Terry Pratchett: Soul Music

Susan waited politely for a while, and then got up and left as quietly as possible.

Certain things have to happen before other things. Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice.

It was raining in the small, mountainous country of Llamedos. It was always raining in Llamedos. Rain was the country's main export. It had rain mines.

Imp the bard sat under the evergreen, more out of habit than any real hope that it would keep the rain off. Water just dribbled through the spiky leaves and formed rivulets down the twigs, so that it was really a sort of rain concentrator. Occasional lumps of rain would splat on to his head.

He was eighteen, extremely talented and, currently, not at ease with his life.

He tuned his harp, his beautiful new harp, and watched the rain, tears running down his face and mingling with the drops.

Gods like people like this.

It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long.

Susan mooched along the disinfectant‑smelling cor­ridors. She wasn't particularly worried about what Miss Butts was going to think. She didn't usually worry about what anyone thought. She didn't know why people forgot about her when she wanted them to, but afterwards they seemed a bit embarrassed about raising the subject.

Sometimes, some teachers had trouble seeing her. This was fine. She'd generally take a book into the classroom and read it peacefully, while all around her The Principal Exports of Klatch happened to other people.

It was, undoubtedly, a beautiful harp. Very rarely a craftsman gets something so right that it is impossible to imagine an improvement. He hadn't bothered with ornamentation. That would have been some kind of sacrilege.

And it was new, which was very unusual in Llamedos. Most of the harps were old. It wasn't as if they wore out. Sometimes they needed a new frame, or a neck, or new strings ‑ but the harp went on. The old bards said they got better as they got older, although old men tend to say this sort of thing regardless of daily experience.

Imp plucked a string. The note hung in the air, and faded. The harp was fresh and bright and already it sang out like a bell. What it might be like in a hundred years' time was unimaginable.

His father had said it was rubbish, that the future was written in stones, not notes. That had only been the start of the row.

And then he'd said things, and he'd said things, and suddenly the world was a new and unpleasant place, because things can't be unsaid.

He'd said, "You don't know anything! You're just a stupid old man! But I'm giving my life to music! One day soon everyone will say I was the greatest musician in the world!"

Stupid words. As if any bard cared for any opinions except those of other bards, who'd spent a lifetime learning how to listen to music.

But said, nevertheless. And, if they're said with the right passion and the gods are feeling bored, some­times the universe will reform itself around words like that. Words have always had the power to change the world.

Be careful what you wish for. You never know who will be listening.

Or what, for that matter.

Because, perhaps, something could be drifting through the universes, and a few words by the wrong person at the right moment may just cause it to veer in its course...

Far away in the bustling metropolis of Ankh‑Morpork there was a brief crawling of sparks across an other­wise bare wall and then...

... there was a shop. An old musical instrument shop. No‑one remarked on its arrival. As soon as it appeared, it had always been there.

Death sat staring at nothing, chinbone resting on his hands.

Albert approached very carefully.

It had continually puzzled Death in his more introspective moments, and this was one of them, why his servant always walked the same path across the floor.

I MEAN, he thought, CONSIDER THE SIZE OF THE ROOM...

... which went on to infinity, or as near infinity as makes no difference. In fact it was about a mile. That's big for a room, whereas infinity you can hardly see.

Death had got rather flustered when he'd created the house. Time and space were things to be manipulated, not obeyed. The internal dimensions had been a little too generous. He'd forgotten to make the outside bigger than the inside. It was the same with the garden. When he'd begun to take a little more interest in these things, he'd realized the role people seemed to think that colour played in concepts like, for example, roses. But he'd made them black. He liked black. It went with anything. It went with everything, sooner or later.

The humans he'd known ‑ and there had been a few ‑ had responded to the impossible size of the rooms in a strange way, by simply ignoring them.

Take Albert, now. The big door had opened, Albert had stepped through, carefully balancing a cup and saucer...

... and a moment later had been well inside the room, on the edge of the relatively small square of carpet that surrounded Death's desk. Death gave up wondering how Albert covered the intervening space when it dawned on him that, to his servant, there was no intervening space...

" I've brought you some camomile tea, sir," said Albert.

HMM?

" Sir?"

SORRY. I WAS THINKING. WHAT WAS IT YOU SAID?

" Camomile tea?"

I THOUGHT THAT WAS A KIND OF SOAP.

" You can put it in soap or tea, sir," said Albert. He was worried. He was always worried when Death started to think about things. It was the wrong job for thinking about things. And he thought about them in the wrong way.

HOW VERY USEFUL. CLEAN INSIDE AND OUT.

Death put his chin on his hands again.

" Sir?" said Albert, after a while.

HMM?

" It'll get cold if you leave it."

ALBERT...

" Yessir?"

I HAVE BEEN WONDERING...

" Sir?"

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? SERIOUSLY? WHEN YOU GET RIGHT DOWN TO IT?

" Oh. Er. Couldn't really say, sir."

I DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT, ALBERT. YOU KNOW THAT. NOW I KNOW WHAT SHE MEANT. NOT JUST ABOUT THE KNEES.

"Who, Sir?"

There was no reply.

Albert looked back when he'd reached the door. Death was staring into space again. No‑one could stare quite like him.

Not being seen wasn't a big problem. It was the things that she kept seeing that were more of a worry.

There were the dreams. They were only dreams, of course. Susan knew that modern theory said that dreams were only images thrown up while the brain was filing the day's events. She would have been more reassured if the day's events had ever included flying white horses, huge dark rooms and lots of skulls.

At least they were only dreams. She'd seen other things. For example, she'd never mentioned the strange woman in the dormitory the night Rebecca Snell put a tooth under the pillow. Susan had watched her come through the open window and stand by the bed. She looked a bit like a milkmaid and not at all frightening, even though she had walked through the furniture. There had been the jingle of coins. Next morning the tooth had gone and Rebecca was richer by one 50‑pence coin.

Susan hated that sort of thing. She knew that men­tally unstable people told children about the Tooth Fairy, but that was no reason for one to exist. It suggested woolly thinking. She disliked woolly think­ing, which in any case was a major misdemeanour under the regime of Miss Butts.

It was not, otherwise, a particularly bad one. Miss Eulalie Butts and her colleague, Miss Delcross, had founded the college on the astonishing idea that, since gels had nothing much to do until someone married them, they may as well occupy themselves with learn­ing things.