Snuff (Discworld 39)

“Well, you’ve come to the right lady, she’s an expert, so I reckon, always fussing about the bloody things. Got a bottle of brandy on you? She’s not one for strangers, my granny, but I reckon that anyone with a bottle of brandy is no stranger to Granny as long as the drink holds out.”

Angua whispered to Carrot, “Harry’s got a huge drinks cabinet in his office, and it’s not like this is bribery. Worth a try?”

She waited with Billy Slick while Carrot went on the errand, and for something to say, she said, “Billy Slick doesn’t sound much like a goblin name?”

Billy made a face. “Too right! Granny calls me Of the Wind Regretfully Blown. What kind of name is that, I ask you? Who’s going to take you seriously with a name like that? This is modern times, right?” He looked at her defiantly, and she thought: and so one at a time we all become human—human werewolves, human dwarfs, human trolls…the melting pot melts in one direction only, and so we make progress. Aloud, she said, “Aren’t you proud of your goblin name?”

He looked at her with his mouth open, showing his pointy teeth. “What? Proud? Why the fruckle should anyone be proud of being a goblin? Except my granny, of course. Come along inside, and I surely hope that the brandy arrives quickly. She can be fretful without the brandy.”

Billy Slick and his granny lived in a building of sorts in the shanty town. Willow and other saplings had been liberated from the damp swamps and used to make a reasonably large hemisphere, the size of a small cottage. It seemed to Angua that some skill and thought had gone into the construction: smaller twigs and branches had been interwoven with the structure and some had, as is the way with willow, rooted themselves and sprouted, and then somebody, presumably Billy Slick, had further interwoven the new growth so that, in the summertime at least, it was a pretty good gaff, especially since somebody had meticulously filled most of the gaps with smaller weaves. Inside, it was a smoky cave, but the dark-accustomed eye of the werewolf saw that the inner walls had been lined very carefully with old tarpaulin and any other rubbish that could be persuaded to bend, to keep away drafts. Okay, it had probably taken less than two days to build and cost nothing, but the city was full of people who would have been overjoyed to live there.

“Sorry about this,” said Billy. “I can’t say that Harry is a big payer, but he turns a blind eye to us snaffling the occasional bits and pieces if we don’t get cheeky about it.”

“But you’ve even got a stove pipe!” said Angua, astonished.

Billy looked down. “Leaks a bit; waiting for me to solder a few patches on, that’s all. Wait here, I’ll just make sure she’s ready for you. I know she’ll be ready for the brandy.”

There was a polite knock on the door which turned out to be courtesy of Captain Carrot who was on his way back with the brandy. He carefully opened the battered and many-times-painted outside door and let in some light. Then he looked around and said, “Very cozy!”

Angua tapped her foot. “Look, he’s even jigsawed broken bits of roof tile together to make a decent floor cover. There’s some thoughtful construction going on here.” She lowered her voice and whispered, “And he’s a goblin. It’s not what I’d expected—”

“Got bloody good hearing as well, miss,” said Billy, re-entering the room. “Amazing, innit, what tricks us goblins can learn. Cor, you’d almost think we were people!” He pointed toward a hanging of some sort of felt that obscured the other end of the room. “Got the brandy wine? Off we go, then. Hold the bottle out in front of you, that usually does the trick. Officers, the lady ain’t my granny as such, she’s my great-granny, but that was too much of a mouthful for me when I was a little kid, so Granny she became. Let me do the talking, ’cos unless you are a bloody genius, you won’t understand a blind word she says! Come on in, quickly, I’ve got to go and make her lunch in half an hour, and, like I said, you’ve probably got until the drink runs out.”

“I can’t see a thing,” said Carrot, as the felt somberly swung back behind them, and Angua said, carefully, “I can. Would you be so good as to introduce us to your great-grandmother, Billy?”

Carrot still fought for any kind of vision but heard what he thought was the goblin boy speaking, although it sounded as if he was chewing gravel at the same time. Then, after a sense of movement in the darkness, another voice, cracking like ice, answered him. Then Billy quite clearly said, “Regret of the Falling Leaf welcomes you, watchmen, and bids you give her the bloody brandy right now.”

Carrot held the bottle out in the direction of Billy’s voice, and it was swiftly passed on to the shape beginning to form in front of him as sight trickled back. The shape apparently said, according to Billy, “Why you come to me, po-leess-man? Why you need help from dying lady? What is unggue to you, Mr. Po-leess-man? Unggue is ours, ours! No good for you here, big Mr. po-leess-man!”

“What is unggue, madam?” said Carrot.

“No religion, no ringing bellsey, no knees all bendey, no chorus, no hallelujah, no by your leave, just unggue, pure unggue! Just unggue, who come when need. Little unggue! When gods wash hands and turn away there is unggue who roll up the sleeves! Unggue strikes in the dark. If unggue don’t come himself, he send. Unggue is everywhere!”

Carrot cleared his throat. “Regret of the Falling Leaf, we have a man, a policeman, a good man, who is dying of unggue. We don’t understand; please help us understand. In his hand he is holding an unggue pot.”

The screech must have echoed around the works; it certainly made the little shack rock. “Unggue thief! Pot stealer! Not fit to live!” Billy translated with every sign of embarrassment. The old goblin woman tried to stand up and sank back into her cushions, muttering.

Angua tried: “You are wrong, old lady. This pot came to him by chance. He found it, it is the pot called soul of tears.”

Regret of the Falling Leaf had filled the world with noise. Now she appeared to empty it with silence. She said, bitterly and come to that, curiously, considering the fact that her great grandson said she didn’t know much Ankh-Morporkian, “Found in goblin cave, oh yes! Found on end of shovel, oh yes! Bad cess to him!”

“No!” Suddenly Carrot was face to face with the goblin woman. “It came to him by accident, like a curse. He never wanted it and he didn’t know what it was. He found it in a cigar.”

There was a pause in which, presumably, the old woman was doing some complex thinking, because she said, “Would you pay me my price, Mr. Po-leess-man?”

“We gave you the brandy,” said Angua.

“Indeedy, wolf whelp, but that was for consultation only. Now it’s price for diagnosis and cure, which will be from the snuff mill, two pounds of sweet raspberry, one pound of angler’s chum, and one pound of Dr. Varies’ medicated upright mixture, just the job on a winter’s day.” Something like a laugh escaped from the old goblin woman’s mouth. “Glad of the fresh air,” she added. “My lad he gets around and about and says you are trustworthy, but goblins have learned not to rely on word, so we will seal the bargain the old way, which we have all understood since time was time.”

The bewildered Billy stood back as a long hand with longer fingernails extended toward Carrot, who spat on his own hand and slapped it, with no thought of health and safety, on to the palm of Regret of the Fallen Leaf who cackled again. “That can’t be broke, that, it can’t be broke. Never.” After a moment’s

hesitation she said in an offhand voice, “Wash hand after using.”

There was a glug from the brandy bottle, and Billy Slick’s old granny went on, “A pot of tears, you say?” Angua nodded. “If so, only one meaning. A poor goblin woman, a starving woman, had to eat her newborn baby, because she could not feed it. I hear you stop breathing for a moment. That such things happen? Is awful truth, oh yes. Is often awful truth in bad country when times are hard and food is nothing. And so, weeping, she carved a little unggue pot for soul of her baby and cried life into it and sent it away until better times when baby will come back.”

Quietly, Carrot said, “Could you tell us anything more, madam?”

The old goblin was silent for a moment and then said, “Inside cigar, wrapped in tobacco? Ask the man who sell tobacco!”