Reaper Man

Wizards can see Death. And when a wizard dies, Death arrives in person to usher him into the Beyond. The Bursar wondered why this was considered a plus -

"Don't know what you're all looking at," said Windle, cheerfully.

The Bursar opened his watch.

The hatch under the 12 snapped up.

"Can you knock it off with all this shaking around?" squeaked the demon. "I keeps on losing count."

"Sorry, " the Bursar hissed. It was nine twenty-nine.

The Archchancellor stepped forward.

"Bye, then, Windle," he said, shaking the old man's parchment-like hand. "The old place won't seem the same without you."

"Don't know how we'll manage," said the Bursar, thankfully.

"Good luck in the next life," said the Dean. "Drop in if you're ever passing and happen to, you know, remember who you've been."

"Don't be a stranger, you hear?" said the Archchancellor.

Windle Poons nodded amiably. He hadn't heard what they were saying. He nodded on general principles.

The wizards, as one man, faced the door.

The hatch under the 12 snapped up again.

"Bing bing bong bing," said the demon. "Bingely-bingely bong bing bing."

"What?" said the Bursar, jolted.

"Half past nine, " said the demon.

The wizards turned to Windle Poons. They looked faintly accusing.

"What're you all looking at?" he said.

The seconds hand on the watch squeaked onwards.

"How are you feeling?" said the Dean loudly.

"Never felt better," said Windle. "Is there any more of that, mm, rum left?"

The assembled wizards watched him pour a generous measure into his beaker.

"You want to go easy on that stuff," said the Dean nervously.

"Good health!" said Windle Poons.

The Archchancellor drummed his fingers on the table.

"Mr. Poons, " he said, "are you quite sure?"

Windle had gone off at a tangent. "Any more of these toturerillas? Not that I call it proper food," he said, "dippin' bits of hard bikky in sludge, what's so special about that? What I could do with right now is one of Mr. Dibbler's famous meat pies -"

And then he died.

The Archchancellor glanced at his fellow wizards, and then tiptoed across to the wheelchair and lifted a blueveined wrist to check the pulse. He shook his head.

"That's the way I want to go, " said the Dean.

"What, muttering about meat pies?" said the Bursar.

"No. Late."

"Hold on. Hold on," said the Archchancellor. "This isn't right, you know. According to tradition, Death himself turns up for the death of a wiz - "

"Perhaps He was busy, " said the Bursar hurriedly.

"That's right," said the Dean. "Bit of a serious flu epidemic over Quirm way, I'm told."

"Quite a storm last night, too. Lots of shipwrecks, I daresay, " said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

"And of course it's springtime, when you get a great many avalanches in the mountains."

"And plagues."

The Archchancellor stroked his beard thoughtfully.

"Hmm, " he said.

Alone of all the creatures in the world, trolls believe that all living things go through Time backwards. If the past is visible and the future is hidden, they say, then it means you must be facing the wrong way. Everything alive is going through life back to front. And this is a very interesting idea, considering it was invented by a race who spend most of their time hitting one another on the head with rocks.

Whichever way around it is, Time is something that living creatures possess.

Death galloped down through towering black clouds.

And now he had Time, too.

The time of his life.

Windle Poons peered into the darkness.

"Hallo?" he said. "Hallo. Anyone there? What ho?"

There was a distant, forlorn soughing, as of wind at the end of a tunnel.

"Come out. come out, wherever you are," said Windle, his voice trembling with mad cheerfulness. "Don't worry. I'm quite looking forward to it, to tell the truth."

He clapped his spiritual hands and rubbed them together with forced enthusiasm.

"Get a move on. Some of us have got new lives to go to," he said.

The darkness remained inert. There was no shape, no sound. It was void, without form. The spirit of Windle Poons moved on the face of the darkness.

It shook its head. "Blow this for a lark," it muttered. "This isn't right at all."

It hung around for a while and then, because there didn't seem anything else for it, headed for the only home it had ever known.

It was a home he'd occupied for one hundred and thirty years. It wasn't expecting him back and put up a lot of resistance. You either had to be very determined or very powerful to overcome that sort of thing, but Windle Poons had been a wizard for more than a century. Besides, it was like breaking into your own house, the old familiar property that you'd lived in for years. You knew where the metaphorical window was that didn't shut properly.

In short, Windle Poons went back to Windle Poons.