And so at last they came back to the Stationery Department.
Just in time.
Granny Monkie looked up as they were ushered into the Abbot's bedroom. She was sitting by the bed with her hands on her knees.
'Don't make any loud noises,' she ordered. 'He's very ill. He says he's dyin'. I suppose he should know.' 'Dying of what?' said Masklin.
'Dyin' of bein' alive for such a long time,' said Granny.
The Abbot lay, wrinkled and even smaller than Masklin remembered him, among his pillows. He was clutching the Thing in two thin, claw-like hands.
He looked at Masklin and, with a great effort, beckoned him to come closer.
'You'll have to lean oven,' Granny ordered. 'He can't talk above a croak, poor old soul.' The Abbot gently grabbed Masklin's ear and pulled it down to his mouth.
'A sterling woman,' he whispered. 'Many fine qualities, I am sure. But please send her away before she gives me any more medicine.' Masklin nodded, Granny's remedies, made from simple, honest and generally nearly poisonous herbs and roots, were amazing things. After one dose of stomach-ache jollop, you made sure you never complained of stomach ache ever again. In its way, it was a sort of cure.
'I can't send,' he said, 'but I can ask.' She went out, shouting instructions, to mix up another batch.
Gurder knelt down by the bed.
'You're not going to die, are you, sir?' he said.
'Of course I am. Everyone is. That's what being alive is all about,' whispered the Abbot. 'Did you see Arnold Bros (est. 1905)?' Well. Er.' Gurder hesitated. 'We found some Writing, sir. It's true, it says the Store will be demolished. That means the end of everything, sir, whatever shall we do?' 'You will have to leave,' said the Abbot.
Gurder looked horrified.
'But you've always said that everything outside the Stone could only be a dream!' 'And you never believed me, boy. And maybe I was wrong. That young man with the spear, is he still here? I can't see very well.' Masklin stepped forward.
'Oh, there you are,' said the old nome. 'This box of yours.' 'Yes?' said Masklin.
'Told me things. Showed me pictures. Store's a lot bigger than I thought, there's this room they keep the stars in, not just the glittery ones they hang from the ceiling at Christmas Fayre, but hundreds of the damn things. It's called the universe. We used to live in it, it nearly all belonged to us, it was our home. We didn't live under anyone's floor. I think Arnold Bros (est. 1905) is telling us to go back there.' He reached out and his cold white finger gripped Masklin's arm with surprising strength.
'I don't say you're blessed with brains,' he said. 'In fact I reckon you're the stupid but dutiful kind who gets to be leader when there's no glory in it. You're the kind who sees things through. Take them home. Take them all home.' He slumped back on to the pillows, and shut his eyes.
'But-leave the Store, sir?' said Gurder. 'There's thousands of us, old people and babies and everyone, where can we go? There's foxes out there, Masklin says, and wind and hunger and water that drops out of the sky in bits! Sir? Sir?' Grimma leaned over and felt the old nome's wrist.
'Can he hear me?' said Gurder.
'Maybe,' said Grimma. 'Perhaps. But he won't be able to answer you, because he's dead.' 'But he can't die! He's always been here!' said Gurder, aghast. 'You've got it wrong. Sir? Sir!' Masklin took the Thing out of the Abbot's unresisting hands as other Stationeri, hearing Gurder's voice, hurried in.
'Thing?' he said quietly, walking away from the crowd around the bed, 'I hear you.' 'Is he dead?' 'I detect no life functions.' What does that mean?' 'It means "yes".' 'Oh.' Masklin considered this. 'I thought you had to be eaten or squashed first. I didn't think you just sort of stopped.' The Thing didn't volunteer any information.
'Any idea what I should do now?' said Masklin. 'Gurder was right. They are not going to leave all this warmth and food. I mean, some of the youngsters might, for a lark. But if we're going to survive outside we'll need lots of people. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. And what am I supposed to say to them: Sorry, you've all got to leave it all behind?' The Thing spoke.
'No,' it said.
Masklin had never seen a funeral before. Come to that, he'd never seen a nome die from being alive too long. Oh, people had been eaten, or had never come back, but no one had simply come to an end.
Where do you bury your dead?' Gurder had asked. 'Inside badgers and foxes, often,' he'd replied, and hadn't been able to resist adding, 'You know. The handsome and agile hunters?' This was how the nomes said farewell to their dead: The body of the old Abbot was ceremoniously dressed in a green coat and a pointy red hat. His long white beard was carefully combed out and then he lay, peacefully, on his bed as Gurder read the service.
'Now that it has pleased you, Arnold Bros (est. 1905), to take our brother to your great Gardening Department beyond Consumer Accounts, where there is Ideal Lawn Edging and an Amazing Floral Display and the pool of eternal life in Easy-to-Lay Polythene with Real Crazy-Paving Edging, we will give him the gifts a nome must take on his journey.' The Count de Ironmongri stepped forward. 'I give him,' he said, laying an object beside the nome, 'the Spade Of Honest Toil.' 'And I,' said the Duke de Haberdasheri, 'lay beside him the Fishing Rod of Hope.' Other leading nomes brought other things: the Wheelbarrow of Leadership, the Shopping Basket of Life. Dying in the Store was quite complicated, Masklin gathered.
Grimma blew her nose as Gurder completed the service and the body was ceremoniously carried away.
To the sub-basement, they later learned, and the incinerator. Down in the realms of Prices Slashed, the Security, where he sat at night-times, legend said, and drank his horrible tea.
'That's a bit dreadful, I reckon,' said Granny Morkie, as they stood around aimlessly afterwards. 'In my young day, if a person died, we buried 'em. In the ground.' 'Ground?' said Gurder.
'Sort of floor,' explained Granny.
'Then what happened?' said Gurder.
Granny looked blank. 'What?' she said.
'Where did they go after that?' said the Stationeri patiently.
'Go? I don't reckon they went anywhere. Dead people don't get about much.' 'In the Store,' said Gurder slowly, as if he was explaining things to a rather backward child, 'when a nome dies, if he has been a good nome, Arnold Bros (eat. 1905) sends them back to see us before they go to a Better Place.' 'How can-' Granny began.
'The inner bit of them, I mean,' said Gurder. 'The bit inside you that's really you.' They looked at him politely, waiting for him to make any sort of sense.
Gurder sighed. 'All right,' he said, 'I'll get someone to show you.' They were taken to the Gardening Department. It was a strange place, Masklin thought. It was like the world outside but with all the difficult bits taken away. The only light was the faint glow of indoor suns, which stayed on all night. There was no wind, no rain, and there never would be. There was grass, but it was just painted green sacking with bits sticking out of it. There were mountainous cliffs of nothing but seeds in packets, each one with a picture that Masklin suspected was quite unreal. They showed flowers, but flowers unlike any he'd ever seen before.
'Is the Outside like this?' said the young priest who was guiding them. 'They say, they say, er, they say you've been there. They say you've seen it.' He sounded hopeful.
'There was more green and brown,' said Masklin flatly.