Hogfather

     'I'm sorry, but I seem to have too many legs. Ow.'

     Susan did  her best to prop him up as, swaying and slipping, they  made their way back to the exit.

     'My head,'  said  the boy. 'My head. My  head. My head. Feels awful. My head. Feels like someone's hitting it. My head. With a hammer.'

     Someone was.  There  was a small  green and purple imp sitting amid the damp curls and holding a very large mallet. It gave Susan a friendly nod and brought the hammer down again.

     'Oh, me ...'

     'That wasn't necessary!' said Susan.

     'You  telling  me my job?'  said the imp.  'I suppose  you  could do it better, could you?'

     'I wouldn't do it at all!'

     'Well, someone's got to do it,' said the imp.

     'He's part. Of the. Arrangement,' said the boy.

     'Yeah, see?' said the imp. 'Can you hold the hammer while I go and coat his tongue with yellow gunk?'

     'Get down right now!'

     Susan  made a grab for the creature. It leapt away, still clutching the hammer, and grabbed a pillar.

     'I'm part of the arrangement, I am!' it yelled.

     The boy clutched his head.

     'I  feel awful,' he said. 'Have  you got  any ice?'  Whereupon, because there are conventions stronger than mere physics, the building fell in.

     The collapse of the Castle  of  Bones was  stately and  impressive  and seemed to go on for a long time. Pillars fell in, the slabs of the roof slid down, the ice crackled and  splintered. The air  above the tumbling wreckage filled with a haze of snow and ice crystals.

     Susan watched from the trees. The boy, who she'd leaned against a handy trunk, opened his eyes.

     'That was amazing,' he managed.

     'Why, you mean the way it's all turning bark into snow?'

     'The way you just picked me up and ran.

     'Oh, that.'

     The  grinding  of the  ice continued. The  fallen  pillars didn't  stop moving when they collapsed, but went on tearing themselves apart.

     When the fog of ice settled there was nothing but drifted snow.

     'As though it was  never there,' said Susan, aloud. She  turned  to the groaning figure.

     'All right, what were you doing there?'

     'I don't know. I just opened my. Eyes and there I was.'

     'Who are you?'

     'I  ... think  my name  is Bilious.  I'm the  ...  I'm the  oh  God  of Hangovers.'

     'There's a God of Hangovers?'

     'An oh  god,'  he corrected. 'When  people witness me,  you  see,  they clutch their  head and say, "Oh God  ..."  How  many of you are  standing here?'

     'What? There's just me!'

     'Ah. Fine. Fine.'

     'I've never heard of a God of Hangovers . . .'

     'You've heard of Bibulous, the God of Wine?

     'Oh. yes.'

     'Big fat man, wears vine leaves round his head, always  pictured with a glass  in his hand ... Ow. Well, you know why he's so cheerful? Him  and his big face? It's because he knows he's going to feel good in the morning! 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  chill 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-coloured  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 Im 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 h-ling 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.