Hogfather

     'Household gods,' said  Ridcully. 'That's  what  they are,  Chair?'  He opened the drawer in his hat and took out his pipe.

     'Yes, Archchancellor. It says  here they  used  to  be  the  ...  local spirits,  I suppose.  They  saw to it  that  the bread rose  and  the butter churned properly.'

     'Did  they eat pencils?  What  was  their   attitude  in  the  socks department?'

     'This was  back in  the  time of the  First Empire,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Sandals and togas and so on.'

     'Ah. Not noticeably socked?'

     'Not  excessively so, no. And it  was nine  hundred  years before Osric Pencillium first discovered, in  the graphiterich sands of the remote island of Sumtri, the small bush which, by dint of careful cultivation, he induced to produce the long...'

     'Yes, we can all see you've got the encyclopaedia open under the table, Chair,' said Ridcully. 'But I daresay things have changed a  bit. Moved with the times. Bound to have been a few developments. Once they looked after the bread rising, now  we have things  that eat pencils and socks and  see to it that you can never find a dean towel when you want one...'

     There was a distant tinkling.

     He stopped.

     'I just said that, didn't P' he said.

     The wizards nodded glumly.

     'And this is the first time anyone's mentioned it?'

     The wizards nodded again.

     'Well, dammit, it's amazing, you can never find a dean towel when---'

     There was a rising  wheeee noise. A towel  went  by at shoulder height. There was a suggestion of many small wings.

     'That was  mine,' said the Lecturer in  Recent Runes reproachfully. The towel disappeared in the direction of the Great Hall.

     'Towel Wasps,' said the Dean. 'Well done, Archchancellor.'

     'Well,  I  mean,  dammit, it's human nature,  isn't it?'  said Ridcully hotly. 'Things  go wrong,  things get  lost, it's natural  to invent  little creatures that - all right, all right, I'll be careful. I'm just  saying man is naturally a mythopoeic creature.'

     'What's that mean?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Means  we make things up as we go along,' said the Dean, not looking up.

     'Um  ...  excuse  me,  gentlemen,' said Ponder Stibbons, who  had  been scribbling  thoughtfully  at  the end of  the table. 'Are we suggesting that things are coming back? Do we think that's a viable hypothesis?'

     The wizards looked at one another around the table.

     'Definitely viable.'

     `Viable, right enough.' - 'Yes, that's the stuff to give the troops.'

     'What is? Whats the stuff to give the troops?'

     'Well  ... tinned rations? Decent weapons, good  boots ... that sort of thing.'

     'What's that got to do with anything?'

     'Don't ask me. He was the one who started talking about giving stuff to the troops.'

     'Will you lot shut up? No one's giving anything to the troops!'

     'Oh, shouldn't they have something? It's Hogswatch, after all.'

     'Look it was just  a figure  of speech, all right? I just meant  I was. fully in agreement. It's just  colourful language.  Good  grief,  you surely can't think I'm actually suggesting giving stuff to the troops, at Hogswatch or any other time!'

     'You weren't?'

     'No!"

     'That's a bit mean, isn't it?'

     Ponder just let it happen. It's because their minds are so often involved with deep  and problematic matters, he told himself, that their mouths are allowed to wander around making a nuisance of themselves.

     'I don't hold  with using  that thinking machine,' said the Dean. 'I've said  this before. It's meddling with the Cult. The occult  has always  been good enough for me, thank you very much.'

     'On  the other  hand  it's the  only  person round here  who  can think straight and it does what it's told,' said Ridcully.

     The sleigh roared through the snow, leaving rolling trails in the sky.

     'Oh, what fun,' muttered Albert, hanging on tightly.

     The  runners hit a roof  near the University and the pigs trotted to  a halt.

     Death looked at the hourglass again.

     ODD, he said.

     'It's a scythe job, then?' said Albert. 'You won't be wanting the false beard  and the jolly  laugh?'  He  looked  around, and  puzzlement  replaced sarcasm. 'Hey ... how could anyone be dead up here?

     Someone was. A corpse lay in the snow.

     It was dear that  the man had only just died. Albert squinted up at the sky.

     'There's nowhere to fall from  and there's no footprints  in the snow,' he said, as Death swung his scythe. 'So where did he come from? Looks like someone's personal guard. Been stabbed to death. Nasty knife wound there, see?'

     'It's not good,' agreed the spirit of the man, looking down at himself.

     Then  he  stared  from  himself  to  Albert to  Death and  his  phantom expression went from shock to concern.

     'They got the teeth! All of them! They just walked in ... and ...  they ... no, wait...

     He faded and was gone.

     'Well, what was that all about?' said Albert.

I HAVE MY SUSPICIONS.

     'See that badge on his shirt? Looks like a drawing of a tooth.'

YES. IT DOES.

     'Where's that come from?'

A PLACE I CANNOT GO.

     Albert  looked down at the mysterious corpse and then back up at Deaths impassive skull.