Hogfather - Room of Lifetimers

She let herself into the Room of Lifetimers.

She'd liked the sound of it, when she was a little girl. But now the hiss of sand from millions of hourglasses, and the little pings and pops as full ones vanished and new empty ones appeared, was not so enjoyable. Now she knew what was going on. Of course, everyone died sooner or later. It just wasn't right to be listening to it happening.

She was about to leave when she noticed the open door in a place where she had never seen a door before. It was disguised. A whole section of shelving, complete with its whispering glasses, had swung out. Susan pushed it back and forth with a finger. When it was shut, you'd have to look hard to see the crack.

There was a much smaller room on the other side. It was merely the size of, say, a cathedral. And it was lined floor to ceiling with more hourglasses that Susan could just see dimly in the light from the big room.

She stepped inside and snapped her fingers. 'Light,' she commanded.

A couple of candles sprang into life.

The hourglasses were ... wrong. The ones in the main room, however metaphorical they might be, were solid-looking things of wood and brass and glass. But these looked as though they were made of highlights and shadows with no real substance at all. She peered at a large one. The name in it was: OFFLER.

'The crocodile god?' she thought.

Well, gods had a life, presumably. But they never actually died, as far as she knew. They just dwindled away to a voice on the wind and a footnote in some textbook on religion. There were other gods lined up. She recognized a few of them. But there were smaller lifetimers on the shelf. When she saw the labels she nearly burst out laughing.

'The Tooth Fairy? The Sandman? John Barleycorn? The Soul Cake Duck? The God of what?'

She stepped back, and something crunched under her feet. There were shards of glass on the floor. She reached down and picked up the biggest. Only a few letters remained of the name etched into the glass HOGFA...

'Oh, no ... it's true. Granddad, what have you done?'

When she left, the candles winked out. Darkness sprang back. And in the darkness, among the spilled sand, a faint sizzle and a tiny spark of light…

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Hogfather - p99-101