skull feel like it’s lined with dog hair?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Ah.” Bilious swayed. “You know when people say ‘I had fifteen lagers last night and when I woke up my head was clear as a bell’?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “Bastards! That’s because I was the one who woke up groaning in a pile of recycled chili. Just once, I mean just once , I’d like to open my eyes in the morning without my head sticking to something.” He paused. “Are there any giraffes in this wood?”
    “Up here? I shouldn’t think so.”
    He looked nervously past Susan’s head.
    “Not even indigo-colored ones which are sort of stretched and keep flashing on and off?”
    “Very unlikely.”
    “Thank goodness for that.” He swayed back and forth. “Excuse me, I think I’m about to throw up my breakfast.”
    “It’s the middle of the evening!”
    “Is it? In that case, I think I’m about to throw up my dinner.”
    He folded up gently in the snow behind the tree.
    “He’s a long streak of widdle, isn’t he?” said a voice from a branch. It was the raven. “Got a neck with a knee in it.”
    The oh god reappeared after a noisy interlude.
    “I know I must eat,” he mumbled. “It’s just that the only time I remember seeing my food it’s always going the other way…”
    “What were you doing in there?” said Susan.
    “Ouch! Search me,” said the oh god. “It’s only a mercy I wasn’t holding a traffic sign and wearing a—” he winced and paused “—having some kind of women’s underwear about my person.” He sighed. “Someone somewhere has a lot of fun,” he said wistfully. “I wish it was me.”
    “Get a drink inside you, that’s my advice,” said the raven. “Have a hair of the dog that bit someone else.”
    “But why there ?” Susan insisted.
    The oh god stopped trying to glare at the raven. “I don’t know, where was there exactly?”
    Susan looked back at where the castle had been. It was entirely gone.
    “There was a very important building there a moment ago,” she said.
    The oh god nodded carefully.
    “I often see things that weren’t there a moment ago,” he said. “And they often aren’t there a moment later. Which is a blessing in most cases, let me tell you. So I don’t usually take a lot of notice.”
    He folded up and landed in the snow again.
    There’s just snow now, Susan thought. Nothing but snow and the wind. There’s not even a ruin.
    The certainty stole over her again that the Hogfather’s castle wasn’t simply not there any more. No…it had never been there. There was no ruin, no trace.
    It had been an odd enough place. It was where the Hogfather lived, according to the legends. Which was odd, when you thought about it. It didn’t look like the kind of place a cheery old toy maker would live in.
    The wind soughed in the trees behind them. Snow slid off branches. Somewhere in the dark there was a flurry of hooves.
    A spidery little figure leapt off a snowdrift and landed on the oh god’s head. It turned a beady eye up toward Susan.
    “All right by you, is it?” said the imp, producing its huge hammer. “Some of us have a job to do, you know, even if we are of a metaphorical, nay, folkloric persuasion.”
    “Oh, go away .”
    “If you think I’m bad, wait until you see the little pink elephants,” said the imp.
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “They come out of his ears and fly around his head making tweeting noises.”
    “Ah,” said the raven, sagely. “That sounds more like robins. I wouldn’t put anything past them .”
    The oh god grunted.
    Susan suddenly felt that she didn’t want to leave him. He was human. Well, human shaped. Well, at least he had two arms and legs. He’d freeze to death here. Of course, gods, or even oh gods, probably couldn’t, but humans didn’t think like that. You couldn’t just leave someone. She prided herself on this bit of normal thinking.
    Besides, he might have some answers, if she could make him stay awake enough to understand the questions.
    From the edge of the frozen forest, animal eyes watched them go.

    Mr. Crumley sat on the damp stairs and sobbed. He couldn’t get any nearer to the toy department. Every time he tried he got lifted off his feet by the mob and dumped