Wintersmith

wall, sending back “ITH… Ith … ith …” until it died away.
    Another staircase, then, and this time there was something new. On a plinth, where there might have been a statue, was a crown. It floated in the air a few feet above the base, turning gently, and glittered with frost. A little bit farther on was another statue, smaller than most, but around this one, blue and green and gold lights danced and shimmered.
    They looked just like the Hublights that could sometimes be seen in the depths of winter floating over the mountains at the center of the world. Some people thought they were alive.
    The statue was the same height as Tiffany.
    “Wintersmith!” There was still no reply. A nice palace with no kitchen, no bed…. He didn’t need to eat or sleep, so who was it for?
    She knew the answer already: me.
    She reached out to touch the dancing lights, and they swarmed up her arm and spread across her body, making a dress that glittered like moonlight on snowfields. She was shocked, then angry. Then she wished she had a mirror, felt guilty about that, and went back to being angry again, and resolved that if by chance she did find a mirror, the only reason she’d look in it would be to check how angry she was.
    After searching for a while, she found a mirror, which was nothing more than a wall of ice of such a dark green that it was almost black.
    She did look angry. And immensely, beautifully sparkly. There were little glints of gold on the blue and green, just like there were in the sky on wintry nights.
    “Wintersmith!”
    He must be watching her. He could be anywhere.
    “All right! I’m here! You know that!”
    “Yes. I do,” said the Wintersmith behind her.
    Tiffany spun around and slapped him across the face, then slapped him again with her other hand.
    It was like hitting rock. He was learning very quickly now.
    “That’s for the lambs,” she said, trying to shake some life back into her fingers. “How dare you! You didn’t have to!”
    He looked much more human. Either he was wearing real clothes or he had worked hard on making them look real. He’d actually managed to look…well, handsome. Not cold anymore, just…cool.
    He’s nothing but a snowman, her Second Thoughts protested. Remember that. He’s just too smart to have coal for eyes or a carrot for a nose.
    “Ouch,” said the Wintersmith, as if he’d just remembered to say it.
    “I demand that you let me go!” Tiffany snapped. “Right now!” That’s right, her Second Thoughts said. You want him to end up cowering behind the saucepans on top of the kitchen dresser. As it were…
    “At this moment,” said the Wintersmith very calmly, “I am a gale wrecking ships a thousand miles away. I am freezing water pipes in a snowbound town. I am freezing the sweat on a dying man, lost in a terrible blizzard. I creep silently under doors. I hang from gutters. I stroke the fur of the sleeping bear, deep in her cave, and course in the blood of the fishes under the ice.”
    “I don’t care!” said Tiffany. “I don’t want to be here! And you shouldn’t be here either!”
    “Child, will you walk with me?” said the Wintersmith. “I will not harm you. You are safe here.”
    “What from?” said Tiffany, and then, because too much time around Miss Tick does something to your conversation, even in times of stress, she changed this to: “From what?”
    “Death,” said the Wintersmith. “Here you will never die.”

    At the back of the Feegles’ chalk pit, more chalk had been carved out of the wall to make a tunnel about five feet high and perhaps as long.
    In front of it stood Roland de Chumsfanleigh (it wasn’t his fault). His ancestors had been knights, and they had come to own the Chalk by killing the kings who thought they did. Swords, that’s what it had all been about. Swords and cutting off heads. That was how you got land in the old days, and then the rules were changed so that you didn’t need a sword to own land anymore, you just needed the right piece of paper. But his ancestors had still hung on to their swords, just in case people thought that the whole thing with the bits of paper was unfair, it being a fact that you can’t please everybody.
    He’d always wanted to be good with a sword, and it had come as a shock to find they were so heavy . He was great at air sword. In front of a mirror he could fence against his reflection and win nearly all the time. Real swords didn’t allow that. You tried to swing