Wintersmith

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?"