Hogfather

quietly. “I don’t think this is what the Tooth Fairy is all about. All that effort to get the teeth, and then just to dump them like this? No. Anyway, there’s a cigarette end on the floor. I don’t see the Tooth Fairy as someone who rolls her own.”
    She stared down at the chalk marks.
    Voices high above her made her look up. She thought she saw a head look over the stair rail, and then draw back again. She didn’t see much of the face, but what she saw didn’t look fairylike.
    She glanced back at the circle of chalk around the teeth. Someone had wanted all the teeth in one place and had drawn a circle to show people where they had to go.
    There were a few symbols scrawled around the circle.
    She had a good memory for small details. It was another family trait. And a small detail stirred in her memory like a sleepy bee.
    “Oh, no ,” she breathed. “Surely no one would try to—”
    Someone shouted, someone up in the whiteness.
    A body rolled down the stairs nearest her. It had been a skinny, middle-aged man. Technically it still was, but the long spiral staircase had not been kind.
    It tumbled across the white marble and slid to a boneless halt.
    Then, as she hurried toward the body, it faded away, leaving nothing behind but a smear of blood.
    A jingle noise made her look back up the stairs. Spinning over and over, making salmon leaps in the air, a crowbar bounded over the last dozen steps and landed point first on a flagstone, staying upright and vibrating.

    Chickenwire reached the top of the stairs, panting.
    “There’s people down there, Mister Teatime!” he wheezed. “Dave and the others’ve gone down to catch them, Mister Teatime!”
    “Teh-ah-tim-eh,” said Teatime, without taking his eyes off the wizard.
    “That’s right, sir!”
    “Well?” said Teatime. “Just…do away with them.”
    “Er…one of them’s a girl, sir.”
    Teatime still didn’t look round. He waved a hand vaguely.
    “Then do away with them politely .”
    “Yes, Mister…yes, right…” Chickenwire coughed. “Don’t you want to find out why they’re here, sir?”
    “Good heavens, no. Why should I want to do that? Now go away.”
    Chickenwire stood there for a moment, and then hurried off.
    As he scurried down the stairs he thought he heard a creak, as of an ancient wooden door.
    He went pale.
    It was just a door, said the sensible bit in front of his brain. There were hundreds of them in this place, although, come to think of it, none of them had creaked.
    The other bit, the bit that hung around in dark places nearly at the top of his spinal column, said: But it’s not one of them, and you know it, because you know which door it really is…
    He hadn’t heard that creak for thirty years.
    He gave a little yelp and started to take the stairs four at a time.
    In the hollows and corners, the shadows grew darker.

    Susan ran up a flight of stairs, dragging the oh god behind her.
    “Do you know what they’ve been doing?” she said. “You know why they’ve got all those teeth in a circle? The power …oh, my…”

    “I’m not going to,” said the head waiter, firmly.
    “Look, I’ll buy you a better pair after Hogswatch—”
    “There’s two more Shoe Pastry, one for Purée de la Terre and three more Tourte à la Boue ,” said a waiter, hurrying in.
    “Mud pies!” moaned the waiter. “I can’t believe we’re selling mud pies. And now you want my boots!”
    “With cream and sugar, mind you. A real taste of Ankh-Morpork. And we can get at least four helpings off those boots. Fair’s fair. We’re all in our socks—”
    “Table seven says the steaks were lovely but a bit tough,” said a waiter, rushing past.
    “Right. Use a larger hammer next time and boil them for longer.” The manager turned back to the suffering head waiter. “Look, Bill,” he said, taking him by the shoulder. “This isn’t food. No one expects it to be food. If people wanted food they’d stay at home, isn’t that so? They come here for ambiance. For the experience. This isn’t cookery, Bill. This is cuisine . See? And they’re coming back for more.”
    “Yeah, but old boots …”
    “Dwarfs eat rats,” said the manager. “And trolls eat rocks. There’s folks in Howondaland that eat insects and folks on the Counterweight Continent eat soup made out of bird spit. At least the boots have been on a cow.”
    “And mud?” said the head waiter, gloomily.
    “Isn’t there an old proverb that says a man must eat