Terry Pratchett - Wintersmith

"Can you feel anything?" asked Miss Tick.

"It's a bit cold, that's all—oh…something's happening…."

Green shoots appeared around her feet, and grew quickly. Then they went white at the base and gently pushed Tiffany's feet aside as they began to swell.

"Onions?" said Granny Weatherwax scornfully.

"Well, they were the only seeds I could find quickly," said Nanny Ogg, poking at the glistening white bulbs. "Good size. Well done, Tiff."

Granny looked shocked. "You're not going to eat those, are you, Gytha?" she said accusingly. "You are, aren't you? You're going to eat them!"

Nanny Ogg, standing up with a bunch of onions in each pudgy hand, looked guilty, but only for a moment.

"Why not?" she said stoutly. "Fresh vegetables are not to be sneezed at in the winter. And anyway, her feet are nice and clean."

"It's not seemly," said Miss Tick.

"It didn't hurt," said Tiffany. "All I had to do was put my feet on the tray for a moment."

"Yes, she says it didn't hurt," Nanny Ogg insisted. "Now, I think I might have some old carrot seeds in the kitchen drawer—" She saw the expressions on the faces of the others. "All right, all right, then. There's no need to look like that," she said. "I was just tryin' to point out the silver lining, that's all."

"Someone please tell me what is happening to me?" Tiffany wailed.

"Miss Tick is going to give you the answer in some long words," said Granny. "But they boils down to this: It's the Story happening. It's making you fit into itself."

Tiffany tried not to look like someone who didn't understand a word that she had just heard.

"I could do with a little bit of the fine detail, I think," she said.

"I think I'll get some tea brewed," said Nanny Ogg.

The Wintersmith and the Summer Lady…danced. The dance never ended.

Winter never dies. Not as people die. It hangs on in late frost and the smell of autumn in a summer evening, and in the heat it flees to the mountains.

Summer never dies. It sinks into the ground; in the depths, winter buds form in sheltered places and white shoots creep under dead leaves. Some of it flees into the deepest, hottest deserts, where there is a summer that never ends. To animals they were just the weather, just part of everything.

But humans arose and gave them names, just as people filled the starry sky with heroes and monsters, because this turned them into stories. And humans loved stories, because once you'd turned things into stories, you could change the stories. And there was the problem, right there.

Now the Lady and the Wintersmith danced around the year, changing places in the spring and autumn, and it had worked for thousands of years, right up until the time a girl couldn't control her feet and had arrived in the dance at exactly the wrong time.

But the Story had life, too. It was like a play now. It would roll on around the year, and if one of the players wasn't the real actress but just some girl who'd wandered onto the stage, well, that was too bad. She'd have to wear the costume and speak the lines and hope that there was going to be a happy ending. Change the Story, even if you don't mean to, and the Story changes you.

Miss Tick used a lot more words than this, like "anthropomorphic personification," but this was what ended up in Tiffany's head.

"So…I'm not a goddess?" she said.

"Oh, I wish I had a blackboard." Miss Tick sighed. "They really don't survive the water, though, and of course the chalks get so soggy—"

"What we think happened in the Dance," Granny Weatherwax began in a loud voice, "is that you and the Summer Lady got…mixed up."

"Mixed up?"

"You may have some of her talents. The myth of the Summer Lady says that flowers grow wherever she walks," said Granny Weatherwax.

"Where e'er," said Miss Tick primly.

"What?" snapped Granny, who was now pacing up and down in front of the fire.

"It's ‘where e'er she walks,' in fact," said Miss Tick. "It's more…poetical."

"Hah," Granny said. "Poetry!"

Am I going to get into trouble about this? Tiffany wondered. "And what about the real Summer Lady? Is she going to be angry?" she asked.

Granny Weatherwax stopped pacing and looked at Miss Tick, who said: "Ah, yes…er…we are exploring every possibility—"

"That means we don't know," said Granny. "That's the truth of it. This is about gods, see? But yes, since you ask, they can be a bit touchy."

"I didn't see her in the dance," said Tiffany.

"Did you see the Wintersmith?"

"Well…no," said Tiffany. How could she describe that wonderful, endless, golden, spinning moment? It went beyond bodies and thoughts. But it had sounded as though two people had said: "Who are you?" She pulled her boots back on. "Er…where is she now?" she asked as she tied the laces. Perhaps she'd have to run.

"She's probably gone back underground for the winter. The Summer Lady doesn't walk above ground in winter."

"Up until now," said Nanny Ogg cheerfully. She seemed to be enjoying this.

"Aah, Mrs. Ogg has put her finger on the other problem," said Miss Tick. "The, er, Wintersmith and the Summer Lady are, uh, that is, they've never—" She looked imploringly at Nanny Ogg.

"They've never met except in the Dance," said Nanny. "But now here you are, and you feel like the Summer Lady to him, walking around as bold as brass in the wintertime, so you might be…how shall I put it…?"

"…exciting his romantic propensities," said Miss Tick quickly.

"I wasn't going to describe it quite like that," said Nanny Ogg.

"Yes, I suspects you weren't!" said Granny. "I suspects you was going to use Language!"

Tiffany definitely heard the capital "L," which entirely suggested that the language she was thinking of was not to be uttered in polite company.

Nanny stood up and tried to look haughty, which is hard to do when you have a face like a happy apple.

"I was actually going to draw Tiff's attention to this," she said, taking an ornament off the crowded mantelpiece. It was a little house. Tiffany had glanced at it before; it had two little doorways at the front and, at the moment, a tiny little wooden man with a top hat.

"It's called a weather house," Nanny said, handing it to Tiffany. "I don't know how it works—there's a bit of special string or something—but there's a little wooden man who comes out if it's going to rain and a little wooden woman who comes out when it's going to be sunny. But they're on a little pivoty thing, see? They can never be out at the same time, see? Never. An' I can't help wonderin', when the weather's changin', if the little man sees the little woman out of the corner of his eye and wonders—"

"Is this about sex?" asked Tiffany.

Miss Tick looked at the ceiling. Granny Weatherwax cleared her throat. Nanny gave a huge laugh that would have embarrassed even the little wooden man.

"Sex?" she said. "Between Summer and Winter? Now there's a thought."

"Don't…think…it," said Granny Weatherwax sternly. She turned to Tiffany. "He's fascinated by you, that's what it is. And we don't know how much of the Summer Lady's power is in you. She might be quite weak. You'll have to be a summer in winter until winter ends," she added flatly. "That's justice. No excuses. You made a choice. You get what you chose."

"Couldn't I just go and find her and say I'm sorry—?" Tiffany began.

"No. The old gods ain't big on ‘sorry,'" said Granny, pacing up and down again. "They know it's just a word."

"You know what I think?" said Nanny. "I think she's watchin' you, Tiff. She's sayin' to herself, ‘Who's this hoity-toity young madam steppin' into my shoes? Well, let's make her walk a mile in 'em and see how she likes it!'"

"Mrs. Ogg may have something there," said Miss Tick, who was leafing through Chaffinch's Mythology. "The gods expect you to pay for your mistakes."