Wintersmith

seen the sort of things they do.”
    The coachman clearly spotted that this was a road not to go down, and turned the pages furiously. Then he beamed.
    “Ah, ah, ah!” he said. “How much do you weigh, miss?”
    “Two ounces,” said Miss Tick. “Which by chance is the maximum weight of a letter that can be sent to the Lancre and Near Hinterland area for ten pence.” She pointed to the two stamps gummed to her lapel. “I have already purchased my stamps.”
    “You never weigh two ounces!” said the coachman. “You’re a hundred and twenty pounds at least!”
    Miss Tick sighed. She’d wanted to avoid this, but Twoshirts wasn’t Dogbend, after all. It lived on the highway, it watched the world go past. She reached up and pressed the button that worked her hat.
    “Would you like me to forget you just said that?” she asked.
    “Why?” said the coachman.
    There was a pause while Miss Tick stared blankly at him. Then she turned her eyes upward.
    “Excuse me,” she said. “This is always happening, I’m afraid. It’s the duckings, you know. The spring rusts.”
    She reached up and banged the side of the hat. The hidden pointy bit shot up, scattering paper flowers.
    The coachman’s eyes followed it. “Oh,” he said.
    And the thing about pointy hats was this: The person under one was definitely a witch or a wizard. Oh, someone who wasn’t could probably get a pointy hat and go out wearing it, and they’d be fine right up until the moment when they met a real pointy-hat owner. Wizards and witches don’t like impostors. They also don’t like being kept waiting.
    “How much do I weigh now, pray?” she asked.
    “Two ounces!” said the coachman quickly.
    Miss Tick smiled. “Yes. And not one scruple more! A scruple being, of course, a weight of twenty grains, or one twenty-fourth of an ounce. I am in fact…unscrupulous!”
    She waited to see if this extremely teachery joke was going to get a smile but didn’t mind when it didn’t. Miss Tick rather liked being smarter than other people.
    She got on the coach.
    As the coach climbed up into the mountains, snow started to fall. Miss Tick, who knew that no two snowflakes are alike, didn’t pay them any attention. If she had done so, she’d have felt slightly less smart.

    Tiffany slept. A fire glowed in the bedroom grate. Downstairs, Miss Treason’s loom wove its way through the night….
    Small blue figures crept across the bedroom floor and, by forming a Feegle pyramid, reached the top of the little table Tiffany used as a desk.
    Tiffany turned over in bed and made a little snfgl noise. The Feegles froze, just for a moment, and then the bedroom door swung gently shut behind them.
    A blue blur raised a trail of dust on the narrow stairs, across the loom-room floor, out into the scullery, and through a strange cheese-shaped hole in the outside door. From then on it was a trail of disturbed leaves leading deep into the woods, where a small fire burned. It lit the faces of a horde of Feegles, although it may not have wanted to.
    The blur stopped and became about six Feegles, two of them carrying Tiffany’s diary.
    They laid it down carefully.
    “We’re well oot o’ that hoose,” said Big Yan. “Dija see dem bigjob skulls? There’s a hag ye wouldna want tae cross in a hurry!”
    “Ach, I see she’s got one o’ they paddly locks again,” said Daft Wullie, walking around the diary.
    “Rob, I canna help thinkin’ that it’s no’ right tae read this,” said Billy Bigchin, as Rob put his arm into the keyhole. “It’s pers’nal!”
    “She’s oor hag. What’s pers’nal tae her is pers’nal tae us,” said Rob matter-of-factly, fishing around inside the lock. “Besides, she must want someone tae read it, ’cuz she wrote things doon. Nae point in writin’ stuff doon if ye dinna want it read! It’s a sheer waste o’ pencil!”
    “Mebbe she wanted tae read it hersel’,” said Billy doubtfully.
    “Oh, aye? Why’d she want tae do that?” said Rob scornfully. “She already kens what’s in it. An’ Jeannie wants tae know what she’s thinkin’ aboot the Baron’s lad.”
    There was a click, and the padlock opened. The assembled Feeglehood watched carefully.
    Rob turned the rustling pages and grinned.
    “Ach, she’s writ here: Oh, the dear Feegles ha’ turned up again, ” he said. This met with general applause.
    “Ach, what a kind girl she is tae write that,” said Billy Bigchin. “Can I see?”
    He read: Oh dear, the