'Um. Sorry. No. I only get fifty pence a week allowance anyway.'
'Blast. Oh, well, nothing for it.' In so far as Susan could see, the girl did not appear to be the usual sort of young woman who made her living in alleys. She had a kind of well-scrubbed beefiness about her; she looked like a nurse of the sort who assist doctors whose patients occasionally get a bit confused and
declare they're a bedspread. She looked familiar, too. The girl took a pair of pliers from a pocket in her dress, shinned up the ladder and climbed in through an upper window. Susan hesitated. The girl had seemed quite businesslike about it all, but in her limited experience people who climbed ladders to get into houses at night were Miscreants whom Plucky Gels should Apprehend. And she might at least have gone to look for a watchman, had it not been for the opening of a door further up the alley. Two men staggered out, arm in arm, and zigzagged happily towards the main street. Susan stepped back. No-one bothered her when she didn't want to be noticed. The men walked through the ladder. Either the men weren't exactly solid, and they certainly sounded solid enough, or there was something wrong with the ladder. But the girl had climbed it... . . . and was now climbing down again, slipping something into her pocket. 'Never even woke up, the little cherub,' she said. 'Sorry?' said Susan. 'Didn't have Sop on me,' said the girl. She swung the ladder easily up on to her shoulder. 'Rules are rules. I had to take another tooth.'
'Pardon?'
'It's all audited, you see. I'd be in real trouble if the dollars and teeth didn't add up. You know how it is.'
'I do?'
'Still, can't stay here talking all night. Got sixty more to do.'
'Why should I know? Do what? Whom to?' said Susan. 'Children, of course. Can't disappoint them, can I? Imagine their little faces when they lift up their little pillows, bless them.' Ladder. Pliers. Teeth. Money. Pillows . . . 'You don't expect me to believe you're the Tooth Fairy?' said Susan suspiciously. She touched the ladder. It felt solid enough. 'Not the,' said the girl. 'A. I'm surprised you don't know that.' She'd sauntered around the corner before Susan asked, 'Why me?'
''Cos she can tell,' said a voice behind her. 'Takes one to know one.' She turned. The raven was sitting in a small open window. 'You'd better come in,' it said. 'You can meet all sorts, out in that alley.'
'I already have.' There was a brass plate screwed on the wall beside the door. It said: 'C V Cheesewaller, DM (Unseen) B. Thau, B.F.' It was the first time Susan had ever heard metal speak. 'Simple trick,' said the raven, dismissively. 'It senses you looking at it. Just give-'
'C V Cheesewaller, DM (Unseen) B. Thau, B.F.'
'. . . shut up . . . just give the door a push.'
'It's locked.' The raven gave her a beady-eyed look with its head on one side. Then it said: 'That stops you? Oh, well. I'll fetch the key.' It appeared a moment later and dropped a large metal key on to the cobbles. 'Isn't the wizard in?'
'In, yes. In bed. Snoring his head off.'
'I thought they stayed up all night!'
'Not this one. Cup of cocoa around nine, dead to the world at five past.'
'I can't just let myself into his house!'
'Why not? You've come to see me. Anyway, I'm the brains of the outfit. He just wears the funny hat and does the hand waving.' Susan turned the key. It was warm inside. There was the usual wizardly paraphernalia - a forge, a bench with bottles and bundles strewn over it, a bookcase with books rammed in anyhow, a stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling, some very big candles that were just lava streams of wax, and a raven on a skull. `They get it all out of a catalogue,' said the raven. 'Believe me. It all comes in a big box. You think candles get dribbly like that by themselves? That's three days' work for a skilled candle dribbler.' `You're just making that up,' said Susan. 'Anyway, you can't just buy a skull.'
'You know best, I'm sure, being educated,' said the raven. 'What were you trying to tell me last night?'
'Tell you?' said the raven, with a guilty look on its beak. 'All that dah-dah-dah-DAH stuff.' The raven scratched its head. 'He said I wasn't to tell you. I was just supposed to warn you about the horse. I got carried away. Turned up, has it?'
'Yes!'
'Ride it.'
'I did. It can't be real! Real horses know where the ground is.'
'Miss, there's no horse realer than that one.'
'I know his name! I've ridden him before!' The raven sighed, or at least made a sort of whistling noise which is as close to a sigh as a beak can get. 'Ride the horse. He's decided you're the one.'
'Where to?'
'That's for me not to know and you to find out.'
'Just supposing I was stupid enough to do it . . . can you kind of hint about what will happen?'
'Well . . . you've read books, I can see. Have you ever read any about children who go to a magical faraway kingdom and have adventures with goblins and so on?'
'Yes, of course,' said Susan, grimly. 'It'd probably be best if you thought along those lines,' said the raven. Susan picked up a bundle of herbs and played with them. 'I saw someone outside who said she was the Tooth Fairy,' she said. 'Nah, couldn't've been the Tooth Fairy,' said the raven. 'There's at least three of them.'