Gerbil World Cup HQ: The Sixteenth Team
The letter arrived exactly at midnight, which nobody found reassuring, carried by a raven that landed on the sill, deposited it, and left without further comment.
RE: LATE ENTRY — DISCWORLD
Griselda read it in the lamplight and put it down slowly. “We are,” she said, “one team short of a clean bracket. Sixteen sides, even rounds, no byes, no awkward asterisk in the fixture list explaining why someone got a week off.”
“And?” said Gertrude, not looking up.
“And this,” Griselda said, tapping the letter, “solves that. Which is precisely why I intend to be extremely difficult about it.”
The application was signed by a Granny Weatherwax, who had, according to the accompanying note, not so much requested entry as informed HQ that entry was already assumed and the paperwork was a formality being completed out of courtesy. Attached was a squad list: Weatherwax herself, captain, described only as handles things; a second gerbil named Nanny Ogg, listed under special skills as knows everybody, knows things about everybody; a third called Vimes, who had crossed out striker and written watchman, will explain formation later; and, at the bottom, in handwriting so precise it looked engraved, a final name: Death.
Beside it, in brackets, someone had written (and Binky).
Griselda stared at the entry for a long moment. “Is Death playing, or refereeing?”
“BOTH, TRADITIONALLY,” said a voice from the doorway, which was how everyone discovered Death was already there, tall, patient, unhurried, and had apparently let herself in.
Nobody had heard the door.
Griselda, to her enormous credit, did not flinch. “We already have a Griselda for procedure.”
“THERE IS ROOM,” said Death, “FOR MORE THAN ONE OF US WHO ENJOYS A WELL-KEPT LIST.”
Binky, the horse, stood patiently in the corridor, eating nothing, requiring nothing, occasionally glowing very faintly in a way the building’s insurance policy did not have a clause for.
The Luggage came in last, on its own many legs, and immediately bit the leg off Griselda’s desk, apparently by way of introducing itself. Griselda decided, on the spot, not to make this a disciplinary matter.
Publicly, the ruling took four hours to arrive at, most of it Griselda pacing, muttering about precedent, about the sanctity of sixteen clean slots, about how she “hadn’t asked for a horse with opinions.” Gwendoline’s bulletin, drafted and redrafted six times, eventually ran with careful, visible reluctance: DISCWORLD ENTRY UNDER CONSIDERATION. GRISELDA “NOT THRILLED.”
Privately, in the seed cupboard, with the door shut, Griselda allowed herself exactly one long exhale. “Sixteen,” she said, to nobody. “A full bracket. No byes. No letter from the Tunnel team complaining about an uneven round.” She permitted herself, briefly, something that was almost a smile, and then put it away again before anyone could catch her at it.
Gertrude, who had caught her at it anyway, sent a single sunflower seed across the table without comment.
The approval, when it finally came, was delivered with maximum, theatrical reluctance. Griselda stamped the form, sighed heavily enough to be heard in the corridor, and announced to the assembled staff that Discworld’s entry was being permitted “under considerable protest, and only because the bracket demanded it, and for no other reason whatsoever.”
Nanny Ogg, on hearing this, winked at Gertrude in a way that suggested she understood exactly what had actually happened and thought it was hilarious.
Vimes, meanwhile, had already started drawing up what she called “a proper investigative approach to marking,” on the grounds that “nobody’s told me the offside rule and I intend to enforce it anyway, on principle.”
Griselda checked the bracket under glass one last time before locking up. Sixteen names. No gaps.
Greta’s line appeared beneath it before morning, in the usual unexplained hand:
Discworld — in. Sixteen. Even, at last.
Underneath, in noticeably smaller writing, as though added as an afterthought by someone who didn’t want to be seen caring:
Good.
https://myrtlelion.substack.com/p/the-16th-team