It is not good, being in a sandwich of bewildered dancers. They were heavy men. Tiffany was Aching all over. She was covered in bruises, including one the shape of a boot that she wasn’t going to show to anyone.

Feegles filled every flat surface in Miss Treason’s weaving room. She was working at her loom with her back to the room because, she said, this helped her think; but since she was Miss Treason, her position didn’t matter much. There were plenty of eyes and ears she could use, after all. The fire burned hot, and there were candles everywhere. Black ones, of course.

Tiffany was angry. Miss Treason hadn’t shouted, hadn’t even raised her voice. She’d just sighed and said “foolish child,” which was a whole lot worse, mostly because that’s just what Tiffany knew she’d been. One of the dancers had helped bring her back to the cottage. She couldn’t remember anything about that at all.

A witch didn’t do things because they seemed a good idea at the time! That was practically cackling! You had to deal every day with people who were foolish and lazy and untruthful and downright unpleasant, and you could certainly end up thinking that the world would be considerably improved if you gave them a slap. But you didn’t because, as Miss Tick had once explained: a) it would make the world a better place for only a very short time; b) it would then make the world a slightly worse place; and c) you’re not supposed to be as stupid as they are.

Her feet had moved, and she’d listened to them. She ought to have been listening to her head. Now she had to sit by Miss Treason’s fire with a tin hot-water bottle on her lap and a shawl around her.

“So the Wintersmith is a kind of god?” she said.

“That kind o’ thing, yes,” said Billy Bigchin. “But not the prayin’-to kinda god. He just…makes winters. It’s his job, ye ken.”

“He’s an elemental,” said Miss Treason from her loom.

“Aye,” said Rob Anybody. “Gods, elementals, demons, spirits…sometimes it’s hard to tell ’em apart wi’oot a map.”

“And the dance is to welcome winter?” said Tiffany. “That doesn’t make sense! The Morris dance is to welcome the coming of the summer, yes, that’s—”

“Are you an infant?” said Miss Treason. “The year is round! The wheel of the world must spin! That is why up here they dance the Dark Morris, to balance it. They welcome the winter because of the new summer deep inside it!”

Click-clack went the loom. Miss Treason was weaving a new cloth, of brown wool.

“Well, all right,” said Tiffany. “We welcomed it…him. That doesn’t mean he’s supposed to come looking for me!”

“Why did you join the dance?” Miss Treason demanded.

“Er…There was a space, and—”

“Yes. A space. A space not intended for you. Not for you, foolish child. You danced with him, and now he wants to meet such a bold girl. I have never heard of such a thing! I want you to fetch the third book from the right on the second shelf from the top of my bookcase.” She handed Tiffany a heavy black key. “Can you manage to do even that?”

Witches didn’t need to slap the stupid, not when they had a sharp tongue that was always ready.

Miss Treason also had several shelves of books, which was unusual for one of the older witches. The shelves were high up, the books looked big and heavy, and up until now Miss Treason had forbidden Tiffany to dust them, let alone unlock the big black iron band that secured them to the shelves. People who came here always gave them a nervous look. Books were dangerous.

Tiffany unlocked the bands and wiped away the dust. Ah…the books were, like Miss Treason, not everything they seemed. They looked like magic books, but they had names like An Encyclopaedia of Soup. There was a dictionary. Next to it the book Miss Treason had asked for was covered in cobwebs.

Still blushing with shame and anger, Tiffany got the book down, fighting to get it free of the webs. Some of them went pling! as they snapped, and dust fell off the top of the pages. When she opened it, it smelled old and parchmenty, like Miss Treason. The title, in gold lettering that had almost rubbed away, was Chaffinch’s Ancient and Classical Mythology. It was full of bookmarks.

“Pages eighteen and nineteen,” said Miss Treason, her head not moving. Tiffany turned to them.

“‘The Dacne of the Sneasos’?” she said. “Is that supposed to be ‘The Dance of the Seasons’?”

“Regrettably, the artist, Don Weizen de Yoyo, whose famous masterpiece that was, did not have the same talent with letters as he had with painting,” said Miss Treason. “They worried him, for some reason. I notice you mention the words before the pictures. You are a bookish child.”

The picture was…strange. It showed two figures. Tiffany hadn’t seen masquerade costumes. There wasn’t the money at home for that sort of thing. But she’d read about them, and this was pretty much what she’d imagined.

The page showed a man and a woman—or, at least, things that looked like a man and a woman. The woman was labeled “Summer” and was tall and blond and beautiful, and therefore to the short, brown-haired Tiffany was a figure of immediate distrust. She was carrying what looked like a big basket shaped like a shell, which was full of fruit.

The man, “Winter,” was old and bent and gray. Icicles glittered on his beard.

“Ach, that’s wha’ the Wintersmith would look like, sure enough,” said Rob Anybody, strolling across the page. “Ol’ Frosty.”

“Him?” said Tiffany. “That’s the Wintersmith? He looks a hundred years old!”

“A youngster, eh?” said Miss Treason nastily.

“Dinna let him kiss ye, or yer nose might turn blue and fall off!” said Daft Wullie cheerfully.

“Daft Wullie, don’t you dare say things like that!” said Tiffany.

“I wuz just tryin’ to lighten the mood, ye ken,” said Wullie, looking sheepish.

“That’s an artist’s impression, of course,” said Miss Treason.

“What does that mean?” said Tiffany, staring at the picture. It was wrong. She knew it. This wasn’t what he was like at all….

“It means he made it up,” said Billy Bigchin. “He wouldna ha’ seen him, noo, would he? No one’s seen the Wintersmith.”

“Yet!” said Daft Wullie.

“Wullie,” said Rob Anybody, turning to his brother, “ye ken I told ye aboot makin’ tactful remarks?”

“Aye, Rob, I ken weel,” said Wullie obediently.

“What ye just said wuz not one o’ them,” said Rob.

Wullie hung his head. “Sorry, Rob.”

Tiffany clenched her fists. “I didn’t mean all this to happen!”

Miss Treason turned her chair with some solemnity.

“Then what did you mean? Will you tell me? Did you dance out of youth’s inclination to disobey old age? To mean is to think. Did you think at all? Others have joined in the dance before now. Children, drunkards, youths for a silly bet…nothing happened. The spring and autumn dances are…just an old tradition, most people would say. Just a way of marking when ice and fire exchange their dominion over the world. Some of us think we know better. We think something happens. For you, the dance became real, and something has happened. And now the Wintersmith is seeking you.”

“Why?” Tiffany managed.

“I don’t know. When you were dancing, did you see anything? Hear anything?”

How could you describe the feeling of being everywhere and everything? Tiffany wondered. She didn’t try.

“I…thought I heard a voice, or maybe two voices,” she mumbled. “Er, they asked me who I was.”

“Int-ter-rest-ting,” said Miss Treason. “Two voices? I will consider the implications. What I can’t understand is how he found you. I will think about that. In the meantime, I expect it would be a good idea to wear warm clothing.”

“Aye,” said Rob Anybody, “the Wintersmith canna abide the heat. Oh, I’ll be forgettin’ my ain heid next! We brought a wee letter from that hollow tree down in the forest. Gi’ it to the big wee hag, Wullie. We picked it up on the way past.”

“A letter?” said Tiffany, as the loom clacked behind her and Daft Wullie began to pull a grubby, rolled-up envelope from his spog.

“It’s from that wee heap o’ jobbies at the castle back hame,” Rob went on, as his brother hauled. “He says he bides fine and hopes ye do likewise, an’ he’s lookin’ forward to you bein’ back hame soon, an’ there’s lots o’ stuff about how the ships are doin’ an’ suchlike, no’ verra interestin’ in ma opinion, an’ he’s writ S. W. A. L. K. on the bottom, but we havena worked out what that means yet.”

“You read my letter?” said Tiffany in horror.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob with pride. “Nae problem. Billy Bigchin here gave me a wee hint with some o’ the longer words, but it was mostly me, aye.” He beamed, but the grin faded as he watched Tiffany’s expression. “Ach, I ken you’re a wee bitty upset that we opened yon envelope thingy,” he explained. “But that’s okay, ’cuz we glued it up again wi’ slug. Ye wouldna ever know it’d been read.”

He coughed, because Tiffany was still glaring at him. All women were a bit scary to the Feegles, and witches were the worst. At last, when he was really nervous, Tiffany said: “How did you know where that letter would be?”

She glanced sideways at Daft Wullie. He was chewing the edge of his kilt. He only ever did this when he was frightened.

“Er…would you accept a wee bittie lie?” Rob said.

“No!”

“It’s interestin’. There’s dragons an’ unicorns in it—”

“No. I want the truth!”

“Ach, it’s so boring. We go to the Baron’s castle an’ read the letters ye sent him, an’, an’ ye said the postman knows to leave letters tae you in the hollow tree by the waterfall,” said Rob.

If the Wintersmith had got into the cottage, the air couldn’t have been any colder.

“He keeps the letters fra’ ye in a box under his—” Rob began, and then shut his eyes as Tiffany’s patience parted with a twang even louder than Miss Treason’s strange cobwebs.

“Don’t you know it’s wrong to read other people’s letters?” she demanded.

“Er…” Rob Anybody began.

“And you broke into the Baron’s cast—”

“Ah, ah, ah, no, no, no!” said Rob, jumping up and down. “Ye canna get us on that one! We just walked in through one of them little wee slits for the firin’ o’ the arrows—”

“And then you read my personal letters sent personally to Roland?” said Tiffany. “They were personal!”

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody. “But dinna fash yersel’—we willna tell anyone what was in ’em.”

“We ne’er tell a soul what’s in yer diary, after all,” said Daft Wullie. “Not e’en the bits wi’ the flowers ye draw aroound them.”

Miss Treason is grinning to herself behind me, Tiffany thought. I just know she is. But she’d run out of nasty tones of voice. You did that after talking to the Feegles for any length of time.

You were their Kelda, her Second Thoughts reminded her. They think they have a solemn duty to protect you. It doesn’t matter what you think. They’re going to make your life sooo complicated.

“Don’t read my letters,” she said, “and don’t read my diary, either.”

“Okay,” said Rob Anybody.

“Promise?”

“Oh, aye.”

“But you promised last time!”

“Oh, aye.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Oh, aye, nae problemo.”

“And that’s the promise of an untrustworthy, lying, stealing Feegle, is it?” said Miss Treason. “Because ye believe ye’re deid already, do ye no’? That’s what ye people think, right?”

“Oh, aye, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. “Thank ye for drawin’ ma attention tae that.”

“In fact, Rob Anybody, ye ha’ nae intention o’ keepin’ any promise at all!”

“Aye, mistress,” said Rob proudly. “Not puir wee weak promises like that. Becuz, ye see, ’tis oor solemn destiny to guard the big wee hag. We mus’ lay doon oor lives for her if it comes to it.”

“How can ye do that when ye’re deid already?” said Miss Treason sharply.

“That’s a bit o’ a puzzler, right enough,” said Rob, “so probably we’ll lay doon the lives o’ any scunners who do wrong by her.”

Tiffany gave up and sighed. “I’m almost thirteen,” she said. “I can look after myself.”

“Hark at Miss Self-Reliant,” said Miss Treason, but not in a particularly nasty way. “Against the Wintersmith?”

“What does he want?” said Tiffany.

“I told you. Perhaps he wants to find out what kind of girl was so forward as to dance with him?” said Miss Treason.

“It was my feet! I said I didn’t mean to!”

Miss Treason turned around in her chair. How many eyes is she using? Tiffany’s Second Thoughts wondered. The Feegles? The ravens? The mice? All of them? How many of me is she seeing? Is she watching me with mice, or insects with dozens of glittery eyes?

“Oh, that’s all right then,” said Miss Treason. “Once again, you didn’t mean it. A witch takes responsibility! Have you learned nothing, child?”

Child. That was a terrible thing to say to anyone who was almost thirteen. Tiffany felt herself going red again. The horrible hotness spread inside her head.

That was why she walked across the room, opened the front door, and stepped outside.

A fluffy snow was falling, very gently. When Tiffany looked into the pale-gray sky, she saw the flakes drifting down in soft, feathery clusters; it was the kind of snow that people back home on the Chalk called “Granny Aching shearing her sheep.”

Tiffany felt the flakes melting on her hair as she walked away from the cottage. Miss Treason was shouting from the doorway, but she walked on, letting the snow cool her blushes.

Of course this is stupid, she told herself. But being a witch is stupid. Why do we do it? It’s hard work for not much reward. What’s a good day for Miss Treason? When someone brings her a secondhand pair of old boots that fit properly! What does she know about anything?

Where is the Wintersmith, then? Is he here? I’ve only got Miss Treason’s word for it! That and a made-up picture in a book!

“Wintersmith!” she shouted.

You could hear the snow falling. It made a strange little noise, like a faint, cold sizzle.

“Wintersmith!”

There was no reply.

Well, what had she expected? A big booming voice? Mr. Spiky the icicle man? There was nothing but the softness of white snow falling patiently among dark trees.

She felt a bit silly now, but satisfied, too. This was what a witch did! She faced what she was afraid of, and then it held no more fear! She was good at this!

She turned—and saw the Wintersmith.

Remember this, said her Third Thoughts, cutting in. Every little detail is important.

The Wintersmith was……nothing. But the snow outlined him. It flowed around him in lines, as if traveling on an invisible skin. He was just a shape, and nothing more, except perhaps for two tiny pale purple-gray dots in the air, where you might expect to find eyes.

Tiffany stood still, her mind frozen, her body waiting to be told what to do.

The hand made of falling snow was reaching toward her now, but very slowly, as you would reach out toward an animal you do not want to frighten. There was…something, some strange sense of things unsaid because there was no voice to say them, a sense of striving, as if the thing were putting heart and soul into this moment, even if it did not know the meaning of heart or soul.

The hand stopped about a foot away from her. It was formed into a fist, and now it turned over and the fingers opened.

Something gleamed. It was the white horse, made of silver, on a fine silver chain.

Tiffany’s hand flew to her throat. But she’d had it on last night! Before she went…to…watch…the…dance….

It must have come off! And he’d found it!

That’s interesting, said her Third Thoughts that busied themselves with the world in their own way. You can’t see what’s hidden inside an invisible fist. How does that work? And why are those little purple-gray blurs in the air where you’d expect to find eyes? Why aren’t they invisible?

That’s Third Thoughts for you. When a huge rock is going to land on your head, they’re the thoughts that think: Is that an igneous rock, such as granite, or is it sandstone?

That part of Tiffany’s brain that was a little less precise at the moment watched the silver horse dangle on its chain.

Her First Thought was: Take it.

Her Second Thought was: Don’t take it. It’s a trap.

Her Third Thought was: Really don’t take it. It will be colder than you can imagine.

And then the rest of her overruled the Thoughts entirely and said: Take it. It’s part of who you are. Take it. When you hold it, you think of home. Take it!

She held out her right hand.

The horse dropped into it. Instinctively she closed her fingers over it. It was indeed colder than she could have imagined, and it burned.

She screamed. The Wintersmith’s snowy outline became a flurry of flakes. The snow around her feet erupted with a cry of “Crivens!” as a mass of Feegles grabbed her feet and carried her, upright, across the clearing and back in through the cottage’s doorway.

Tiffany forced her hand open and, with trembling fingers, pulled the silver horse off her palm. It left a perfect print, a white horse on pink flesh. It wasn’t a burn, it was a…freeze.

Miss Treason’s chair rumbled around on its wheels.

“Come here, child,” she ordered.

Still clasping her hand, trying to force back the tears, Tiffany walked over to her.

“Stand right here by my chair, this instant!”

Tiffany did so. This was no time to be disobedient.

“I wish to look in your ear,” said Miss Treason. “Brush your hair aside.”

Tiffany held back her hair, and winced when she heard the tickle of mouse whiskers. Then the creature was taken away.

“Ah, I am surprised,” said Miss Treason. “I can see nothing.”

“Er…what were you expecting to see?” Tiffany ventured.

“Daylight!” snapped Miss Treason, so loudly that the mouse scuttled away. “Have you no brains at all, child?”

“Ah dunno if anyone is interested,” said Rob Anybody, “but I think yon Wintersmith has offskied. An’ it’s stopped snowin’.”

No one was listening. When witches row, they concentrate.

“It was mine!”

“A trinket!”

“No!”

“O’ course, this may not be the best time tae tell ye…” Rob went on, miserably.

“You think you need it to be a witch?”

“Yes!”

“A witch needs no devices!”

“You’ve used shambles!”

“Used, yes! Don’t need. Not need!”

“Ah mean, it’s quite meltin’ awa—” Rob said, smiling nervously.

Anger grabbed Tiffany’s tongue. How dare this stupid old crone talk about not needing things!

“Boffo!” she shouted. “Boffo, Boffo, Boffo!”

Silence slammed down. After a while Miss Treason looked past Tiffany and said: “Ye wee Feegle schemies! Get oot o’ here right noo! Ah’ll ken it if ye don’t! This is hag business!”

The room filled with a sort of whooshing noise, and the door to the kitchen slammed shut.

“So,” said Miss Treason, “you know about Boffo, do you?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany, breathing heavily. “I do.”

“Very well. And have you told anyone—?” Miss Treason paused and raised a finger to her lips. Then she banged a stick on the floor. “Ah said get oot, ye scunners! Off intae the woods w’ ye! Check that he’s really gang awa’! I’ll see yer guilt through yer own een if ye defy me!”

From below there was the sound of a lot of potatoes rumbling as the Feegles scrambled out through the little ventilation grill.

“Now they’ve gone,” said Miss Treason. “They’ll stay gone, too. Boffo will see to that.”

Somehow, in the space of a few seconds, Miss Treason had become more human and a lot less scary. Well…slightly less scary.

“How did you find out? Did you go looking for it? Did you go prowling and rummaging?” said Miss Treason.

“No! I’m not like that! I found out by accident one day when you were having a nap!” Tiffany rubbed her hand.

“Does that hurt a lot?” said Miss Treason, leaning forward. She might be blind, but—like all the senior witches who knew what they were doing—she noticed everything.

“No, not now. It did, though. Look, I—”

“Then you will learn to listen! Do you think the Wintersmith has gone?”

“He just seemed to vanish—I mean, vanish even more. I think he just wanted to give me back my necklace.”

“Do you think that is the sort of thing the spirit of Winter, who commands the blizzard and the frost, would really do?”

“I don’t know, Miss Treason! He’s the only one I’ve met!”

“You danced with him.”

“I didn’t know I was going to!”

“Nevertheless.”

Tiffany waited, and then said: “Nevertheless what?”

“Just general neverthelessness. The little horse led him to you. But he’s not here now—you’re right about that. I’d know if he was.”

Tiffany walked up to the front door, hesitated for just a moment, and then opened it and went out into the clearing. There was a bit of snow here and there, but the day was turning into just another one of those gray-skyed winter days.

I’d know if he was, too, she thought. And he isn’t. And her Second Thoughts said: Oh? How do you know?

“We’ve both touched the horse,” she said under her breath.

She looked around at the empty branches and the sleeping trees, fiddling with the silver chain in her hand. The forests were curling in on themselves, ready for the winter.

He’s out there, but not close. He must be very busy, with a whole winter to make….

She said, “Thank you!” automatically, because her mother had always said that politeness costs nothing, and went back in. It was very hot inside now, but Miss Treason always had a huge log pile built by the Secret of Boffo. The local woodcutters always kept the pile high. A chilly witch might get nasty.

“I should like a cup of black tea,” said the old woman as Tiffany walked in, looking thoughtful.

She waited until Tiffany was washing out the cup, then said: “Have you heard the stories about me, child?” The voice was kindly. There had been shouts, there had been things said that might have been better put, there had been temper and defiance. But they were there together, with nowhere else to go. The quiet voice was a peace offering, and Tiffany was glad of it.

“Er, that you have a demon in the cellar?” Tiffany answered, her mind still full of puzzles. “And you eat spiders? And get visited by kings and princes? And that any flower planted in your garden blooms black?”

“Oh, do they say so?” said Miss Treason, looking delighted. “I haven’t heard that last one. How nice. And did you hear that I walk around at night in the dark time of the year and reward those who have been good citizens with a purse of silver? But if they have been bad, I slit open their bellies with my thumbnail like this?”

Tiffany leaped backward as a wrinkled hand twisted her around and Miss Treason’s yellow thumbnail scythed past her stomach. The old woman looked terrifying.

“No! No, I haven’t heard that one!” she gasped, pressing up against the sink.

“What? And it was a wonderful story, with real historical antecedents!” said Miss Treason, her vicious scowl becoming a smile. “And the one about me having a cow’s tail?”

“A cow’s tail? No!”

“Really? How very vexing,” said Miss Treason, lowering her finger. “I fear the art of storytelling has got into a pretty bad way in these parts. I really shall have to do something.”

“This is just another kind of Boffo, right?” said Tiffany. She wasn’t totally sure. Miss Treason had looked pretty scary with that thumbnail. No wonder girls left so quickly.

“Ah, you do have a brain, after all. Of course it is. Boffo, yes. A good name for it. Boffo, indeed. The art of expectations. Show people what they want to see, show ’em what they think should be there. I have a reputation to keep up, after all.”

Boffo, Tiffany thought. Boffo, Boffo, Boffo.

She went over to the skulls, picked one up, and read the label underneath, just like she’d done a month ago:

 

Ghastly Skull No. 1 Price $2.99
The Boffo Novelty & Joke Shop
No. 4, Tenth Egg Street, Ankh-Morpork
“If it’s a laugh…it’s a Boffo!”

 

“Very lifelike, aren’t they,” said Miss Treason, clicking back to her chair, “if you can say that about a skull, of course! The shop sold a wonderful machine for making spiderwebs. You poured in this sticky stuff, d’you see, and with practice quite good webs could be made. Can’t abide creepy-crawlies, but of course I’ve got to have the webs. Did you notice the dead flies?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany, glancing up. “They’re raisins. I thought you had vegetarian spiders.”

“Well done. Nothing wrong with your eyes, at least. I got my hat from there, too. ‘Wicked Old Witch Number Three, A Must for Scary Parties,’ I think it was. I’ve still got their catalogue somewhere, if you’re interested.”

“Do all witches buy from Boffo?” asked Tiffany.

“Only me, at least around here. Oh, and I believe Old Mistress Breathless over in Two Falls used to buy warts from there.”

“But…why?” said Tiffany.

“She couldn’t grow them. Just couldn’t grow them at all, poor woman. Tried everything. Face like a baby’s bottom, her whole life.”

“No, I meant, why do you want to seem so”—Tiffany hesitated, and went on—“awful?”

“I have my reasons,” said Miss Treason.

“But you don’t do those things the stories say you do, do you? Kings and princes don’t come to consult you, do they?”

“No, but they might,” said Miss Treason stoutly. “If they got lost, for example. Oh, I know all about those stories. I made up most of them!”

“You made up stories about yourself?”

“Oh, yes. Of course. Why not? I couldn’t leave something as important as that to amateurs.”

“But people say you can see a man’s soul!”

Miss Treason chuckled. “Yes. Didn’t make that one up! But I’ll tell you, for some of my parishioners I’d need a magnifying glass! I see what they see, I hear with their ears. I knew their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers. I know the rumors and the secrets and the stories and the truths. And I am Justice to them, and I am fair. Look at me. See me.”

Tiffany looked—and looked past the black cloak and the skulls and the rubber cobwebs and the black flowers and the blindfold and the stories, and saw a little deaf and blind old lady.

Boffo made the difference…not just the silly party stuff, but Boffo-thinking—the rumors and the stories. Miss Treason had power because people thought she did. It was like the standard witch’s hat. But Miss Treason was taking Boffo much, much further.

“A witch needs no devices, Miss Treason,” Tiffany said.

“Don’t get smart with me, child. Didn’t the girl Weatherwax tell you all this? Oh, yes, you don’t need a wand or a shamble or even a pointy hat to be a witch. But it helps a witch to put on a show! People expect it. They’ll believe in you. I didn’t get where I am today by wearing a woolly bobble hat and a gingham apron! I look the part. I—”

There was a crash from outside, in the direction of the dairy.

“Our little blue friends?” said Miss Treason, raising her eyebrows.

“No, they’re absolutely forbidden to go into any dairy I work in,” Tiffany began, heading for the door. “Oh dear, I hope it’s not Horace—”

“I told you he’d be nothing but trouble, did I not?” Miss Treason shouted as Tiffany hurried away.

It was Horace. He’d squeezed out of his cage again. He could make himself quite runny when he wanted to.

There was a broken butter dish on the floor, but although it had been full of butter, there was none there now. There was just a greasy patch.

And, from the darkness under the sink, there came a sort of high-speed grumbling noise, a kind of mnnamnamnam….

“Oh, you’re after butter now, are you, Horace?” said Tiffany, picking up the dairy broom. “That’s practically cannibalism, you know.”

Still, it was better than mice, she had to admit. Finding little piles of mouse bones on the floor was a bit distressing. Even Miss Treason had not been able to work that one out. A mouse she happened to be looking through would be trying to get at the cheeses and then it would all go dark.

That was because Horace was a cheese.

Tiffany knew that Lancre Blue cheeses were always a bit on the lively side, and sometimes had to be nailed down, but…well, she was highly skilled at cheese making, even though she said it herself, and Horace was definitely a champion. The famous blue streaks that gave the variety its wonderful color were really pretty, although Tiffany wasn’t sure they should glow in the dark.

She prodded the shadows with the end of the broom. There was a crack, and when she pulled the stick out again, two inches were missing from the end. Then there was a ptooi! noise and the missing piece of handle bounced off the wall on the other side of the room.

“No more milk for you, then,” said Tiffany, straightening up, and she thought:

He came to give me the horse back. The Wintersmith did that.

Um…

That is quite…impressive, when you think about it.

I mean, he’s got to organize avalanches and gales and come up with new shapes for snowflakes and everything, but he spared a bit of time just to come and give me my necklace back. Um…

And he just stood there.

And then he just vanished—I mean vanished even more.

Um…

She left Horace muttering under the sink and made tea for Miss Treason, who was back at her weaving. Then she quietly went up to her room.

Tiffany’s diary was three inches thick. Annagramma, another local trainee witch and one of her friends (more or less), said that she should really call it her Book of Shadows and write it on vellum using one of the special magical inks sold at Zakzak Stronginthearm’s Magical Emporium at Popular Prices—at least, prices that were popular with Zakzak.

Tiffany couldn’t afford one. You could only trade witchcraft—you weren’t supposed to sell it. Miss Treason didn’t mind her selling cheeses, but even so paper was expensive up here, and the wandering peddlers never had very much to sell. They usually had an ounce or two of green copperas, though, which could make a decent ink if you mixed it with crushed oak galls or green walnut shells.

The diary was now as thick as a brick with extra pages Tiffany had glued in. She’d worked out that she could make it last two more years if she wrote small.

On the leather cover she had, with a hot skewer, drawn the words “Feegles Keep Out!!” It had never worked. They looked upon that sort of thing as an invitation. She wrote parts of the diary in code these days. Reading didn’t come naturally to the Chalk Hill Feegles, so surely they’d never get the hang of a code.

She looked around carefully, in any case, and unlocked the huge padlock that secured a chain around the book. She turned to today’s date, dipped her pen in the ink, and wrote: “Met t*.”

Yes, a snowflake would be a good code for the Wintersmith.

He just stood there, she thought.

And he ran away because I screamed.

Which was a good thing, obviously.

Um…

But…I wish I hadn’t screamed.

She opened her hand. The image of the horse was still there, as white as chalk, but there was no pain at all.

Tiffany gave a little shiver and pulled herself together. So? She had met the spirit of Winter. She was a witch. It was the sort of thing that sometimes happened. He’d politely given her back what was hers, and then he’d gone. There was no call to get soppy about it. There were things to do.

Then she wrote: “Ltr frm R.”

She very carefully opened the letter from Roland, which was easy because slug slime isn’t much of a glue. With any luck she could even reuse the envelope. She hunched over the letter so that no one could read it over her shoulder. Finally she said: “Miss Treason, will you get out of my face, please? I need to use my eyeballs privately.”

There was a pause and then a mutter from downstairs, and the tickling behind her eyes went away.

It was always…good to get a letter from Roland. Yes, they were often about the sheep, and other things of the Chalk, and sometimes there’d be a dried flower inside, a harebell or a cowslip. Granny Aching wouldn’t have approved of that; she always said that if the hills had wanted people to pick the flowers, they would have grown more of them.

The letters always made her homesick.

One day Miss Treason had said, “This young man who writes to you…is he your beau?” and Tiffany had changed the subject until she had time to look up the word in the dictionary and then more time to stop blushing.

Roland was…well, the thing about Roland was…the main thing about…well, the point was…he was there.

Okay, when she’d first really met him, he had been a rather useless, rather stupid lump, but what could you expect? He’d been the prisoner of the Queen of the Elves for a year, to start with, fat as butter and half crazy on sugar and despair. Besides, he’d been brought up by a couple of haughty aunts, his father—the Baron—being mostly more interested in horses and dogs.

He’d more and less changed since then: more thoughtful, less rowdy, more serious, less stupid. He’d also had to wear glasses, the first ever seen on the Chalk.

And he had a library! More than a hundred books! Actually, it belonged to the castle, but no one else seemed interested in it.

Some of the books were huge and ancient, with wooden covers and huge black letters and colored pictures of strange animals and far-off places. There was Waspmire’s Book of Unusual Days, Crumberry’s Why Things Are Not Otherwise, and all but one volume of the Ominous Encyclopaedia. Roland had been astonished to find that she could read foreign words, and she’d been careful not to tell him it was all done with the help of what remained of Dr. Bustle.

The thing was…the fact was…well, who else had they got? Roland couldn’t, just couldn’t have friends among the village kids, what with him being the son of the Baron and everything. But Tiffany had the pointy hat now, and that counted for something. The people of the Chalk didn’t like witches much, but she was Granny Aching’s granddaughter, right? No tellin’ what she’d learned from the ol’ girl, up at the shepherding hut. And they do say she showed those witches up in the mountains what witchin’s all about, eh? Remember the lambing last year? She prit near brought dead lambs back to life just by lookin’ at ’em! And she’s an Aching, and they’ve got these hills in their bones. She’s all right. She’s ours, see?

And that was fine, except that she didn’t have any old friends anymore. Kids back home who’d been friendly were now…respectful, because of the hat. There was a kind of wall, as if she’d grown up and they hadn’t. What could they talk about? She’d been to places they couldn’t even imagine. Most of them hadn’t even been to Twoshirts, which was only half a day away. And this didn’t worry them at all. They were going to do the jobs their fathers did, or raise children like their mothers did. And that was fine, Tiffany added hurriedly to herself. But they hadn’t decided. It was just happening to them, and they didn’t notice.

It was the same up in the mountains. The only people of her own age she could actually talk to were other witches-in-training like Annagramma and the rest of the girls. It was useless trying to have a real conversation with people in the villages, especially the boys. They just looked down and mumbled and shuffled their feet, like people at home when they had to talk to the Baron.

Actually, Roland did that too, and he went red every time she looked at him. Whenever she visited the castle, or walked on the hills with him, the air was full of complicated silences…just like it had been with the Wintersmith.

She read the letter carefully, trying to ignore the grubby Feegle fingerprints all over it. He’d been kind enough to include several spare sheets of paper.

She smoothed one out, very carefully, stared at the wall for a while, and then began to write.

Down in the scullery,* Horace the cheese had come out from behind the slop bucket. Now he was in front of the back door. If a cheese ever looked thoughtful, Horace looked thoughtful now.

 

In the tiny village of Twoshirts, the driver of the mail coach was having a bit of a problem. A lot of mail from the countryside around Twoshirts ended up at the souvenir shop there, which also acted as the post office.

Usually the driver just picked up the mailbag, but today there was a difficulty. He frantically turned over the pages of the book of Post Office Regulations.

Miss Tick tapped her foot. This was getting on his nerves.

“Ah, ah, ah,” said the coachman triumphantly. “Says here no animals, birds, dragons, or fish!”

“And which one of them do you think I am?” asked Miss Tick icily.

“Ah, well, right, well, human is kind of like animal, right? I mean, look at monkeys, right?”

“I have no wish to look at monkeys,” said Miss Tick. “I have seen the sort of things they do.”

The coachman clearly spotted that this was a road not to go down, and turned the pages furiously. Then he beamed.

“Ah, ah, ah!” he said. “How much do you weigh, miss?”

“Two ounces,” said Miss Tick. “Which by chance is the maximum weight of a letter that can be sent to the Lancre and Near Hinterland area for ten pence.” She pointed to the two stamps gummed to her lapel. “I have already purchased my stamps.”

“You never weigh two ounces!” said the coachman. “You’re a hundred and twenty pounds at least!”

Miss Tick sighed. She’d wanted to avoid this, but Twoshirts wasn’t Dogbend, after all. It lived on the highway, it watched the world go past. She reached up and pressed the button that worked her hat.

“Would you like me to forget you just said that?” she asked.

“Why?” said the coachman.

There was a pause while Miss Tick stared blankly at him. Then she turned her eyes upward.

“Excuse me,” she said. “This is always happening, I’m afraid. It’s the duckings, you know. The spring rusts.”

She reached up and banged the side of the hat. The hidden pointy bit shot up, scattering paper flowers.

The coachman’s eyes followed it. “Oh,” he said.

And the thing about pointy hats was this: The person under one was definitely a witch or a wizard. Oh, someone who wasn’t could probably get a pointy hat and go out wearing it, and they’d be fine right up until the moment when they met a real pointy-hat owner. Wizards and witches don’t like impostors. They also don’t like being kept waiting.

“How much do I weigh now, pray?” she asked.

“Two ounces!” said the coachman quickly.

Miss Tick smiled. “Yes. And not one scruple more! A scruple being, of course, a weight of twenty grains, or one twenty-fourth of an ounce. I am in fact…unscrupulous!”

She waited to see if this extremely teachery joke was going to get a smile but didn’t mind when it didn’t. Miss Tick rather liked being smarter than other people.

She got on the coach.

As the coach climbed up into the mountains, snow started to fall. Miss Tick, who knew that no two snowflakes are alike, didn’t pay them any attention. If she had done so, she’d have felt slightly less smart.

 

Tiffany slept. A fire glowed in the bedroom grate. Downstairs, Miss Treason’s loom wove its way through the night….

Small blue figures crept across the bedroom floor and, by forming a Feegle pyramid, reached the top of the little table Tiffany used as a desk.

Tiffany turned over in bed and made a little snfgl noise. The Feegles froze, just for a moment, and then the bedroom door swung gently shut behind them.

A blue blur raised a trail of dust on the narrow stairs, across the loom-room floor, out into the scullery, and through a strange cheese-shaped hole in the outside door. From then on it was a trail of disturbed leaves leading deep into the woods, where a small fire burned. It lit the faces of a horde of Feegles, although it may not have wanted to.

The blur stopped and became about six Feegles, two of them carrying Tiffany’s diary.

They laid it down carefully.

“We’re well oot o’ that hoose,” said Big Yan. “Dija see dem bigjob skulls? There’s a hag ye wouldna want tae cross in a hurry!”

“Ach, I see she’s got one o’ they paddly locks again,” said Daft Wullie, walking around the diary.

“Rob, I canna help thinkin’ that it’s no’ right tae read this,” said Billy Bigchin, as Rob put his arm into the keyhole. “It’s pers’nal!”

“She’s oor hag. What’s pers’nal tae her is pers’nal tae us,” said Rob matter-of-factly, fishing around inside the lock. “Besides, she must want someone tae read it, ’cuz she wrote things doon. Nae point in writin’ stuff doon if ye dinna want it read! It’s a sheer waste o’ pencil!”

“Mebbe she wanted tae read it hersel’,” said Billy doubtfully.

“Oh, aye? Why’d she want tae do that?” said Rob scornfully. “She already kens what’s in it. An’ Jeannie wants tae know what she’s thinkin’ aboot the Baron’s lad.”

There was a click, and the padlock opened. The assembled Feeglehood watched carefully.

Rob turned the rustling pages and grinned.

“Ach, she’s writ here: Oh, the dear Feegles ha’ turned up again,” he said. This met with general applause.

“Ach, what a kind girl she is tae write that,” said Billy Bigchin. “Can I see?”

He read: Oh dear, the Feegles have turned up again.

“Ah,” he said. Billy Bigchin had come with Jeannie all the way from the Long Lake clan. The clan there was more at home with the reading and writing, and since he was the gonnagle, he was expected to be good at both.

The Chalk Hill Feegles, on the other hand, were more at home with the drinkin’, stealin’, and fightin’, and Rob Anybody was good at all three. But he’d learned to read and write because Jeannie had asked him to. He did them with a lot more optimism than accuracy, Billy knew. When he was faced with a long sentence, he tended to work out a few words and then have a great big guess.

“The art o’ readin’ is all aboot understandin’ whut the wurds is tryin’ tae say, right?” said Rob.

“Aye, mebbe,” said Big Yan, “but is there any wurd there tae tell us that the big wee hag is sweet on that heap o’ jobbies doon in the stone castle?”

“Ye ha’ a verra ro-mantic nature,” said Rob. “And the answer is: I canna tell. They writes some bits o’ their letters in them wee codies. That’s a terrible thing tae do to a reader. It’s hard enough readin’ the normal words, wi’oot somebody jumblin’ them all up.”

“It’ll be a baaaad look-oot fra’ us all if the big wee hag starts mindin’ boys instead o’ gettin’ the knowin’ o’ the hagglin’,” said Big Yan.

“Aye, but the boy willna be interested in marryin’,” said Slightly Mad Angus.

“He might be one day,” said Billy Bigchin, who’d made a hobby of watching humans. “Most bigjob men get married.”

“They do?” said a Feegle in astonishment.

“Oh, aye.”

“They want tae get married?”

“A lot o’ them do, aye,” said Billy.

“So there’s nae more drinkin’, stealin’, an’ fightin’?”

“Hey, ah’m still allowed some drinkin’ an’ stealin’ an’ fightin’!” said Rob Anybody.

“Aye, Rob, but we canna help noticin’ ye also have tae do the Explainin’, too,” said Daft Wullie.

There was a general nodding from the crowd. To Feegles, Explaining was a dark art. It was just so hard.

“Like, when we come back from drinkin’, stealin’, an’ fightin’, Jeannie gives ye the Pursin’ o’ the Lips,” Daft Wullie went on.

A moan went up from all the Feegles: “Ooooh, save us from the Pursin’ o’ the Lips!”

“An’ there’s the Foldin’ o’ the Arms,” said Wullie, because he was even scaring himself.

“Oooooh, waily, waily, waily, the Foldin’ o’ the Arms!” the Feegles cried, tearing at their hair.

“Not tae mention the Tappin’ o’ the Feets….” Wullie stopped, not wanting to mention the Tappin’ o’ the Feets.

“Aargh! Oooooh! No’ the Tappin’ o’ the Feets!” Some of the Feegles started to bang their heads on trees.

“Aye, aye, aye, BUT,” said Rob Anybody desperately, “what youse dinna ken is that this is part o’ the hiddlins o’ husbandry.”

Feegles looked at one another. There was silence except for the creak of a small tree as it fell over.

“We never heard o’ any sich thing, Rob,” said Big Yan.

“Well, an’ ah’m no’ surprised! Who’d tell ye? Ye ain’t married! Ye dinna get the po-et-ic symmi-tree o’ the whole thing. Gather roound ’til I tell ye….”

Rob looked around to see if anyone apart from about five hundred Feegles was watching him, and went on: “See…first ye get the drinkin’ an’ the fightin’ an’ the stealin’, okay. An’ when you get back tae the mound, it’s time for the Tappin’ o’ the Feets—”

“Ooooooo!”

“—an’ the Foldin’ o’ the Arms—”

“Aaaargh!”

“—an’, o’ course, the Pursin’ o’ the Lips an’ will ye scunners knock it off wi’ the groanin’ before I starts bangin’ heids together! Right?”

All the Feegles fell silent, except for one:

“Oh, waily, waily, waily! Ohhhhhhh! Aaarrgh! The Pursin’…o’…the…”

He stopped and looked around in embarrassment.

“Daft Wullie?” said Rob Anybody with icy patience.

“Aye, Rob?”

“Ye ken I told yez there wuz times ye should listen to whut I was sayin’?”

“Aye, Rob?”

“That wuz one o’ them times.”

Daft Wullie hung his head. “Sorry, Rob.”

“Aye! Now, where wuz I…Oh, aye…we get the lips an’ the arms an’ the feets, okay? An’ then—”

“It’s time for the Explainin’!” said Daft Wullie.

“Aye!” snapped Rob Anybody. “Any one o’ youse mudlins want to be the one who dares tae do the Explainin’?”

He looked around.

The Feegles shuffled backward.

“Wi’ the kelda a-pursin’ an’ a-foldin’ an’ a-tappin’,” Rob went on in a voice of Doom, “an’ that look in her bonny eye that says: ‘This Explanation had better be really guid’? Well? Do ye?”

By now Feegles were crying and chewing the edges of their kilts in terror.

“No, Rob,” they murmured.

“No, aye!” said Rob Anybody triumphantly. “Ye wouldna! That’s because you don’t have the knowin’ o’ the husbandry!”

“I heard Jeannie say ye come up with Explanations no other Feegle in all the world would try,” said Daft Wullie admiringly.

“Aye, that’s quite likely,” said Rob, swelling with pride. “An’ Feegles has got a fine tradition o’ huge Explanations!”

“She said some of your Explainin’ is so long an’ twisty, by the time ye’ve got to the end, she canna recall how they started,” Daft Wullie went on.

“It’s a nat’ral gift—I wouldna wanta boast,” said Rob, waving his hand modestly.

“I can’t see bigjobs bein’ good at Explainin’,” said Big Yan. “They’re verra slow thinkers.”

“They still get wed, though,” said Billy Bigchin.

“Aye, and yon boy in the big castle is bein’ too friendly wi’ the big wee hag,” said Big Yan. “His da is gettin’ old an’ sick, and soon yon boy will own a big stone castle an’ the wee bittie papers that says that he owns the hills.”

“Jeannie’s afeared that if he’s got the wee bittie papers that says he owns the hills,” Billy Bigchin continued, “he might go daft and think they belong to him. An’ we know where that’ll lead, right?”

“Aye,” said Big Yan. “Plowin’.”

It was a dreaded word. The old Baron had once planned to plow a few of the flatter areas of the Chalk, because wheat was fetching high prices and there was no money in sheep, but Granny Aching had been alive then and had changed his mind for him.

But some pastures around the Chalk were being plowed up already. There was money in wheat. The Feegles took it for granted that Roland would take to the plow, too. Wasn’t he brought up by a couple of vain, scheming, and unpleasant aunts?

“I dinna trust him,” said Slightly Mad Angus. “He reads books an’ such. He disna care aboot the land.”

“Aye,” said Daft Wullie, “but if he wuz wed tae the big wee hag, he’d no’ think o’ the plow, ’cuz the big wee hag would soon gi’e him the Pursin’ o’ the Arms—”

“It’s the Foldin’ o’ the Arms!” snapped Rob Anybody.

All the Feegles looked around fearfully.

“Ooooooh, not the Foldin’ o’ th—”

“Shut up!” Rob yelled. “Ah’m ashamed o’ yez! It’s up tae the big wee hag tae marry who she wants tae! Is that no’ so, gonnagle?”

“Hmm?” said Billy, looking upward. He caught a snowflake.

“I said the big wee hag can wed who she wants, right?”

Billy was staring at the snowflake.

“Billy?” said Rob.

“What?” he said, as if waking up. “Oh…yes. Do ye think she wants tae marry the Wintersmith?”

“The Wintersmith?” said Rob. “He canna marry anyone. He’s like a spirit—there’s nothin’ tae him!”

“She danced with him. We saw her,” said Billy, catching another flake and inspecting it.

“Just girlish high spirits! Anyway, why should the big wee hag think anything o’ the Wintersmith?”

“I have reason tae believe,” said the gonnagle slowly, as more flakes danced down, “that the Wintersmith is thinkin’ a lot aboot the big wee hag….”