Wintersmith (10 page)

“Isn’t he the one who talks about pigs all the time?”

“Well, pigs are very interesting,” said Petulia reproachfully. “And his father, um, has got the biggest pig-breeding farm in the mountains.”

“That’s something worth thinking about, definitely,” said Tiffany. “Ouch.”

“What happened?” said Petulia.

“Oh, nothing. My hand really twinged there for a moment.” Tiffany rubbed it. “Part of the healing, I suppose. See you tomorrow.”

Tiffany went indoors. Petulia carried on through the forest.

From up near the roof came the sounds of a conversation.

“Didja hear what the fat girl said?”

“Aye, but pigs are no’ that interestin’.”

“Oh, I dinna ken aboot that. A verra useful animal is the pig. You can eat every part o’ it, ye ken, except for the squeal.”

“Ach, ye’re wrong there. Ye can use the squeal.”

“Dinna be daft!”

“Aye, ye can so! Ye make up a pie crust, right, an’ ye put in a lot o’ ham, right, an’ then ye catch the squeal, put the top on the pie before he can escape, right, an’ bung it straight in the oven.”

“I ne’er heard o’ such a thing as that!”

“Have ye no’? It’s called squeal-and-ham pie.”

“There’s nae such thing!”

“Why not? There’s bubble-and-squeak, right? An’ a squeak is wee compared tae a squeal. I reckon you could—”

“If youse mudlins dinna listen, I’ll put
ye
inna pie!” yelled Rob Anybody. The Feegles muttered into silence

And on the other side of the clearing the Wintersmith watched with purple-gray eyes. He watched until a candle was lit in an upstairs room, and watched the orange glow until it went out.

Then, walking unsteadily on new legs, he went toward the flower patch where, in the summer, roses had grown.

If you went to Zakzak Stronginthearm’s Magical Emporium, you’d see crystal balls of all sizes but more or less only one price, which
was A Great Deal Of Money. Since most witches, and particularly the good ones, had Not Much Money At All, they made use of other things, like the glass floats off old fishing nets or a saucer of black ink.

There was a puddle of black ink on Granny Weatherwax’s table now. It had been in the saucer, but things had wobbled a bit when Granny and Miss Tick had banged their heads together trying to look in the saucer at the same time.

“Did you hear that?” said Granny Weatherwax. “Petulia Gristle asked the important question, and she just didn’t think about it!”

“I’m sorry to say I missed it too,” said Miss Tick. You, the white kitten, jumped up onto the table, walked carefully through the puddle of ink, and dropped into Miss Tick’s lap.

“Stop that, You,” said Granny Weatherwax in a vague sort of way, as Miss Tick stared down at her dress.

“It hardly shows up,” said Miss Tick, but in fact four perfect cat footprints were very clear. Witches’ dresses start out black but soon fade to shades of gray because of frequent washings or, in the case of Miss Tick, regular dips in various ponds and streams. They got threadbare and ragged, too, and their owners liked that. It showed you were a working witch, not a witch for show. Four black kitten footprints in the middle of your dress suggested you were a bit wussy, though. She lowered the cat to the floor, where it trotted over to Granny Weatherwax, rubbed up against her, and tried to
meep
more chicken into existence.

“What was the important thing?” said Miss Tick.

“I’m asking you as one witch to another, Perspicacia Tick: Has the Wintersmith ever
met
a girl?”

“Well,” said Miss Tick, “I suppose the classic representation of
Summer might be called a—”

“But do they ever
meet
?” asked Granny Weatherwax.

“In the Dance, I suppose. Just for a moment,” said Miss Tick.

“And at that moment, that very moment, in dances Tiffany Aching,” said Granny Weatherwax. “A witch who won’t wear black. No, it’s blue and green for her, like green grass under a blue sky. She calls to the strength of her hills, all the time. An’ they calls to her! Hills that was once alive, Miss Tick! They feels the rhythm of the Dance, an’ so in her bones does she, if she did but know it. And this shapes her life, even here! She could not help but tap her feet! The
land
taps its feet to the Dance of the Seasons!”

“But she—” Miss Tick began, because no teacher likes to hear anyone else talk for very long.

“What happened in that moment?” Granny Weatherwax went on, unstoppably. “Summer, Winter, and Tiffany. One spinning moment! And then they part. Who knows what got tangled? Suddenly, the Wintersmith is acting so stupid, he might even be a wee bit…human?”

“What
has
she got herself into?” said Miss Tick.

“The Dance, Miss Tick. The Dance that never ends. An’ she can’t change the steps, not yet. She has to dance to his tune for a while.”

“She’s going to be in a lot of danger,” Miss Tick said.

“She has the strength of her hills,” said Granny.

“Soft hills, though,” said Miss Tick. “Easily worn down.”

“But the heart of the chalk is flint, remember. It cuts sharper than any knife.”

“Snow can cover the hills,” said Miss Tick.

“Not forever.”

“It did once,” said Miss Tick, fed up with playing games. “For
thousands of years, at least. An age of ice. Great beasts wallowed and sneezed across the world.”

“That’s as may be,” said Granny Weatherwax, a glint in her eye. “O’ course, I wasn’t around then. In the meantime, we must watch our girl.”

Miss Tick sipped her tea. Staying with Granny Weatherwax was a bit of a trial. Last night’s pot of chicken scraps had turned out to be not for her but for You. The witches had good thick pease pudding and bacon soup without—and this was important—the bacon. Granny kept a big lump of fat bacon on a string and had taken it out, carefully dried it, and put it away for another day. Despite her hunger, Miss Tick was impressed. Granny could shave the skin off a second.

“I hear that Miss Treason has heard her Call,” she said.

“Yes. Funeral tomorrow,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“That’s a difficult steading
*
over there,” said Miss Tick. “They’ve had Miss Treason for a long, long time. It’ll be a tricky task for a new witch.”

“She’ll be a difficult…act to follow, indeed,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Act?” said Miss Tick.

“I meant life, of course,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Whom will you put in there?” asked Miss Tick, because she liked to be first with the news. She also made a point of saying “whom” whenever she could. She felt it was more literate.

“Miss Tick, that is not up to me,” said Granny sharply. “We have no leaders in witchcraft, you know that.”

“Oh indeed,” said Miss Tick, who also knew that the leader the witches did not have was Granny Weatherwax. “But I know that Mrs. Earwig will be proposing young Annagramma, and Mrs. Earwig has quite a few followers these days. It’s probably those books she writes. She makes witchcraft sound exciting.”

“You know I don’t like witches who try to impose their will on others,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Quite,” said Miss Tick, trying not to laugh.

“I shall, however, drop a name into the conversation,” said Granny Weatherwax.

With a clang, I expect, thought Miss Tick. “Petulia Gristle has shaped up very well,” she said. “A good all-around witch.”

“Yes, but mostly all around pigs,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I was thinking about Tiffany Aching.”

“What?” said Miss Tick. “Don’t you think that child has enough to cope with?”

Granny Weatherwax smiled briefly. “Well, Miss Tick, you know what they say: If you want something done, give it to someone who’s busy! And young Tiffany might be very busy soon,” she added.

“Why do you say that?” said Miss Tick.

“Hmm. Well, I can’t be sure, but I will be very interested to see what happens to her feet….”

Tiffany didn’t sleep much on the night before the funeral. Miss Treason’s loom had clicked and clacked all through the night, because she had an order for bedsheets she wanted to complete.

It was just getting light when Tiffany gave up and got up, in that order. At least she could get the goats mucked out and milked
before she tackled the other chores. There was snow, and a bitter wind was blowing it across the ground.

It wasn’t until she was carting a barrowload of muck to the compost heap, which was steaming gently in the gray light, that she heard the tinkling. It sounded a bit like the wind chimes Miss Pullunder had around her cottage, only they were tuned to a note that was uncomfortable for demons.

It was coming from the place where the rose bed was in summer. It grew fine, old roses, full of scent and so red they were nearly, yes, black.

The roses were blooming again. But they—

“How do you like them, sheep girl?”
said a voice. It didn’t arrive in her head, it wasn’t her thoughts, any of them, and Dr. Bustle didn’t wake up until at least ten. It was her own voice, from her own lips. But she hadn’t thought it, and she hadn’t meant to say it.

Now she was running back to the cottage. She hadn’t decided to do that either, but her legs had taken over. It wasn’t fear, not exactly; it was just that she very much wanted to be somewhere other than in the garden with the sun not up and the snow blowing and filling the air with ice crystals as fine as fog.

She ran through the scullery door and collided with a dark figure, which said, “Um, sorry,” and therefore was Petulia. She was the kind of person who apologized if you trod on her foot. Right now there was no sight more welcome.

“Sorry, I was called out to deal with a difficult cow and, um, it wasn’t worth going back to bed,” Petulia said, and then added: “Are you all right? You don’t look it!”

“I heard a voice in my mouth!” said Tiffany.

Petulia gave her an odd look and might just have stepped an inch or so backward.

“You mean in your head?” she asked.

“No! I can deal with
those
! My mouth said words all by itself! And come and see what’s grown in the rose garden! You won’t believe it!”

There were roses. They were made of ice so thin that, if you breathed on them, they melted away and left nothing but the dead stalks they’d grown on. And there were dozens of them, waving in the wind.

“Even the heat of my hand near them makes them drip,” said Petulia. “Do you think it’s your Wintersmith?”

“He’s not mine! And I can’t think of any other way they’d turn up!”

“And you think he, um, spoke to you?” said Petulia, plucking another rose. Ice particles slid off her hat every time she moved.

“No! It was me! I mean, my voice! But it didn’t sound like him. I mean, like I think he’d sound! It was a bit snide, like Annagramma when she’s in a mood! But it was my voice!”

“How
do
you think he’d sound?” said Petulia.

The wind gusted across the clearing, making the pine trees shake and roar.

“…Tiffany…be mine…”

After a little while Petulia coughed and said: “Um, was it just me, or did that sound like—?”

“Not just you,” whispered Tiffany, standing very still.

“Ah,” said Petulia, in a voice as bright and brittle as a rose of ice. “Well, I think we should get indoors now, yes? Um, and get all the fires lit and some tea made, yes? And then start getting things ready, because quite soon
a lot of people will be turning up
.”

A minute later they were in the cottage, with the doors bolted and every candle spluttering into life.

They didn’t talk about the wind or the roses. What would be the point? Besides, there was a job to be done. Work, that’s what helps. Work, and think and talk later, don’t gabble now like frightened ducks. They even managed to get another layer of grime off the windows.

All through the morning people arrived from the village with the things Miss Treason had ordered. People were walking across the clearing. The sun was out, even if it was as pale as a poached egg. The world was belonging to…normality. Tiffany caught herself wondering if she was wrong about things. Were there roses? There were none now; the fragile petals had not survived even the dawn’s weak light. Had the wind spoken? Then she met Petulia’s gaze. Yes, it had happened. But for now there was a funeral to feed.

The girls had already got to work on the ham rolls, with three sorts of mustard, but however far wrong you couldn’t go with a ham roll, if that was all you were giving seventy or eighty hungry witches, you were going all the way past Wrong and were heading into Absolute Party Disaster. So barrows were arriving with loaves and roasts of beef, and jars of pickled cucumbers so big that they looked like drowned whales. Witches are very keen on pickles, as a rule, but the food they like best is free food. Yes, that’s the diet for your working witch: lots of food that someone else is paying for, and so much of it that there is enough to shove in your pockets for later.

As it turned out, Miss Treason wasn’t paying for it either. No one would take any money. They wouldn’t leave, either, but hung about by the back door looking worried until they could have a word with Tiffany. The conversation, when she could spare the time from slicing and spreading, would go something like this:

“She’s not really dying, is she?”

“Yes. At around half past six tomorrow morning.”

“But she’s very old!”

“Yes. I think that’s sort of why, you see.”

“But what will we do without her?”

“I don’t know. What did you do before she was here?”

“She was
always
here! She knew everything! Who’s going to tell us what to do now?”

And then they’d say: “It’s not going to be you, is it?” and give her a Look that said: We hope not. You don’t even wear a black dress.

After a while Tiffany got fed up with this and in a very sharp voice asked the next person, a woman delivering six cooked chickens: “What about all those stories about her slitting open bad people’s bellies with her thumbnail, then?”