Wintersmith (Discworld 35)

"She did that!" said Mr. Hogparsley. "Hah! I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side o' her!"

"Right, so no shootin' arrows at anyone except Death, right? Otherwise Mistress Weatherwax won't make you any more," said Nanny, putting a bottle on the old wooden box that was Mr. Hogparsley's bedside table. "Here's some of your jollop, freshly mixed up. Where did she tell you to keep the pain?"

"It's sitting up here on my shoulder, missus, being no trouble." Nanny touched the shoulder, and seemed to think for a moment. "It's a brown and white squiggle? Sort of oblong?"

"That's right, missus," said Mr. Hogparsley, pulling at the cork on the bottle. "It wiggles away there and I laughs at it." The cork popped out. Suddenly, the room smelled of apples. "It's gettin' big," said Nanny. "Mistress Weatherwax will be along tonight to take it away."

"Right you are, missus," said the old man, filling a mug to the brim. "Try not to shoot her, all right? It only makes her mad." It was snowing again when they stepped out of the cottage, big feathery flakes that meant business. "I reckon that's it for today," Nanny announced. "I've got things to see to over in Slice, but we'll take the stick tomorrow."

"That arrow he fired at us—" said Tiffany. "Imaginary," said Nanny Ogg, smiling. "It looked real for a moment!" Nanny Ogg chuckled. "It's amazing what Esme Weatherwax can make people imagine!"

"Like traps for Death?"

"Oh, yes. Well, it gives the old boy an interest in life. He's on his way to the Door. But at least Esme's seen to it that there's no pain."

"Because it's floating over his shoulder?" said Tiffany. "Yep. She put it just outside his body for him, so it don't hurt," said Nanny, the snow crunching under her feet. "I didn't know you could do that!"

"I can do it for small stuff, toothaches and the like. Esme's the champion for it, though. We're none of us too proud to call her in. Y'know, she's very good at people. Funny, really, 'cuz she doesn't like 'em much." Tiffany glanced at the sky, and Nanny was the kind of inconvenient person who notices everything. "Wondering if lover boy is goin' to drop in?" she said with a big grin. "Nanny! Really!"

"But you are, aren't you?" said Nanny, who knew no shame. "O' course, he's always around, when you think about it. You're walking through him, you feel him on your skin, you stamp him off your boots when you go indoors—"

"Just don't talk like that, please?" said Tiffany. "Besides, what's time to an elemental?" Nanny chattered. "And I suppose snowflakes don't just make themselves, especially when you've got to get the arms and legs right….

" She's looking at me out of the corner of her eye to see if I'm going red, Tiffany thought. I know it. Then Nanny nudged her in the ribs and laughed one of her laughs that would make a rock blush. "Good for you!" she said. "I've had a few boyfriends myself that I'd have loved to stamp off my boots!" Tiffany was just getting ready for bed that night when she found a book under her pillow. The title, in fiery red letters, was Passion's Plaything by Marjory J. Boddice, and in smaller print were the words: Gods and Men said their love was not to be, but they would not listen!! A tortured tale of a tempestuous romance by the author of Sundered Hearts!!! The cover showed, up close, a young woman with dark hair and clothes that were a bit on the skimpy side in Tiffany's opinion, both hair and clothes blowing in the wind. She looked desperately determined, and also a bit chilly. A young man on a horse was watching her some distance away. It appeared that a thunderstorm was blowing up. Strange. There was a library stamp inside, and Nanny didn't use the library. Well, it wouldn't hurt to read a bit before blowing the candle out. Tiffany turned to page one. And then to page two. When she got to page nineteen she went and fetched the Unexpurgated Dictionary. She had older sisters and she knew some of this, she told herself. But Marjory J. Boddice had got some things laughably wrong. Girls on the Chalk didn't often run away from a young man who was rich enough to own his own horse—or not for long and not without giving him a chance to catch up. And Megs, the heroine of the book, clearly didn't know a thing about farming. No young man would be interested in a woman who couldn't dose a cow or carry a piglet. What kind of help would she be around the place? Standing around with lips like cherries wouldn't get the cows milked or the sheep sheared! And that was another thing.

Did Marjory J. Boddice know anything about sheep? This was a sheep farm in the summertime, wasn't it? So when did they shear the sheep? The second most important occasion in a sheep farm's year and it wasn't worth mentioning? Of course, they might have a breed like Habbakuk Polls or Lowland Cobbleworths that didn't need shearing, but these were rare and any sensible author would surely have mentioned it. And the scene in chapter five, where Megs left the sheep to fend for themselves while she went gathering nuts with Roger…well, how stupid was that? They could have wandered anywhere, and they were really stupid to think they'd find nuts in June. She read on a bit further, and thought: Oh. I see. Hmm. Hah. Not nuts at all, then. On the Chalk, that sort of thing was called "looking for cuckoo nests."

She stopped there to go downstairs to fetch a fresh candle, got back into bed, let her feet warm up again, and went on reading. Should Megs marry sulky dark-eyed William, who already owned two and a half cows, or should she be swayed by Roger, who called her "my proud beauty" but was clearly a bad man because he rode a black stallion and had a mustache? Why did she think she had to marry either of them? Tiffany wondered. Anyway, she spent too much time leaning meaningfully against things and pouting. Wasn't anyone doing any work? And if she always dressed like that, she'd catch a chill. It was amazing what those men put up with. But it made you think. She blew out the candle and sank gently under the eiderdown, which was as white as snow. Snow covered the Chalk. It fell around the sheep, making them look a dirty yellow. It covered the stars but glowed by its own light. It stuck to the windows of the cottages, blotting out the orange candlelight. But it would never cover the castle. The castle stood on a mound a little way from the village, a tower of stone ruling all those thatched homes. They looked as if they had grown from the land, but the castle nailed it down. It said: I Own. In his room, Roland wrote carefully. He ignored the hammering from outside. Annagramma, Petulia, Miss Treason—Tiffany's letters were full of faraway people with strange- sounding names. Sometimes he tried to imagine them, and wondered if she was making them up. The whole witchcraft business seemed…well, not as advertised. It seemed like— "Do you hear this, you wicked boy?"

Aunt Danuta sounded triumphant. "Now it's barred from this side too! Hah! This is for your own good, you know. You will stay in there until you are ready to apologize!" —like hard work, to be honest. Worthy, though, visiting the sick and everything, but very busy and not very magical. He'd heard of "dancing around without your drawers on" and tried his best not to imagine it, but in any case there didn't seem to be anything like that. Even broomstick rides sounded— "And we know about your secret passage now, oh yes! It's being walled up! No more thumbing your nose at people who are doing their very best for you!" —dull. He paused for a moment, staring blankly at the carefully stacked piles of loaves and sausages beside his bed. I ought to get some onions tonight, he thought. General Tacticus says they are unsurpassable for the proper operation of the digestive system if you can't find fresh fruit. What to write, what to write…yes! He'd tell her about the party. He'd only gone because his father, in one of his good moments, had asked him to. It was important to keep in with the neighbors but not with the relatives! It'd been quite nice to get out, and he'd been able to leave his horse at Mr. Gamely's stable, where the aunts wouldn't think of looking for it. Yes…she'd enjoy hearing about the party. The aunts were shouting again, about locking the door to his father's room. And they were blocking the secret passage. That meant that all he was left with was the loose stone that came out behind the tapestry in the next room, the wobbly flagstone that could let him drop down into the room below, and, of course, the chain outside the window that let him climb all the way down to the ground. And on his desk, on top of General Tacticus's book, was a complete set of shiny new castle keys. He'd got Mr. Gamely to make them for him. The blacksmith was a thoughtful man who could see the sense in being friendly to the next Baron. He could come and go as he liked, whatever they did. They could bully his father, they could shout all  they pleased, but they would never own him. You could learn a lot from books. The Wintersmith was learning. It was a hard, slow task when you had to make your brain out of ice. But he had learned about snowmen. They were built by the smaller kinds of humans. That was interesting. Apart from the ones in pointy hats, the bigger humans didn't seem to hear him. They knew invisible creatures didn't speak to them out of the air. The small ones, though, hadn't found out what was impossible. In the big city was a big snowman. Actually, it would be more honest to call it a slushman. Technically it was snow, but by the time it had spiraled down through the big city's fogs, smogs, and smokes, it was already a sort of yellowish gray, and then most of what ended up on the pavement was what had been thrown up from the gutter by cart wheels. It was, at best, a mostly snowman. But three grubby children were building it anyway, because building something that you could call a snowman was what you did. Even if it was yellow. They'd done their best with what they could find and had given him two horse droppings for eyes and a dead rat for a nose. At which point the snowman spoke to them, in their heads. Small humans, why do you do that? The boy who might have been the older boy looked at the girl who might have been the older girl. "I'll tell you I heard that if you say you heard it too," he said. The girl was still young enough not to think "snowmen can't talk" when one of them had just spoken to her, so she said to it: "You have to put them in to make you a snowman, mister." Does that make me human? "No, 'cuz…" She hesitated. "You ain't got innards," said the third and smallest child, who might have been the younger boy or the younger girl, but who was spherical with so many layers of clothing that it was quite impossible to tell. It did have a pink woolly hat with a bobble on it, but that didn't mean anything. Someone did care about it, though, because they'd embroidered "R" and "L" on its mittens, "F" and "B" on the front and back of its coat, "T" on top of the bobble hat, and probably "U" on the underside of its rubber boots. That meant that while you couldn't know what it was, you could be certain it was the right way up and which way it was facing. A cart went by, throwing up another wave of slush. Innards? said the secret voice of the snowman. Made of special dust, yes! But what dust? "Iron," said the possibly older boy promptly. "Enough iron to make a nail."

"Oh, yeah, that's right, that's how it goes," said the possibly older girl. "We used to skip to it. Er…'Iron enough to make a nail…Water enough to drown a cow—'"

"A dog," said the possibly older boy. "It's 'Water enough to drown a dog, Sulfur enough to stop the fleas.' It's 'Poison enough to kill a cow.'" What is this? the Wintersmith asked. "It's…like…an old song," said the possibly older boy. "More like a sort of poem. Everyone knows it," said the possibly older girl. "'S called 'These Are the Things That Make a Man,'" said the child who was the right way up. Tell me the rest of it, the Wintersmith demanded, and on the freezing pavement they did, as much as they knew. When they'd finished, the possibly older boy said hopefully, "Is there any chance you can take us flying?" No, said the Wintersmith. I have things to find! Things that make a man! One afternoon, when the sky was growing cold, there was a frantic knocking on Nanny's door. It turned out to be caused by Annagramma, who almost fell into the room. She looked terrible, and her teeth were chattering. Nanny and Tiffany stood her by the fire, but she started talking before her teeth had warmed up. "Skkkkulls!" she managed. Oh dear, thought Tiffany. "What about them?" she said, as Nanny Ogg hurried in from the kitchen with a hot drink. "Mmmmmiss Trrreason's Skkkkulls!"

"Yes? What about them?" Annagramma took a swig from the mug. "What did you do with them?" she gasped, cocoa dribbling down her chin. "Buried them."

"Oh, no! Why?"

"They were skulls. You can't just leave skulls lying about!" Annagramma looked around wildly. "Can you lend me a shovel, then?"

"Annagramma! You can't dig up Miss Treason's grave!"

"But I need some skulls!" Annagramma insisted. "The people there—well, it's like the olden days! I whitewashed that place with my own hands! Have you any idea how long it takes to whitewash over black? They complained! They won't have anything to do with crystal therapy, they just frown and say Miss Treason gave them sticky black medicine that tasted horrible but worked! And they keep on asking me to sort out stupid little problems, and I don't have a clue what they're about. And this morning there was this old man who's dead and I've got to lay him out and sit up with him tonight. Well, I mean, that's so…yuk…." Tiffany glanced at Nanny Ogg, who was sitting in her chair and puffing gently on her pipe. Her eyes were gleaming. When she saw Tiffany's expression, she winked and said: "I'll leave you girls to have a little chat, shall I?"

"Yes, please, Nanny. And please don't listen at the door."

"To a private conversation? The very idea!" said Nanny, and went into the kitchen. "Will she listen?" whispered Annagramma. "I'll just die if Mistress Weatherwax finds out." Tiffany sighed. Did Annagramma know anything? "Of course she'll listen," she said. "She's a witch."

"But she said she wouldn't!"

"She'll listen, but she'll pretend she hasn't and she won't tell anyone," said Tiffany. "It's her cottage, after all." Annagramma looked desperate. "And on Tuesday I've probably got to go and deliver a baby out in some valley somewhere! An old woman came and gabbled at me about it!"

"That'll be Mrs. Owslick," said Tiffany. "I did leave some notes, you know. Didn't you read them?"

"I think perhaps Mrs. Earwig tidied them away," Annagramma said. "You should have looked at them! It took me an hour to write them all down!" said Tiffany reproachfully. "Three pieces of paper! Look, calm down, will you? Didn't you learn anything about midwifery?"

"Mrs. Earwig said giving birth is a natural action and nature should be allowed to take its course," said Annagramma, and Tiffany was sure she heard a snort from behind the kitchen door. "I know a soothing chant, though."