Wintersmith (17 page)

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.

T
he Wintersmith and the Summer Lady…danced. The dance never ended.

Winter never dies. Not as people die. It hangs on in late frost and the smell of autumn in a summer evening, and in the heat it flees to the mountains.

Summer never dies. It sinks into the ground; in the depths, winter buds form in sheltered places and white shoots creep under dead leaves. Some of it flees into the deepest, hottest deserts, where there is a summer that never ends. To animals they were just the weather, just part of everything.

But humans arose and gave them names, just as people filled the starry sky with heroes and monsters, because this turned them into stories. And humans loved stories, because once you’d turned things into stories, you could change the stories. And there was the problem, right there.

Now the Lady and the Wintersmith danced around the year, changing places in the spring and autumn, and it had worked for thousands of years, right up until the time a girl couldn’t control her feet and had arrived in the dance at exactly the wrong time.

But the Story had life, too. It was like a play now. It would roll
on around the year, and if one of the players wasn’t the real actress but just some girl who’d wandered onto the stage, well, that was too bad. She’d have to wear the costume and speak the lines and hope that there was going to be a happy ending. Change the Story, even if you don’t mean to, and the Story changes you.

Miss Tick used a lot more words than this, like “anthropomorphic personification,” but this was what ended up in Tiffany’s head.

“So…I’m not a goddess?” she said.

“Oh, I wish I had a blackboard.” Miss Tick sighed. “They really don’t survive the water, though, and of course the chalks get so soggy—”

“What we
think
happened in the Dance,” Granny Weatherwax began in a loud voice, “is that you and the Summer Lady got…mixed up.”

“Mixed up?”

“You may have some of her talents. The myth of the Summer Lady says that flowers grow wherever she walks,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Where e’er,”
said Miss Tick primly.

“What?” snapped Granny, who was now pacing up and down in front of the fire.

“It’s ‘where e’er she walks,’ in fact,” said Miss Tick. “It’s more…poetical.”

“Hah,” Granny said. “Poetry!”

Am I going to get into trouble about this? Tiffany wondered. “And what about the
real
Summer Lady? Is she going to be angry?” she asked.

Granny Weatherwax stopped pacing and looked at Miss Tick, who said: “Ah, yes…er…we are exploring every possibility—”

“That means we don’t know,” said Granny. “That’s the truth of
it. This is about gods, see? But yes, since you ask, they can be a bit touchy.”

“I didn’t
see
her in the dance,” said Tiffany.

“Did you
see
the Wintersmith?”

“Well…no,” said Tiffany. How could she describe that wonderful, endless, golden, spinning moment? It went beyond bodies and thoughts. But it
had
sounded as though two people had said: “Who are you?” She pulled her boots back on. “Er…where is she now?” she asked as she tied the laces. Perhaps she’d have to run.

“She’s probably gone back underground for the winter. The Summer Lady doesn’t walk above ground in winter.”

“Up until now,” said Nanny Ogg cheerfully. She seemed to be enjoying this.

“Aah, Mrs. Ogg has put her finger on the
other
problem,” said Miss Tick. “The, er, Wintersmith and the Summer Lady are, uh, that is, they’ve never—” She looked imploringly at Nanny Ogg.

“They’ve never met except in the Dance,” said Nanny. “But now here you are, and you feel like the Summer Lady to him, walking around as bold as brass in the wintertime, so you might be…how shall I put it…?”

“…exciting his romantic propensities,” said Miss Tick quickly.

“I wasn’t going to describe it quite like that,” said Nanny Ogg.

“Yes, I suspects you weren’t!” said Granny. “I suspects you was going to use Language!”

Tiffany definitely heard the capital “L,” which entirely suggested that the language she was thinking of was not to be uttered in polite company.

Nanny stood up and tried to look haughty, which is hard to do when you have a face like a happy apple.

“I was actually going to draw Tiff’s attention to this,” she said,
taking an ornament off the crowded mantelpiece. It was a little house. Tiffany had glanced at it before; it had two little doorways at the front and, at the moment, a tiny little wooden man with a top hat.

“It’s called a weather house,” Nanny said, handing it to Tiffany. “I don’t know how it works—there’s a bit of special string or something—but there’s a little wooden man who comes out if it’s going to rain and a little wooden woman who comes out when it’s going to be sunny. But they’re on a little pivoty thing, see? They can
never
be out at the same time, see? Never. An’ I can’t help wonderin’, when the weather’s changin’, if the little man sees the little woman out of the corner of his eye and wonders—”

“Is this about sex?” asked Tiffany.

Miss Tick looked at the ceiling. Granny Weatherwax cleared her throat. Nanny gave a huge laugh that would have embarrassed even the little wooden man.

“Sex?” she said. “Between Summer and Winter? Now there’s a thought.”

“Don’t…think…it,” said Granny Weatherwax sternly. She turned to Tiffany. “He’s fascinated by you, that’s what it is. And we don’t know how much of the Summer Lady’s power is in you. She might be quite weak. You’ll have to be a summer in winter until winter ends,” she added flatly. “That’s justice. No excuses. You made a choice. You get what you chose.”

“Couldn’t I just go and find her and say I’m sorry—?” Tiffany began.

“No. The old gods ain’t big on ‘sorry,’” said Granny, pacing up and down again. “They know it’s
just
a word.”

“You know what I think?” said Nanny. “I think she’s watchin’ you, Tiff. She’s sayin’ to herself, ‘Who’s this hoity-toity young
madam steppin’ into my shoes? Well, let’s make her walk a mile in ’em and see how she likes it!’”

“Mrs. Ogg may have something there,” said Miss Tick, who was leafing through Chaffinch’s
Mythology
. “The gods expect you to
pay
for your mistakes.”

Nanny Ogg patted Tiffany’s hand. “If she wants to see what you can do,
show
her what you can do, Tiff, eh? That’s the way! Surprise her!”

“You mean the Summer Lady?” said Tiffany.

Nanny winked. “Oh, and the Summer Lady, too!”

There was what sounded very much like the start of a laugh from Miss Tick before Granny Weatherwax glared at her.

Tiffany sighed. It was all very well to talk about choices, but she had no choice here.

“All right. What else can I expect apart from…well, the feet?”

“I’m, er, checking,” said Miss Tick, still thumbing through the book. “Ah…it says here that she was, I mean
is
, fairer than all the stars in heaven….”

They all looked at Tiffany.

“You could try doing something with your hair,” said Nanny Ogg after a while.

“Like what?” said Tiffany.

“Like anything, really.”

“Apart from the feet and doing something with my hair,” said Tiffany sharply, “is there anything else?”

“Says here, quoting a very old manuscript: ‘She waketh the grasses in Aprill and filleth the beehives with honey swete,’” Miss Tick reported.

“How do I do that?”

“I don’t know, but I suspect that happens anyway,” said Miss Tick.

“And the Summer Lady gets the credit?”

“I think she just has to exist for it to happen, really,” said Miss Tick.

“Anything else?”

“Er, yes. You have to make sure the winter ends,” said Miss Tick. “And, of course, deal with the Wintersmith.”

“And how do I do
that
?”

“We think that you just have to…be there,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Or perhaps you’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

Meep.

“Be where?” said Tiffany.

“Everywhere. Anywhere.”

“Granny, your hat squeaked,” said Tiffany. “It went
meep
!”

“No it didn’t,” Granny said sharply.

“It did, you know,” said Nanny Ogg. “I heard it too.”

Granny Weatherwax grunted and pulled off her hat. The white kitten, curled around her tight bun of hair, blinked in the light.

“I can’t help it,” Granny muttered. “If I leave the dratted thing alone, it goes under the dresser and cries and cries.” She looked around at the others as if daring them to say anything. “Anyway,” she added, “it keeps m’ head warm.”

On his chair, the yellow slit of Greebo’s left eye opened lazily.

“Get down, You,” said Granny, lifting the kitten off her head and putting it on the floor. “I daresay Mrs. Ogg has got some milk in the kitchen.”

“Not much,” said Nanny. “I’ll swear something’s been drinking it!”

Greebo’s eye opened all the way, and he began to growl softly.

“You sure you know what you’re doing, Esme?” said Nanny
Ogg, reaching for a cushion to throw. “He’s very protective of his territory.”

You the kitten sat on the floor and washed her ears. Then, as Greebo got to his feet, she fixed him with an innocent little stare and took a flying leap onto his nose, landing on it with all her claws out.

“So is she,” said Granny Weatherwax, as Greebo erupted from the chair and hurtled around the room before disappearing into the kitchen. There was a crash of saucepans followed by the
groioioioing
of a saucepan lid spinning into silence on the floor.

The kitten padded back into the room, hopped into the empty chair, and curled up.

“He brought in half a wolf last week,” said Nanny Ogg. “You haven’t been hexperimenting
*
on that poor kitten, have you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” said Granny. “She just knows her own mind, that’s all.” She turned to Tiffany. “I don’t reckon the Wintersmith will be worrying about you too much for a while,” she said. “The big winter weather will be on us soon. That’ll keep him busy. In the meantime, Mrs. Ogg will teach you…things she knows.”

And Tiffany thought: I wonder how embarrassing this is going to be.

Deep in the snow, in the middle of a windswept moorland, a small band of traveling librarians sat around their cooling stove and wondered what to burn next.

Tiffany had never been able to find out much about the librarians. They were a bit like the wandering priests and teachers who went even into the smallest, loneliest villages to deliver those
things—prayers, medicine, facts—that people could do without for weeks at a time but sometimes needed a lot of all at once. The librarians would loan you a book for a penny, although they often would take food or good secondhand clothes. If you gave them a book, you got ten free loans.

Sometimes you’d see two or three of their wagons parked in some clearing and could smell the glues they boiled up to repair the oldest books. Some of the books they loaned were so old that the printing had been worn gray by the pressure of people’s eyeballs reading it.

The librarians were mysterious. It was said they could tell what book you needed just by looking at you, and they could take your voice away with a word.

But here they were searching the shelves for T. H. Mouse-holder’s famous book
Survival in the Snow
.

Things were getting desperate. The oxen that pulled the wagon had broken their tethers and run off in the blizzard, the stove was nearly out, and worst of all, they were down to their last candles, which meant that soon they would not be able to read books.

“It says here in K. Pierpoint Poundsworth’s
Among the Snow Weasels
that the members of the ill-fated expedition to Whale Bay survived by making soup of their own toes,” said Deputy Librarian Grizzler.

“That’s interesting,” said Senior Librarian Swinsley, who was rummaging on the shelf below. “Is there a recipe?”

“No, but there may be something in Superflua Raven’s book
Cooking in Dire Straits
. That’s where we got yesterday’s recipe for Nourishing Boiled Socks Surprise—” There was a thunderous knocking at the door. It was a two-part door that allowed only the top half to be opened, so that a ledge on the bottom half could be
a sort of small desk for stamping books. Snow came through the crack as the knocking continued.

“I hope that’s not the wolves again,” said Mr. Grizzler. “I got no sleep at all last night!”

“Do they knock? We could check in
The Habits of Wolves
by Captain W. E. Lightly,” said Senior Librarian Swinsley, “or perhaps you could just open the door? Quickly! The candles are going out!”

Grizzler opened the top half of the door. There was a tall figure on the steps, hard to see in the fitful, cloud-strained moonlight.

“Ah’m lookin’ for Romance,” it rumbled.

The Deputy Librarian thought for a moment, and then said, “Isn’t it a bit chilly out there?”

“Aren’t ye the people wi’ all dem books?” the figure demanded.

“Yes, indeed…oh, Romance! Yes, certainly!” said Mr. Swinsley, looking relieved. “In that case, I think you’ll want Miss Jenkins. Forward please, Miss Jenkins.”

“It looks like youse is freezin’ in there,” said the figure. “Dem’s icicles hanging from der ceilin’.”

“Yes. However, we have managed to keep them off the books,” said Mr. Swinsley. “Ah, Miss Jenkins. The, er, gentleman is looking for Romance. Your department, I think.”

“Yes, sir,” said Miss Jenkins. “What kind of romance were you looking for?”

“Oh, one wi’ a cover on, ye ken, and wi’ pages wi’ all wurdies on ’em,” said the figure.

Miss Jenkins, who was used to this sort of thing, disappeared into the gloom at the other end of the wagon.