Reaper Man

you wasn’t just dead but buried too,” said the gardener, as Windle lurched off.
    “That’s right.”
    “Can’t keep a good man down, eh?”
    Windle turned back.
    “By the way…where’s Elm Street?”
    Modo scratched an ear. “Isn’t it that one off Treacle Mine Road?”
    “Oh, yes. I remember.”
    Modo went back to his weeding.
    The circular nature of Windle Poons’ death didn’t bother him much. After all, trees looked dead in the winter, burst forth again every spring. Dried up old seeds went in the ground, fresh young plants sprang up. Practically nothing ever died for long. Take compost, for example.
    Modo believed in compost with the same passion that other people believed in gods. His compost heaps heaved and fermented and glowed faintly in the dark, perhaps because of the mysterious and possibly illegal ingredients Modo fed them, although nothing had ever been proved and, anyway, no one was about to dig into one to see what was in it.
    All dead stuff, but somehow alive. And it certainly grew roses. The Senior Wrangler had explained to Modo that his roses grew so big because it was a miracle of existence, but Modo privately thought that they just wanted to get as far away from the compost as possible.
    The heaps were in for a treat tonight. The weeds were really doing well. He’d never known plants to grow so fast and luxuriantly. It must be all the compost, Modo thought.

    By the time the wizards reached the palace it was in uproar. Pieces of furniture were gliding across the ceiling. A shoal of cutlery, like silvery minnows in mid-air, flashed past the Archchancellor and dived away down a corridor. The place seemed to be in the grip of a selective and tidy-minded hurricane.
    Other people had already arrived. They included a group dressed very like the wizards in many ways, although there were important differences to the trained eye.
    “Priests?” said the Dean. “Here? Before us ?”
    The two groups began very surreptitiously to adopt positions that left their hands free.
    “What good are they?” said the Senior Wrangler.
    There was a noticeable drop in metaphorical temperature.
    A carpet undulated past.
    The Archchancellor met the gaze of the enormous Chief Priest of Blind Io who, as senior priest of the senior god in the Discworld’s rambling pantheon, was the nearest thing Ankh-Morpork had to a spokesman on religious affairs.
    “Credulous fools,” muttered the Senior Wrangler.
    “Godless tinkerers,” said a small acolyte, peering out from behind the Chief Priest’s bulk.
    “Gullible idiots!”
    “Atheistic scum!”
    “Servile morons!”
    “Childish conjurors!”
    “Bloodthirsty priests!”
    “Interfering wizards!”
    Ridcully raised an eyebrow. The Chief Priest nodded very slightly.
    They left the two groups hurling imprecations at each other from a safe distance and strolled nonchalantly toward a comparatively quiet part of the room where, beside a statue of one of the Patrician’s predecessors, they turned and faced one another again.
    “So…how are things in the godbothering business?” said Ridcully.
    “We do our humble best. How is the dangerous meddling with things man was not meant to understand?”
    “Pretty fair. Pretty fair.” Ridcully removed his hat and fished inside the pointy bit. “Can I offer you a drop of something?”
    “Alcohol is a snare for the spirit. Would you care for a cigarette? I believe you people indulge.”
    “Not me. If I was to tell you what that stuff does to your lungs—”
    Ridcully unscrewed the very tip of his hat and poured a generous measure of brandy into it.
    “So,” he said, “what’s happening?”
    “We had an altar float up into the air and drop on us.”
    “A chandelier unscrewed itself. Everything’s unscrewing itself. You know, I saw a suit of clothes run past on the way here? Two pairs of pants for seven dollars!”
    “Hmm. Did you see the label?”
    “Everything’s throbbing, too. Notice the way everything’s throbbing?”
    “We thought it was you people.”
    “It’s not magic. I suppose the gods aren’t more than usually unhappy?”
    “Apparently not.”
    Behind them, the priests and the wizards were screaming chin to chin.
    The Chief Priest moved a little closer.
    “I think I could be strong enough to master and defeat just a little snare,” he said. “I haven’t felt like this since Mrs. Cake was one of my flock.”
    “Mrs. Cake? What’s a Mrs. Cake?”
    “You have…ghastly Things from