Soul Music

here before…and all these skulls and bones on things…”
    Albert’s rangy, vulturelike shape loomed over her.
    “Would you like a cocoa?” he said.
    It was a lot different from the cocoa at the school, which was like hot brown water. Albert’s cocoa had fat floating in it; if you turned the mug upside down, it would be a little while before anything fell out.
    “Your mum and dad,” said Albert, when she had a chocolate mustache that was far too young for her, “did they ever…explain anything to you?”
    “Miss Delcross did that in Biology,” said Susan. “She got it wrong,” she added.
    “I mean about your grandfather,” said Albert.
    “I remember things,” said Susan, “but I can’t remember them until I’ve seen them. Like the bathroom. Like you.”
    “Your mum and dad thought it best if you forgot,” said Albert. “Hah! It’s in the bone! They was afraid it was going to happen and it has! You’ve inherited .”
    “Oh, I know about that, too,” said Susan. “It’s all about mice and beans and things.”
    Albert gave her a blank look.
    “Look, I’ll try to put it tactful,” he said.
    Susan gave him a polite look.
    “Your grandfather is Death,” said Albert. “You know? The skeleton in the black robe? You rode in on his horse and this is his house. Only he’s…gone away. To think things over, or something. What I reckon’s happening is you’re being sucked in. It’s in the bone. You’re old enough now. There’s a hole and it thinks you’re the right shape. I don’t like it any more than you do.”
    “Death,” said Susan, flatly. “Like the Hogfather and the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy?”
    “Yes.”
    SQUEAK.
    “You expect me to believe that, do you?” said Susan, trying to summon up her most withering scorn.
    Albert glared back like someone who’d done all his withering a long time ago.
    “It’s no skin off my nose what you believe, madam,” he said.
    “You really mean the tall figure with the scythe and everything?”
    “Yes.”
    “Look, Albert,” said Susan, in the voice ones uses to the simple-minded, “even if there was a ‘Death’ like that, and frankly it’s quite ridiculous to go anthropomorphizing a simple natural function, no-one can inherit anything from it. I know about heredity. It’s all about having red hair and things. You get it from other people. You don’t get it from…myths and legends. Um.”
    The Death of Rats had gravitated to the cheeseboard, where he was using his scythe to hack off a lump. Albert sat back.
    “I remember when you got brought here,” he said. “He’d kept on asking, you see. He was curious. He likes kids. Sees a lot of them really, but…not to get to know, if you see what I mean. Your mum and dad didn’t want to, but they gave in and brought you all here for tea one day just to keep him quiet. They didn’t like to do it because they thought you’d be scared and scream the place down. But you… you didn’t scream. You laughed. Frightened the life out of your dad, that did. They brought you a couple more times when he asked, but then they got scared about what might happen and your dad put his foot down and that was the end of it. He was about the only one who could argue with the Master, your dad. You’d have been about four then, I think.”
    Susan raised her hand thoughtfully and touched the pale lines on her cheek.
    “The Master said they were raising you according to,” Albert sneered, “modern methods. Logic. And thinking old stuff is silly. I dunno…I suppose they wanted to keep you away from…ideas like this…”
    “I was given a ride on the horse,” said Susan, not listening to him. “I had a bath in the big bathroom.”
    “Soap all over the place,” said Albert. His face contorted into something approaching a smile. “I could hear the Master laughing from here. And he made you a swing, too. Tried to, anyway. No magic or anything. With his actual hands.”
    Susan sat while memories woke and yawned and unfolded in her head.
    “I remember about that bathroom now,” she said. “It’s all coming back to me.”
    “Nah, it never went away. It just got papered over.”
    “He was no good at plumbing. What does Y.M.R-C-I-G-B-S A, A-M. mean?”
    “Young Men’s Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God-Bel-Shamharoth Association, Ankh-Morpork,” said Albert. “It’s where I stay if I have to go back down for anything. Soap and suchlike.”
    “But you’re not…a young man,” said