Wintersmith

Page 18

"You know, I don't think he wanted to hurt me. He was just upset," said Tiffany. "Really? Do you want to meet it upset again?" Tiffany thought about that strange face. There had been the shape of a human there—more or less—but it was as if the Wintersmith had heard of the idea of being human but hadn't found out how to do it yet. "You think he'll harm other people?" she asked. "He is the Winter, child. It's not all pretty snowflakes, is it?" Tiffany held out her hand. "Give it back to me, please." Granny handed it over with a shrug. It lay in Tiffany's hand, on the strange white scar. It was the first thing she had ever been given that wasn't useful, that wasn't supposed to do something. I don't need this, she thought. My power comes from the Chalk. But is that what life's going to be like? Nothing that you don't need? "We should tie it to something that's light," she said in a matter-of-fact voice. "Otherwise it will get caught on the bottom." After some rooting around in the grass near the bridge, she found a stick and wrapped the silver chain around it. It was noon. Tiffany had invented the word noonlight because she liked the sound of it. Anyone could be a witch at midnight, she'd thought, but you'd have to be really good to be a witch by noonlight. Good at being a witch, anyway, she thought now as she walked back onto the bridge. Not good at being a happy person. She threw the necklace off the bridge. She didn't make a big thing of it. It would have been nice to say that the silver horse glittered in the light, seemed to hang in the air for a moment before falling the long fall. Perhaps it did, but Tiffany didn't look. "Good," said Granny Weatherwax. "Is it all over now?" said Tiffany. "No! You danced into a story, girl, one that tells itself to the world every year. It's the Story about ice and fire, Summer and Winter. You've made it wrong. You've got to stay to the end and make sure it turns out right. The horse is just buyin' you time, that's all."
"How much time?"
"I don't know. This hasn't happened before. Time to think, at least. How are your feet?" The Wintersmith was moving through the world without, in any human sense, moving at all. Wherever winter was, he was too. He was trying to think. He'd never had to do this before, and it hurt. Up until now humans had just been parts of the world that moved around in strange ways and lit fires. Now he was spinning himself a mind, and everything was new. A human…made of human stuff…that was what she had said. Human stuff. He had to make himself of human stuff for the beloved. In the chill of morgues and the wreckage of ships, the Wintersmith rode the air searching for human stuff. And what was it? Dirt and water, mostly. Leave a human long enough and even the water would go, and there would be nothing but a few handfuls of dust that blew away in the wind. So, since water did not think, all the work was being done by the dust. The Wintersmith was logical, because ice was logical. Water was logical. Wind was logical. There were rules. So what a human was all about was…the right kind of dust! And, while he was searching for it, he could show her how strong he was. That evening Tiffany sat on the edge of her new bed, the clouds of sleep rising in her brain like thunderheads, and yawned and stared at her feet. They were pink, and had five toes each. They were pretty good feet, considering. Normally when people met you, they'd say things like "How are you?" Nanny Ogg had just said: "Come on in. How's your feet?" Suddenly everyone was interested in her feet. Of course, feet were important, but what did people expect to happen to them? She swung them back and forth on the ends of her legs. They didn't do anything strange, so she got into bed. She hadn't slept properly for two nights. She hadn't really understood that until she'd reached Tir Nani Ogg, when her brain had started to spin of its own accord. She'd talked to Mrs. Ogg, but it was hard to remember what about. Voices had banged in her ears. Now, at last, she had nothing to do but sleep. It was a good bed, the best she'd ever slept in. It was the best room she'd ever been in, although she'd been too tired to explore it. Witches didn't go in much for comfort, especially in spare bedrooms, but Tiffany had grown up on an ancient bed where the springs went gloing every time she moved, and with care she could get them to play a tune. This mattress was thick and yielding. She sank into it as if it were very soft, very warm, very slow quicksand. The trouble is, you can shut your eyes but you can't shut your mind. As she lay in the dark, it squiggled pictures inside her head, of clocks that went clonk-clank, of snowflakes shaped like her, of Miss Treason striding through the nighttime forest, seeking bad people with her yellow thumbnail ready. Myth Treason… She drifted through these scrambled memories into dull whiteness. But it got brighter, and took on detail, little areas of black and gray. They began to move gently from side to side…. Tiffany opened her eyes, and everything became clear. She was standing on a…a boat, no, a big sailing ship. There was snow on the decks, and icicles hung from the rigging. It was sailing in the washing-up- water light of dawn, on a silent gray sea full of floating ice and clouds of fog. The rigging creaked, the wind sighed in the sails. There was no one to be seen. "Ah. This appears to be a dream. Let me out, please," said a familiar voice. "Who are you?" said Tiffany. "You. Cough, please." Tiffany thought: Well, if this is a dream…and she coughed. A figure grew up out of the snow on the deck. It was her, and she was looking around thoughtfully. "Are you me too?" Tiffany asked. Strangely, here on the freezing deck, it didn't seem that, well, strange. "Hmm. Oh, yes," said the other Tiffany, still staring intently at things. "I'm your Third Thoughts. Remember? The part of you that never stops thinking? The bit that notices little details? It's good to be out in fresh air. Hmm."
"Is there something wrong?"
"Well, this clearly appears to be a dream. If you would care to look, you'll see that the steersman in yellow oilskins up there at the wheel is the Jolly Sailor off the wrappers of the tobacco that Granny Aching used to smoke. He always comes into our mind when we think about the sea, yes?" Tiffany looked up at the bearded figure, who gave her a cheerful wave. "Yes, that's certainly him!" she said. "But I don't think this is our dream, exactly," said the Third Thoughts. "It's too…real." Tiffany reached down and picked up a handful of snow. "Feels real," she said. "Feels cold." She made a snowball and threw it at herself. "I really wish I wouldn't do that," said the other Tiffany, brushing the snow off her shoulder. "But you see what I mean? Dreams are never as…nondreamlike as this."
"I know what I mean," said Tiffany. "I think they're going to be real, and then something weird turns up."
"Exactly. I don't like it all. If this is a dream, then something horrible is going to happen…." They looked ahead of the ship. There was a dismal, dirty bank of fog there, spreading out across the sea. "There's something in the fog!" said the Tiffanys together. They turned and scurried up the ladder to the man at the wheel. "Keep away from the fog! Please don't go near it!" Tiffany shouted. The Jolly Sailor took his pipe out of his mouth and looked puzzled. "A Good Smoke in Any Weather?" he said to Tiffany. "What?"
"It's all he can say!" said her Third Thoughts, grabbing the wheel. "Remember? That's what he says on the label!" The Jolly Sailor pushed her away gently. "A Good Smoke in Any Weather," he said soothingly. "In Any Weather."
"Look, we only want to—" Tiffany began, but her Third Thoughts, without a word, put a hand on her head and turned her around. Something was coming out of the fog. It was an iceberg, a large one, at least five times as high as the ship, as majestic as a swan. It was so big that it was causing its own weather. It seemed to be moving slowly; there was white water around its base. Snow fell around it. Streamers of fog trailed behind it. The Jolly Sailor's pipe dropped out of his mouth as he stared. "A Good Smoke!" he swore. The iceberg was Tiffany. It was a Tiffany hundreds of feet high, formed of glittering green ice, but it was still a Tiffany. There were seabirds perched on her head. "It can't be the Wintersmith doing this!" said Tiffany. "I threw the horse away!" She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted: "I THREW THE HORSE AWAY!" Her voice echoed off the looming ice figure. A few birds took off from the huge cold head, screaming. Behind Tiffany, the ship's wheel spun. The Jolly Sailor stamped a foot and pointed to the white sails above them. "A Good Smoke in Any Weather!" he commanded. "I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean!" said Tiffany desperately. The man pointed to the sails and made frantic pulling motions with his hands. "A Good Smoke!"
"Sorry, I just can't understand you!" The sailor snorted and ran off toward a rope, which he hauled on in a great hurry. "It's gotten weird," said her Third Thoughts quietly. "Well, yes, I should think a huge iceberg shaped like me is a—"
"No, that's just strange. This is weird," said her Third Thoughts. "We've got passengers. Look." She pointed. Down on the main deck there was a row of hatches with big iron grids on them; Tiffany hadn't noticed them before. Hands, hundreds of them, pale as roots under a log, groping and waving, were thrusting through the grids. "Passengers?" Tiffany whispered in horror. "Oh, no…" And then the screaming started. It would have been better, but not a lot better, if it had been cries of "Help! and "Save us," but instead it was just screaming and wailing, just the sounds of people in pain and fear— No! "Come back inside my head," she said grimly. "It's too distracting to have you running around outside. Right now."
"I'll walk in from behind you," said her Third Thoughts. "Then it won't seem so—" Tiffany felt a twinge of pain, and a change in her mind, and thought: Well, I suppose it could have been a lot messier. Okay. Let me think. Let all of me think. She watched the desperate hands, waving like weeds underwater, and thought: I'm in something like a dream, but I don't think it's mine. I'm on a ship, and we're going to get killed by an iceberg that's a giant figure of me. I think I liked it better when I was snowflakes…. Whose dream is this? "What is this about, Wintersmith?" she asked, and her Third Thoughts, back where they should be, commented: It's amazing, you can even see your own breath in the air. "Is this a warning?" Tiffany shouted. "What do you want?" You for my bride, said the Wintersmith. The words just arrived in her memory. Tiffany's shoulders sank. You know this isn't real, said her Third Thoughts. But it may be the shadow of something real…. I shouldn't have let Granny Weatherwax send Rob Anybody away like that— "Crivens! Shiver me timber!" shouted a voice behind her. And then there was the usual clamor: "It's 'timbers,' ye dafty!"
"Aye? But I can only find one!"
"Splice the big plank! Daft Wullie's just walked intae the watter!"
"The big puddin'! I told him, just the one eye patch!"
"With a yo hoho and a ho yoyo—" Feegles erupted from the cabin behind Tiffany, and Rob Anybody stopped in front of her as the rest streamed past. He saluted. "Sorry we're a wee bittie late, but we had to find the black patches," he said. "There's sich a thing as style, ye ken."