Wintersmith (5 page)

After less than a minute Miss Tick had crafted a shamble out of:

It looked like a cat’s cradle, or maybe the tangled strings of a very strange puppet.

Miss Tick stared at it, waiting for it to read her. Then the ruler swung around, the throat sweets exploded in a little cloud of red dust, the pencil shot away and stuck in Miss Tick’s hat, and the ruler was covered in frost.

That was not supposed to happen.

Miss Treason sat downstairs in her cottage and watched Tiffany sleeping in the low bedroom above her. She did this through a mouse, which was sitting on the tarnished brass bedstead. Beyond the gray windows (Miss Treason hadn’t bothered to clean them for fifty-three years, and Tiffany hadn’t been able to shift all the dirt), the wind howled among the trees, even though it was mid-afternoon.

He’s looking for her, she thought as she fed a piece of ancient cheese to another mouse on her lap. But he won’t find her. She is safe here.

Then the mouse looked up from the cheese. It had heard something.

“I told yez! She’s here somewhere, fellas!”

“I dinna see why we canna just talk tae the ol’ hag. We get along fine wi’ hags.”

“Mebbe, but this one is a terrrrrible piece o’ work. They say she’s got a fearsome demon in her tattie cellar.”

Miss Treason looked puzzled. “Them?” she whispered to herself. The voices were coming from beneath the floor. She sent the mouse scurrying across the boards and into a hole.

“I dinna want to disappoint ye, but we’s in a cellar right here, and it’s full o’ tatties.”

After a while a voice said: “So where izzit?”

“Mebbe it’s got the day off?”

“What’s a demon need a day off for?”

“Tae gae an’ see its ol’ mam an’ dad, mebbe?”

“Oh, aye? Demons have mams, do they?”

“Crivens! Will ye lot stop arguin’! She might hear us!”

“Nae, she’s blind as a bat and deaf as a post, they say.”

Mice have very good hearing. Miss Treason smiled as the hurrying mouse came out in the rough old stone wall of the cellar, near the floor.

She looked through its eyes. It could see quite well in the gloom, too.

A small group of little men was creeping across the floor. Their skins were blue and covered with tattoos and dirt. They all wore very grubby kilts, and each one had a sword, as big as he was, strapped to his back. And they all had red hair, a real orange-red, with scruffy pigtails. One of them wore a rabbit skull as a helmet. It would have been more scary if it hadn’t kept sliding over his eyes.

In the room above, Miss Treason smiled again. So they’d heard of Miss Treason? But they hadn’t heard enough.

As the four little men squirmed through an old rat hole to get out of the cellar, they were watched by two more mice, three different beetles, and a moth. They tiptoed carefully across the floor, past an old witch who was clearly asleep—right up until she banged on the arms of her chair and bellowed:

“
Jings! I see you there, ye wee schemies!”

The Feegles reacted in instant panic, colliding with one another in shock and awe.

“I dinna remember tellin’ ye tae move!” shouted Miss Treason, grinning horribly.

“Oh, waily, waily, waily! She’s got the knowin’ o’ the speakin’!” someone sobbed.

“Ye’re Nac Mac Feegles, right? But I dinna ken the clan markin’s. Calm doon, I ain’t gonna deep-fry ye. You! What’s your name?”

“Ah’m Rob Anybody, Big Man o’ the Chalk Hill clan,” said the one with the rabbit-skull helmet. “And—”

“Aye? Big Man, are ye? Then ye’ll do me the courtesy an’ tak’ off yon bony bonnet ere ye speak tae me!” said Miss Treason, enjoying herself no end. “An’ stannit up straight! I will have nae slouchin’ in this hoose!”

Instantly all four Feegles stood to rigid attention.

“Right!” said Miss Treason. “An’ who are the rest o’ yez?”

“This is my brother Daft Wullie, miss,” said Rob Anybody, shaking the shoulder of the Feegle who was an instant wailer. He was staring in horror at Enochi and Athootita.

“An’ the other two of you…I mean, twa’ o’ ye?” said Miss Treason. “You, there. I mean ye. Ye have the mousepipes. Are ye a gonnagle?”

“Aye, mistress,” said a Feegle who looked neater and cleaner than the others, although it had to be said that there were things living under old logs that were cleaner and neater than Daft Wullie.

“And your name is…?”

“Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin, mistress.”

“You’re staring hard at me, Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin,” said Miss Treason. “Are ye afraid?”

“No, mistress. I wuz admirin’ ye. It does my heart good tae see a witch so…witchy.”

“It does, does it?” said Miss Treason suspiciously. “Are ye sure ye’re no’ afraid o’ me, Mr. Billy Bigchin?”

“No, mistress. But I will be if it makes ye happy,” said Billy carefully.

“Hah!” said Miss Treason. “Well, I see we have—hae a clever one here. Who is your big friend, Mr. Billy?”

Billy elbowed Big Yan in the ribs. Despite his size, which for a Feegle was huge, he was looking very nervous. Like a lot of people with big muscles, he got edgy about people who were
strong in other ways.

“He’s Big Yan, mistress,” Billy Bigchin supplied, while Big Yan stared at his feet.

“I see he’s got a necklace o’ big teeth,” said Miss Treason. “Human teeth?”

“Aye, mistress. Four, mistress. One for every man he’s knocked out.”

“Are you talking about human men?” asked Miss Treason in astonishment.

“Aye, mistress,” said Billy. “Mostly he drops on ’em heidfirst oot o’ a tree. He has a verra tough heid,” he added, in case this wasn’t clear.

Miss Treason sat back. “And now you will kindly explain why ye were creepin’ aboot here in my hoose,” she said. “Come along, now!”

There was a tiny, tiny pause before Rob Anybody said happily, “Oh, weel, that’s easy. We wuz huntin’ the haggis.”

“No, you weren’t,” said Miss Treason sharply, “because a haggis is a pudding of sheep’s offal and meat, well spiced and cooked in a sheep’s stomach.”

“Ah, that is only when ye canna find the real thing, mistress,” said Rob Anybody carefully. “’Tis no’ a patch on the real thing. Oh, a canny beast is the haggis, which makes its burrows in tattie cellars….”

“And that’s the truth? You were hunting the haggis? Is it, Daft Wullie?” said Miss Treason, her voice suddenly sharp. All eyes, including a pair belonging to an earwig, turned to the luckless Wullie.

“Er…aye…oooh…aarg…waily, waily, waily!” moaned Daft Wullie, and dropped to his knees. “Please dinna do somethin’ horrible tae me, mistress!” he begged. “Yon earwiggy is
givin’ me a dreadful look!”

“Very well, we shall start again,” said Miss Treason. She reached up and tore off her blindfold. The Feegles stepped back as she touched the skulls on either side of her.

“I do not need eyes to smell a lie when it comes calling,” she said. “Tell me why you are here. Tell me…again.”

Rob Anybody hesitated for a moment. This was, in the circumstances, very brave of him. Then he said: “’Tis aboot the big wee hag, mistress, we came.”

“The big wee—Oh, you mean Tiffany?”

“Aye!”

“We is under one o’ them big birds,” said Daft Wullie, keeping his eyes averted from the witch’s blind stare.

“He means a geas, mistress,” said Rob Anybody, glaring at his brother. “It’s like a—”

“—a tremendous obligation that you cannot disobey,” said Miss Treason. “I ken what a geas is. But why?”

Miss Treason had heard a lot of things in 113 years, but now she listened in astonishment to a story about a human girl who had, for a few days at least, been the kelda of a clan of Nac Mac Feegles. And if you were their kelda, even for a few days, they’d watch over you…forever.

“An’ she’s the hag o’ our hills,” said Billy Bigchin. “She cares for them, keeps them safe. But…”

He hesitated, and Rob Anybody continued: “Our kelda is havin’ dreams. Dreams o’ the future. Dreams o’ the hills all froze an’ everyone deid an’ the big wee hag wearin’ a crown o’ ice!”

“My goodness!”

“Aye, an’ there wuz more!” said Billy, throwing out his arms. “She saw a green tree growin’ in a land o’ ice! She saw a ring o’
iron! She saw a man with a nail in his heart! She saw a plague o’ chickens an’ a cheese that walks like a man!”

There was silence, and then Miss Treason said: “The first two, the tree and the ring, no problem there, good occult symbolism. The nail, too, very metaphorical. I’m a bit doubtful about the cheese—could she mean Horace?—and the chickens…I’m not sure you can have a plague of chickens, can you?”

“Jeannie wuz verra firm about them,” said Rob Anybody. “She’s dreamed many strange and worryin’ things, so we thought we might just see how the big wee hag wuz gettin’ along.”

Miss Treason’s various eyes stared at him. Rob Anybody stared back with an expression of ferocious honesty, and did not flinch.

“This seems an honorable enterprise,” she said. “Why start by lying?”

“Oh, the lie wuz goin’ tae be a lot more interestin’,” said Rob Anybody.

“The truth of the matter seems quite interesting to
me
,” said Miss Treason.

“Mebbe, but I wuz plannin’ on puttin’ in giants an’ pirates an’ magic weasels,” Rob declared. “Real value for the money!”

“Oh well,” said Miss Treason. “When Miss Tick brought Tiffany to me, she did say she was guarded by strange powers.”

“Aye,” said Rob Anybody proudly. “That’d be us, right enough.”

“But Miss Tick is a rather bossy woman,” said Miss Treason. “I am sorry to say I didn’t listen much to what she said. She is always telling me that these girls are really keen to learn, but mostly they are just flibbertigibbets who want to be a witch to impress the young men, and they run away after a few days. This one doesn’t, oh no! She runs toward things! Did you know she tried to dance with the Wintersmith?!”

“Aye. We ken. We were there,” said Rob Anybody.

“You were?”

“Aye. We followed yez.”

“No one saw you there. I would have known if they did,” Miss Treason said.

“Aye? Weel, we’re good at no one seein’ us,” said Rob Anybody, smiling. “It’s amazin’, the people who dinna see us.”

“She actually tried to dance with the Wintersmith,” Miss Treason repeated. “I told her not to.”

“Ach, people’re always tellin’ us not tae do things,” said Rob Anybody. “That’s how we ken what’s the most interestin’ things tae do!”

Miss Treason stared at him with the eyes of one mouse, two ravens, several moths, and an earwig.

“Indeed,” she said, and sighed. “Yes. The trouble with being this old, you know, is that being young is so far away from me now that it seems sometimes that it happened to someone else. A long life is not what it’s cracked up to be, that is a fact. It—”

“The Wintersmith is seekin’ for the big wee hag, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. “We saw her dancin’ wi’ the Wintersmith. Now he is seekin’ her. We can hear him in the howl o’ the wind.”

“I know,” said Miss Treason. She stopped, and listened for a moment. “The wind has dropped,” she stated. “He’s
found
her.”

She snatched up her walking sticks and scuttled toward the stairs, going up them with amazing speed. Feegles swarmed past her into the bedroom, where Tiffany lay on a narrow bed.

A candle burned in a saucer at each corner of the room.

“But
how
has he found her?” Miss Treason demanded. “I had her hidden! You, blue men, fetch wood now!” She glared at them. “I said fetch—”

She heard a couple of thumps. Dust was settling. The Feegles were watching Miss Treason expectantly. And sticks, a lot of sticks, were piled in the tiny bedroom fireplace.

“Ye did well,” she said. “An’ not tae soon!”

Snowflakes were drifting down the chimney.

Miss Treason crossed her walking sticks in front of her and stamped her foot hard.

“Wood burn, fire blaze!” she shouted. The wood in the grate burst into flame. But now frost was forming on the window, ferny white tendrils snapping across the glass with a crackling sound.

“I am not putting up with this at my age!” said the witch.

Tiffany opened her eyes, and said: “What’s happening?”

I
t is not good, being in a sandwich of bewildered dancers. They were heavy men. Tiffany was Aching all over. She was covered in bruises, including one the shape of a boot that she wasn’t going to show to
anyone
.

Feegles filled every flat surface in Miss Treason’s weaving room. She was working at her loom with her back to the room because, she said, this helped her think; but since she was Miss Treason, her position didn’t matter much. There were plenty of eyes and ears she could use, after all. The fire burned hot, and there were candles everywhere. Black ones, of course.

Tiffany was angry. Miss Treason hadn’t shouted, hadn’t even raised her voice. She’d just sighed and said “foolish child,” which was a whole lot worse, mostly because that’s just what Tiffany knew she’d been. One of the dancers had helped bring her back to the cottage. She couldn’t remember anything about that at all.

A witch didn’t do things because they seemed a good idea at the time! That was practically cackling! You had to deal every day with people who were foolish and lazy and untruthful and downright unpleasant, and you could certainly end up thinking that the world would be considerably improved if you gave them a slap. But you
didn’t because, as Miss Tick had once explained: a) it would make the world a better place for only a very short time; b) it would then make the world a slightly worse place; and c) you’re not supposed to be as stupid as they are.

Her feet had moved, and she’d listened to them. She ought to have been listening to her head. Now she had to sit by Miss Treason’s fire with a tin hot-water bottle on her lap and a shawl around her.

“So the Wintersmith is a kind of god?” she said.

“That kind o’ thing, yes,” said Billy Bigchin. “But not the prayin’-to kinda god. He just…makes winters. It’s his job, ye ken.”

“He’s an elemental,” said Miss Treason from her loom.

“Aye,” said Rob Anybody. “Gods, elementals, demons, spirits…sometimes it’s hard to tell ’em apart wi’oot a map.”

“And the dance is to welcome winter?” said Tiffany. “That doesn’t make sense! The Morris dance is to welcome the coming of the summer, yes, that’s—”

“Are you an infant?” said Miss Treason. “The year is round! The wheel of the world must spin! That is why up here they dance the Dark Morris, to balance it. They welcome the winter because of the new summer deep inside it!”

Click-clack
went the loom. Miss Treason was weaving a new cloth, of brown wool.

“Well, all right,” said Tiffany. “We welcomed it…him. That doesn’t mean he’s supposed to come looking for me!”

“Why did you join the dance?” Miss Treason demanded.

“Er…There was a space, and—”

“Yes. A space. A space not intended for you. Not for you, foolish child. You danced with him, and now he wants to meet such a bold girl. I have never heard of such a thing! I want you to fetch
the third book from the right on the second shelf from the top of my bookcase.” She handed Tiffany a heavy black key. “Can you manage to do even that?”

Witches didn’t need to slap the stupid, not when they had a sharp tongue that was always ready.

Miss Treason also had several shelves of books, which was unusual for one of the older witches. The shelves were high up, the books looked big and heavy, and up until now Miss Treason had forbidden Tiffany to dust them, let alone unlock the big black iron band that secured them to the shelves. People who came here always gave them a nervous look. Books were dangerous.

Tiffany unlocked the bands and wiped away the dust. Ah…the books were, like Miss Treason, not everything they seemed. They looked like magic books, but they had names like
An Encyclopaedia of Soup
. There was a dictionary. Next to it the book Miss Treason had asked for was covered in cobwebs.

Still blushing with shame and anger, Tiffany got the book down, fighting to get it free of the webs. Some of them went
pling!
as they snapped, and dust fell off the top of the pages. When she opened it, it smelled old and parchmenty, like Miss Treason. The title, in gold lettering that had almost rubbed away, was Chaffinch’s
Ancient and Classical Mythology
. It was full of bookmarks.

“Pages eighteen and nineteen,” said Miss Treason, her head not moving. Tiffany turned to them.

“‘The Dacne of the Sneasos’?” she said. “Is that supposed to be ‘The Dance of the Seasons’?”

“Regrettably, the artist, Don Weizen de Yoyo, whose famous masterpiece that was, did not have the same talent with letters as he had with painting,” said Miss Treason. “They worried him, for some reason. I notice you mention the words before the pictures.
You are a bookish child.”

The picture was…strange. It showed two figures. Tiffany hadn’t seen masquerade costumes. There wasn’t the money at home for that sort of thing. But she’d read about them, and this was pretty much what she’d imagined.

The page showed a man and a woman—or, at least, things that looked like a man and a woman. The woman was labeled “Summer” and was tall and blond and beautiful, and therefore to the short, brown-haired Tiffany was a figure of immediate distrust. She was carrying what looked like a big basket shaped like a shell, which was full of fruit.

The man, “Winter,” was old and bent and gray. Icicles glittered on his beard.

“Ach, that’s wha’ the Wintersmith would look like, sure enough,” said Rob Anybody, strolling across the page. “Ol’ Frosty.”

“Him?” said Tiffany. “
That’s
the Wintersmith? He looks a hundred years old!”

“A youngster, eh?” said Miss Treason nastily.

“Dinna let him kiss ye, or yer nose might turn blue and fall off!” said Daft Wullie cheerfully.

“Daft Wullie, don’t you dare say things like that!” said Tiffany.

“I wuz just tryin’ to lighten the mood, ye ken,” said Wullie, looking sheepish.

“That’s an artist’s impression, of course,” said Miss Treason.

“What does that mean?” said Tiffany, staring at the picture.
It was wrong
. She knew it. This wasn’t what he was like at all….

“It means he made it up,” said Billy Bigchin. “He wouldna ha’ seen him, noo, would he? No one’s seen the Wintersmith.”

“Yet!” said Daft Wullie.

“Wullie,” said Rob Anybody, turning to his brother, “ye ken I
told ye aboot makin’ tactful remarks?”

“Aye, Rob, I ken weel,” said Wullie obediently.

“What ye just said wuz not one o’ them,” said Rob.

Wullie hung his head. “Sorry, Rob.”

Tiffany clenched her fists. “I didn’t mean all this to happen!”

Miss Treason turned her chair with some solemnity.

“Then what did you mean? Will you tell me? Did you dance out of youth’s inclination to disobey old age? To mean is to think. Did you think at all? Others have joined in the dance before now. Children, drunkards, youths for a silly bet…nothing happened. The spring and autumn dances are…just an old tradition, most people would say. Just a way of marking when ice and fire exchange their dominion over the world. Some of us think we know better. We think something happens. For you, the dance became real, and something
has
happened. And now the Wintersmith is seeking you.”

“Why?” Tiffany managed.

“I don’t know. When you were dancing, did you see anything? Hear anything?”

How could you describe the feeling of being everywhere and everything? Tiffany wondered. She didn’t try.

“I…thought I heard a voice, or maybe two voices,” she mumbled. “Er, they asked me who I was.”

“Int-ter-rest-ting,” said Miss Treason. “Two voices? I will consider the implications. What I can’t understand is how he found you. I will think about that. In the meantime, I expect it would be a good idea to wear warm clothing.”

“Aye,” said Rob Anybody, “the Wintersmith canna abide the heat. Oh, I’ll be forgettin’ my ain heid next! We brought a wee letter from that hollow tree down in the forest. Gi’ it to the big
wee hag, Wullie. We picked it up on the way past.”

“A letter?” said Tiffany, as the loom clacked behind her and Daft Wullie began to pull a grubby, rolled-up envelope from his spog.

“It’s from that wee heap o’ jobbies at the castle back hame,” Rob went on, as his brother hauled. “He says he bides fine and hopes ye do likewise, an’ he’s lookin’ forward to you bein’ back hame soon, an’ there’s lots o’ stuff about how the ships are doin’ an’ suchlike, no’ verra interestin’ in ma opinion, an’ he’s writ S. W. A. L. K. on the bottom, but we havena worked out what that means yet.”

“You read my letter?” said Tiffany in horror.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob with pride. “Nae problem. Billy Bigchin here gave me a wee hint with some o’ the longer words, but it was mostly me, aye.” He beamed, but the grin faded as he watched Tiffany’s expression. “Ach, I ken you’re a wee bitty upset that we opened yon envelope thingy,” he explained. “But that’s okay, ’cuz we glued it up again wi’ slug. Ye wouldna ever know it’d been read.”

He coughed, because Tiffany was still glaring at him. All women were a bit scary to the Feegles, and witches were the worst. At last, when he was really nervous, Tiffany said: “How did you know where that letter would be?”

She glanced sideways at Daft Wullie. He was chewing the edge of his kilt. He only ever did this when he was frightened.

“Er…would you accept a wee bittie lie?” Rob said.

“No!”

“It’s interestin’. There’s dragons an’ unicorns in it—”

“No. I want the truth!”

“Ach, it’s so boring. We go to the Baron’s castle an’ read the letters ye sent him, an’, an’ ye said the postman knows to leave letters
tae you in the hollow tree by the waterfall,” said Rob.

If the Wintersmith had got into the cottage, the air couldn’t have been any colder.

“He keeps the letters fra’ ye in a box under his—” Rob began, and then shut his eyes as Tiffany’s patience parted with a twang even louder than Miss Treason’s strange cobwebs.

“Don’t you know it’s wrong to read other people’s letters?” she demanded.

“Er…” Rob Anybody began.

“And you broke into the Baron’s cast—”

“Ah, ah, ah, no, no, no!” said Rob, jumping up and down. “Ye canna get us on that one! We just walked in through one of them little wee slits for the firin’ o’ the arrows—”

“And then you read my personal letters sent personally to Roland?” said Tiffany. “They were personal!”

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody. “But dinna fash yersel’—we willna tell anyone what was in ’em.”

“We ne’er tell a soul what’s in yer diary, after all,” said Daft Wullie. “Not e’en the bits wi’ the flowers ye draw aroound them.”

Miss Treason is grinning to herself behind me, Tiffany thought. I just know she is. But she’d run out of nasty tones of voice. You did that after talking to the Feegles for any length of time.

You were their Kelda, her Second Thoughts reminded her. They think they have a solemn duty to protect you. It doesn’t matter what you think. They’re going to make your life sooo complicated.

“Don’t read my letters,” she said, “and don’t read my diary, either.”

“Okay,” said Rob Anybody.

“Promise?”

“Oh, aye.”

“But you promised last time!”

“Oh, aye.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Oh, aye, nae problemo.”

“And that’s the promise of an untrustworthy, lying, stealing Feegle, is it?” said Miss Treason. “Because ye believe ye’re deid already, do ye no’? That’s what ye people think, right?”

“Oh, aye, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. “Thank ye for drawin’ ma attention tae that.”

“In fact, Rob Anybody, ye ha’ nae intention o’ keepin’ any promise at all!”

“Aye, mistress,” said Rob proudly. “Not puir wee weak promises like that. Becuz, ye see, ’tis oor solemn destiny to guard the big wee hag. We mus’ lay doon oor lives for her if it comes to it.”

“How can ye do that when ye’re deid already?” said Miss Treason sharply.

“That’s a bit o’ a puzzler, right enough,” said Rob, “so probably we’ll lay doon the lives o’ any scunners who do wrong by her.”

Tiffany gave up and sighed. “I’m almost thirteen,” she said. “I can look after myself.”

“Hark at Miss Self-Reliant,” said Miss Treason, but not in a particularly nasty way. “Against the Wintersmith?”

“What does he want?” said Tiffany.

“I told you. Perhaps he wants to find out what kind of girl was so forward as to dance with him?” said Miss Treason.

“It was my feet! I said I didn’t mean to!”

Miss Treason turned around in her chair. How many eyes is she using? Tiffany’s Second Thoughts wondered. The Feegles? The ravens? The mice? All of them? How many of me is she seeing? Is she watching me with mice, or insects with dozens of glittery eyes?

“Oh, that’s all right then,” said Miss Treason. “Once again, you didn’t mean it. A witch takes responsibility! Have you learned
nothing
, child?”

Child. That was a terrible thing to say to anyone who was almost thirteen. Tiffany felt herself going red again. The horrible hotness spread inside her head.

That was why she walked across the room, opened the front door, and stepped outside.

A fluffy snow was falling, very gently. When Tiffany looked into the pale-gray sky, she saw the flakes drifting down in soft, feathery clusters; it was the kind of snow that people back home on the Chalk called “Granny Aching shearing her sheep.”

Tiffany felt the flakes melting on her hair as she walked away from the cottage. Miss Treason was shouting from the doorway, but she walked on, letting the snow cool her blushes.

Of course this is stupid, she told herself. But being a witch is stupid. Why do we do it? It’s hard work for not much reward. What’s a good day for Miss Treason? When someone brings her a secondhand pair of old boots that fit properly! What does she know about anything?

Where is the Wintersmith, then? Is he here? I’ve only got Miss Treason’s word for it! That and a made-up picture in a book!

“Wintersmith!” she shouted.