Reaper Man

BECAUSE THEN THERE WILL BE NOTHING. BECAUSE I WON’T EXIST.

‘Is that what happens for humans, too?’

I DON’T THINK SO. IT’S DIFFERENT FOR YOU. YOU HAVE IT ALL BETTER ORGANISED.

They both sat watching the fading glow of the coals in the forge.

‘So what were you working on the scythe blade for?’ said Miss Flitworth.

I THOUGHT PERHAPS I COULD … FIGHT BACK …

‘Has it ever worked? With you, I mean.’

NOT USUALLY. SOMETIMES PEOPLE CHALLENGE ME TO A GAME. FOR THEIR LIVES, YOU KNOW.

‘Do they ever win?’

NO. LAST YEAR SOMEONE GOT THREE STREETS AND ALL THE UTILITIES.^{27}

‘What? What sort of game is that?’

I DON’T RECALL. ‘EXCLUSIVE POSSESSION’, I THINK. I WAS THE BOOT.

‘Just a moment,’ said Miss Flitworth. If you’re you, who will be coming for you?’

DEATH. LAST NIGHT THIS WAS PUSHED UNDER THE DOOR.

Death opened his hand to reveal a small grubby piece of paper, on which Miss Flitworth could read, with some difficulty, the word: OOoooEEEee OOOoooEEeeeOOOooo-Eeeee.

I HAVE RECEIVED THE BADLY-WRITTEN NOTE OF THE BANSHEE.

Miss Flitworth looked at him with her head on one side.

‘But … correct me if I’m wrong, but …’

THE NEW DEATH.

Bill Door picked up the blade.

HE WILL BE TERRIBLE.

The blade twisted in his hands. Blue light flickered along its edge.

I WILL BE THE FIRST.

Miss Flitworth stared at the light as if fascinated.

‘Exactly how terrible?’

HOW TERRIBLE CAN YOU IMAGINE?

‘Oh.’

EXACTLY AS TERRIBLE AS THAT.

The blade tilted this way and that.

‘And for the child, too,’ said Miss Flitworth.

YES.

‘I don’t reckon I owe you any favours, Mr Door. I don’t reckon anyone in the whole world owes you any favours.’

YOU MAY BE RIGHT.

‘Mind you, life’s got one or two things to answer for too. Fair’s fair.’

I CANNOT SAY.

Miss Flitworth gave him another long, appraising look.

‘There’s a pretty good grindstone in the corner,’ she said.

I’VE USED IT.

‘And there’s an oilstone in the cupboard.’

I’VE USED THAT, TOO.

She thought she could hear a sound as the blade moved. A sort of faint whine of tensed air.

‘And it’s still not sharp enough?’

Bill Door sighed. IT MAY NEVER BE SHARP ENOUGH.

‘Come on, man. No sense in giving in,’ said Miss Flitworth. ‘Where there’s life, eh?’

WHERE THERE’S LIFE EH WHAT?

‘There’s hope?’

IS THERE?

‘Right enough.’

Bill Door ran a bony finger along the edge.

HOPE?

‘Got anything else left to try?’

Bill shook his head. He’d tried a number of emotions, but this was a new one.

COULD YOU FETCH ME A STEEL?

It was an hour later.

Miss Flitworth sorted through her rag-bag.

‘What next?’ she said.

WHAT HAVE WE HAD SO FAR?

‘Let’s see … hessian, calico, linen … how about satin? Here’s a piece.’

Bill Door took the rag and wiped it gently along the blade.

Miss Flitworth reached the bottom of the bag, and pulled out a swatch of white cloth.

YES?

‘Silk,’ she said softly. ‘Finest white silk. The real stuff. Never worn.’

She sat back and stared at it.

After a while he took it tactfully from her fingers.

THANK YOU.

‘Well now,’ she said, waking up. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’

When he turned the blade, it made a noise like whommmm. The fires of the forge were barely alive now, but the blade glowed with razor light.^{28}

‘Sharpened on silk,’ said Miss Flitworth. ‘Who’d believe it?’

AND STILL BLUNT.

Bill Door looked around the dark forge, and then darted into a corner.

‘What have you found?’

COBWEB.

There was a long thin whine, like the torturing of ants.

‘Any good?’

STILL TOO BLUNT.

She watched Bill Door stride out of the forge, and scuttled after him. He went and stood in the middle of the yard, holding the scythe blade edge-on to the faint, dawn breeze.

It hummed.

‘How sharp can a blade get, for goodness’ sake?’

IT CAN GET SHARPER THAN THIS.

Down in his henhouse, Cyril the cockerel awoke and stared blearily at the treacherous letters chalked on the board. He took a deep breath.

‘Floo-a-cockle-dod!’

Bill Door glanced at the rimward horizon and then, speculatively, at the little hill behind the house.

He jerked forward, legs clicking over the ground.

The new daylight sloshed on to the world. Discworld light is old, slow and heavy; it roared across the landscape like a cavalry charge. The occasional valley slowed it for a moment and, here and there, a mountain range banked it up until it poured over the top and down the far slope.

It moved across a sea, surged up the beach and accelerated over the plains, driven by the lash of the sun.

On the fabled hidden continent of Xxxx, somewhere near the rim, there is a lost colony of wizards who wear corks around their pointy hats and live on nothing but prawns.^{29} There, the light is still wild and fresh as it rolls in from space, and they surf on the boiling interface between night and day.

If one of them had been carried thousands of miles inland on the dawn, he might have seen, as the light thundered over the high plains, a stick figure toiling up a low hill in the path of the morning.

It reached the top a moment before the light arrived, took a breath, and then spun around in a crouch, grinning.

It held a long blade upright between extended arms.