about?’
‘Anything bad he encounters on his journey after death,’ said Carrot, a shade awkwardly.
This is so essential that Cuddy, the dwarf watchman, flatlyrefuses to depart into the afterlife because his axe has been shattered in the fall that killed him. He protests to Death that he needs a good weapon:
‘If I’m not going to be properly buried, I ain’t going. My tortured soul will walk the world in torment.’
I T DOESN’T HAVE TO.
‘It can if it wants to,’ snapped the ghost of Cuddy.
Many, many human societies in this world have agreed with the dwarfs that the dead should be given their weapons, and anything else they might need on the journey. And archaeologists are very grateful to them – especially to the ones who carefully laid the stuff in the grave, rather than those who tossed it on to a funeral pyre, even if from the ghost’s point of view both methods are equally good. Obviously, archaeologists can’t tell from material remains whether in these old societies the living also felt (as Carrot does) that there’s something disgusting about using weapons and tools that had belonged to the dead, but it would not be surprising if they did. In the modern world, Gypsies traditionally approve of the idea of burning a dead man’s caravan and all its contents, though this means such financial loss to the family that nowadays it is rarely done. So too on the Disc, the Chalkland shepherds burned Granny Aching’s hut after her death, knowing none of them would dare use something she had made so much her own (see A Hatful of Sky ).
One of us recalls a metalwork shop staffed by very old men. When one of them died, his personal tools were left on the bench where he’d put them, untouched, and were gradually buried under workshop debris. It does not need a fevered imagination to see that in the days when tools were an expensive lifetime investment, shaped over the years to their owner’s hand, there would be a certain unfocused distaste for handling them after a workmate’s death.
*
Outsiders often assume that because all dwarfs look, dress and behave alike, have masculine names, and refer to one another as ‘he’, they are in fact all male. This is completely untrue – the population, as with other humanoid races, is fifty per cent male and fifty per cent female. But very, very, very few dwarfs would ever admit this statistic in public. And (until very recently) none would let it be publicly known that they themselves belong to the female fifty per cent.
Even when outsiders know about this, they underestimate the distress it can cause. When the dwarf Cheery Littlebottom joined the Ankh-Morpork Watch, the werewolf Angua guessed that ‘he’ was really ‘she’, but couldn’t understand why being spotted was so shattering:
Cheery sagged on to a seat. ‘How could you tell? Even other dwarfs can’t tell! I’ve been so careful!’
‘I don’t know why you’re so upset,’ said Angua. ‘I thought dwarfs hardly recognized the difference between male and female, anyway. Look, there’s plenty of women in this town that’d love to do things the dwarf way. I mean, what are the choices they’ve got? Barmaid, seamstress, or somebody’s wife. While you can do anything the men do …’
‘Provided we do only what the men do,’ said Cheery.
Angua paused. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I see . Hah. Yes, I know that tune.’ [ Feet of Clay ]
Encouraged by Angua, Cheery gradually yields to her suppressed longing for a bit of jewellery and a dab of lipstick; eventually and with much nervousness, she dons a mid-calf leather skirt (still keeping helmet, breastplate, and beard, naturally). Some other dwarf watchmen react with horror:
‘That’s … female clothes, isn’t it?’
‘Well?’ she quavered. ‘So what? I can if I want to.’
‘That’s … my mother never even … urgh … That’sdisgusting! In public too! What happens if kids come in? I can see your ankles !’
As it turns out, other
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