Terry Pratchett - Wintersmith

"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."

Tiffany was speechless, but only for a moment. She pointed.

"We've got to stop this ship from hitting that iceberg!"

"Just that? Nae problemo!" Rob looked past her to the looming ice giantess and grinned. "He's got yer nose just right, eh?"

"Just stop it! Please?" Tiffany pleaded.

"Aye-aye! C'mon, lads!"

Watching the Feegles working was like watching ants, except that ants didn't wear kilts and shout "Crivens!" all the time. Maybe it was because they could make one word do so much work that they seemed to have no problem at all with the Jolly Sailor's orders. They swarmed across the deck. Mysterious ropes were pulled. Sails moved and billowed to a chorus of "A Good Smoke!" and "Crivens!"

Now the Wintersmith wants to marry me, Tiffany thought. Oh, dear.

She'd sometimes wondered if she'd get married one day, but she was definite that now was too soon for "one day." Yes, her mother had been married when she was still fourteen, but that was the sort of thing that happened in the olden days. There were a lot of things to be done before Tiffany ever got married, she was very clear about that.

Besides, when you thought about it…yuk. He wasn't even a person. He'd be too—

Thud! went the wind in the sails. The ship creaked and leaned over, and everyone was shouting at her. Mostly they shouted, "The wheel! Grab the wheel right noo!" although there was also a desperate "A Good Smoke in Any Weather!" in there too.

Tiffany turned to see the wheel spinning in a blur. She made a snatch at it and got thumped across the fingers by the spokes, but there was a length of rope coiled nearby and she managed to lasso the wheel with a loop and jerk it to a halt without sliding along the deck too much. Then she grabbed the wheel and tried to turn it the other way. It was like pushing a house, but it did move, very slowly at first and then faster as she put her back into it.

The ship came around. She could feel it moving, beginning to head a little bit away from the iceberg, not directly for it. Good! Things were going right at last! She spun the wheel some more, and now the huge cold wall was sliding past, filling the air with mist. Everything was going to be all right after—

The ship hit the iceberg.

It started with a simple crack! as a spar caught on an outcrop, but then others smashed as the ship scraped along the side of the ice. Then there were some sharp splintering noises as the ship ground onward, and bits of plank shot up on columns of foaming water. The top of a mast broke off, dragging sails and rigging with it. A lump of ice smashed onto the deck a few feet away from Tiffany, showering her with needles.