Wintersmith

am sorry to say I didn’t listen much to what she said. She is always telling me that these girls are really keen to learn, but mostly they are just flibbertigibbets who want to be a witch to impress the young men, and they run away after a few days. This one doesn’t, oh no! She runs toward things! Did you know she tried to dance with the Wintersmith?!”
    “Aye. We ken. We were there,” said Rob Anybody.
    “You were?”
    “Aye. We followed yez.”
    “No one saw you there. I would have known if they did,” Miss Treason said.
    “Aye? Weel, we’re good at no one seein’ us,” said Rob Anybody, smiling. “It’s amazin’, the people who dinna see us.”
    “She actually tried to dance with the Wintersmith,” Miss Treason repeated. “I told her not to.”
    “Ach, people’re always tellin’ us not tae do things,” said Rob Anybody. “That’s how we ken what’s the most interestin’ things tae do!”
    Miss Treason stared at him with the eyes of one mouse, two ravens, several moths, and an earwig.
    “Indeed,” she said, and sighed. “Yes. The trouble with being this old, you know, is that being young is so far away from me now that it seems sometimes that it happened to someone else. A long life is not what it’s cracked up to be, that is a fact. It—”
    “The Wintersmith is seekin’ for the big wee hag, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. “We saw her dancin’ wi’ the Wintersmith. Now he is seekin’ her. We can hear him in the howl o’ the wind.”
    “I know,” said Miss Treason. She stopped, and listened for a moment. “The wind has dropped,” she stated. “He’s found her.”
    She snatched up her walking sticks and scuttled toward the stairs, going up them with amazing speed. Feegles swarmed past her into the bedroom, where Tiffany lay on a narrow bed.
    A candle burned in a saucer at each corner of the room.
    “But how has he found her?” Miss Treason demanded. “I had her hidden! You, blue men, fetch wood now!” She glared at them. “I said fetch—”
    She heard a couple of thumps. Dust was settling. The Feegles were watching Miss Treason expectantly. And sticks, a lot of sticks, were piled in the tiny bedroom fireplace.
    “Ye did well,” she said. “An’ not tae soon!”
    Snowflakes were drifting down the chimney.
    Miss Treason crossed her walking sticks in front of her and stamped her foot hard.
    “Wood burn, fire blaze!” she shouted. The wood in the grate burst into flame. But now frost was forming on the window, ferny white tendrils snapping across the glass with a crackling sound.
    “I am not putting up with this at my age!” said the witch.
    Tiffany opened her eyes, and said: “What’s happening?”

CHAPTER THREE
    The Secret of Boffo
    I t is not good, being in a sandwich of bewildered dancers. They were heavy men. Tiffany was Aching all over. She was covered in bruises, including one the shape of a boot that she wasn’t going to show to anyone .
    Feegles filled every flat surface in Miss Treason’s weaving room. She was working at her loom with her back to the room because, she said, this helped her think; but since she was Miss Treason, her position didn’t matter much. There were plenty of eyes and ears she could use, after all. The fire burned hot, and there were candles everywhere. Black ones, of course.
    Tiffany was angry. Miss Treason hadn’t shouted, hadn’t even raised her voice. She’d just sighed and said “foolish child,” which was a whole lot worse, mostly because that’s just what Tiffany knew she’d been. One of the dancers had helped bring her back to the cottage. She couldn’t remember anything about that at all.
    A witch didn’t do things because they seemed a good idea at the time! That was practically cackling! You had to deal every day with people who were foolish and lazy and untruthful and downright unpleasant, and you could certainly end up thinking that the world would be considerably improved if you gave them a slap. But you didn’t because, as Miss Tick had once explained: a) it would make the world a better place for only a very short time; b) it would then make the world a slightly worse place; and c) you’re not supposed to be as stupid as they are.
    Her feet had moved, and she’d listened to them. She ought to have been listening to her head. Now she had to sit by Miss Treason’s fire with a tin hot-water bottle on her lap and a shawl around her.
    “So the Wintersmith is a kind of god?” she said.
    “That