Wintersmith (Discworld 35)

"Well, it's all a bit—" Tiffany began. The little mouse had looked so lost and forlorn. "Don't cry," said Miss Treason. "Living this long's not as wonderful as people think. I mean, you get the same amount of youth as everyone else, but a great big extra helping of being very old and deaf and creaky. Now, blow your nose and help me on with the ravens' perch."

"He might still be out there…" Tiffany mumbled, as she eased the perch onto the thin shoulders. Then she rubbed at the window again and saw shapes and movement. "Oh…they came…" she said. "What?" said Miss Treason. She stopped. "There's lots of people out there!"

"Er…yes," said Tiffany. "What do you know about this, my girl?"

"Well, you see, they kept asking when—"

"Fetch my skulls! They mustn't see me without my skulls! How does my hair look?" said Miss Treason, frantically winding up her clock. "It looks nice—"

"Nice? Nice? Are you mad? Mess it up this minute!" Miss Treason demanded. "And fetch my most raggedy cloak! This one's far too clean! Move yourself, child!" It took several minutes to get Miss Treason ready, and a lot of the time was spent convincing her that taking the skulls out in daylight might be dangerous, in case they got dropped and someone saw the labels. Then Tiffany opened the door. A murmur of conversation crashed into silence. There were people in a crowd all around the door. As Miss Treason stepped forward, it parted to leave a clear path. To her horror, Tiffany saw a dug grave on the other side of the clearing. She hadn't expected that. She wasn't sure what she had expected, but a dug grave wasn't it. "Who dug—?"

"Our blue friends," said Miss Treason. "I asked them to." And then the crowd started to cheer. Women hurried forward with big bunches of yew, holly, and mistletoe, the only green things growing. People were laughing. People were crying. They clustered around the witch, forcing Tiffany out to the edge of the crowd. She went quiet and listened. "We don't know what we'll do without you, Miss Treason."—"I don't think we'll get another witch as good as you, Miss Treason!"—"We never thought you'd go, Miss Treason. You brought my ol' granddad into the world."— Walking into the grave, Tiffany thought. Well, that's style. That is…solid gold Boffo. They'll remember that for the rest of their lives— "In that case you shall keep all the puppies but one—" Miss Treason had stopped to organize the crowd. "The custom is to give that one to the owner of the dog. You should have kept the bitch in, after all, and minded your fences. And your question, Mister Blinkhorn?" Tiffany stood up straight. They were bothering her! Even this morning! But she…wanted to be bothered. Being bothered was her life. "Miss Treason!" she snapped, pushing her way through the mob. "Remember you have an appointment!" It wasn't the best thing to say, but a lot better than: "You said you were going to die in about five minutes' time!" Miss Treason turned and looked uncertain for a moment. "Oh, yes," she said. "Yes, indeed. We had better get on." Then, still talking to Mr. Blinkhorn about some complex problem concerning a fallen tree and someone's shed, and with the rest of the crowd trailing after her, she let Tiffany walk her gently to the graveside. "Well, at least you've got a happy ending, Miss Treason," Tiffany whispered. It was a silly thing to say and deserved what it got. "We make happy endings, child, day to day. But you see, for the witch there are no happy endings. There are just endings. And here we are…." Best not to think, thought Tiffany. Best not to think you're climbing down an actual ladder into an actual grave. Try not to think about helping Miss Treason down the ladder onto the leaves that are piled up at one end. Do not let yourself know you're standing in a grave. Down here, the horrible clock seemed to clank even louder: clonk-clank, clonk-clank…. Miss Treason trod the leaves down a bit and said cheerfully, "Yes, I can see myself being quite comfortable here. Listen, child, I told you about the books, did I not? And there is a small gift for you under my chair. Yes, this seems adequate. Oh, I forgot…" Clonk-clank, clonk-clank …went the clock, sounding much louder down there. Miss Treason stood on tiptoe and poked her head over the edge of the hole. "Mr. Easy! You owe two months' rent to the Widow Langley! Understand? Mr. Plenty, the pig belongs to Mrs. Frumment, and if you don't give it back to her, I shall come back and groan under your window! Mistress Fullsome, the Dogelley family have had Right of Passage over the Turnwise pasture since even I cannot remember, and you must…you must…" Clon…k. There was a moment, one long moment, when the sudden silence of the clock not ticking anymore filled the clearing like thunder. Slowly Miss Treason sagged down onto the leaves. It took a few dreadful seconds for her brain to start working, and then Tiffany screamed at the people clustered above: "Go back, all of you! Give her some air!" She knelt down as they backed hurriedly away. The smell of the raw soil was sharp in the air. At least Miss Treason seemed to have died with her eyes shut. Not everyone did. Tiffany hated having to shut them for people; it was like killing them all over again. "Miss Treason?" she whispered. That was the first test. There were a lot of them, and you had to do them all: speak to them, raise an arm, check the pulses including the one behind the ear, check for breath with a mirror…and she'd always been so nervous about getting them wrong that the first time she'd had to go out to deal with someone who looked dead—a young man who'd been in a horrible sawmill accident—she'd done every single test, even though she'd had to go and find his head. There were no mirrors in Miss Treason's cottage. In that case she— —should think! This is Miss Treason here! And I heard her wind her clock up only a few minutes ago! She smiled. "Miss Treason!" she said, very close to the woman's ear. "I know you're in there!" And that's when the morning, which had been sad, weird, odd, and horrible, became…Boffo all the way. Miss Treason smiled. "Have they gone?" she inquired. "Miss Treason!" said Tiffany sternly. "That was a terrible thing to do!"

"I stopped my clock with my thumbnail," said Miss Treason proudly. "Couldn't disappoint them, eh? Had to give 'em a show!"

"Miss Treason," said Tiffany severely, "did you make up the story about your clock?"

"Of course I did! And it's a wonderful bit of folklore, a real corker. Miss Treason and her clockwork heart! Might even become a myth, if I'm lucky. They'll remember Miss Treason for thousands of years!" Miss Treason closed her eyes again. "I'll certainly remember you, Miss Treason," said Tiffany. "I will really, because—" The world had gone gray, and was getting grayer. And Miss Treason had gone very still. "Miss Treason?" said Tiffany, nudging her. "Miss Treason?" MISS EUMENIDES TREASON, AGED ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN? Tiffany heard the voice inside her head. It didn't seem to have come through her ears. And she'd heard it before, making her quite unusual. Most people hear the voice of Death only once. Miss Treason stood up, without the creak of even one bone. And she looked just like Miss Treason, solid and smiling. What now lay on the dead leaves was, in this strange light, just a shadow. But a very tall dark figure was standing beside her. It was Death himself. Tiffany had seen him before, in his own land beyond the Dark Door, but you didn't need to have met him before to know who he was. The scythe, the long hooded robe, and of course the bundle of hourglasses were all clues. "Where are your manners, child?" said Miss Treason. Tiffany looked up and said: "Good morning." GOOD MORNING, TIFFANY ACHING, AGED THIRTEEN, said Death in his no-voice. I SEE YOU ARE IN GOOD HEALTH. "A little curtsy would be in order too," said Miss Treason. To Death? thought Tiffany. Granny Aching wouldn't have liked that. Never bend the knee to tyrants, she would say. AT LAST, MISS EUMENIDES TREASON, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER. Death took her gently by the arm. "Hey, wait a minute!" said Tiffany. "Miss Treason is one hundred and thirteen!"

"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!"

;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."