Wintersmith

was a good idea that she’d had the book printed in big letters.
    It was in fact Miss Tick who had written Witch Hunting for Dumb People , and she made sure that copies of it found their way into those areas where people still believed that witches should be burned or drowned.
    Since the only witch ever likely to pass through these days was Miss Tick herself, it meant that if things did go wrong, she’d get a good night’s sleep and a decent meal before being thrown into the water. The water was no problem at all to Miss Tick, who had been to the Quirm College for Young Ladies, where you had to have an icy dip every morning to build Moral Fiber. And a No. 1 Bosun’s knot was very easy to undo with your teeth, even underwater.
    Oh, yes, she thought, as she emptied her boots, and she’d got two silver sixpences, too. Really, the people of the village of Dogbend were getting very stupid indeed. Of course, that’s what happened when you got rid of your witches. A witch was just someone who knew a bit more than you did. That’s what the name meant. And some people didn’t like anyone who knew more than they did, so these days the wandering teachers and the traveling librarians steered clear of the place. The way things were going, if the people of Dogbend wanted to throw stones at anyone who knew more than them, they’d soon have to throw them at the pigs.
    The place was a mess. Unfortunately there was a girl aged eight there who was definitely showing promise, and Miss Tick dropped in sometimes to keep an eye on her. Not as a witch, obviously, because although she liked a cold dip in the morning, you could have too much of a good thing. She disguised herself as a humble apple seller, or a fortune-teller. (Witches don’t usually do fortune-telling, because if they did, they’d be too good at it. People don’t want to know what’s really going to happen, only that it’s going to be nice. But witches don’t add sugar.)
    Unfortunately the spring on Miss Tick’s stealth hat had gone wrong while she was walking down the main street and the point had popped up. Even Miss Tick hadn’t been able to talk her way out of that one. Oh well, she’d have to make other arrangements now. Witch finding was always dangerous. You had to do it, though. A witch growing up all alone was a sad and dangerous child….
    She stopped, and stared at the fire. Why had she just thought about Tiffany Aching? Why now?
    Working quickly, she emptied her pockets and started a shamble.
    Shambles worked. That was about all you could say about them for certain. You made them out of some string and a couple of sticks and anything you had in your pocket at the time. They were a witch’s equivalent of those knives with fifteen blades and three screwdrivers and a tiny magnifying glass and a thing for extracting earwax from chickens.
    You couldn’t even say precisely what they did, although Miss Tick thought they were a way of finding out what things the hidden bits of your own mind somehow knew. You had to make a shamble from scratch every time, and only from things in your pockets. There was no harm in having interesting things in your pockets, though, just in case.
    After less than a minute Miss Tick had crafted a shamble out of:
     One twelve-inch ruler
     One bootlace
     One piece of secondhand string
     Some black thread
     One pencil
     One pencil sharpener
     A small stone with a hole in it
     A matchbox containing a mealworm called Roger, along with a scrap of bread for him to eat, because every shamble must contain something living
     About half a packet of Mrs. Sheergold’s Lubricated Throat Lozenges
     A button
    It looked like a cat’s cradle, or maybe the tangled strings of a very strange puppet.
    Miss Tick stared at it, waiting for it to read her. Then the ruler swung around, the throat sweets exploded in a little cloud of red dust, the pencil shot away and stuck in Miss Tick’s hat, and the ruler was covered in frost.
    That was not supposed to happen.

    Miss Treason sat downstairs in her cottage and watched Tiffany sleeping in the low bedroom above her. She did this through a mouse, which was sitting on the tarnished brass bedstead. Beyond the gray windows (Miss Treason hadn’t bothered to clean them for fifty-three years, and Tiffany hadn’t been able to shift all the dirt), the wind howled among the trees, even though it was mid-afternoon.
    He’s