“Probably some great white crackling thing. Like an electric storm in trousers,” said Miss Flitworth.
I THINK NOT.
Binky rose up into the morning sky.
“Anyway…death to all tyrants” said Miss Flitworth.
YES.
“Where are we going?”
Binky was galloping, but the landscape did not move.
“That’s a pretty good horse you’ve got there,” said Miss Flitworth, her voice shaking.
YES.
“But what is he doing?”
GETTING UP SPEED.
“But we’re not going anywhere—”
They vanished.
They reappeared.
The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren’t old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow.
The horse landed on a snowbank that should not, by rights, have been able to support it.
Death dismounted and helped Miss Flitworth down.
They walked over the snow to a frozen muddy track that hugged the mountain side.
“Why are we here?” said the spirit of Miss Flitworth.
I DO NOT SPECULATE ON COSMIC MATTERS.
“I mean here on this mountain. Here on this geography,” said Miss Flitworth patiently.
THIS IS NOT GEOGRAPHY.
“What is it, then?”
HISTORY.
They rounded a bend in the track. There was a pony there, eating a bush, with a pack on its back. The track ended in a wall of suspiciously clean snow.
Death removed a lifetimer from the recesses of his robe.
NOW, he said, and stepped into the snow.
She watched it for a moment, wondering if she could have done that too. Solidity was an awfully hard habit to give up.
And then she didn’t have to.
Someone came out.