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The rat shook its skull.

“And you’re real?”

SQUEAK. SQUEAKSQUEAKSQUEAK-

“Look, I don’t understand,” said Susan patiently. “I don’t speak rodent. We only do Klatchian in Modern Languages and I only know how to say “My aunt’s camel has fallen in the mirage". And if you are imaginary, you might try to be a bit more... lovable.”

A skeleton, even a small one, is not a naturally lovable object, even if it has got an open countenance and a grin. But the feeling... no, she realized... the memory was creeping over her from somewhere that this one was not only real but on her side. It was an unfamiliar concept. Her side had normally consisted of her.

The late rat regarded Susan for a moment and then, in one movement, gripped the tiny scythe between its teeth and sprang off Susan’s hand, landed on the classroom floor, and scuttled away between the desks.

“It’s not even as if you’ve got paws and whiskers,” said Susan. “Not proper ones, anyway.”

The skeletal rat stepped through the wall.

Susan turned back to her book and ferociously read Noxeuse’s Divisibility Paradox, which demonstrated the impossibility of falling off a log.

They practised that very night, in Glod’s obsessively neat lodgings. These were behind a tannery in Phedre Road, and were probably safe from the wandering ears of the Musicians’ Guild. They were also freshly painted and well scrubbed. The tiny room sparkled. You never got cockroaches or rats or any kind of vermin in a dwarf home. At least, not while the owner could still hold a frying-pan.

Glod and Imp sat and watched Lias the troll hit his rocks.

“What d'you fink?” he said, when he’d finished.

“Is that all you do?” said Imp, after a while.

“They’re rocks,” said the troll, patiently. “That’s all you can do. Bop, bop, bop.”

“Hmm. Can I have a go?” said Glod.

He sat behind the array of stones and looked at them for a while. Then he rearranged a few of them, took a couple of hammers out of his toolbox, and tapped a stone experimentally.

“Now, let’s see...” he said.

Bambam-bamBAM.

Beside Imp, the guitar strings hummed.

“Without A Shirt,” said Glod.

“What?” said Imp.

“It’s just a bit of musical nonsense,” said Glod. “Like “Shave and a haircut, two pence"?”

“Sorry?”

Bam-bam-a-bambam, bamBAM.

“Shave and haircut good value for two pence,” said Lias.

Imp looked hard at the stones. Percussion wasn’t approved of in Llamedos either. The bards said that anyone could hit a rock or a hollow log with a stick. That wasn’t music. Besides, it was... and here they’d drop their voices... too animal.

The guitar hummed. It seemed to pick up sounds.

Imp suddenly had a nagging feeling that there was a lot you could do with percussion.

“Can I try?” he said.

He picked up the hammers. There was the faintest of tones from the guitar.

Forty-five seconds later, he put down the hammers. The echoes died away.

“Why did you hit me on the helmet at the end there?” said Glod, carefully.

“Sorry,” said Imp. “I think I got carried away. I thought you were a cymball.”

“It was very... unusual,” said the troll.

“The music’s... in the stones,” said Imp. “You just have to llet it out. There’s music in everything, if you know how to find it.”

“Can I try dat riff?” said Lias. He took the hammers and shuffled around behind the stones again.

A-bam-bop-a-re-bop-a-bim-bam-boom.

“What did you do to them?” he said. “They sound... wild.”

“Sounded good to me,” said Glod. “Sounded a whole lot better.”

Imp slept that night wedged between Glod’s very small bed and the bulk of Lias. After a while, he snored.

Beside him, the strings hummed gently in harmony.

Lulled by their almost imperceptible sound, he’d completely forgotten about the harp.

Susan awoke. Something was tugging at her ear.

She opened her eyes.

SQUEAK?

“Oh, nooo—”

She sat up in bed. The rest of the girls were asleep. The window was open, because the school encouraged fresh air. It was available in large amounts for free.

The skeletal rat leapt on to the window-ledge and then, when it had made sure she was watching, jumped into the night.

As Susan saw it, the world offered two choices. She could go back to bed, or she could follow the rat.

Which would be a stupid thing to do. Soppy people in books did that sort of thing. They ended up in some idiot world with goblins and feeble-minded talking animals. And they were such sad, wet girls. They always let things happen to them, without making any effort. They just went around saying things like “My goodness me”, when it was obvious that any sensible human being could soon get the place properly organized.

Actually, when you thought of it like that, it was tempting... The world held too much fluffy thinking. She always told herself that it was the job of people like Susan, if there were any more like her, to sort it out.

She pulled on her dressing-gown and climbed over the sill, holding on until the last moment and dropping into a flower-bed.

The rat was a tiny shape scurrying across the moonlit lawn. She followed it around to the stables, where it vanished somewhere in the shadows.

As she stood feeling slightly chilly and more than slightly an idiot, it returned dragging an object rather bigger than itself. It looked like a bundle of old rags.

The skeletal rat walked around the side of it and gave the ragged bundle a good hard kick.

“All right, all right!”

The bundle opened one eye, which swivelled around wildly until it focused on Susan.

“I warn you,” said the bundle, “I don’t do the N word.”

“I’m sorry?” said Susan.

The bundle rolled over, staggered upright and extended two scruffy wings. The rat stopped kicking it.

“I’m a raven, aren’t I?” it said. “One of the few birds who speak. The first thing people say is, oh, you’re a raven, go on, say the N word... If I had a penny every time that’s happened, I’d

SQUEAK.

“All right, all right. ” The raven ruffled its feathers. “This thing here is the Death of Rats. Note the scythe and cowl, yes? Death of Rats. Very big in the rat world.”

The Death of Rats bowed.

“Tends to spend a lot of time under barns and anywhere people have put down a plate of bran laced with strychnine,” said the raven. “Very conscientious.”

SQUEAK.

“All right. What does it—he want with me?” said Susan. “I’m not a rat.”

“Very perspicacious of you,” said the raven. “Look, I didn’t ask to do this, you know. I was asleep on my skull, next minute he had a grip on my leg. Being a raven, as I said, I’m naturally an occult bird—”

“Sorry,” said Susan. “I know this is all one of those dreams, so I want to make sure I understand it. You said... you were asleep on your skull?”

“Oh, not my personal skull,” said the raven. “It’s someone else’s.”

“Whose?”

The raven’s eyes spun wildly. It never managed to have both eyes pointing in the same direction. Susan had to resist trying to move around to follow them.

“How do I know? They don’t come with a label on them,” it said. “It’s just a skull. Look... I work for this wizard, right? Down in the town. I sit on this skull all day and go “caw” at people—”

“Why?”

“ Because a raven sitting on a skull and going “caw” is as much part of your actual wizarding modus operandi as the big dribbling candles and the old stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling. Don’t you know anything? I should have thought anyone knows that who knows anything about anything. Why, a proper wizard might as well not even have bubbling green stuff in bottles as be without his raven sitting on a skull and going “caw"—”

SQUEAK.

“Look, you have to lead up to things with humans,” said the raven wearily. One eye focused on Susan again. “He’s not one for subtleties, him. Rats don’t argue questions of a philosophical nature when they’re dead. Anyway, I’m the only person round here he knows who can talk—”

“Humans can talk,” said Susan.

`Oh, indeed,” said the raven, “but the key point about humans, a crucial distinction you might say, is that they’re not prone to being woken up in the middle of the night by a skeletal rat who needs an interpreter in a hurry. Anyway, humans can’t see him.”

`I can see him.”

“Ah. I think you’ve put your digit on the nub, crux and gist of it all,” said the raven. “The marrow, as you might say.”

“Look,” said Susan, “I’d just like you to know that I don’t believe any of this. I don’t believe there’s a Death of Rats in a cowl carrying a scythe.”

“He’s standing in front of you.”

“That’s no reason to believe it.”

“I can see you’ve certainly had a proper education,” said the raven sourly.

Susan stared down at the Death of Rats. There was a blue glow deep in its eye sockets.

SQUEAK.

“The thing is,” said the raven, “that he’s gone again.”

“Your... grandfather.”

“Grandad Lezek? How can he be gone again? He’s dead!”

“Your... er... other grandfather...?” said the raven.

“I haven’t got—”

Images rose from the mud at the bottom of her mind. Something about a horse... and there was a room full of whispers. And a bathtub, that seemed to fit in somewhere. And fields of wheat came into it, too.

“This is what happens when people try to educate their children,” said the raven, “instead of telling them things.”

“I thought my other grandad was also... dead,” said Susan.

SQUEAK.

“ The rat says you’ve got to come with him. It’s very important.”

The image of Miss Butts rose like a Valkyrie in Susan’s mind. This was silliness.

“Oh, no,” said Susan. “It must be midnight already. And we’ve got a geography exam tomorrow.”

The raven opened its beak in astonishment.

“You can’t be saying that,” it said.

“You really expect me to take instructions from a... a bony rat and a talking raven? I’m going back!”

“No, you’re not,” said the raven. “No-one with any blood in them’d go back now. You’d never find things out if you went back now. You’d just get educated.”

“But I haven’t got time,” Susan wailed.

“Oh, time,” said the raven. “Time’s mainly habit. Time is not a particular feature of things for you.”

“How—”

“You’ll have to find out, won’t you?”

SQUEAK.

The raven jumped up and down excitedly.

“Can I tell her? Can I tell her?” it squawked. It swivelled its eyes towards Susan.

“Your grandfather,” it said, “is... (dah dah dah DAH)... Dea—”

SQUEAK!

“She’s got to know some time,” said the raven.

“Deaf? My grandfather is deaf?” said Susan. “You’ve got me out here in the middle of the night to talk about hearing difficulties?”

“I didn’t say deaf, I said your grandfather is... (dah dah dah DAH)... D—”

SQUEAK!

“All right! Have it your way!”

Susan backed away while the two of them argued.

Then she grasped the skirts of her nightdress and ran, out of the yard and across the damp lawns. The window was still open. She managed, by standing on the sill of the one below, to grab the ledge and heave herself up and into the dormitory. She got into bed and pulled the blankets over her head...

After a while she realized that this was an unintelligent reaction. But she left them where they were, anyway.

She dreamed of horses and coaches and a clock without hands.

“D'you think we could have handled that better?”

SQUEAK? “Dah dah dah DAH ' SQUEAK?

“How did you expect me to put it. “Your grandfather is Death?” Just like that? Where’s the sense of occasion? Humans like drama.”

SQUEAK, the Death of Rats pointed out.

“Rats is different.”

SQUEAK.

“I reckon I ought to call it a night,” said the raven. “Ravens are not generally nocturnal, you know.” It scratched at its bill with a foot. “Do you just do rats, or mice and hamsters and weasels and stuff like that as well?”

SQUEAK.

“Gerbils? How about gerbils?”

SQUEAK.

“Fancy that. I never knew that. Death of Gerbils, too? Amazing how you can catch up with them on those treadmills—”

SQUEAK.

“Please yourself.”

There are the people of the day, and the creature’s of the night.

And it’s important to remember that the creatures of the night aren’t simply the people of the day staying up late because they think that makes them cool and interesting. It takes a lot more than heavy mascara and a pale complexion to cross the divide.

Heredity can help, of course.

The raven had grown up in the forever-crumbling, ivy-clad Tower of Art, overlooking Unseen University in far Ankh-Morpork. Ravens are naturally intelligent birds, and magical leakage, which has a tendency to exaggerate things, had done the rest.

It didn’t have a name. Animals don’t normally bother with them.

The wizard who thought he owned him called him Quoth, but that was only because he didn’t have a sense of humour and, like most people without a sense of humour, prided himself on the sense of humour he hadn’t, in fact, got.

The raven flew back to the wizard’s house, skimmed in through the open window, and took up his roost on the skull.

“Poor kid,” he said.

“That’s destiny for you,” said the skull.

“I don’t blame her for trying to be normal. Considering.”

“Yes,” said the skull. “Quit while you’re a head, that’s what I say.”

The owner of a grain silo in Ankh-Morpork was having a bit of a crackdown. The Death of Rats could hear the distant yapping of the terriers. It was going to be a busy night.

It would be too hard to describe the Death of Rats’ thought-processes, or even be certain that he had any. He had a feeling that he shouldn’t have involved the raven, but humans set a great store by words.

Rats don’t think very far ahead, except in general terms. In general terms, he was very, very worried. He hadn’t expected education.

Susan got through the next morning without having to go nonexistent. Geography consisted of the flora of the Sto Plains,[3] chief exports of the Sto Plains[4] and the fauna of the Sto Plains.[5] Once you mastered the common denominator, it was straightforward. The gels had to colour in a map. This involved a lot of green. Lunch was Dead Man’s Fingers and Eyeball Pudding, a healthy ballast for the afternoon’s occupation, which was Sport.

This was the province of Iron Lily, who was rumoured to shave and lift weights with her teeth, and whose shouts of encouragement as she thundered up and down the touchline tended towards the nature of “Get some ball, you bunch of soft nellies!”

Miss Butts and Miss Delcross kept their windows closed on games afternoon. Miss Butts ferociously read logic and Miss Delcross, in her idea of a toga, practised eurhythmics in the gym.

Susan surprised people by being good at sport. Some sport, anyway. Hockey, lacrosse and rounders, certainly. Any game that involved putting a stick of some sort in her hands and asking her to swing it, definitely. The sight of Susan advancing towards goal with a calculating look made any goalie lose all faith in her protective padding and throw herself flat as the ball flashed past at waist height, making a humming noise.

It was only evidence of the general stupidity of the rest of humanity, Susan considered, that although she was manifestly one of the best players in the school she never got picked for teams. Even fat girls with spots got picked before her. It was so infuriatingly unreasonable, and she could never understand why.

She’d explained to other girls how good she was, and demonstrated her skill, and pointed out just how stupid they were in not picking her. For some exasperating reason it didn’t seem to have any effect.

This afternoon she went for an official walk instead. This was an acceptable alternative, provided girls went in company. Usually they went into town and bought stale fish and chips from an unfragrant shop in Three Roses Alley; fried food was considered unhealthy by Miss Butts, and therefore bought out of school at every opportunity.

Girls had to walk in groups of three or more. Peril, in Miss Butts’s conjectural experience, couldn’t happen to units of more than two.

In any case it was certainly unlikely to happen to any group that contained Princess Jade and Gloria Thogsdaughter.

The school’s owners had been a bit bothered about taking a troll, but Jade’s father was king of an entire mountain and it always looked good to have royalty on the roll. And besides, Miss Butts had remarked to Miss Delcross, it’s our duty to encourage them if they show any inclination to become real people and the King is actually quite charming and assures me he can’t even remember when he last ate anyone. Jade had bad eyesight, a note excusing her from unnecessary sunshine, and knitting chain mail in handicraft class.

Whereas Gloria was banned from sport because of her tendency to use her axe in a threatening manner. Miss Butts had suggested that an axe wasn’t a ladylike weapon, even for a dwarf, but Gloria had pointed out that, on the contrary, it had been left to her by her grandmother who had owned it all her life and polished it every Saturday, even if she hadn’t used it at all that week. There was something about the way she gripped it that made even Miss Butts give in. To show willing, Gloria left off her iron helmet and, while not shaving off her beard—there was no actual rule about girls not having beards a foot long—at least plaited it. And tied it in ribbons in the school colours.

Susan felt strangely at home in their company, and this had earned guarded praise from Miss Butts. It was nice of her to be such a chum, she said. Susan had been surprised. It had never occurred to her that anyone actually said a word like chum.

The three of them trailed back along the beech drive by the playing field.

“I don’t understand sport,” said Gloria, watching the gaggle of panting young women stampeding across the pitch.

“There’s a troll game,” said Jade. “It’s called aargrooha. ”

“How’s it played?” said Susan.

“Er... you rip off a human’s head and kick it around with special boots made of obsidian until you score a goal or it bursts. But it’s not played any more, of course,” she added quickly.

“I should think not,” said Susan.

“No-one knows how to make the boots, I expect,” said Gloria.

“I expect if it was played now, someone like Iron Lily would go running up and down the touchline shouting, “Get some head, you soft nellies",” said Jade.

They walked in silence for a while.

“I think,” said Gloria, cautiously, “that she probably wouldn’t, actually.”

“I say, you two haven’t noticed anything... odd lately, have you?” said Susan.

“Odd like what?” said Gloria.

“Well, like... rats...” said Susan.

“Haven’t seen any rats in the school,” said Gloria. “And I’ve had a good look.”

“I mean... strange rats,” said Susan.

They were level with the stables. These were normally the home of the two horses that pulled the school coach, and the term-time residence of a few horses belonging to gels who couldn’t be parted from them.

There is a type of girl who, while incapable of cleaning her bedroom even at knifepoint, will fight for the privilege of being allowed to spend the day shovelling manure in a stable. It was a magic that hadn’t rubbed off on Susan. She had nothing against horses, but couldn’t understand all the snaffles, bridles and fetlocks business. And she couldn’t see why they had to be measured in “hands’ when there were perfectly sensible inches around to do the job. Having watched the jodhpured girls who bustled around the stables, she decided it was because they couldn’t understand complicated machines like rulers. She’d said so, too.

“All right,” said Susan. “How about ravens?”

Something blew in her ear.

She spun around.

The white horse stood in the middle of the yard like a bad special effect. He was too bright. He glowed. He seemed like the only real thing in a world of pale shapes. Compared to the bulbous ponies that normally occupied the loose-boxes, he was a giant.

A couple of the jodhpured girls were fussing around him. Susan recognized Cassandra Fox and Lady Sara Grateful, almost identical in their love of anything on four legs that went “neigh' and their disdain for anything else, their ability to apparently look at the world with their teeth, and their expertise in putting at least four vowels in the word “oh”.

The white horse neighed gently at Susan, and began to nuzzle her hand.

You’re Binky, she thought. I know you. I’ve ridden on you. You’re... mine. I think.

“I say,” said Lady Sara, “who does he belong to?”

Susan looked around.

“What? Me?” she said. “Yes. Me... I suppose.”

“Oeuwa? He was in the loose-box next to Browny. I didn’t knoeuwa you had a horse here. You have to get permission from Miss Butts, you knoeuwa.”

“He’s a present,” said Susan. “From... someone...?”

The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind. She wondered why she’d said that. She hadn’t thought of her grandfather for years. Until last night.

I remember the stable, she thought. So big you couldn’t see the walls. And I was given a ride on you once. Someone held me so I wouldn’t fall off. But you couldn’t fall off this horse. Not if he didn’t want you to.

“Oeuwa. I didn’t know you rode.”

“I... used to.”

“There’s extra fees, you knoeuwa. For keeping a horse,” said Lady Sara.

Susan said nothing. She strongly suspected they’d be paid.

“And you’ve got noeuwa tack,” said Lady Sara.

And Susan rose to it.

“I don’t need any,” she said.

“Oeuwa, bareback riding,” said Lady Sara. “And you steer by the ears, ya?”

Cassandra Fox said: “Probably can’t afford them, out in the sticks. And stop that dwarf looking at my pony. She’s looking at my pony!”

“I’m only looking,” said Gloria.

“You were... salivating,” said Cassandra.

There was a pattering across the cobbles and Susan swung herself up and on to the horse’s back.

She looked down at the astonished girls, and then at the paddock beyond the stables. There were a few jumps there, just poles balanced on barrels.

Without her moving a muscle, the horse turned and trotted into the paddock and turned towards the highest jump. There was a sensation of bunched energy, a moment of acceleration, and the jump passed underneath...

Binky turned and halted, prancing from one hoof to the other.

The girls were watching. All four of them had an expression of total amazement.

“Should it do that?” said jade.

“What’s the matter?” said Susan. “Have none of you seen a horse jump before?”

“Yes. The interesting point is...” Gloria began, in that slow, deliberate tone of voice people use when they don’t want the universe to shatter, “... is that, usually; they come down again.”

Susan looked.

The horse was standing on the air.

What sort of command was necessary to make a horse resume contact with the ground? It was an instruction that the equestrian sorority had not hitherto required.

As if understanding her thoughts, the horse trotted forward and down. For a moment the hoofs dipped below the field, as if the surface were no more substantial than mist. Then Binky appeared to determine where the ground level should be, and decided to stand on it.

Lady Sara was the first one to find her voice.

“We’ll tell Miss Butts of youewa,” she managed.

Susan was almost bewildered with unfamiliar fright, but the pettymindedness in the tones slapped her back to something approaching sanity.

“Oh yes?” she said. “And what will you tell her?”

“You made the horse jump up and...” The girl stopped, aware of what she was about to say.

“Quite so,” said Susan. “I expect that seeing horses float in the air is silly, don’t you?”

She slipped off the horse’s back, and gave the watchers a bright smile.

“It’s against school rules, anyway,” muttered Lady Sara.

Susan led the white horse back into the stables, rubbed him down, and put him in a spare loose-box.

There was a rustling in the hay-rack for a moment. Susan thought she caught a glimpse of ivory-white bone.

“Those wretched rats,” said Cassandra, struggling back to reality. “I heard Miss Butts tell the gardener to put poison down.”

“Shame,” said Gloria.

Lady Sara seemed to have something boiling in her mind.

“Look, that horse didn’t really stand in mid-air, did it?” she demanded. “Horses can’t do that!”

“Then it couldn’t have done it,” said Susan.

“Hang time,” said Gloria. “That’s all it was. Hang time. Like in basketball.[6] Bound to be something like that.”

“Yes.”

“That’s all it was.”

“Yes.”

The human mind has a remarkable ability to heal. So have the trollish and dwarfish minds. Susan looked at them in frank amazement. They’d all seen a horse stand on the air. And now they had carefully pushed it somewhere in their memories and broken off the key in the lock.

“Just out of interest,” she said, still eyeing the hayrack, “I don’t suppose any of you know where there’s a wizard in this town, do you?”

“I’ve found us somewhere to play!” said Glod.

“Where?” said Lias.

Glod told them.

“ The Mended Drum? “ said Lias. “They throw axes!”

“We’d be safe there. The Guild won’t play in there,” said Glod.

“Well, yah, dey lose members in there. Their members lose members,” said Lias.

“We’ll get five dollars,” said Glod.

The troll hesitated.

“I could use five dollars,” he conceded.

“One-third of five dollars,” said Glod.

Lias’s brow creased.

“Is that more or less than five dollars?” he said.

“Look, it’ll get us exposure,” said Glod.

“I don’t want exposure in de Drum,” said Lias. “Exposure’s the last thing I want in de Drum. In de Drum, I want something to hide behind.”

“All we have to do is play something,” said Glod. “Anything. The new landlord is dead keen on pub entertainment.”

“I thought they had a one-arm bandit.”

“Yes, but he got arrested.”

There’s a floral clock in Quirm. It’s quite a tourist attraction.

It turns out to be not what they expect.

Unimaginative municipal authorities throughout the multiverse had made floral clocks, which turn out to be a large clock mechanism buried in a civic flowerbed with the face and numbers picked out in bedding plants.[7]

But the Quirm clock is simply a round flower-bed, filled with twenty-four different types of flower, carefully chosen for the regularity of the opening and closing of their petals...

As Susan ran past, the Purple Bindweed was opening and Love-in-a-Spin was closing. This meant that it was about half past ten.

The streets were deserted. Quirm wasn’t a night town. People who came to Quirm looking for a good time went somewhere else. Quirm was so respectable that even dogs asked permission before going to the lavatory.

At least, the streets were almost deserted. Susan fancied she could hear something following her, fast and pattering, moving and dodging across the cobbles so quickly that it was never more than a suspicion of a shape.

Susan slowed down as she reached Three Roses Alley.

Somewhere in Three Roses near the fish shop, Gloria had said. The gels were not encouraged to know about wizards. They did not figure in Miss Butts’s universe.

The alley looked alien in the darkness. A torch burned in a bracket at one end. It merely made the shadows darker.

And, halfway along in the gloom, there was a ladder leaning against the wall and a young woman just preparing to climb it. There was something familiar about her.

She looked around as Susan approached, and seemed quite pleased to see her.

“Hi,” she said. “Got change of a dollar, miss?”

“Pardon?”

“Couple of half-dollars’d do. Half a dollar is the rate. Or I’ll take copper. Anything, really.”

“Um. Sorry. No. I only get fifty pence a week allowance anyway.”

“Blast. Oh, well, nothing for it.”

In so far as Susan could see, the girl did not appear to be the usual sort of young woman who made her living in alleys. She had a kind of well-scrubbed beefiness about her; she looked like a nurse of the sort who assist doctors whose patients occasionally get a bit confused and declare they’re a bedspread.

She looked familiar, too.