Thief of Time

Susan's lips moved as a memory collided with a thought.

“To ride out on?” she said. “Are you really talking about the Apocalypse? Are you serious? No one believes in that sort of thing any more!”

I DO.

Susan's jaw dropped. “You're really going to do that? Knowing everything you know?”

Death patted Binky on the muzzle.

YES, he said.

Susan gave her grandfather a sideways look.

“Hold on, there's a trick, isn't there…? You're planning something and you're not even going to tell me, right? You're not really going to just wait for the world to end and celebrate it, are you?”

WE WILL RIDE OUT.

“No!”

YOU WILL NOT TELL THE RIVERS NOT TO FLOW. YOU WILL NOT TELL THE SUN NOT TO SHINE. YOU WILL NOT TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT DO.

“But it's so—” Susan's expression changed, and Death flinched. “I thought you cared!”

TAKE THIS ALSO.

Without wanting to, Susan took a smaller lifetimer from her grandfather.

SHE MAY TALK TO YOU.

“And who is this?”

THE MIDWIFE, said Death. NOW… FIND THE SON.

He faded.

Susan looked down at the lifetimers in her hands. He's done it to you again! she screamed at herself. You don't have to do this and you can put this thing down and you can go back to the classroom and you can be normal again and you just know that you won't, and so does he—

SQUEAK?

The Death of Rats was sitting between Binky's ears, grasping a lock of the white mane and giving the general impression of someone anxious to be going. Susan raised a hand to slap him off, and then stopped herself. Instead, she pushed the heavy lifetimers into the rat's paws.

“Make yourself useful,” she said, grasping the reins. “Why do I do this?”

SQUEAK.

“I have not got a nice nature!”

Tick

There was not, surprisingly, a great deal of blood. The head rolled into the snow, and the body slowly toppled forward.

“Now you've killed—” Lobsang began.

“Just a second,” said Lu-Tze. “Any moment now…”

The headless body vanished. The kneeling yeti turned his head to Lu-Tze, blinked and said, “Thaat stung a biit.”

“Sorry.”

Lu-Tze turned to Lobsang. “Now, hold on to that memory!” he commanded. “It'll try to vanish, but you've had training. You've got to go on remembering that you saw something that now did not happen, understand? Remember that time's a lot less unbending than people think, if you get your head right! Just a little lesson! Seeing is believing!”

“How did it do that?”

“Good question. They can save their life up to a certain point and go back to it if they get killed,” said Lu-Tze. “How it's done… well, the abbot spent the best part of a decade working that one out. Not that anyone else can understand it. There's a lot of quantum involved.” He took a pull of his permanent foul cigarette. “Gotta be good working-out, if no one else can understand it.”14

“How is der abboott these daays?” said the yeti, getting to its feet again and picking up the pilgrims.

“Teething.”

“Ah. Reincarnation's alwaays a problem,” said the yeti, falling into its long, ground-eating lope.

“Teeth are the worst, he says. Always coming or going.”

“How fast are we going?” said Lobsang.

The yeti's stride was more like a continuous series of leaps from one foot to the other; there was so much spring in the long legs that each landing was a mere faint rocking sensation. It was almost restful.

“I reckon we're doing thirty miles an hour or so, clock time,” said Lu-Tze. “Get some rest. We'll be above Copperhead in the morning. It's all downhill from there.”

“Coming back from the dead…” Lobsang murmured.

“It's more like not actually ever going in the first place,” said Lu-Tze. “I've studied them a bit, but… well, unless it's built in you'd have to learn how to do it, and would you want to bet on getting it right first time? Tricky one. You'd have to be desperate. I hope I'm never that desperate.”

Tick

Susan recognized the country of Lancre from the air, a little bowl of woods and fields perched like a nest on the edge of the Ramtop mountains. And she found the cottage, too, which was not the corkscrew-chimneyed compost-heap kind of witch's house popularized by Grim Fairy Tales and other books, but a spanking new one with gleaming thatch and a manicured front lawn.

There were more ornaments—gnomes, toadstools, pink bunnies, big-eyed deer—around a tiny pond than any sensible gardener should have allowed. Susan spotted one brightly painted gnome fishi—No, that wasn't a rod he was holding, was it? Surely a nice old lady wouldn't put something like that in her garden, would she? Would she?

Susan was bright enough to go round to the back, because witches were allergic to front doors. The door was opened by a small, fat, rosy-cheeked woman whose little currant eyes said, yep, that's my gnome all right, and be thankful he's only widdling in the pond.

“Mrs Ogg? The midwife?”

There was a pause before Mrs Ogg said, “The very same.”