Wintersmith

kind o’ thing, yes,” said Billy Bigchin. “But not the prayin’-to kinda god. He just…makes winters. It’s his job, ye ken.”
    “He’s an elemental,” said Miss Treason from her loom.
    “Aye,” said Rob Anybody. “Gods, elementals, demons, spirits…sometimes it’s hard to tell ’em apart wi’oot a map.”
    “And the dance is to welcome winter?” said Tiffany. “That doesn’t make sense! The Morris dance is to welcome the coming of the summer, yes, that’s—”
    “Are you an infant?” said Miss Treason. “The year is round! The wheel of the world must spin! That is why up here they dance the Dark Morris, to balance it. They welcome the winter because of the new summer deep inside it!”
    Click-clack went the loom. Miss Treason was weaving a new cloth, of brown wool.
    “Well, all right,” said Tiffany. “We welcomed it…him. That doesn’t mean he’s supposed to come looking for me!”
    “Why did you join the dance?” Miss Treason demanded.
    “Er…There was a space, and—”
    “Yes. A space. A space not intended for you. Not for you, foolish child. You danced with him, and now he wants to meet such a bold girl. I have never heard of such a thing! I want you to fetch the third book from the right on the second shelf from the top of my bookcase.” She handed Tiffany a heavy black key. “Can you manage to do even that?”
    Witches didn’t need to slap the stupid, not when they had a sharp tongue that was always ready.
    Miss Treason also had several shelves of books, which was unusual for one of the older witches. The shelves were high up, the books looked big and heavy, and up until now Miss Treason had forbidden Tiffany to dust them, let alone unlock the big black iron band that secured them to the shelves. People who came here always gave them a nervous look. Books were dangerous.
    Tiffany unlocked the bands and wiped away the dust. Ah…the books were, like Miss Treason, not everything they seemed. They looked like magic books, but they had names like An Encyclopaedia of Soup . There was a dictionary. Next to it the book Miss Treason had asked for was covered in cobwebs.
    Still blushing with shame and anger, Tiffany got the book down, fighting to get it free of the webs. Some of them went pling! as they snapped, and dust fell off the top of the pages. When she opened it, it smelled old and parchmenty, like Miss Treason. The title, in gold lettering that had almost rubbed away, was Chaffinch’s Ancient and Classical Mythology . It was full of bookmarks.
    “Pages eighteen and nineteen,” said Miss Treason, her head not moving. Tiffany turned to them.
    “‘The Dacne of the Sneasos’?” she said. “Is that supposed to be ‘The Dance of the Seasons’?”
    “Regrettably, the artist, Don Weizen de Yoyo, whose famous masterpiece that was, did not have the same talent with letters as he had with painting,” said Miss Treason. “They worried him, for some reason. I notice you mention the words before the pictures. You are a bookish child.”
    The picture was…strange. It showed two figures. Tiffany hadn’t seen masquerade costumes. There wasn’t the money at home for that sort of thing. But she’d read about them, and this was pretty much what she’d imagined.
    The page showed a man and a woman—or, at least, things that looked like a man and a woman. The woman was labeled “Summer” and was tall and blond and beautiful, and therefore to the short, brown-haired Tiffany was a figure of immediate distrust. She was carrying what looked like a big basket shaped like a shell, which was full of fruit.
    The man, “Winter,” was old and bent and gray. Icicles glittered on his beard.
    “Ach, that’s wha’ the Wintersmith would look like, sure enough,” said Rob Anybody, strolling across the page. “Ol’ Frosty.”
    “Him?” said Tiffany. “ That’s the Wintersmith? He looks a hundred years old!”
    “A youngster, eh?” said Miss Treason nastily.
    “Dinna let him kiss ye, or yer nose might turn blue and fall off!” said Daft Wullie cheerfully.
    “Daft Wullie, don’t you dare say things like that!” said Tiffany.
    “I wuz just tryin’ to lighten the mood, ye ken,” said Wullie, looking sheepish.
    “That’s an artist’s impression, of course,” said Miss Treason.
    “What does that mean?” said Tiffany, staring at the picture. It was wrong . She knew it. This wasn’t what he was like at all….
    “It means he made it up,” said Billy Bigchin. “He