Wintersmith

"Er…I adjusted it slightly for professional reasons," said Miss Treason. "One hundred and eleven sounds so…adolescent." As if to hide her ghostly embarrassment, she plunged her hand into her pocket and pulled out the spirit of the ham sandwich. "Ah, it worked," she said. "I know I—where has the mustard gone?" MUSTARD IS ALWAYS TRICKY, said Death as they began to fade. "No mustard? What about pickled onions?" PICKLES OF ALL SORTS DON'T SEEM TO MAKE IT. I'M SORRY. Behind them, the outline of a door appeared. "No relishes in the next world? That's dreadful! What about chutneys?" said the vanishing Miss Treason. THERE'S JAM. JAM WORKS. "Jam? Jam! With ham?" And they were gone. The light went back to normal. Sound came back. Time came back. Once again the thing to do was not to think too deeply, just keep her thoughts nice and level and focused on what she had to do. Watched by the people still hovering around the clearing, Tiffany went and got some blankets, bundling them up so that when she carried them back to the grave, no one would notice that the two Boffo skulls and the spiderweb-making machine were tucked inside. Then with Miss Treason and the secret of Boffo safely tucked away, she filled in the grave, and at this point a couple of men ran and helped her—right until there came, from under the soil: Clonk-clank. Clonk. The men froze. So did Tiffany, but her Third Thoughts cut in with: Don't worry! Remember, she stopped it! A falling stone or something must have started it going again! She relaxed and said sweetly: "That was probably just her saying good-bye." The rest of the soil got shoveled in really quickly. And now I'm part of the Boffo, Tiffany thought, as the people hurried back to their villages. But Miss Treason worked very hard for them. She deserves to be a myth, if that's what she wants. And I'll bet, I'll bet that on dark nights they'll hear her…. But now there was nothing but the wind in the trees. She stared at the grave. Someone should say something. Well? She was the witch, after all. There wasn't much religion on the Chalk or in the mountains. The Omnians came and had a prayer meeting about once a year, and sometimes a priest from the Nine Day Wonderers or the See of Little Faith or the Church of Small Gods would come by on a donkey. People went to listen, if a priest sounded interesting or went red and shouted, and they sang the songs if they had a good tune. And then they went home again. "We are small people," her father had said. "It ain't wise to come to the attention of the gods." Tiffany remembered the words he had said over the grave of Granny Aching, what seemed like a lifetime ago. On the summer turf of the downlands, with the buzzards screaming in the sky, they had seemed to be all there was to say. So she said them now: "If any ground is Consecrate, this ground is. If any day is Holy, it is this day." She saw a movement, and then Billy Bigchin, the gonnagle, scrambled onto the turned earth of the grave. He gave Tiffany a solemn look, then unslung his mousepipes and began to play. Humans could not hear the mousepipes very well because the notes were too high, but Tiffany could feel them in her head. A gonnagle could put many things into his music, and she felt sunsets, and autumns, and the mist on hills and the smell of roses so red they were nearly black…. 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.



CHAPTER SIX



Feet and Sprouts 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!"