In the cottage, the beds were airing, the floors had been swept, and the log basket was full. On the kitchen table the inventory was laid out: so many spoons, so many pans, so many dishes, all lined up in the dingy light. Tiffany packed some of the cheeses, though. She’d made them, after all.

The loom was silent in its room; it looked like the bones of some dead animal, but under the big chair was the package Miss Treason had mentioned, wrapped in black paper. Inside it was a cloak woven of brown wool so dark that it was almost black. It looked warm.

That was it, then. Time to go. If she lay down and put her ear to a mousehole, she could hear widespread snoring coming from the cellar. The Feegles believed that after a really good funeral, everyone should be lying down. It wasn’t a good idea to wake them. They’d find her. They always did.

Was that everything? Oh, no, not quite. She took down the Unexpurgated Dictionary and Chaffinch’s Mythology, with the “Dacne of the Sneasos” in it, and went to tuck them into a bag under the cheeses. As she did so, the pages flipped like cards and several things dropped out onto the stone floor. Some of them were faded old letters, which she tucked back inside for now.

There was also the Boffo catalogue. The cover had a grinning clown on it, and the words:

 

The Boffo Novelty & Joke Company!!!!!
Guffaws, Jokes, Chuckles, Japes Galore!!!
IF IT’S A LAUGH, IT’S A BOFFO!!!
Be the Life of the Party with our Novelty Gift Pack!!!
Special Offer This Month: Half Price off Red Noses!!!

 

Yes, you could spend years trying to be a witch, or you could spend a lot of money with Mr. Boffo and be one as soon as the postman arrived.

Fascinated, Tiffany turned the pages. There were skulls (Glow in the Dark, $8 Extra) and fake ears and pages of hilarious noses (Ghastly Dangling Booger free on noses over $5) and masks, as Boffo would say, Galore!!! Mask No. 19, for example, was: Wicked Witch De-Luxe, with Mad Greasy Hair, Rotting Teeth, and Hairy Warts (supplied loose, stick them where you like!!!). Miss Treason had obviously stopped short of buying one of these, possibly because the nose looked like a carrot but probably because the skin was bright green. She could also have bought Scary Witch Hands ($8 a pair, with green skin and black fingernails) and Smelly Witch Feet ($9).

Tiffany tucked the catalogue back into the book. She couldn’t leave it for Annagramma to find, or the secret of Miss Treason’s Boffo would be out.

And that was it: one life, ended and neatly tidied away. One cottage, clean and empty. One girl, wondering what was going to happen next. “Arrangements” would be made.

Clonk-clank.

She didn’t move, didn’t look around. I’m not going to be Boffo’d, she told herself. There’s an explanation for that noise that has nothing to do with Miss Treason. Let’s see…I cleaned the fireplace, right? And I leaned the poker next to it. But unless you get it just right, it always falls over sooner or later in a sneaky kind of way. That’s it. When I turn and look behind me, I’ll see that the poker has fallen over and is lying in the grate and therefore the noise wasn’t caused by any kind of ghostly clock at all.

She turned around slowly. The poker was lying in the grate.

And now, she thought, it would be a good idea to go outside into the fresh air. It’s a bit sad and stuffy in here. That’s why I want to go out, because it’s sad and stuffy. It’s not at all because I’m afraid of any imaginary noises. I’m not superstitious. I’m a witch. Witches aren’t superstitious. We are what people are superstitious of. I just don’t want to stay. I felt safe here when she was alive—it was like sheltering under a huge tree—but I don’t think it is safe anymore. If the Wintersmith makes the trees shout my name, well, I’ll cover my ears. The house feels like it’s dying and I’m going outside.

There was no point in locking the door. The local people were nervous enough about going inside even when Miss Treason was alive. They certainly wouldn’t set foot inside now, not until another witch had made the place her own.

A weak, runny-egg kind of sun was showing through the clouds, and the wind had blown the frost away. But a brief autumn turned to winter quickly up here; from now on there would always be the smell of snow in the air. Up in the mountains the winter never ended. Even in the summer, the water in the streams was ice cold from the melting snow.

Tiffany sat down on the old stump with her ancient suitcase and a sack and waited for the Arrangements. Annagramma would be here pretty soon, you could bet on that.

The cottage already looked abandoned. It seemed like—

It was her birthday. The thought pushed itself to the front. Yes, it would be today. Death had got it right. The one big day in the year that was totally hers, and she had forgotten about it in all the excitement, and now it was already two thirds over.

Had she ever told Petulia and the others when her birthday was? She couldn’t remember.

Thirteen years old. But she’d been thinking of herself as “nearly thirteen” for months now. Pretty soon she’d be “nearly fourteen.”

She was just about to enjoy a bit of self-pity when there was a stealthy rustling behind her. She turned so quickly that Horace the cheese leaped backward.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Tiffany. “Where have you been, you naughty bo—cheese? I was worried sick!”

Horace looked ashamed, but it was quite hard to see how he managed it.

“Are you going to come with me?” she asked.

Horace was immediately surrounded by a feeling of yesness.

“All right. You must get in the sack.” Tiffany opened it, but Horace backed away.

“Well, if you are going to be a naughty chee—” she began, and stopped. Her hand was itching. She looked up…at the Wintersmith.

It had to be him. At first he was just swirling snow in the air, but as he strode across the clearing, he seemed to come together, become human, become a young man with a cloak billowing out behind him and snow on his hair and shoulders. He wasn’t transparent this time, not entirely, but something like ripples ran across him, and Tiffany thought she could see the trees behind him, like shadows.

She took a few hurried steps backward, but the Wintersmith was crossing the dead grass with the speed of a skater. She could turn and run, but that would mean she was, well, turning and running, and why should she do that? She hadn’t been the one scribbling on people’s windows!

What should she say, what should she say?

“Now, I really appreciated you finding my necklace,” she said, backing away again. “And the snowflakes and roses were really very…it was very sweet. But…I don’t think that we…well, you’re made of cold and I’m not…I’m a human, made of…human stuff.”

“You must be her,” said the Wintersmith. “You were in the Dance! And now you are here, in my winter.”

The voice wasn’t right. It sounded…fake, somehow, as if the Wintersmith had been taught to say the sound of words without understanding what they were.

“I’m a her,” she said uncertainly. “I don’t know about ‘must be.’ Er…please, I’m really sorry about the dance, I didn’t mean to, it just seemed so…”

He’s still got the same purple-gray eyes, she noticed. Purple-gray, in a face sculpted from freezing fog. A handsome face, too. “Look, I never meant to make you think—” she began.

“Meant?” said the Wintersmith, looking astonished. “But we don’t mean. We are!”

“What do you…mean?”

“Crivens!”

“Oh, no…” muttered Tiffany as Feegles erupted from the grass.

The Feegles didn’t know the meaning of the word “fear.” Sometimes Tiffany wished they’d read a dictionary. They fought like tigers, they fought like demons, they fought like giants. What they didn’t do was fight like something with more than a spoonful of brain.

They attacked the Wintersmith with swords, heads, and feet, and the fact that everything went through him as if he were a shadow didn’t seem to bother them. If a Feegle aimed a boot at a misty leg and ended up kicking himself in his own head, then it had been a good result.

The Wintersmith ignored them, like a man paying no attention to butterflies.

“Where is your power? Why are you dressed like this?” the Wintersmith demanded. “This is not as it should be!”

He stepped forward and grabbed Tiffany’s wrist hard, much harder than a ghostly hand should be able to do.

“It is wrong!” he shouted. Above the clearing the clouds were moving fast.

Tiffany tried to pull away. “Let me go!”

“You are her!” the Wintersmith shouted, pulling her toward him.

Tiffany hadn’t known where the shout came from, but the slap came from her hand, thinking for itself. It caught the figure on the cheek so hard that for a moment the face blurred, as if she’d smeared a painting.

“Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me!” she screamed.

There was a flicker behind the Wintersmith. Tiffany couldn’t see it clearly because of the icy haze and her own anger and terror, but something blurred and dark was moving toward them across the clearing, wavering and distorted like a figure seen through ice. It loomed behind the transparent figure for one dark moment, and then became Granny Weatherwax, in the same space as the Wintersmith…inside him.

He screamed for a second, and exploded into a mist.

Granny stumbled forward, blinking.

“Urrrgh. It’ll take a while to get the taste of that out of my head,” she said. “Shut your mouth, girl—something might fly into it.”

Tiffany shut her mouth. Something might fly into it.

“What…what did you do to him?” she managed.

“It!” snapped Granny, rubbing her forehead. “It’s an it, not a he! An it that thinks it’s a he! Now give me your necklace!”

“What! But it’s mine!”

“Do you think I want an argument?” Granny Weatherwax demanded. “Does it say on my face I want an argument? Give it to me now! Don’t you dare defy me!”

“I won’t just—”

Granny Weatherwax lowered her voice and, in a piercing hiss much worse than a scream, said: “It’s how it finds you. Do you want it to find you again? It’s just a fog now. How solid do you think it will become?”

Tiffany thought about that strange face, not moving like a real one should, and that strange voice, putting words together as if they were bricks….

She undid the little silver clasp and held up the necklace.

It’s just Boffo, she told herself. Every stick is a wand, every puddle is a crystal ball. This is just a…a thing. I don’t need it to be me.

Yes, I do.

“You must give it to me,” said Granny softly. “I can’t take it.”

She held out her hand, palm up.

Tiffany dropped the horse into it and tried not to see Granny Weatherwax’s fingers as a closing claw.

“Very well,” said Granny, satisfied. “Now we must go.”

“You were watching me,” said Tiffany sullenly.

“All morning. You could have seen me if you’d thought to look,” said Granny. “But you didn’t do a bad job at the burial, I’ll say that.”

“I did a good job!”

“That’s what I said.”

“No,” said Tiffany, still trembling. “You didn’t.”

“I’ve never held with skulls and suchlike,” said Granny, ignoring this. “Artificial ones, at any rate. But Miss Treason—”

She stopped, and Tiffany saw her stare at the treetops.

“Is that him again?” she asked.

“No,” said Granny, as if this were something to be disappointed about. “No, that’s young Miss Hawkin. And Mrs. Letice Earwig. Didn’t hang about, I see. And Miss Treason hardly cooled down.” She sniffed. “Some people might have had the common decency not to snatch.”

The two broomsticks landed a little way off. Annagramma looked nervous. Mrs. Earwig looked like she always did: tall, pale, very well dressed, wearing lots of occult jewelry and an expression that said you were slightly annoying her but she was being gracious enough not to let it show. And she always looked at Tiffany, when she ever bothered to look at her at all, as if Tiffany were some kind of strange creature that she didn’t quite understand.

Mrs. Earwig was always polite to Granny, in a formal and chilly way. It made Granny Weatherwax mad, but that was the way of witches. When they really disliked one another, they were as polite as duchesses.

As the other two approached, Granny bowed low and removed her hat. Mrs. Earwig did the same thing, only the bow was a little lower.

Tiffany saw Granny glance up and then bow lower still, by about an inch.

Mrs. Earwig managed to go half an inch farther down.

Tiffany and Annagramma exchanged a hopeless glance over the straining backs. Sometimes this sort of thing could go on for hours.

Granny Weatherwax gave a grunt and straightened up. So did Mrs. Earwig, red in the face.

“Blessin’s be upon our meetin’,” said Granny in a calm voice. Tiffany winced. This was a declaration of hostilities. Yelling and prodding with the fingers was perfectly ordinary witch arguing, but speaking carefully and calmly was open warfare.

“How kind of you to greet us,” said Mrs. Earwig.

“I hopes I sees you in good health?”

“I keep well, Miss Weatherwax.” Annagramma shut her eyes. That was a kick in the stomach, by witch standards.

“It’s Mistress Weatherwax, Mrs. Earwig,” said Granny. “As I believes you know?”

“Why, yes. Of course it is. I am so sorry.” These vicious blows having been exchanged, Granny went on: “I trust Miss Hawkin will find everything to her likin’.”

“I’m sure that—” Mrs. Earwig stared at Tiffany, her face a question.

“Tiffany,” said Tiffany helpfully.

“Tiffany. Of course. What a lovely name…. I’m sure that Tiffany has done her very best,” said Mrs. Earwig. “However, we shall shrive and consecrate the cottage, in case of…influences.”

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.

“A Good Smoke in Any Weather?” he said to Tiffany.

“What?”

“It’s all he can say!” said her Third Thoughts, grabbing the wheel. “Remember? That’s what he says on the label!”

The Jolly Sailor pushed her away gently. “A Good Smoke in Any Weather,” he said soothingly. “In Any Weather.”

“Look, we only want to—” Tiffany began, but her Third Thoughts, without a word, put a hand on her head and turned her around.

Something was coming out of the fog.

It was an iceberg, a large one, at least five times as high as the ship, as majestic as a swan. It was so big that it was causing its own weather. It seemed to be moving slowly; there was white water around its base. Snow fell around it. Streamers of fog trailed behind it.

The Jolly Sailor’s pipe dropped out of his mouth as he stared.

“A Good Smoke!” he swore.

The iceberg was Tiffany. It was a Tiffany hundreds of feet high, formed of glittering green ice, but it was still a Tiffany. There were seabirds perched on her head.

“It can’t be the Wintersmith doing this!” said Tiffany. “I threw the horse away!” She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted: “I THREW THE HORSE AWAY!”

Her voice echoed off the looming ice figure. A few birds took off from the huge cold head, screaming. Behind Tiffany, the ship’s wheel spun. The Jolly Sailor stamped a foot and pointed to the white sails above them.

“A Good Smoke in Any Weather!” he commanded.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean!” said Tiffany desperately.

The man pointed to the sails and made frantic pulling motions with his hands.

“A Good Smoke!”

“Sorry, I just can’t understand you!”

The sailor snorted and ran off toward a rope, which he hauled on in a great hurry.

“It’s gotten weird,” said her Third Thoughts quietly.

“Well, yes, I should think a huge iceberg shaped like me is a—”

“No, that’s just strange. This is weird,” said her Third Thoughts. “We’ve got passengers. Look.” She pointed.

Down on the main deck there was a row of hatches with big iron grids on them; Tiffany hadn’t noticed them before.

Hands, hundreds of them, pale as roots under a log, groping and waving, were thrusting through the grids.

“Passengers?” Tiffany whispered in horror. “Oh, no…”

And then the screaming started. It would have been better, but not a lot better, if it had been cries of “Help! and “Save us,” but instead it was just screaming and wailing, just the sounds of people in pain and fear—

No!

“Come back inside my head,” she said grimly. “It’s too distracting to have you running around outside. Right now.”

“I’ll walk in from behind you,” said her Third Thoughts. “Then it won’t seem so—”

Tiffany felt a twinge of pain, and a change in her mind, and thought: Well, I suppose it could have been a lot messier.

Okay. Let me think. Let all of me think.

She watched the desperate hands, waving like weeds underwater, and thought: I’m in something like a dream, but I don’t think it’s mine. I’m on a ship, and we’re going to get killed by an iceberg that’s a giant figure of me.

I think I liked it better when I was snowflakes….

Whose dream is this?

“What is this about, Wintersmith?” she asked, and her Third Thoughts, back where they should be, commented: It’s amazing, you can even see your own breath in the air.

“Is this a warning?” Tiffany shouted. “What do you want?”

You for my bride, said the Wintersmith. The words just arrived in her memory.

Tiffany’s shoulders sank.

You know this isn’t real, said her Third Thoughts. But it may be the shadow of something real….

I shouldn’t have let Granny Weatherwax send Rob Anybody away like that—

“Crivens! Shiver me timber!” shouted a voice behind her. And then there was the usual clamor:

“It’s ‘timbers,’ ye dafty!”

“Aye? But I can only find one!”

“Splice the big plank! Daft Wullie’s just walked intae the watter!”

“The big puddin’! I told him, just the one eye patch!”

“With a yo hoho and a ho yoyo—”

Feegles erupted from the cabin behind Tiffany, and Rob Anybody stopped in front of her as the rest streamed past. He saluted.

“Sorry we’re a wee bittie late, but we had to find the black patches,” he said. “There’s sich a thing as style, ye ken.”

Tiffany was speechless, but only for a moment. She pointed.

“We’ve got to stop this ship from hitting that iceberg!”

“Just that? Nae problemo!” Rob looked past her to the looming ice giantess and grinned. “He’s got yer nose just right, eh?”

“Just stop it! Please?” Tiffany pleaded.

“Aye-aye! C’mon, lads!”

Watching the Feegles working was like watching ants, except that ants didn’t wear kilts and shout “Crivens!” all the time. Maybe it was because they could make one word do so much work that they seemed to have no problem at all with the Jolly Sailor’s orders. They swarmed across the deck. Mysterious ropes were pulled. Sails moved and billowed to a chorus of “A Good Smoke!” and “Crivens!”

Now the Wintersmith wants to marry me, Tiffany thought. Oh, dear.

She’d sometimes wondered if she’d get married one day, but she was definite that now was too soon for “one day.” Yes, her mother had been married when she was still fourteen, but that was the sort of thing that happened in the olden days. There were a lot of things to be done before Tiffany ever got married, she was very clear about that.

Besides, when you thought about it…yuk. He wasn’t even a person. He’d be too—

Thud! went the wind in the sails. The ship creaked and leaned over, and everyone was shouting at her. Mostly they shouted, “The wheel! Grab the wheel right noo!” although there was also a desperate “A Good Smoke in Any Weather!” in there too.

Tiffany turned to see the wheel spinning in a blur. She made a snatch at it and got thumped across the fingers by the spokes, but there was a length of rope coiled nearby and she managed to lasso the wheel with a loop and jerk it to a halt without sliding along the deck too much. Then she grabbed the wheel and tried to turn it the other way. It was like pushing a house, but it did move, very slowly at first and then faster as she put her back into it.

The ship came around. She could feel it moving, beginning to head a little bit away from the iceberg, not directly for it. Good! Things were going right at last! She spun the wheel some more, and now the huge cold wall was sliding past, filling the air with mist. Everything was going to be all right after—

The ship hit the iceberg.

It started with a simple crack! as a spar caught on an outcrop, but then others smashed as the ship scraped along the side of the ice. Then there were some sharp splintering noises as the ship ground onward, and bits of plank shot up on columns of foaming water. The top of a mast broke off, dragging sails and rigging with it. A lump of ice smashed onto the deck a few feet away from Tiffany, showering her with needles.

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go!” she panted, hanging on to the wheel.

Marry me, said the Wintersmith.

Churning white water roared across the foundering ship. Tiffany held on for a moment longer; then the cold surf covered her…except that it was suddenly not cold, but warm. But it was still stopping her from breathing. In the darkness she tried to fight her way to the surface, until the blackness was suddenly pulled aside, her eyes filled with light, and a voice said: “I’m sure these mattresses are far too soft, but you can’t tell Mrs. Ogg a thing.”

Tiffany blinked. She was in bed, and a skinny woman with worried hair and a rather red nose was standing by it.

“You were tossing and turning like a mad thing,” the woman said, putting a steaming mug on the small table by the bed. “One day someone will suffikate, mark my words.”

Tiffany blinked again. I’m supposed to think: Oh, it was just a dream. But it wasn’t just a dream. Not my dream.

“What time is it?” she managed.

“About seven,” said the woman.

“Seven!” Tiffany pushed the sheets back. “I’ve got to get up! Mrs. Ogg will be wanting her breakfast!”

“I shouldn’t think so. I took it to her in bed not ten minutes ago,” said the woman, giving Tiffany a Look. “And I’m off home.” She sniffed. “Drink your tea before it gets cold.” And with that she marched toward the door.

“Is Mrs. Ogg ill?” asked Tiffany, looking everywhere for her socks. She’d never heard of anyone who wasn’t really old or very ill having a meal in bed.

“Ill? I don’t think she’s had a day’s illness in her life,” said the woman, managing to suggest that in her opinion this was unfair. She shut the door.

Even the bedroom floor was smooth—not made smooth by centuries of feet that had worn down the planks and taken all the splinters out, but because someone had sanded and varnished it. Tiffany’s bare feet stuck to it slightly. There was no dust to be seen, no spiderwebs anywhere. The room was bright and fresh and exactly unlike any room in a witch’s cottage ought to be.

“I’m going to get dressed,” she said to the air. “Are there any Feegles in here?”

“Ach, no,” said a voice from under the bed.

There was some frantic whispering and the voice said: “That is tae say, there’s hardly any o’ us here at a’.”

“Then shut your eyes,” said Tiffany.

She got dressed, taking occasional sips of the tea as she did so. Tea brought to your bedside when you weren’t ill? That sort of thing happened to kings and queens!

And then she noticed the bruise on her fingers. It didn’t hurt at all, but the skin was blue where the ship’s wheel had hit it. Right…

“Feegles?” she said.

“Crivens, ye’ll nae be foolin’ us a second time,” said the voice from under the bed.

“Get out here where I can see you, Daft Wullie!” Tiffany commanded.

“It’s real hagglin’, miss, the way ye always ken it’s me.”

After some more urgent whispering, Daft Wullie—for it was indeed he—trooped out with two more Feegles and Horace the cheese.

Tiffany stared. All right, he was a blue cheese, so he was about the same color as a Feegle. And he acted like a Feegle, no doubt about that. Why, though, had he got a grubby strip of Feegle tartan around him?

“He kinda found us,” said Daft Wullie, putting his arm around as much of Horace as was possible. “Can I keep him? He understands evera word I say!”

“That’s amazing, because I don’t,” said Tiffany. “Look, were we in a shipwreck last night?”

“Oh, aye. Sorta.”

“Sort of? Was it real or wasn’t it?”

“Oh, aye,” said the Feegle nervously.

“Which?” Tiffany insisted.

“Kinda real, and kinda not real, in a real unreal sorta way,” said Daft Wullie, squirming a bit. “I don’t have the knowin’ o’ the right wurdies….”

“Are all you Feegles okay?”

“Oh aye, miss,” said Daft Wullie, brightening up. “Nae problemo. It wuz only a dream ship on a dream sea, after a’.”

“And a dream iceberg?” said Tiffany.

“Ach, no. The iceberg was real, mistress.”

“I thought so! Are you sure?”

“Aye. We’re good at the knowin’ o’ stuff like that,” said Daft Wullie. “That’s so, eh, lads?” The other two Feegles, in total awe of being in the presence of the big wee hag without the safety of hundreds of brothers around them, nodded at Tiffany and then tried to shuffle behind each other.

“A real iceberg shaped like me is floating around on the sea?” said Tiffany in horror. “Getting in the way of shipping?”

“Aye. Could be,” said Daft Wullie.

“I’m going to get into so much trouble!” said Tiffany, standing up.

There was a snapping noise, and the end of one of the floorboards leaped out of the floor and hung there, bouncing up and down with a rocking-chair noise. It had ripped out two long nails.

“And now this,” said Tiffany weakly. But the Feegles and Horace had vanished.

Behind Tiffany someone laughed, although it was maybe more of a chuckle, deep and real and with just a hint that maybe someone had told a rude joke.

“Those little devils can’t half run, eh?” said Nanny Ogg, ambling into the room. “Now then, Tiff, I wants you to turn around slowly and go and sit on your bed with your feet off the ground. Can you do that?”

“Of course, Mrs. Ogg,” said Tiffany. “Look, I’m sorry about—”

“Poo, what’s a floorboard more or less?” said Nanny Ogg. “I’m much more worried about Esme Weatherwax. She said there might be something like this! Ha, she was right and Miss Tick was wrong! There’ll be no living with her after this! She’ll have her nose so far in the air, her feet won’t touch the ground!”

With a spioioioiiing! sound, another floorboard sprang up.

“And it might be a good idea if yours didn’t either, miss,” Nanny Ogg added. “I’ll be back in half a tick.”

That turned out to be the same length of time as twenty-seven seconds, when Nanny returned carrying a pair of violently pink slippers with bunny rabbits on them.

“My second-best pair,” she said as, behind her, a board went plunk! and hurled four big nails into the far wall. The boards that had already sprung up were beginning to sprout what looked a lot like leaves. They were thin and weedy, but leaves were what they were.

“Is it me doing this?” asked Tiffany nervously.

“I daresay Esme will want to tell you all about it herself,” said Nanny, helping Tiffany’s feet into the slippers. “But what you’ve got here, miss, is a bad case of Ped Fecundis.” In the back of Tiffany’s memory Dr. Sensibility Bustle, D. M. Phil., B. El L., stirred in his sleep for a moment and took care of the translation.

“Fertile Feet?” said Tiffany.

“Well done! I didn’t expect anything to happen to floorboards, mind you, but it makes sense, when you think about it. They’re made of wood, after all, so they’re tryin’ to grow.”

“Mrs. Ogg?” said Tiffany.

“Yes?”

“Please? I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about! I keep my feet very clean! And I think I’m a giant iceberg!”

Nanny Ogg gave her a slow, kind look. Tiffany stared into dark, twinkling eyes. Don’t try to trick her or hold anything back from those eyes, said her Third Thoughts. Everyone says she’s been Granny Weatherwax’s best friend since they were girls. And that means that under all those wrinkles must be nerves of steel.

“Kettle’s on downstairs,” said Nanny brightly. “Why don’t you come down and tell me all about it?”

Tiffany had looked up “strumpet” in the Unexpurgated Dictionary, and found it meant “a woman who is no better than she should be” and “a lady of easy virtue.” This, she decided after some working out, meant that Mrs. Gytha Ogg, known as Nanny, was a very respectable person. She found virtue easy, for one thing. And if she was no better than she should be, then she was just as good as she ought to be.

She had a feeling that Miss Treason hadn’t meant this, but you couldn’t argue with logic.

Nanny Ogg was good at listening, at least. She listened like a great big ear, and before Tiffany realized it, she was telling her everything. Everything. Nanny sat on the opposite side of the big kitchen table, puffing gently at a pipe with a hedgehog carved on it. Sometimes she’d ask a little question, like “Why was that?” or “And then what happened?” and off they’d go again. Nanny’s friendly little smile could drag out of you things you didn’t know you knew.

While they talked, Tiffany’s Third Thoughts scanned the room out of the corners of her eyes.

It was wonderfully clean and bright, and there were ornaments everywhere—cheap, jolly ones, the sort that have things like “To the World’s Best Mum” on them. And where there weren’t ornaments, there were pictures of babies and children and families.

Tiffany had thought that only grand folk lived in homes like this. There were oil lamps! There was a bath, made of tin, hanging conveniently on a hook outside the privy! There was a pump actually indoors! But Nanny ambled around in her rather worn black dress, not grand at all.

From the best chair in the room of ornaments, a large gray cat watched Tiffany with a half-open eye that glinted with absolute evil. Nanny had referred to him as “Greebo…don’t mind him, he’s just a big old softie,” which Tiffany knew enough to interpret as “he’ll have his claws in your leg if you go anywhere near him.”

Tiffany talked as she hadn’t talked to anyone before. It must be a kind of magic, her Third Thoughts concluded. Witches soon picked up ways of controlling people with their voices, but Nanny Ogg listened at you.

“This lad Roland who is not your young man,” said Nanny, when Tiffany had paused for breath. “Thinking of marrying him, are you?”

Don’t lie, her Third Thoughts insisted.

“I…well, your mind comes up with all kinds of things when you’re not paying attention, doesn’t it?” said Tiffany. “It’s not like thinking. Anyway, all the other boys I’ve met just stare at their stupid feet! Petulia says it’s because of the hat.”

“Well, taking it off helps,” said Nanny Ogg. “Mind you, so did a low-cut bodice, when I was a girl. Stopped ’em lookin’ at their stupid feet, I don’t mind telling you!”

Tiffany saw the dark eyes locked onto her. She burst out laughing. Mrs. Ogg’s face broke into a huge grin that should have been locked up for the sake of public decency, and for some reason Tiffany felt a lot better. She’d passed some kind of test.

“Mind you, that probably wouldn’t work with the Wintersmith, of course,” said Nanny, and the gloom came down again.

“I didn’t mind the snowflakes,” said Tiffany. “But the iceberg—I think that was a bit much.”

“Showing off in front of the girls,” said Nanny, puffing at her hedgehog pipe. “Yes, they do that.”

“But he can kill people!”

“He’s Winter. It’s what he does. But I reckon he’s in a bit of a tizzy because he’s never been in love with a human before.”

“In love?”

“Well, he probably thinks he is.”

Once again the eyes watched her carefully.

“He’s an elemental, and they’re simple, really,” Nanny Ogg went on. “But he’s trying to be human. And that’s complicated. We’re packed with stuff he doesn’t understand—can’t understand, really. Anger, for example. A blizzard is never angry. The storm don’t hate the people who die in it. The wind is never cruel. But the more he thinks about you, the more he’s having to deal with feelings like this, and there’s none can teach him. He’s not very clever. He’s never had to be. And the interesting thing is that you are changin’ too—”

There was a knocking at the door. Nanny Ogg got up and opened it. Granny Weatherwax was there, with Miss Tick peering over her shoulder.

“Blessings be upon this house,” said Granny, but in a voice that suggested that if blessings needed to be taken away, she could do that, too.

“Quite probably,” said Nanny Ogg.

“It’s Ped Fecundis, then?” Granny nodded at Tiffany.

“Looks like a bad case. The floorboards started growing after she walked over them in bare feet.”

“Ha! Have you given her anything for it?” said Granny.

“I prescribed a pair of slippers.”

“I really don’t see how avatarization could be taking place, not when we’re talking about elementals, it makes no—” Miss Tick began.

“Do stop wittering, Miss Tick,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I notices you witter when things goes wrong, and it is not being a help.”

“I don’t want to worry the child, that’s all,” said Miss Tick. She took Tiffany’s hand, patted it, and said, “Don’t you worry, Tiffany, we’ll—”

“She’s a witch,” said Granny sternly. “We just have to tell her the truth.”

“You think I’m turning into a…a goddess?” said Tiffany.

It was worth it to see their faces. The only mouth not in an O was the one belonging to Granny Weatherwax, which was smirking. She looked like someone whose dog has just done a rather good trick.

“How did you work that out?” Granny asked.

Dr. Bustle had a guess: Avatar, an incarnation of a god. But I’m not going to tell you that, Tiffany thought. “Well, am I?” she said.

“Yes,” said Granny Weatherwax. “The Wintersmith thinks you are…oh, she’s got a lot of names. The Lady of the Flowers is a nice one. Or the Summer Lady. She makes the summertime, just like he makes the winter. He thinks you’re her.”

“All right,” said Tiffany. “But we know he’s wrong, don’t we?”

“Er…not quite as wrong as we’d like,” said Miss Tick.

 

Most of the Feegles had camped out in Nanny Ogg’s barn, where they were holding a council of war, except that it was about something that isn’t quite the same thing.

“What we’ve got here,” Rob Anybody pronounced, “is a case o’ Romance.”

“What’s that, Rob?” asked a Feegle.

“Aye, is it like how wee babbies are made?” asked Daft Wullie. “Ye told about that last year. It wuz verra interestin’, although a bit far-fetched tae my mind.”

“No’ exactly,” said Rob Anybody. “An’ it’s kinda hard tae describe. But I reckon yon Wintersmith wants to romance the big wee hag and she disna ken what tae do aboot it.”

“So it is like how babbies are made?” said Daft Wullie.

“No, ’cuz even beasties know that but only people know aboot Romancin’,” said Rob. “When a bull coo meets a lady coo, he disna have tae say, ‘My heart goes bang-bang-bang when I see your wee face,’ ’cuz it’s kinda built intae their heads. People have it more difficult. Romancin’ is verra important, ye ken. Basically it’s a way the boy can get close to the girl wi’oot her attackin’ him and scratchin’ his eyes oot.”

“I dinna see how we can teach her any o’ that stuff,” said Slightly Mad Angus.

“The big wee hag reads books,” said Rob Anybody. “When she sees a book she just canna help herself. An’ I,” he added proudly, “have a Plan.”

The Feegles relaxed. They always felt happier when Rob had a Plan, especially since most plans of his boiled down to screaming and rushing at something.

“Tell us aboot the Plan, Rob,” said Big Yan.

“Ah’m glad ye asked me,” said Rob. “The Plan is: We’ll find her a book aboot Romancin’.”

“An’ how will we find this book, Rob?” asked Billy Bigchin uncertainly. He was a loyal gonnagle, but he was also bright enough to get nervous whenever Rob Anybody had a Plan.

Rob Anybody airily waved a hand. “Ach,” he said, “we ken this trick! A’ we need is a big hat an’ coat an’ a coat hanger an’ a broom handle!”

“Oh aye?” said Big Yan. “Well, I’m not bein’ doon in the knee again!”

 

With witches everything is a test. That’s why they tested Tiffany’s feet.

I bet that I’m the only person in the world about to do this, she thought as she lowered both her feet into a tray of soil that Nanny had hastily shoveled up. Granny Weatherwax and Miss Tick were both sitting on bare wooden chairs, despite the fact that the gray cat Greebo was occupying the whole of one big saggy armchair. You didn’t want to wake up Greebo when he wanted to sleep.

“Can you feel anything?” asked Miss Tick.

“It’s a bit cold, that’s all—oh…something’s happening….”

Green shoots appeared around her feet, and grew quickly. Then they went white at the base and gently pushed Tiffany’s feet aside as they began to swell.

“Onions?” said Granny Weatherwax scornfully.

“Well, they were the only seeds I could find quickly,” said Nanny Ogg, poking at the glistening white bulbs. “Good size. Well done, Tiff.”

Granny looked shocked. “You’re not going to eat those, are you, Gytha?” she said accusingly. “You are, aren’t you? You’re going to eat them!”

Nanny Ogg, standing up with a bunch of onions in each pudgy hand, looked guilty, but only for a moment.

“Why not?” she said stoutly. “Fresh vegetables are not to be sneezed at in the winter. And anyway, her feet are nice and clean.”

“It’s not seemly,” said Miss Tick.

“It didn’t hurt,” said Tiffany. “All I had to do was put my feet on the tray for a moment.”

“Yes, she says it didn’t hurt,” Nanny Ogg insisted. “Now, I think I might have some old carrot seeds in the kitchen drawer—” She saw the expressions on the faces of the others. “All right, all right, then. There’s no need to look like that,” she said. “I was just tryin’ to point out the silver lining, that’s all.”

“Someone please tell me what is happening to me?” Tiffany wailed.

“Miss Tick is going to give you the answer in some long words,” said Granny. “But they boils down to this: It’s the Story happening. It’s making you fit into itself.”

Tiffany tried not to look like someone who didn’t understand a word that she had just heard.

“I could do with a little bit of the fine detail, I think,” she said.

“I think I’ll get some tea brewed,” said Nanny Ogg.