Hogfather

teeth,” said the oh god again. “Like…rows, you know? What’s the Tooth Fairy?”
    “Oh, you see her around a lot these days,” said Susan. “Or them, rather. It’s a sort of franchise operation. You get the ladder, the money belt and the pliers and you’re set up.”
    “Pliers?”
    “If she can’t make change she has to take an extra tooth on account. But, look, the tooth fairies are harmless enough. I’ve met one or two of them. They’re just working girls. They don’t menace anyone.”
    S QUEAK .
    “I just hope Grandfather doesn’t take it into his head to do their job as well. Good grief, the thought of it—”
    “They collect teeth?”
    “Yes. Obviously.”
    “Why?”
    “Why? It’s their job .”
    “I meant why, where do they take the teeth after they collect them?”
    “ I don’t know! They just…well, they just take the teeth and leave the money,” said Susan. “What sort of question is that—‘Where do they take the teeth?’”
    “I just wondered, that’s all. Probably all humans know, I’m probably very silly for asking, it’s probably a well-known fact.”
    Susan looked thoughtfully at the Death of Rats.
    “Actually…where do they take the teeth?”
    SQUEAK ?
    “He says search him,” said the raven. “Maybe they sell ’em?” It pecked at another jar. “How about these, these look nice and wrinkl—”
    “Pickled walnuts,” said Susan absently. “What do they do with the teeth? What use is there for a lot of teeth? But…what harm can a tooth fairy do?”
    “Have we got time to find one and ask her?” said the oh god.
    “Time isn’t the problem,” said Susan.

    There are those who believe knowledge is something that is acquired—a precious ore hacked, as it were, from the gray strata of ignorance.
    There are those who believe that knowledge can only be recalled, that there was some Golden Age in the distant past when everything was known and the stones fitted together so you could hardly put a knife between them, you know, and it’s obvious they had flying machines, right, because of the way the earthworks can only be seen from above, yeah? and there’s this museum I read about where they found a pocket calculator under the altar of this ancient temple, you know what I’m saying? but the government hushed it up… *
    Mustrum Ridcully believed that knowledge could be acquired by shouting at people, and was endeavoring to do so. The wizards were sitting around the Uncommon Room table, which was piled high with books.
    “It is Hogswatch, Archchancellor,” said the Dean reproachfully, thumbing through an ancient volume.
    “Not until midnight,” said Ridcully. “Sortin’ this out will give you fellows an appetite for your dinner.”
    “I think I might have something, Archchancellor,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “This is Woddeley’s Basic Gods . There’s some stuff here about lares and penates that seems to fit the bill.”
    “Lares and penates? What were they when they were at home?” said Ridcully.
    “Hahaha,” said the Chair.
    “What?” said Ridcully.
    “I thought you were making a rather good joke, Archchancellor,” said the Chair.
    “Was I? I didn’t mean to,” said Ridcully.
    “Nothing new there,” said the Dean, under his breath.
    “What was that, Dean?”
    “Nothing, Archchancellor.”
    “I thought you made the reference ‘at home’ because they are, in fact, household gods. Or were, rather. They seemed to have faded away long ago. They were…little spirits of the house, like, for example—”
    Three of the other wizards, thinking quite fast for wizards, clapped their hands over his mouth.
    “Careful!” said Ridcully. “Careless talk creates lives! That’s why we’ve got a big fat God of Indigestion being ill in the privy. By the way, where’s the Bursar?”
    “He was in the privy, Archchancellor,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
    “What, when the—?”
    “ Yes , Archchancellor.”
    “Oh, well, I’m sure he’ll be all right,” said Ridcully, in the matter-of-fact voice of someone contemplating something nasty that was happening to someone else out of earshot. “But we don’t want any more of these…what’re they, Chair?”
    “Lares and penates, Archchancellor, but I wasn’t suggesting—”
    “Seems clear to me. Something’s gone wrong and these little devils are coming back. All we have to do is find out what’s gone wrong and put it right.”
    “Oh, well, I’m glad that’s