Reaper Man

Picture a figure on horseback, moving slowly along a road that’s an inch deep in dust between fields of corn that already promise an unusually rich harvest.

Picture a fence of baked, dead wood. There’s a notice pinned to it. The sun has faded the letters, but they are still readable.

Picture a shadow, falling across the notice. You can almost hear it reading both the words.

There’s a track leading off the road, towards a small group of bleached buildings.

Picture dragging footsteps.

Picture a door, open.

Picture a cool, dark room, glimpsed through the open doorway. This isn’t a room that people live in a lot. It’s a room for people who live outdoors but have to come inside sometimes, when it gets dark. It’s a room for harnesses and dogs, a room where oilskins are hung up to dry. There’s a beer barrel by the door. There are flagstones on the floor and, along the ceiling beams, hooks for bacon. There’s a scrubbed table that thirty hungry men could sit down at.

There are no men. There are no dogs. There is no beer. There is no bacon.

There was silence after the knocking, and then the flap-flap of slippers on flagstones. Eventually a skinny old woman with a face the colour and texture of a walnut peered around the door.

‘Yes?’ she said.

THE NOTICE SAID ‘MAN WANTED’.

‘Did it? Did it? That’s been up there since before last winter!’

I AM SORRY? YOU NEED NO HELP?

The wrinkled face looked at him thoughtfully.

‘I can’t pay more’n sixpence a week, mind,’ it said.

The tall figure looming against the sunlight appeared to consider this.

YES, it said, eventually.

‘I wouldn’t even know where to start you workin’, either. We haven’t had any proper help here for three years. I just hire the lazy goodfornothin’s from the village when I want ’em.’

YES?

‘You don’t mind, then?’

I HAVE A HORSE.

The old woman peered around the stranger. In the yard was the most impressive horse she’d ever seen. Her eyes narrowed.

‘And that’s your horse, is it?’

YES.

‘With all that silver on the harness and everything?’

YES.

‘And you want to work for sixpence a week?’

YES.

The old woman pursed her lips. She looked from the stranger to the horse to the dilapidation around the farm. She appeared to reach a decision, possibly on the lines that someone who owned no horses probably didn’t have much to fear from a horse thief.

‘You’re to sleep in the barn, understand?’ she said.

SLEEP? YES. OF COURSE. YES, I WILL HAVE TO SLEEP.

‘Couldn’t have you in the house anyway. It wouldn’t be right.’

THE BARN WILL BE QUITE ADEQUATE, I ASSURE YOU.

‘But you can come into the house for your meals.’

THANK YOU.

‘My name’s Miss Flitworth.’

YES.

She waited.

‘I expect you have a name, too,’ she prompted.

YES.

THAT’S RIGHT.

She waited again.

‘Well?’

I’M SORRY?

‘What is your name?’

The stranger stared at her for a moment, and then looked around wildly.

‘Come on,’ said Miss Flitworth. ‘I ain’t employing no-one without no name. Mr …?’

The figure stared upwards.

MR SKY?

‘No-one’s called Mr Sky.’

MR … DOOR?

She nodded.

‘Could be. Could be Mr Door. There was a chap called Doors I knew once. Yeah. Mr Door. And your first name? Don’t tell me you haven’t got one of those, too. You’ve got to be a Bill or a Tom or a Bruce or one of those names.’

YES.

‘WHAT?’

ONE OF THOSE.

‘Which one?’

ER. THE FIRST ONE?

‘You’re a Bill?’

YES?

Miss Flitworth rolled her eyes.

‘All right, Bill Sky …’ she said.

DOOR.

‘Yeah. Sorry. All right, Bill Door …’

CALL ME BILL.

‘And you can call me Miss Flitworth. I expect you want some dinner?’

I WOULD? AH. YES. THE MEAL OF THE EVENING. YES.

‘You look half starved, to tell the truth. More than half, really.’ She squinted at the figure. Somehow it was very hard to be certain what Bill Door looked like, or even remember the exact sound of his voice. Clearly he was there, and clearly he had spoken — otherwise why did you remember anything at all?

‘There’s a lot of people in these parts as don’t use the name they were born with,’ she said. ‘I always say there’s nothing to be gained by going around asking pers’nal questions. I suppose you can work, Mr Bill Door? I’m still getting the hay in off the high meadows and there’ll be a lot of work come harvest. Can you use a scythe?’

Bill Door seemed to meditate on the question for some time. Then he said, I THINK THE ANSWER TO THAT IS A DEFINITE ‘YES’, MISS FLITWORTH.

Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler also never saw the sense in asking personal questions, at least insofar as they applied to him and were on the lines of ‘Are these things yours to sell?’ But no-one appeared to be coming forward to berate him for selling off their property, and that was good enough for him. He’d sold more than a thousand of the little globes this morning, and he’d had to employ a troll to keep up a flow from the mysterious source of supply in the cellar.

People loved them.

The principle of operation was laughably simple and easily graspable by the average Ankh-Morpork citizen after a few false starts.