Wintersmith (15 page)

I already scrubbed and scrubbed everything! Tiffany thought.

“Influences?” said Granny Weatherwax. Even the Wintersmith could not have managed a voice so icy.

“And disquieting vibrations,” said Mrs. Earwig.

“Oh, I know about
those
,” said Tiffany. “It’s the loose floorboard in the kitchen. If you tread on it, it makes the dresser wobble.”

“There has been talk of a demon,” said Mrs. Earwig, gravely ignoring this. “And…skulls.”

“But—” Tiffany began, and Granny’s hand squeezed her shoulder so hard she stopped.

“Deary, deary me,” said Granny, still holding on tightly. “Skulls, eh?”

“There are some very disturbing stories,” said Mrs. Earwig, watching Tiffany. “Of the darkest nature, Mistress Weatherwax. I feel that the people in this steading have been very badly served, indeed. Dark forces have been unleashed.”

Tiffany wanted to yell: No! It was all stories! It was all Boffo! She watched over them! She stopped their stupid arguments, she remembered their laws, she scolded their silliness! She couldn’t do that if she was just a frail old lady! She had to be a myth! But Granny’s grip kept her silent.

“Strange forces are certainly at work,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I wish you well in your endeavors, Mrs. Earwig. If you will excuse me?”

“Of course, Mis—tress Weatherwax. May good stars attend you.”

“May the road slow down to meet your feet,” said Granny. She stopped gripping Tiffany so hard but nevertheless almost dragged her around the side of the cottage. The late Miss Treason’s broomstick was leaning against the wall.

“Tie your stuff on quickly!” she commanded. “We must move!”

“Is he going to come back?” asked Tiffany, struggling to tie the sack and old suitcase onto the bristles.

“Not yet. Not soon, I think. But it will be looking for you. And it will be stronger. Dangerous to you, I believe, and those around you! You have such a lot to learn! You have such a lot to do!”

“I thanked him! I tried to be nice to him! Why is he still interested in me?”

“Because of the Dance,” said Granny.

“I’m sorry about that!”

“Not good enough. What does a storm know of sorrow? You must make amends. Did you really think that space was left there for you? Oh, this is so tangled! How are your feet?”

Tiffany, angry and bewildered, stopped with one leg half over the stick.

“My feet? What about my feet?”

“Do they itch? What happens when you take your boots off?”

“Nothing! I just see my socks! What have my feet got to do with anything?”

“We shall find out,” said Granny, infuriatingly. “Now, come along.”

Tiffany tried to get the stick to rise, but it barely cleared the dead grass. She looked around. The bristles were covered with Nac Mac Feegles.

“Dinna mind us,” said Rob Anybody. “We’ll hold on tight!”

“An’ dinna make it too bumpy, ’cuz I feel like the top o’ mah heid’s come off,” said Daft Wullie.

“Do we get meals on this flight?” said Big Yan. “I’m fair boggin’ for a wee drink.”

“I can’t take you all!” said Tiffany. “I don’t even know where I’m going!”

Granny Weatherwax glared at the Feegles. “You’ll have to walk. We’re travelin’ to Lancre Town. The address is Tir Nani Ogg, The Square.”

“Tir Nani Ogg,” said Tiffany. “Isn’t that—?”

“It means Nanny Ogg’s Place,” said Granny, as Feegles dropped off the broomstick. “You’ll be safe there. Well, more or less. But we must make a stop on the way. We must put that necklace as far away from you as we can. And I know how to do that! Oh, yes!”

The Nac Mac Feegle jogged through the afternoon woods. Local wildlife had found out about Feegles, so the fluffy woodland creatures had all dived for their burrows or climbed high into the trees, but after a while Big Yan called a halt and said: “There’s somethin’ trackin’ us!”

“Don’t be daft,” said Rob Anybody. “There’s nothin’ left in these woods that’s mad enough tae hunt Feegles!”

“I know what I’m sensin’,” said Big Yan stubbornly. “I can feel it in my watter. There’s somethin’ creepin’ up on us right noo!”

“Weel, I’m not one tae argue wi’ a man’s watter,” said Rob wearily. “Okay, lads, spread oot inna big circle!”

Swords drawn, the Feegles spread out, but after a few minutes there was a general muttering. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear. A few birds sang, at a safe distance. Peace and quiet, unusual in the vicinity of Feegles, was everywhere.

“Sorry, Big Yan, but I’m thinkin’ yer watter is no’ on the button this time,” said Rob Anybody.

It was at this point that Horace the cheese dropped from a branch onto his head.

A lot of water flowed under the big bridge at Lancre, but from up here you could barely see it because of the spray coming from the waterfalls a little farther on, spray that hovered in the freezing air. There was white water all through the deep gorge, and then the river leaped the waterfall like a salmon and hit the plains below like a thunderstorm. From the base of the falls you could follow the river all the way past the Chalk, but it moved in wide, lazy curves, and it was quicker to fly in a straight line.

Tiffany had flown up it just once, when Miss Level had first brought her into the mountains. Since then she’d always taken the long way down, cruising just above the zigzagging coach road. Flying out over the edge of that furious torrent into a sudden drop full of cold damp air and then pointing the stick almost straight down was pretty high on her list of things she never intended to do, ever.

Now Granny Weatherwax stood on the bridge, the silver horse in her hand.

“It’s the only way,” she said. “It’ll end up at the bottom of the deep sea. Let the Wintersmith look for you there!”

Tiffany nodded. She wasn’t crying, which is not the same as, well, not crying. People walked around not crying all the time and didn’t think about it at all. But now, she did. She thought: I’m not crying….

It made sense. Of course it made sense. It was all Boffo! Every stick is a wand, every puddle is a crystal ball. No thing had any power that you didn’t put there. Shambles and skulls and wands were like…shovels and knives and spectacles. They were like…levers. With a lever you could lift a big rock, but the lever didn’t do any work.

“It has to be your choice,” said Granny. “I can’t make it for you. But it’s a small thing, and while you have it, it will be dangerous.”

“You know, I don’t think he wanted to hurt me. He was just upset,” said Tiffany.

“Really? Do you want to meet it upset again?”

Tiffany thought about that strange face. There had been the shape of a human there—more or less—but it was as if the Wintersmith had heard of the idea of being human but hadn’t found out how to do it yet.

“You think he’ll harm other people?” she asked.

“He is the Winter, child. It’s not all pretty snowflakes, is it?”

Tiffany held out her hand. “Give it back to me, please.”

Granny handed it over with a shrug.

It lay in Tiffany’s hand, on the strange white scar. It was the first thing she had ever been given that wasn’t useful, that wasn’t supposed to do something.

I don’t need this, she thought. My power comes from the Chalk. But is that what life’s going to be like? Nothing that you don’t need?

“We should tie it to something that’s light,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Otherwise it will get caught on the bottom.”

After some rooting around in the grass near the bridge, she found a stick and wrapped the silver chain around it.

It was noon. Tiffany had invented the word noonlight because she liked the sound of it. Anyone could be a witch at midnight, she’d thought, but you’d have to be really good to be a witch by noonlight.

Good at being a witch, anyway, she thought now as she walked back onto the bridge. Not good at being a happy person.

She threw the necklace off the bridge.

She didn’t make a big thing of it. It would have been nice to say that the silver horse glittered in the light, seemed to hang in the air for a moment before falling the long fall. Perhaps it did, but Tiffany didn’t look.

“Good,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Is it all over now?” said Tiffany.

“No! You danced into a story, girl, one that tells itself to the world every year. It’s the Story about ice and fire, Summer and Winter. You’ve made it wrong. You’ve got to stay to the end and make sure it turns out right. The horse is just buyin’ you time, that’s all.”

“How much time?”

“I don’t know. This hasn’t happened before. Time to think, at least. How are your feet?”

The Wintersmith was moving through the world without, in any human sense, moving at all. Wherever winter was, he was too.

He was trying to think. He’d never had to do this before, and it hurt. Up until now humans had just been parts of the world that moved around in strange ways and lit fires. Now he was spinning himself a mind, and everything was new.

A human…made of human stuff…that was what she had said.

Human stuff. He had to make himself of human stuff for the beloved. In the chill of morgues and the wreckage of ships, the Wintersmith rode the air searching for human stuff. And what was it? Dirt and water, mostly. Leave a human long enough and even the water would go, and there would be nothing but a few handfuls of dust that blew away in the wind.

So, since water did not think, all the work was being done by the dust.

The Wintersmith was logical, because ice was logical. Water was logical. Wind was logical. There were rules. So what a human was all about was…the right kind of dust!

And, while he was searching for it, he could show her how strong he was.

That evening Tiffany sat on the edge of her new bed, the clouds of sleep rising in her brain like thunderheads, and yawned and stared at her feet.

They were pink, and had five toes each. They were pretty good feet, considering.

Normally when people met you, they’d say things like “How are you?” Nanny Ogg had just said: “Come on in. How’s your feet?”

Suddenly everyone was interested in her feet. Of course, feet were important, but what did people expect to happen to them?

She swung them back and forth on the ends of her legs. They didn’t do anything strange, so she got into bed.

She hadn’t slept properly for two nights. She hadn’t really understood that until she’d reached Tir Nani Ogg, when her brain had started to spin of its own accord. She’d talked to Mrs. Ogg, but it was hard to remember what about. Voices had banged in her ears. Now, at last, she had nothing to do but sleep.

It was a good bed, the best she’d ever slept in. It was the best room she’d ever been in, although she’d been too tired to explore it. Witches didn’t go in much for comfort, especially in spare bedrooms, but Tiffany had grown up on an ancient bed where the springs went
gloing
every time she moved, and with care she could get them to play a tune.

This mattress was thick and yielding. She sank into it as if it were very soft, very warm, very slow quicksand.

The trouble is, you can shut your eyes but you can’t shut your mind. As she lay in the dark, it squiggled pictures inside her head, of clocks that went
clonk-clank
, of snowflakes shaped like her, of Miss Treason striding through the nighttime forest, seeking bad people with her yellow thumbnail ready.

Myth Treason…

She drifted through these scrambled memories into dull whiteness. But it got brighter, and took on detail, little areas of black and gray. They began to move gently from side to side….

Tiffany opened her eyes, and everything became clear. She was standing on a…a boat, no, a big sailing ship. There was snow on the decks, and icicles hung from the rigging. It was sailing in the washing-up-water light of dawn, on a silent gray sea full of floating ice and clouds of fog. The rigging creaked, the wind sighed in the sails. There was no one to be seen.

“Ah. This appears to be a dream. Let me out, please,” said a familiar voice.

“Who are you?” said Tiffany.

“You. Cough, please.”

Tiffany thought: Well, if this is a dream…and she coughed.

A figure grew up out of the snow on the deck. It was her, and she was looking around thoughtfully.

“Are you me too?” Tiffany asked. Strangely, here on the freezing deck, it didn’t seem that, well, strange.

“Hmm. Oh, yes,” said the other Tiffany, still staring intently at things. “I’m your Third Thoughts. Remember? The part of you that never stops thinking? The bit that notices little details? It’s good to be out in fresh air. Hmm.”

“Is there something wrong?”

“Well, this clearly appears to be a dream. If you would care to
look, you’ll see that the steersman in yellow oilskins up there at the wheel is the Jolly Sailor off the wrappers of the tobacco that Granny Aching used to smoke. He always comes into our mind when we think about the sea, yes?”

Tiffany looked up at the bearded figure, who gave her a cheerful wave.

“Yes, that’s certainly him!” she said.

“But I don’t think this is our dream, exactly,” said the Third Thoughts. “It’s too…real.”

Tiffany reached down and picked up a handful of snow.

“Feels real,” she said. “Feels cold.” She made a snowball and threw it at herself.

“I really wish I wouldn’t do that,” said the other Tiffany, brushing the snow off her shoulder. “But you see what I mean? Dreams are never as…nondreamlike as this.”

“I know what I mean,” said Tiffany. “I think they’re going to be real, and then something weird turns up.”

“Exactly. I don’t like it all. If this is a dream, then something horrible is going to happen….”

They looked ahead of the ship. There was a dismal, dirty bank of fog there, spreading out across the sea.

“There’s something in the fog!” said the Tiffanys together.

They turned and scurried up the ladder to the man at the wheel.

“Keep away from the fog! Please don’t go near it!” Tiffany shouted.

The Jolly Sailor took his pipe out of his mouth and looked puzzled.