Terry Pratchett - Reaper Man

YES, WASN'T IT, he mumbled noncommittally, as she helped him drag it over the stack and weigh it down with stones. The wind caught at it and tried to drag it out of his hands; it might as well have tried to blow a mountain over.

Rain swept over the fields, among shreds of mist that shimmered with blue electric energies.

"Never known a night like it," Miss Flitworth said.

There was another crack of thunder. Sheet lightning fluttered around the horizon.

Miss Flitworth clutched Bill Door's arm.

"Isn't that... a figure on the hill?" she said. ‘Thought I saw a...shape."

NO, IT'S MERELY A MECHANICAL CONTRIVANCE.

There was another flash.

"On a horse?" said Miss Flitworth.

A third sheet seared across the sky. And this time there was no doubt about it. There was a mounted figure on the nearest hilltop. Hooded. Holding a scythe as proudly as a lance.

POSING. Bill Door turned towards Miss Flitworth. POSING. I NEVER DID ANYTHING LIKE THAT. WHY DO ANYTHING LIKE THAT? WHAT PURPOSE DOES IT SERVE?

He opened his palm. The gold timer appeared.

"How much longer have you got?"

PERHAPS AN HOUR. PERHAPS MINUTES.

"Come on, then!"

Bill Door remained where he was, looking at the timer.

"I said, come on!"

IT WON'T WORK. I WAS WRONG TO THINK THAT IT WOULD. BUT IT WON'T. THERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT YOU CANNOT ESCAPE. YOU CANNOT LIVE FOREVER.

"Why not?"

Bill Door looked shocked. WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

"Why can't you live for ever?"

I DON'T KNOW. COSMIC WISDOM?

"What does cosmic wisdom know about it? Now, will you come on?"

The figure on the hill hadn't moved.

The rain had turned the dust into a fine mud. They slithered down the slope and hurried across the yard and into the house.

I SHOULD HAVE PREPARED MORE. I HAD PLANS -

"But there was the harvest."

YES.

"Is there any way we can barricade the doors or something?"

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE SAYING?

"Well, think of something! Didn't anything ever work against you?"

NO, said Bill Door with a tiny touch of pride.

Miss Flitworth peered out of the window, and then flung herself dramatically against the wall on one side of it.

"He's gone!"

IT, said Bill Door. IT WON'T BE A HE YET.

"It's gone. It could be anywhere."

IT CAN COME THROUGH THE WALL.

She darted forward, and then glared at him.

VERY WELL. FETCH THE CHILD. I THINK WE SHOULD LEAVE HERE. A thought struck him. He brightened up a little bit.

WE DO HAVE SOME TIME. WHAT IS THE HOUR?

"I don't know. You go around stopping the clocks the whole time."

BUT IT IS NOT YET MIDNIGHT?

"I shouldn't think it's more than a quarter past eleven."

THEN WE HAVE THREE-QUARTERS OF AN HOUR.

"How can you be sure?"

BECAUSE OF DRAMA, MISS FLITWORTH. THE KIND OF DEATH WHO POSES AGAINST THE SKYLINE AND GETS LIT UP BY LIGHTNING FLASHES, said Bill Door, disapprovingly, DOESN'T TURN UP AT FIVE AND-TWENTY PAST ELEVEN IF HE CAN POSSIBLY TURN UP AT MIDNIGHT.

She nodded, white-faced, and disappeared upstairs. After a minute or two she returned, with Sal wrapped up in a blanket.

"Still fast asleep," she said.

THAT'S NOT SLEEP.

The rain had stopped, but the storm still marched around the hills. The air sizzled, still seemed oven-hot.

Bill Door led the way past the henhouse, where Cyril and his elderly harem were crouched back in the darkness, all trying to occupy the same few inches of perch.

There was a pale green glow hovering around the farmhouse chimney.

"We call that Mother Carey's Fire," said Miss Flitworth. "It's an omen."

AN OMEN OF WHAT?

"What? Oh, don't ask me. Just an omen, I suppose. Just basic omenery. Where are we going?"

INTO THE TOWN.

"To be near the scythe?"

YES.

He disappeared into the barn. After a while he came out leading Binky, saddled and harnessed. He mounted up, then leaned down and pulled both her and the sleeping child on to the horse in front of him.

IF I'M WRONG, he added, THIS HORSE WILL TAKE YOU WHEREVER YOU WANT TO GO.

"I shan't want to go anywhere except back home!"

WHEREVER.

Binky broke into a trot as they turned on to the road to the town. Wind blew the leaves off the trees, which tumbled past them and on up the road. The occasional flash of lightning still hissed across the sky.

Miss Flitworth looked at the hill beyond the farm.

I KNOW.

"- it's there again -"

I KNOW.

"Why isn't it chasing us?"

WE'RE SAFE UNTIL THE SAND RUNS OUT.

"And you die when the sand runs out?"

NO. WHEN THE SAND RUNS OUT IS WHEN I SHOULD DIE. I WILL BE IN THE SPACE BETWEEN LIFE AND AFTERLIFE.

"Bill, it looked as though the thing it was riding... I thought it was a proper horse, just very skinny, but..."

IT'S A SKELETAL STEED. IMPRESSIVE BUT IMPRACTICAL. I HAD ONE ONCE BUT THE HEAD FELL OFF.

"A bit like flogging a dead horse, I should think."

HA. HA. MOST AMUSING, MISS FLITWORTH.

"I think that at a time like this you can stop calling me Miss Flitworth," said Miss Flitworth.

RENATA?

She looked startled. ‘How did you know my name? Oh. You've probably seen it written down, right?"

ENGRAVED.

"On one of them hourglasses?"

YES.

"With all them sands of time pouring through?"

YES.

"Everyone's got one?"

YES.

"So you know how long I've -"

YES.

"It must be very odd, knowing... the kind of things you know..."

DO NOT ASK ME.

"That's not fair, you know. If we knew when we were going to die, people would live better lives."

IF PEOPLE KNEW WHEN THEY WERE GOING TO DIE, I THINK THEY PROBABLY WOULDN'T LIVE AT ALL.

"Oh, very gnomic. And what do you know about it, Bill Door?"

EVERYTHING.

Binky trotted up one of the town's meagre handful of streets and over the cobbles of the square. There was no-one else around. In cities like Ankh-Morpork midnight was just late evening, because there was no civic night at all, just evenings fading into dawns. But here people regulated their lives by things like sunsets and mispronounced cockcrows. Midnight meant what it said.

Even with the storm stalking the hills, the square itself was hushed. The ticking of the clock in its tower, unnoticeable at midday, now seemed to echo off the buildings.

As they approached, something whirred deep in its cogwheeled innards. The minute hand moved with a clonk, and shuddered to a halt on the 9. A trapdoor opened in the clock face and two little mechanical figures whirred out self-importantly and tapped a small bell with great apparent effort.

Ting-ting-ling.

The figures lined up and wobbled back into the clock.

"They've been there ever since I was a girl. Mr. Simnel's great-great-grandad made them," said Miss Flitworth. "I always wondered what they did between chimes, you know. I thought they had a little house in there, or something."

I DON'T THINK SO. THEY'RE JUST A THING. THEY'RE NOT ALIVE.

"Hmm. Well, they've been there for hundreds of years. Maybe life is something you sort of acquire?"

YES.

They waited in silence, except for the occasional thud as the minute hand climbed the night.

"It's been quite nice having you around the place, Bill Door."

He didn't reply.

"Helping me with the harvest and everything."

IT WAS... INTERESTING.

"It was wrong of me to delay you, just for a lot of corn."

NO. THE HARVEST IS IMPORTANT.

Bill Door unfolded his palm. The timer appeared.

"I still can't work out how you do that."

IT IS NOT DIFFICULT.

The hiss of the sand grew until it filled the square.

"Have you got any last words?"

YES. I DON'T WANT TO GO.

"Well. Succinct, anyway."

Bill Door was amazed to find she was trying to hold his hand.