Terry Pratchett - Wintersmith

"Here is the heart of the summer," hissed the voice of the Summer Lady. "Fear me as much as the Wintersmith. We are not yours, though you give us shapes and names. Fire and ice we are, in balance. Do not come between us again…."

And now, at last, there was movement. From out of gaps between the stones they came like stones brought alive: bronze and red, umber and yellow, black and white, with harlequin patterns and deadly gleaming scales.

The snakes tested the boiling air with their forked tongues and hissed triumphantly.

The vision vanished. The world came back.

The water had poured away. The everlasting wind had teased the fogs and steams into long streamers of cloud, but the unconquered sun was finding its way through. And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it's gone.

Tiffany walked across the grass where the palace had been. There were a few pieces of ice left, but they would be gone in an hour. There were the clouds, but clouds drifted away. The normal world pressed in on her, with its dull little songs. She was walking on a stage after the play was over, and who now could say it had ever happened?

Something sizzled on the grass. Tiffany reached down and picked up a piece of metal. It was still warm with the last of the heat that had twisted it out of shape, but you could see that it had once been a nail.

No, I won't take a gift to make the giver feel better, she thought. Why should I? I'll find my own gifts. I was…"entertaining" to her, that's all.

But him—he made me roses and icebergs and frost and never understood….

She turned suddenly at the sound of voices. The Feegles came bounding over the slope of the downs, at a speed just fast enough for a human to keep up. And Roland was keeping up, panting a little, his overlarge chain mail making him run like a duck.

She laughed.

Two weeks later Tiffany went back to Lancre. Roland took her as far as Twoshirts, and the pointy hat took her the rest of the way. That was a bit of luck. The driver remembered Miss Tick, and since there was a spare space on the roof of the coach, he wasn't prepared to go through all that again. The roads were flooded, the ditches gurgled, the swollen rivers sucked at the bridges.

First she visited Nanny Ogg, who had to be told everything. That saved some time, because once you've told Nanny Ogg, you've more or less told everyone else. When she heard exactly what Tiffany had done to the Wintersmith, she laughed and laughed.

Tiffany borrowed Nanny's broomstick and flew slowly across the forests to Miss Treason's cottage.

Things were going on. In the clearing, several men were digging the vegetable area, and lots of people were hanging around the door, so she landed back in the woods, shoved the broom into a rabbit hole and her hat under a bush, and walked back on foot.

Stuck in a birch tree where the track entered the clearing was…a doll, maybe, made out of lots of twigs bound together. It was new, and a bit worrying. That was probably the idea.

No one saw her raise the catch on the scullery door or slip inside the cottage. She leaned against the kitchen wall and went quiet.

From the next room came the unmistakable voice of Annagramma at her most typically Annagrammatical.

"—only a tree, do you understand? Cut it up and share the wood. Agreed? And now shake hands. Go on. I mean it. Properly, or else I'll get angry! Good. That feels better, doesn't it? Let's have no more of this silliness—"

After ten minutes of listening to people being scolded, grumbled at, and generally prodded, Tiffany crept out again, cut through the woods, and walked into the clearing via the track. There was a woman hurrying toward her, but she stopped when Tiffany said: "Excuse me, is there a witch near here?"

"Ooooh, yes," said the woman, and gave Tiffany a hard stare. "You're not from around here, are you?"

"No," said Tiffany, and thought: I lived here for months, Mrs. Carter, and I saw you most days. But I always wore the hat. People always talk to the hat. Without the hat, I'm in disguise.

"Well, there's Miss Hawkin," said Mrs. Carter, as if reluctant to give away a secret. "Be careful, though." She leaned forward and lowered her voice. "She turns into a terrible monster when she's angry! I've seen her! She's all right with us, of course," she added. "Lots of young witches have been coming to learn things from her!"

"Gosh, she must be good!"

"She's amazing," Mrs. Carter went on. "She'd only been here five minutes and she seemed to know all about us!"

"Amazing," said Tiffany. You'd think that somebody wrote it all down. Twice. But that wouldn't be interesting enough, would it? And who would believe that a real witch bought her face from Boffo?

"And she's got a cauldron that bubbles green," Mrs. Carter said with great pride. "All down the sides. That's proper witching, that is."

"It sounds like it," said Tiffany. No witch she'd met had done anything with a cauldron apart from make stew, but somehow people believed in their hearts that a witch's cauldron should bubble green. And that must be why Mr. Boffo sold Item #61 Bubbling Green Cauldron Kit, $14, extra sachets of Green, $1 each.

Well, it worked. It probably shouldn't, but people were people. She didn't think Annagramma would be particularly interested in a visit right now, especially from someone who'd read all the way through the Boffo catalogue, so she retrieved her broom and headed on to Granny Weatherwax's cottage.

There was a chicken run out in the back garden now. It had been carefully woven out of pliable hazel, and contented werks were coming from the other side.

Granny Weatherwax was coming out of the back door. She looked at Tiffany as if the girl had just come back from a ten-minute stroll.

"I've got business down in the town right now," she said. "It wouldn't worry me if you came, too." That was, from Granny, as good as a brass band and an illuminated scroll of welcome. Tiffany fell in alongside her as she strode off along the track.

"I hope I find you well, Mistress Weatherwax?" she said, hurrying to keep up.

"I'm still here after another winter, that's all I know," said Granny. "You look well, girl."

"Oh, yes."

"We saw the steam from up here," said Granny.

Tiffany said nothing. That was it? Well, yes. From Granny, that would be it.

After a while Granny said: "Come back to see your young friends, eh?"

Tiffany took a deep breath. She'd been through this in her head dozens of times: what she would say, what Granny would say, what she would shout, what Granny would shout…

"You planned it, didn't you?" she said. "If you'd suggested one of the others, they'd probably have got the cottage, so you suggested me. And you knew, you just knew that I'd help her. And it's all worked out, hasn't it? I bet every witch in the mountains knows what happened by now. I bet Mrs. Earwig is seething. And the best bit is, no one got hurt. Annagramma's picked up where Miss Treason left off, all the villagers are happy, and you've won! Oh, I expect you'll say it was to keep me busy and teach me important things and keep my mind off the Wintersmith, but you still won!"

Granny Weatherwax walked on calmly. Then she said: "I see you got your little trinket back."

It was like having a bolt of lightning and then not getting any thunder, or throwing a pebble into a pool and not getting a splash.

"What? Oh. The horse. Yes! Look, I—"

"What kind of fish?"

"Er…pike," said Tiffany.

"Ah? Some likes 'em, but they are too muddy for my taste."

And that was it. Against Granny's calm she had nowhere to go. She could nag, she could whine, and it wouldn't make any difference. Tiffany consoled herself with the fact that at least Granny knew that she knew. It wasn't much, but it was all she was going to get.