Wintersmith (Discworld #35)

Wintersmith (Discworld #35) Page 7

"Er…what were you expecting to see?" Tiffany ventured. "Daylight!" snapped Miss Treason, so loudly that the mouse scuttled away. "Have you no brains at all, child?"

"Ah dunno if anyone is interested," said Rob Anybody, "but I think yon Wintersmith has offskied. An' it's stopped snowin'." No one was listening. When witches row, they concentrate. "It was mine!"

"A trinket!"

"No!"

"O' course, this may not be the best time tae tell ye…" Rob went on, miserably. "You think you need it to be a witch?"

"Yes!"

"A witch needs no devices!"

"You've used shambles!"

"Used, yes! Don't need. Not need!"

"Ah mean, it's quite meltin' awa—" Rob said, smiling nervously. Anger grabbed Tiffany's tongue. How dare this stupid old crone talk about not needing things! "Boffo!" she shouted. "Boffo, Boffo, Boffo!" Silence slammed down. After a while Miss Treason looked past Tiffany and said: "Ye wee Feegle schemies! Get oot o' here right noo! Ah'll ken it if ye don't! This is hag business!" The room filled with a sort of whooshing noise, and the door to the kitchen slammed shut. "So," said Miss Treason, "you know about Boffo, do you?"

"Yes," said Tiffany, breathing heavily. "I do."

"Very well. And have you told anyone—?" Miss Treason paused and raised a finger to her lips. Then she banged a stick on the floor. "Ah said get oot, ye scunners! Off intae the woods w' ye! Check that he's really gang awa'! I'll see yer guilt through yer own een if ye defy me!" From below there was the sound of a lot of potatoes rumbling as the Feegles scrambled out through the little ventilation grill. "Now they've gone," said Miss Treason. "They'll stay gone, too. Boffo will see to that." Somehow, in the space of a few seconds, Miss Treason had become more human and a lot less scary. Well…slightly less scary. "How did you find out? Did you go looking for it? Did you go prowling and rummaging?" said Miss Treason. "No! I'm not like that! I found out by accident one day when you were having a nap!" Tiffany rubbed her hand. "Does that hurt a lot?" said Miss Treason, leaning forward. She might be blind, but—like all the senior witches who knew what they were doing—she noticed everything. "No, not now. It did, though. Look, I—"

"Then you will learn to listen! Do you think the Wintersmith has gone?"

"He just seemed to vanish—I mean, vanish even more. I think he just wanted to give me back my necklace."

"Do you think that is the sort of thing the spirit of Winter, who commands the blizzard and the frost, would really do?"

"I don't know, Miss Treason! He's the only one I've met!"

"You danced with him."

"I didn't know I was going to!"

"Nevertheless." Tiffany waited, and then said: "Nevertheless what?"

"Just general neverthelessness. The little horse led him to you. But he's not here now—you're right about that. I'd know if he was." Tiffany walked up to the front door, hesitated for just a moment, and then opened it and went out into the clearing. There was a bit of snow here and there, but the day was turning into just another one of those gray-skyed winter days. I'd know if he was, too, she thought. And he isn't. And her Second Thoughts said: Oh? How do you know? "We've both touched the horse," she said under her breath. She looked around at the empty branches and the sleeping trees, fiddling with the silver chain in her hand. The forests were curling in on themselves, ready for the winter. He's out there, but not close. He must be very busy, with a whole winter to make…. She said, "Thank you!" automatically, because her mother had always said that politeness costs nothing, and went back in. It was very hot inside now, but Miss Treason always had a huge log pile built by the Secret of Boffo. The local woodcutters always kept the pile high. A chilly witch might get nasty. "I should like a cup of black tea," said the old woman as Tiffany walked in, looking thoughtful. She waited until Tiffany was washing out the cup, then said: "Have you heard the stories about me, child?" The voice was kindly. There had been shouts, there had been things said that might have been better put, there had been temper and defiance. But they were there together, with nowhere else to go. The quiet voice was a peace offering, and Tiffany was glad of it. file:///F|/MUSIC/Pratchett,%20Terry%20-%20[Discworld...]%20-%20Wintersmith%20[html,%20jpg]/wintersmith.html (53 of 269)26/12/2006 19:25:36

Wintersmith "Er, that you have a demon in the cellar?" Tiffany answered, her mind still full of puzzles. "And you eat spiders? And get visited by kings and princes? And that any flower planted in your garden blooms black?"

"Oh, do they say so?" said Miss Treason, looking delighted. "I haven't heard that last one. How nice. And did you hear that I walk around at night in the dark time of the year and reward those who have been good citizens with a purse of silver? But if they have been bad, I slit open their bellies with my thumbnail like this?" Tiffany leaped backward as a wrinkled hand twisted her around and Miss Treason's yellow thumbnail scythed past her stomach. The old woman looked terrifying. "No! No, I haven't heard that one!" she gasped, pressing up against the sink. "What? And it was a wonderful story, with real historical antecedents!" said Miss Treason, her vicious scowl becoming a smile. "And the one about me having a cow's tail?"

"A cow's tail? No!"

"Really? How very vexing," said Miss Treason, lowering her finger. "I fear the art of storytelling has got into a pretty bad way in these parts. I really shall have to do something."

"This is just another kind of Boffo, right?" said Tiffany. She wasn't totally sure. Miss Treason had looked pretty scary with that thumbnail. No wonder girls left so quickly. "Ah, you do have a brain, after all. Of course it is. Boffo, yes. A good name for it. Boffo, indeed. The art of expectations. Show people what they want to see, show 'em what they think should be there. I have a reputation to keep up, after all." Boffo, Tiffany thought. Boffo, Boffo, Boffo. She went over to the skulls, picked one up, and read the label underneath, just like she'd done a month ago: Ghastly Skull No. 1 Price $2.99 The Boffo Novelty & Joke Shop No. 4, Tenth Egg Street, Ankh-Morpork "If it's a laugh…it's a Boffo!"

"Very lifelike, aren't they," said Miss Treason, clicking back to her chair, "if you can say that about a skull, of course! The shop sold a wonderful machine for making spiderwebs. You poured in this sticky stuff, d'you see, and with practice quite good webs could be made. Can't abide creepy-crawlies, but of course I've got to have the webs. Did you notice the dead flies?"

"Yes," said Tiffany, glancing up. "They're raisins. I thought you had vegetarian spiders."

"Well done. Nothing wrong with your eyes, at least. I got my hat from there, too. 'Wicked Old Witch Number Three, A Must for Scary Parties,' I think it was. I've still got their catalogue somewhere, if you're interested."

"Do all witches buy from Boffo?" asked Tiffany. "Only me, at least around here. Oh, and I believe Old Mistress Breathless over in Two Falls used to buy warts from there."

"But…why?" said Tiffany. "She couldn't grow them. Just couldn't grow them at all, poor woman. Tried everything. Face like a baby's bottom, her whole life."

"No, I meant, why do you want to seem so"—Tiffany hesitated, and went on—"awful?"

"I have my reasons," said Miss Treason. "But you don't do those things the stories say you do, do you? Kings and princes don't come to consult you, do they?"

"No, but they might," said Miss Treason stoutly. "If they got lost, for example. Oh, I know all about those stories. I made up most of them!"

"You made up stories about yourself?"

"Oh, yes. Of course. Why not? I couldn't leave something as important as that to amateurs."

"But people say you can see a man's soul!" Miss Treason chuckled. "Yes. Didn't make that one up! But I'll tell you, for some of my parishioners I'd need a magnifying glass! I see what they see, I hear with their ears. I knew their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers. I know the rumors and the secrets and the stories and the truths. And I am Justice to them, and I am fair. Look at me. See me." Tiffany looked—and looked past the black cloak and the skulls and the rubber cobwebs and the black flowers and the blindfold and the stories, and saw a little deaf and blind old lady. Boffo made the difference…not just the silly party stuff, but Boffo-thinking—the rumors and the stories. Miss Treason had power because people thought she did. It was like the standard witch's hat. But Miss Treason was taking Boffo much, much further. "A witch needs no devices, Miss Treason," Tiffany said. "Don't get smart with me, child. Didn't the girl Weatherwax tell you all this? Oh, yes, you don't need a wand or a shamble or even a pointy hat to be a witch. But it helps a witch to put on a show! People expect it. They'll believe in you. I didn't get where I am today by wearing a woolly bobble hat and a gingham apron! I look the part. I—" There was a crash from outside, in the direction of the dairy. "Our little blue friends?" said Miss Treason, raising her eyebrows. "No, they're absolutely forbidden to go into any dairy I work in," Tiffany began, heading for the door. "Oh dear, I hope it's not Horace—"

"I told you he'd be nothing but trouble, did I not?" Miss Treason shouted as Tiffany hurried away. It was Horace. He'd squeezed out of his cage again. He could make himself quite runny when he wanted to. There was a broken butter dish on the floor, but although it had been full of butter, there was none there now. There was just a greasy patch. And, from the darkness under the sink, there came a sort of high-speed grumbling noise, a kind of mnnamnamnam…. "Oh, you're after butter now, are you, Horace?" said Tiffany, picking up the dairy broom. "That's practically cannibalism, you know." Still, it was better than mice, she had to admit. Finding little piles of mouse bones on the floor was a bit distressing. Even Miss Treason had not been able to work that one out. A mouse she happened to be looking through would be trying to get at the cheeses and then it would all go dark. That was because Horace was a cheese. Tiffany knew that Lancre Blue cheeses were always a bit on the lively side, and sometimes had to be nailed down, but…well, she was highly skilled at cheese making, even though she said it herself, and Horace was definitely a champion. The famous blue streaks that gave the variety its wonderful color were really pretty, although Tiffany wasn't sure they should glow in the dark. She prodded the shadows with the end of the broom. There was a crack, and when she pulled the stick out again, two inches were missing from the end. Then there was a ptooi! noise and the missing piece of handle bounced off the wall on the other side of the room. "No more milk for you, then," said Tiffany, straightening up, and she thought: He came to give me the horse back. The Wintersmith did that. Um… That is quite…impressive, when you think about it. I mean, he's got to organize avalanches and gales and come up with new shapes for snowflakes and everything, but he spared a bit of time just to come and give me my necklace back. Um… And he just stood there. And then he just vanished—I mean vanished even more. Um… She left Horace muttering under the sink and made tea for Miss Treason, who was back at her weaving. Then she quietly went up to her room. Tiffany's diary was three inches thick. Annagramma, another local trainee witch and one of her friends (more or less), said that she should really call it her Book of Shadows and write it on vellum using one of the special magical inks sold at Zakzak Stronginthearm's Magical Emporium at Popular Prices—at least, prices that were popular with Zakzak. Tiffany couldn't afford one. You could only trade witchcraft—you weren't supposed to sell it. Miss Treason didn't mind her selling cheeses, but even so paper was expensive up here, and the wandering peddlers never had very much to sell. They usually had an ounce or two of green copperas, though, which could make a decent ink if you mixed it with crushed oak galls or green walnut shells. The diary was now as thick as a brick with extra pages Tiffany had glued in. She'd worked out that she could make it last two more years if she wrote small. On the leather cover she had, with a hot skewer, drawn the words "Feegles Keep Out!!" It had never worked. They looked upon that sort of thing as an invitation. She wrote parts of the diary in code these days. Reading didn't come naturally to the Chalk Hill Feegles, so surely they'd never get the hang of a code. She looked around carefully, in any case, and unlocked the huge padlock that secured a chain around the book. She turned to today's date, dipped her pen in the ink, and wrote: "Met t*." Yes, a snowflake would be a good code for the Wintersmith. He just stood there, she thought. And he ran away because I screamed. Which was a good thing, obviously. Um… But…I wish I hadn't screamed. She opened her hand. The image of the horse was still there, as white as chalk, but there was no pain at all. Tiffany gave a little shiver and pulled herself together. So? She had met the spirit of Winter. She was a witch. It was the sort of thing that sometimes happened. He'd politely given her back what was hers, and then he'd gone. There was no call to get soppy about it. There were things to do. Then she wrote: "Ltr frm R." She very carefully opened the letter from Roland, which was easy because slug slime isn't much of a glue. With any luck she could even reuse the envelope. She hunched over the letter so that no one could read it over her shoulder. Finally she said: "Miss Treason, will you get out of my face, please? I need to use my eyeballs privately." There was a pause and then a mutter from downstairs, and the tickling behind her eyes went away. It was always…good to get a letter from Roland. Yes, they were often about the sheep, and other things of the Chalk, and sometimes there'd be a dried flower inside, a harebell or a cowslip. Granny Aching wouldn't have approved of that; she always said that if the hills had wanted people to pick the flowers, they would have grown more of them. The letters always made her homesick. One day Miss Treason had said, "This young man who writes to you…is he your beau?" and Tiffany had changed the subject until she had time to look up the word in the dictionary and then more time to stop blushing. Roland was…well, the thing about Roland was…the main thing about…well, the point was…he was there. Okay, when she'd first really met him, he had been a rather useless, rather stupid lump, but what could you expect? He'd been the prisoner of the Queen of the Elves for a year, to start with, fat as butter and half crazy on sugar and despair. Besides, he'd been brought up by a couple of haughty aunts, his father— the Baron—being mostly more interested in horses and dogs. He'd more and less changed since then: more thoughtful, less rowdy, more serious, less stupid. He'd also had to wear glasses, the first ever seen on the Chalk. And he had a library! More than a hundred books! Actually, it belonged to the castle, but no one else seemed interested in it. Some of the books were huge and ancient, with wooden covers and huge black letters and colored pictures of strange animals and far-off places. There was Waspmire's Book of Unusual Days, Crumberry's Why Things Are Not Otherwise, and all but one volume of the Ominous Encyclopaedia. Roland had been astonished to find that she could read foreign words, and she'd been careful not to tell him it was all done with the help of what remained of Dr. Bustle. The thing was…the fact was…well, who else had they got? Roland couldn't, just couldn't have friends among the village kids, what with him being the son of the Baron and everything. But Tiffany had the pointy hat now, and that counted for something. The people of the Chalk didn't like witches much, but she was Granny Aching's granddaughter, right? No tellin' what she'd learned from the ol' girl, up at the shepherding hut. And they do say she showed those witches up in the mountains what witchin's all about, eh? Remember the lambing last year? She prit near brought dead lambs back to life just by lookin' at 'em! And she's an Aching, and they've got these hills in their bones. She's all right. She's ours, see? And that was fine, except that she didn't have any old friends anymore. Kids back home who'd been friendly were now…respectful, because of the hat. There was a kind of wall, as if she'd grown up and they hadn't. What could they talk about? She'd been to places they couldn't even imagine. Most of them hadn't even been to Twoshirts, which was only half a day away. And this didn't worry them at all. They were going to do the jobs their fathers did, or raise children like their mothers did. And that was fine, Tiffany added hurriedly to herself. But they hadn't decided. It was just happening to them, and they didn't notice. It was the same up in the mountains. The only people of her own age she could actually talk to were other witches-in-training like Annagramma and the rest of the girls. It was useless trying to have a real conversation with people in the villages, especially the boys. They just looked down and mumbled and shuffled their feet, like people at home when they had to talk to the Baron. Actually, Roland did that too, and he went red every time she looked at him. Whenever she visited the castle, or walked on the hills with him, the air was full of complicated silences…just like it had been with the Wintersmith. She read the letter carefully, trying to ignore the grubby Feegle fingerprints all over it. He'd been kind enough to include several spare sheets of paper. She smoothed one out, very carefully, stared at the wall for a while, and then began to write. Down in the scullery,* Horace the cheese had come out from behind the slop bucket. Now he was in front of the back door. If a cheese ever looked thoughtful, Horace looked thoughtful now. In the tiny village of Twoshirts, the driver of the mail coach was having a bit of a problem. A lot of mail from the countryside around Twoshirts ended up at the souvenir shop there, which also acted as the post office. Usually the driver just picked up the mailbag, but today there was a difficulty. He frantically turned over the pages of the book of Post Office Regulations. Miss Tick tapped her foot. This was getting on his nerves. "Ah, ah, ah," said the coachman triumphantly. "Says here no animals, birds, dragons, or fish!"