“Granny Beedle will be around directly tomorrow to tidy up and you’re to go with her, understand? And see she lets Gammer Nutley have the pink marble washstand, she’s had her eye on it for years.”
The cat yawped knowingly.
“I haven’t, that is, I HAVEN’T GOT ALL NIGHT, YOU KNOW,” said Mort reproachfully.
“You have, I haven’t, and there’s no need to shout,” said the witch. She slid off her stall and then Mort saw how bent she was, like a bow. With some difficulty she unhooked a tall pointed hat from its nail on the wall, skewered it into place on her white hair with a battery of hatpins, and grasped two walking sticks.
She tottered across the floor towards Mort, and looked up at him with eyes as small and bright as blackcurrants.
“Will I need my shawl? Shall I need a shawl, d’you think? No, I suppose not. I imagine it’s quite warm where I’m going.” She peered closely at Mort, and frowned.
“You’re rather younger than I imagined,” she said. Mort said nothing. Then Goodie Hamstring said, quietly, “You know, I don’t think you’re who I was expecting at all.”
Mort cleared his throat.
“Who were you expecting, precisely?” he said.
“Death,” said the witch, simply. “It’s part of the arrangement, you see. One gets to know the time of one’s death in advance, and one is guaranteed—personal attention.”
“I’m it,” said Mort.
“It?”
“The personal attention. He sent me. I work for him. No-one else would have me.” Mort paused. This was all wrong. He’d be sent home again in disgrace. His first bit of responsibility, and he’d ruined it. He could already hear people laughing at him.
The wail started in the depths of his embarrassment and blared out like a foghorn. “Only this is my first real job and it’s all gone wrong!”
The scythe fell to the floor with a clatter, slicing a piece off the table leg and cutting a flagstone in half.
Goodie watched him for some time, with her head on one side. Then she said, “I see. What is your name, young man?”
“Mort,” sniffed Mort. “Short for Mortimer.”
“Well, Mort, I expect you’ve got an hourglass somewhere about your person,”
Mort nodded vaguely. He reached down to his belt and produced the glass. The witch inspected it critically.
“Still a minute or so,” she said. “We don’t have much time to lose. Just give me a moment to lock up.”
“But you don’t understand!” Mort wailed. “I’ll mess it all up! I’ve never done this before!”
She patted his hand. “Neither have I,” she said. “We can learn together. Now pick up the scythe and try to act your age, there’s a good boy.”
Against his protestations she shooed him out into the snow and followed behind him, pulling the door shut and locking it with a heavy iron key which she hung on a nail by the door.
The frost had tightened its grip on the forest, squeezing it until the roots creaked. The moon was setting, but the sky was full of hard white stars that made the winter seem colder still. Goodie Hamstring shivered.
“There’s an old log over there,” she said conversationally. “There’s quite a good view across the valley. In the summertime, of course. I should like to sit down.”
Mort helped her through the drifts and brushed as much snow as possible off the wood. They sat down with the hourglass between them. Whatever the view might have been in the summer, it now consisted of black rocks against a sky from which little flakes of snow were now tumbling.
“I can’t believe all this,” said Mort. “I mean you sound as if you want to die.”
“There’s some things I shall miss,” she said. “But it gets thin, you know. Life, I’m referring to. You can’t trust your own body any more, and it’s time to move on. I reckon it’s about time I tried something else. Did he tell you magical folk can see him all the time?”
“No,” said Mort, inaccurately.
“Well, we can.”
“He doesn’t like wizards and witches much,” Mort volunteered.
“Nobody likes a smartass,” she said with some satisfaction. “We give him trouble, you see. Priests don’t, so he likes priests.”
“He’s never said,” said Mort.
“Ah. They’re always telling folk how much better it’s going to be when they’re dead. We tell them it could be pretty good right here if only they’d put their minds to it.”
Mort hesitated. He wanted to say: you’re wrong, he’s not like that at all, he doesn’t care if people are good or bad so long as they’re punctual. And kind to cats, he added.
But he thought better of it. It occurred to him that people needed to believe things.
The wolf howled again, so near that Mort looked around apprehensively. Another one across the valley answered it. The chorus was picked up by a couple of others in the depths of the forest. Mort had never heard anything so mournful.
He glanced sideways at the still figure of Goodie Hamstring and then, with mounting panic, at the hourglass. He sprang to his feet, snatched up the scythe, and brought it around in a two-handed swing.
The witch stood up, leaving her body behind.
“Well done,” she said. “I thought you’d missed it, for a minute, there.”
Mort leaned against a tree, panting heavily, and watched Goodie walk around the log to look at herself.
“Hmm,” she said critically. “Time has got a lot to answer for.” She raised her hand and laughed to see the stars through it.
Then she changed. Mort had seen this happen before, when the soul realised it was no longer bound by the body’s morphic field, but never under such control. Her hair unwound itself from its tight bun, changing colour and lengthening. Her body straightened up. Wrinkles dwindled and vanished. Her grey woollen dress moved like the surface of the sea and ended up tracing entirely different and disturbing contours.
She looked down, giggled, and changed the dress into something leaf-green and clingy.
“What do you think, Mort?” she said. Her voice had sounded cracked and quavery before. Now it suggested musk and maple syrup and other things that set Mort’s adam’s apple bobbing like a rubber ball on an elastic band.
“…” he managed, and gripped the scythe until his knuckles went white.
She walked towards him like a snake in a four-wheel drift.
“I didn’t hear you,” she purred.
“V-v-very nice,” he said. “Is that who you were?”
“It’s who I’ve always been.”
“Oh.” Mort stared at his feet. “I’m supposed to take you away,” he said.
“I know,” she said, “but I’m going to stay.”
“You can’t do that! I mean—” he fumbled for words—“you see, if you stay you sort of spread out and get thinner, until—”
“I shall enjoy it,” she said firmly. She leaned forward and gave him a kiss as insubstantial as a mayfly’s sigh, fading as she did so until only the kiss was left, just like a Cheshire cat only much more erotic.{10}
“Have a care, Mort,” said her voice in his head. “You may want to hold on to your job, but will you ever be able to let go?”
Mort stood idiotically holding his cheek. The trees around the clearing trembled for a moment, there was the sound of laughter on the breeze, and then the freezing silence closed in again.
Duty called out to him through the pink mists in his head. He grabbed the second glass and stared at it. The sand was nearly all gone.
The glass itself was patterned with lotus petals. When Mort flicked it with his finger it went ‘Ommm’.
He ran across the crackling snow to Binky and hurled himself into the saddle. The horse threw up his head, reared, and launched itself towards the stars.