Terry Pratchett

“That’s unfair!” said Daphne.

“No, it’s science,” said her father. “‘Could have’ isn’t good enough. Nor is ‘might have’! ‘Did’ is the trick.”

No one stuck up their hands and there was no voting, but she thought, I wonder if it was like this in ancient Athens? This is pure democracy. People don’t just get a vote; they have a say.

“What about the hangman? Doesn’t he do murder, then?”

[No, because enough people say it isn’t. That’s what a courtroom is for. It’s where the law happens.]

“And that makes it right? Didn’t God say, ‘Thou shalt not kill’?”

[Yes. But after that it got complicated.]

And to save time, shall we pretend we’ve had the argument and I won?

“I notice you didn’t laugh, Mr. Black!”

“No, Your Majesty. We are forbidden to laugh at the things kings say, sire, because otherwise we would be at it all day.”

Reality so often fails when it comes to small, satisfying details, she thought.

That was their law. The strongest man led. That made sense. At least, it made sense to strong men.

And when your learned men come here, we will say to them: The world is a globe—the farther you sail, the closer to home you are.

But he felt pleased. The Grandfathers didn’t wake up. The noise he had heard as a boy was just papervine getting hotter or colder. That was true, and he could prove it. It wasn’t hard to work out, so why is it all I can do not to wet myself? Because papervine moving doesn’t sound interesting and walking skeletons does, that’s why. Somehow they make us feel more important. Even our fears make us feel important, because we fear that we might not be.

They obeyed, as wise men do when a woman puts her foot down.

“But wasn’t it Oliver Cromwell who had him executed?” she managed, trying to sound regal.

“Certainly, ma’am. But Oliver Cromwell wasn’t the problem. Charles the First was the problem. Oliver Cromwell was the solution. I’ll grant you he was a bit of a nuisance for a while afterward, but at least his unpleasant rule made people happy to see a king again.”

“Who would want to eat a madman?”

Daphne shuddered. “Just so long as they don’t eat me!”

“No, they would never eat a woman,” said Mau.

“That’s very gentlemanly of them!”

“They would feed you to their wives, so that they become beautiful.”

There was one of those pauses that are icy-cold and red-hot at the same time. It was stuffed with soundless words, words that should not be said, or said another time, or in a different way, or could be said or needed to be said but couldn’t be said, and they would go on tumbling through the pause forever, or until one of them fell out—

“Ahem,” said Daphne, and all the other words escaped forever.