Wintersmith (31 page)

Good-bye to the glittering crown, Tiffany thought with a touch of regret. Good-bye to the dress made of dancing light, and good-bye to the ice roses and the snowflakes. Such a shame. Such a shame.

And then there was grass under her, and so much water pouring past her that it was a case of get up or drown. She managed to get to her knees, at least, and waited until it was possible to stand up without being knocked over.

“You have something of mine, child,” said a voice behind her. She turned, and golden light rushed into a shape. It was her own shape, but her eyes were… odd, like a snake’s. Right here and now, with the roaring of the heat of the sun still filling her ears, this didn’t seem very amazing.

Slowly, Tiffany took the Cornucopia out of her pocket and handed it over.

“You are the Summer Lady, aren’t you?” she asked.

“And you are the sheep-girl who would be me?” There was a hiss to the words.

“I didn’t want to be!” said Tiffany hurriedly. “Why do you look like me?”

The Summer Lady sat down on the turf. It is very strange to watch yourself, and Tiffany noticed she had a small mole on the back of her neck.

“It’s called resonance,” she said. “Do you know what that is?”

“It means ‘vibrating with,’” said Tiffany.

“How does a sheep-girl know that?”

“I have a dictionary,” said Tiffany. “And I’m a witch, thank you.”

“Well, while you were picking up things from me, I’ve been picking up things from you, clever sheep-witch,” said the Summer Lady. She was beginning to remind Tiffany a lot of Annagramma. That was actually a relief. She didn’t sound wise, or nice…she was just another person, who happened to be very powerful but not frighteningly smart and was, frankly, a bit annoying.

“What’s your real shape?” Tiffany asked.

“The shape of heat on a road, the shape of the smell of apples.” Nice reply, Tiffany thought, but not helpful, as such.

Tiffany sat down next to the goddess. “Am I in trouble?” she asked.

“Because of what you did to the Wintersmith? No. He has to die every year, as do I. We die, and sleep and wake. Besides…you were entertaining.”

“Oh? I was
entertaining
, was I?” said Tiffany, her eyes narrowing.

“What is it you want?” asked the Summer Lady. Yes, thought Tiffany,
just
like Annagramma. Wouldn’t spot a hint a mile high.

“Want?” said Tiffany. “Nothing. Just the summer, thank you.”

The Summer Lady looked puzzled. “But humans always want something from gods.”

“But witches don’t accept payment. Green grass and blue skies will do.”

“What? You’ll get those anyway!” The Summer Lady sounded both confused and angry, and Tiffany was quite happy about this, in a small and spiteful way.

“Good,” she said.

“You saved the world from the Wintersmith!”

“Actually, I saved it from a silly girl, Miss Summer. I put right what I put wrong.”

“One simple mistake? You’d be a silly girl not to accept a reward.”

“I’d be a sensible young woman to refuse one,” said Tiffany, and it felt good to say that. “Winter is over. I know. I’ve seen it through. Where it took me, there I chose to go. I chose when I danced with the Wintersmith.”

The Summer Lady stood up. “Remarkable,” she said. “And strange. And now we part. But first, some more things must be taken. Stand up, young woman.”

Tiffany did so, and when she looked into the face of Summer, golden eyes became pits that drew her in.

And then the summer filled her up. It must have been for only a few seconds, but inside them it went on for much longer. She felt what it was like to be the breeze through green corn on a spring day, to ripen an apple, to make the salmon leap the rapids—the sensations came all at once and merged into one great big, glistening, golden-yellow feeling of summer…

…that grew hotter. Now the sun turned red in a burning sky. Tiffany drifted through air like warm oil into the searing calm of
deep deserts, where even camels die. There was no living thing. Nothing moved except ash.

She drifted down a dried-up riverbed, with pure white animal bones on the banks. There was no mud, not one drop of moisture in this oven of a land. This was a river of stones—agates banded like a cat’s eye, garnets lying loose, thunder eggs with their rings of color, stones of brown, orange, creamy white, some with black veins, all polished by the heat.

“Here is the heart of the summer,” hissed the voice of the Summer Lady. “Fear me as much as the Wintersmith. We are not yours, though you give us shapes and names. Fire and ice we are, in balance. Do not come between us again….”

And now, at last, there was movement. From out of gaps between the stones they came like stones brought alive: bronze and red, umber and yellow, black and white, with harlequin patterns and deadly gleaming scales.

The snakes tested the boiling air with their forked tongues and hissed triumphantly.

The vision vanished. The world came back.

The water had poured away. The everlasting wind had teased the fogs and steams into long streamers of cloud, but the unconquered sun was finding its way through. And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it’s gone.

Tiffany walked across the grass where the palace had been. There were a few pieces of ice left, but they would be gone in an hour. There were the clouds, but clouds drifted away. The normal world pressed in on her, with its dull little songs. She was walking on a stage after the play was over, and who now could say it had ever happened?

Something sizzled on the grass. Tiffany reached down and picked up a piece of metal. It was still warm with the last of the heat that had twisted it out of shape, but you could see that it had once been a nail.

No, I won’t take a gift to make the giver feel better, she thought. Why should I? I’ll find my own gifts. I was…“entertaining” to her, that’s all.

But him—he made me roses and icebergs and frost and never understood….

She turned suddenly at the sound of voices. The Feegles came bounding over the slope of the downs, at a speed just fast enough for a human to keep up. And Roland was keeping up, panting a little, his overlarge chain mail making him run like a duck.

She laughed.

Two weeks later Tiffany went back to Lancre. Roland took her as far as Twoshirts, and the pointy hat took her the rest of the way. That was a bit of luck. The driver remembered Miss Tick, and since there was a spare space on the roof of the coach, he wasn’t prepared to go through all that again. The roads were flooded, the ditches gurgled, the swollen rivers sucked at the bridges.

First she visited Nanny Ogg, who had to be told everything. That saved some time, because once you’ve told Nanny Ogg, you’ve more or less told everyone else. When she heard exactly what Tiffany had done to the Wintersmith, she laughed and laughed.

Tiffany borrowed Nanny’s broomstick and flew slowly across the forests to Miss Treason’s cottage.

Things were going on. In the clearing, several men were digging the vegetable area, and lots of people were hanging around the
door, so she landed back in the woods, shoved the broom into a rabbit hole and her hat under a bush, and walked back on foot.

Stuck in a birch tree where the track entered the clearing was…a doll, maybe, made out of lots of twigs bound together. It was new, and a bit worrying. That was probably the idea.

No one saw her raise the catch on the scullery door or slip inside the cottage. She leaned against the kitchen wall and went quiet.

From the next room came the unmistakable voice of Annagramma at her most typically Annagrammatical.

“—only a tree, do you understand? Cut it up and share the wood. Agreed? And now shake hands. Go on. I mean it. Properly, or else I’ll get angry! Good. That feels better, doesn’t it? Let’s have no more of this silliness—”

After ten minutes of listening to people being scolded, grumbled at, and generally prodded, Tiffany crept out again, cut through the woods, and walked into the clearing via the track. There was a woman hurrying toward her, but she stopped when Tiffany said: “Excuse me, is there a witch near here?”

“Ooooh, yes,” said the woman, and gave Tiffany a hard stare. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No,” said Tiffany, and thought: I lived here for months, Mrs. Carter, and I saw you most days. But I always wore the hat. People always talk to the hat. Without the hat, I’m in disguise.

“Well, there’s Miss Hawkin,” said Mrs. Carter, as if reluctant to give away a secret. “Be careful, though.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “She turns into a terrible monster when she’s angry! I’ve seen her! She’s all right with us, of course,” she added. “Lots of young witches have been coming to learn things from her!”

“Gosh, she must be good!”

“She’s amazing,” Mrs. Carter went on. “She’d only been here five minutes and she seemed to know all about us!”

“Amazing,” said Tiffany. You’d think that somebody wrote it all down. Twice. But that wouldn’t be interesting enough, would it? And who would believe that a real witch bought her face from Boffo?

“And she’s got a cauldron that bubbles green,” Mrs. Carter said with great pride. “All down the sides. That’s proper witching, that is.”

“It sounds like it,” said Tiffany. No witch she’d met had done anything with a cauldron apart from make stew, but somehow people believed in their hearts that a witch’s cauldron should bubble green. And that must be why Mr. Boffo sold Item #61 Bubbling Green Cauldron Kit, $14, extra sachets of Green, $1 each.

Well, it worked. It probably shouldn’t, but people were people. She didn’t think Annagramma would be particularly interested in a visit right now, especially from someone who’d read all the way through the Boffo catalogue, so she retrieved her broom and headed on to Granny Weatherwax’s cottage.

There was a chicken run out in the back garden now. It had been carefully woven out of pliable hazel, and contented
werk
s were coming from the other side.

Granny Weatherwax was coming out of the back door. She looked at Tiffany as if the girl had just come back from a ten-minute stroll.

“I’ve got business down in the town right now,” she said. “It wouldn’t worry me if you came, too.” That was, from Granny, as good as a brass band and an illuminated scroll of welcome. Tiffany fell in alongside her as she strode off along the track.

“I hope I find you well, Mistress Weatherwax?” she said, hurrying to keep up.

“I’m still here after another winter, that’s all I know,” said Granny. “You look well, girl.”

“Oh, yes.”

“We saw the steam from up here,” said Granny.

Tiffany said nothing. That was it? Well, yes. From Granny, that would be it.

After a while Granny said: “Come back to see your young friends, eh?”

Tiffany took a deep breath. She’d been through this in her head dozens of times: what she would say, what Granny would say, what she would shout, what Granny would shout…

“You planned it, didn’t you?” she said. “If you’d suggested one of the others, they’d probably have got the cottage, so you suggested me. And you knew, you just
knew
that I’d help her. And it’s all worked out, hasn’t it? I bet every witch in the mountains knows what happened by now. I bet Mrs. Earwig is seething. And the best bit is, no one got hurt. Annagramma’s picked up where Miss Treason left off, all the villagers are happy, and you’ve won! Oh, I expect you’ll say it was to keep me busy and teach me important things and keep my mind off the Wintersmith, but you still won!”

Granny Weatherwax walked on calmly. Then she said: “I see you got your little trinket back.”

It was like having a bolt of lightning and then not getting any thunder, or throwing a pebble into a pool and not getting a splash.

“What? Oh. The horse. Yes! Look, I—”

“What kind of fish?”

“Er…pike,” said Tiffany.

“Ah? Some likes ’em, but they are too muddy for my taste.”

And that was it. Against Granny’s calm she had nowhere to go. She could nag, she could whine, and it wouldn’t make any difference. Tiffany consoled herself with the fact that at least Granny knew that she knew. It wasn’t much, but it was all she was going to get.

“And the horse ain’t the only trinket I see,” Granny continued. “Magick, is it?” She always stuck a K on the end of any magic she disapproved of.

Tiffany glanced down at the ring on her finger. It had a dull shine. It’d never rust while she wore it, the blacksmith had told her, because of the oils in her skin. He’d even taken the time to cut little snowflakes in it with a tiny chisel.

“It’s just a ring I had made out of a nail,” she said.

“Iron enough to make a ring,” said Granny, and Tiffany stopped dead. Did she really get into people’s minds? It had to be something like that.

“And why did you decide you wanted a ring?” said Granny.

For all sorts of reasons that never quite managed to be clear in Tiffany’s head, she knew. All she could think of to say was: “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” She waited for the explosion.

“Then it probably was,” said Granny mildly. She stopped, pointed away from the path—in the direction of the town and Nanny Ogg’s house—and said: “I put the fence around it. It’s got other things protectin’ it, you may be sure of that, but some beasts is just too stupid to scare.”

It was the oak tree sapling, already five feet high. A fence of poles and woven branches surrounded it.

“Growing fast, for oak,” said Granny. “I’m keeping an eye on it. But come on, I don’t want to miss it.” She set off again, covering the ground fast. Bewildered, Tiffany ran after her.

“Miss what?” she panted.

“The dance, of course!”

“Isn’t it too early for that?”

“Not up here. They starts up here!”

Granny hurried along little paths and behind gardens and came out into the town square, which was thronged with people. Small stalls had been set up. A lot of people were standing around in the slightly hopeless why-are-we-here? way of crowds who’re doing what their hearts want to do but their heads feel embarrassed about, but at least there were hot things on sticks to eat. There were lots of white chickens, too. Very good eggs, Nanny had said, so it would have been a shame to kill them.