Wintersmith (14 page)

When he had finished, the gonnagle stood in silence for a moment, looked at Tiffany again, then vanished.

Tiffany sat on a stump and cried a bit, because it needed to be done. Then she went and milked the goats, because someone had to do that, too.

I
n 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.”