Wintersmith (22 page)

“Are we doing the right thing or not?” said Tiffany. “Anyway, what’s the worst she could do to us?”

Petulia gave a short laugh with no humor in it at all. “Well,” she said, “first, she could make our—”

“She won’t.”

“I wish I was as sure as you,” said Petulia. “All right, then. For Mrs. Stumper’s pig.”

Tiffany flew above the treetops, and the occasional high twig brushed against her boots. There was just enough winter sunshine to make the snow crisp and glittery, like a frosted cake.

It had been a busy morning. The coven hadn’t been very interested in helping Annagramma. The coven itself seemed a long time ago. It had been a busy winter.

“All we did was muck about while Annagramma bossed us around,” Dimity Hubbub had said, while grinding minerals and very carefully tipping them, a bit at a time, into a tiny pot being heated by a candle. “I’m too busy to mess around with magic. It never did anything useful. You know her trouble? She thinks you can be a witch by buying enough things.”

“She just needs to learn how to deal with people,” said Tiffany.

At this point, the pot exploded.

“Well, I think we can safely say that wasn’t your everyday toothache cure,” said Dimity, picking bits of pot out of her hair. “All right, I can spare the odd day, if Petulia’s doing it. But it won’t do much good.”

Lucy Warbeck was lying full length and fully clothed in a tin bath full of water when Tiffany came by. Her head was all the way under the surface, but when she saw Tiffany peering in, she held
up a sign saying
I
’
M NOT DROWNING
! Miss Tick had said she would make a good witch finder, so she was training hard.

“I don’t see why we should help Annagramma,” she said as Tiffany helped her get dry. “She just likes putting people down with that sarcastic voice of hers. Anyway, what’s it to you? You know she doesn’t like you.”

“I thought we’ve always got on…more or less,” said Tiffany.

“Really? You can do stuff she can’t even attempt! Like that thing where you go invisible…you do it and you make it look easy! But you come along to the meetings and act like the rest of us and help clear up afterward, and that drives her mad!”

“Look, I don’t understand what you’re going on about.”

Lucy picked up another towel. “She can’t stand the idea that someone’s better than her but doesn’t crow about it.”

“Why should I do that?” said Tiffany, bewildered.

“Because that’s what she’d do, if she was you,” said Lucy, carefully pushing the knife and fork back into her piled-up hair.
*
“She thinks you’re laughing at her. And now, oh my word, she’s got to depend on you. You might as well have pushed pins up her nose.”

But Petulia had signed up, and so Lucy and the rest of them did, too. Petulia had become the big success story since she’d won the Witch Trials with her famous Pig Trick two years ago. She’d been laughed at—well, by Annagramma, and everyone else had sort of grinned awkwardly—but she’d stuck to what she was good at and people were saying that she’d got skills with animals that even Granny Weatherwax couldn’t match. She’d got solid respect, too. People didn’t understand a lot of what witches did, but anyone who could get a sick cow back on its feet…well, that person was someone you looked up to. So for the whole coven, after
Hogswatch, it was going to be All About Annagramma time.

Tiffany flew back toward Tir Nani Ogg with her head spinning. She’d never thought anyone could be envious of her. Okay, she’d picked up one or two things, but anyone could do them. You just had to be able to switch yourself off.

She’d sat on the sand of the desert behind the Door, she’d faced dogs with razor teeth…they were not things she wanted to remember. And on top of all that, there was the Wintersmith.

He couldn’t find her without the horse, everyone was sure of that. He could speak in her head, and she could speak to him, but that was a kind of magic and didn’t have anything to do with maps.

He’d been quiet for a while. He was probably building icebergs.

She landed the broomstick on a small bald hill among the trees. There was no cottage to be seen.

She climbed off the stick but held on to it, just in case.

The stars were coming out. The Wintersmith liked clear nights. They were colder.

And the words came. They were her words in her voice and she knew what they meant, but they had a sort of echo.

“Wintersmith! I command you!”

As she blinked at the high-toned way the words had sounded, the reply came back.

The voice was all around her.

Who commands the Wintersmith?

“I am the Summer Lady.” Well, she thought, I’m a sort of stand-in.

Then why do you hide from me?

“I fear your ice. I fear your chill. I run from your avalanches. I hide from your storms.” Ah, right. This is goddess talk.

Live with me in my world of ice!

“How dare you order me! Don’t you dare to order me!”

But you chose to dwell in my winter….
The Wintersmith sounded uncertain.

“I go where I please. I make my own way. I seek the leave of no man. In your country you will honor me—or there will be a reckoning!” And that bit is mine, Tiffany thought, pleased to get a word in.

There was a long silence, filled with uncertainty and puzzlement. Then the Wintersmith said:
How may I serve you, my lady?

“No more icebergs looking like me. I don’t want to be a face that sinks a thousand ships.”

And the frost? May we share the frosts? And the snowflakes?

“Not the frosts. You must not write my name on windows. That can only lead to trouble.”

But I may be permitted to honor you in snowflakes?

“Er…” Tiffany stopped. Goddesses shouldn’t say “er,” she was sure of that.

“Snowflakes will be…acceptable,” she said. After all, she thought, it’s not as though they have my name on them. I mean, most people won’t notice, and if they do they won’t know it’s me.

Then there will be snowflakes, my lady, until the time we dance again. And we will, for I am making myself a man!

The voice of the Wintersmith…went.

Tiffany was alone again among the trees.

Except…she wasn’t.

“I know you’re still there,” she said, her breath leaving a sparkle in the air. “You are, aren’t you? I can feel you. You’re not my thoughts. I’m not imagining you. The Wintersmith has gone. You can speak with my mouth. Who are you?”

The wind made snow fall from the trees nearby. The stars twinkled. Nothing else moved.

“You
are
there,” said Tiffany. “You’ve put thoughts in my head. You’ve even made my own voice speak to me. That’s not going to happen again. Now that I know the feeling, I
can
keep you out. If you have anything to say to me, say it now. When I leave here, I
will
shut my mind to you. I will not let—”

How does it feel to be so helpless, sheep girl?

“You are Summer, aren’t you?” said Tiffany.

And you are like a little girl dressing in her mother’s clothes, little feet in big shoes, dress trailing in the dirt. The world will freeze because of a silly child—

Tiffany did—something that it would be impossible for her to describe, and the voice ended up like a distant insect.

It was lonely on the hill, and cold. And all you could do was keep going. You could scream, cry, and stamp your feet, but apart from making you feel warmer, it wouldn’t do any good. You could say it was unfair, and that was true, but the universe didn’t care because it didn’t know what “fair” meant. That was the big problem about being a witch. It was up to you. It was always up to you.

Hogswatch came, with more snow and some presents. Nothing from home, even though some coaches were getting through. She told herself there was probably a good reason, and tried to believe it.

It was the shortest day of the year, which was convenient because it fitted neatly with the longest night. This was the heart of winter, but Tiffany didn’t expect the present that arrived the next day.

It had been snowing hard, but the evening sky was pink and blue and freezing.

It came out of the pink evening sky with a whistling noise and landed in Nanny Ogg’s garden, throwing up a shower of dirt and leaving a big hole.

“Well, that’s good-bye to the cabbages,” said Nanny, looking out the window.

Steam was rising from the hole when they went outside, and there was a strong smell of sprouts.

Tiffany peered through the steam. Dirt and stalks covered the thing, but she could make out something rounded.

She let herself slide farther into the hole, right down amid the mud and steam and the mysterious thing. It wasn’t very hot now, and as she scraped stuff away, she began to have a nasty feeling that she knew what it was.

It was, she was sure, the “thingy” that Anoia had talked about. It looked mysterious enough. And as it emerged from the mud, she knew she’d seen it before.

“Are you all right down there? I can’t see you for all this steam!” Nanny Ogg called. By the sound of it, the neighbors had come running; there was some excited chattering.

Tiffany quickly scraped mud and mashed cabbages over the arrival and called up, “I think this might explode. Tell everyone to get indoors! And then reach down and grab my hand, will you?”

There was some shouting above her and the sound of running feet. Nanny Ogg’s hand appeared, waving around in the fog, and between them they got Tiffany out of the hole.

“Shall we hide under the kitchen table?” said Nanny as Tiffany tried to brush mud and cabbage off her dress. Then Nanny winked. “If it
is
going to explode?”

Her son Shawn came around the house with a bucket of water
in each hand and stopped, looking disappointed that there was nothing to do with them.

“What was it, Mum?” he panted.

Nanny looked at Tiffany, who said: “Er…a giant rock fell out of the sky.”

“Giant rocks can’t stay up in the sky, miss!” said Shawn.

“I expect that’s why this one fell down, lad,” said Nanny briskly. “If you want to do something useful, you can stand guard and make sure nobody comes near it.”

“What shall I do if it explodes, Mum?”

“Come and tell me, will you?” said Nanny.

She hurried Tiffany into the cottage, shut the door behind them, and said: “I’m a dreadful ol’ liar, Tiff, and it takes one to know one. What’s down there?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s going to explode,” said Tiffany. “And if it did, I think the worse that’d happen is that we’d be covered in coleslaw. I think it’s the Cornucopia.”

There was the sound of voices outside and the door was flung open.

“Blessings be upon this house,” said Granny Weatherwax, stamping snow off her boots. “Your boy said I shouldn’t come in, but I think he was wrong. I came as quick as I could. What’s happened?”

“We’ve got cornucopias,” said Nanny Ogg, “whatever
they
are.”

It was later that evening. They’d waited until it was dark before pulling the Cornucopia out of the hole. It was a lot lighter than Tiffany had expected; in fact it had an air about it of something very, very heavy which, for reasons of its own, had become light just for a while.

Now it was on the kitchen table, wiped clean of mud and cabbages. Tiffany thought it looked vaguely alive. It was warm to the touch and seemed to vibrate slightly under her fingers.

“According to Chaffinch,” she said, with the
Mythology
open on her lap, “the god Blind Io created the Cornucopia from a horn of the magical goat Almeg to feed his two children by the Goddess Bisonomy, who was later turned into a shower of oysters by Epidity, God of Things Shaped like Potatoes, after insulting Resonata, Goddess of Weasels, by throwing a mole at her shadow. It is now the badge of office of the summer goddess.”

“I always said there used to be far too much of that sort of thing in the old days,” said Granny Weatherwax.

The witches stared at the thing. It did look a bit like a goat horn, but much larger.

“How does it work?” said Nanny Ogg. She stuck her head inside it and shouted “Hello!” Helloes came back, echoing for a long time, as if they had gone much farther than you would expect them to.

“Looks like a great big seashell to
me
,” was the opinion of Granny Weatherwax. The kitten You padded around the giant thing, sniffing daintily at it. (Greebo was hiding behind the saucepans on the top shelf. Tiffany checked.)

“I don’t think anyone knows,” she said. “But the other name for it is The Horn of Plenty.”

“A horn? Can you play a tune on it?” asked Nanny.

“I don’t think so,” said Tiffany. “It contains…er…things.”

“What sort of things?” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Well, technically…everything,” said Tiffany. “Everything that grows.”

She showed them the picture in the book. All sorts of fruits, vegetables, and grain were spilling from the Cornucopia’s wide mouth.

“Mostly fruit, though,” said Nanny. “Not many carrots, but I suppose they’re up in the pointy end. They’d fit better there.”

“Typical artist,” said Granny. “He just painted the showy stuff in the front. Too proud to paint an honest potato!” She poked at the page with an accusing finger. “And what about these cherubs? We’re not going to get them too, are we? I don’t like to see little babies flying through the air.”

“They turn up a lot in old paintings,” said Nanny Ogg. “They put them in to show it’s Art and not just naughty pictures of ladies with not many clothes on.”

“Well, they’re not fooling
me
,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Go on, Tiff, give it a go,” said Nanny Ogg, walking around the table.

“I don’t know how!” said Tiffany. “There aren’t any instructions!”