Wintersmith

them back and forth on the ends of her legs. They didn’t do anything strange, so she got into bed.
    She hadn’t slept properly for two nights. She hadn’t really understood that until she’d reached Tir Nani Ogg, when her brain had started to spin of its own accord. She’d talked to Mrs. Ogg, but it was hard to remember what about. Voices had banged in her ears. Now, at last, she had nothing to do but sleep.
    It was a good bed, the best she’d ever slept in. It was the best room she’d ever been in, although she’d been too tired to explore it. Witches didn’t go in much for comfort, especially in spare bedrooms, but Tiffany had grown up on an ancient bed where the springs went gloing every time she moved, and with care she could get them to play a tune.
    This mattress was thick and yielding. She sank into it as if it were very soft, very warm, very slow quicksand.
    The trouble is, you can shut your eyes but you can’t shut your mind. As she lay in the dark, it squiggled pictures inside her head, of clocks that went clonk-clank , of snowflakes shaped like her, of Miss Treason striding through the nighttime forest, seeking bad people with her yellow thumbnail ready.
    Myth Treason…
    She drifted through these scrambled memories into dull whiteness. But it got brighter, and took on detail, little areas of black and gray. They began to move gently from side to side….
    Tiffany opened her eyes, and everything became clear. She was standing on a…a boat, no, a big sailing ship. There was snow on the decks, and icicles hung from the rigging. It was sailing in the washing-up-water light of dawn, on a silent gray sea full of floating ice and clouds of fog. The rigging creaked, the wind sighed in the sails. There was no one to be seen.
    “Ah. This appears to be a dream. Let me out, please,” said a familiar voice.
    “Who are you?” said Tiffany.
    “You. Cough, please.”
    Tiffany thought: Well, if this is a dream…and she coughed.
    A figure grew up out of the snow on the deck. It was her, and she was looking around thoughtfully.
    “Are you me too?” Tiffany asked. Strangely, here on the freezing deck, it didn’t seem that, well, strange.
    “Hmm. Oh, yes,” said the other Tiffany, still staring intently at things. “I’m your Third Thoughts. Remember? The part of you that never stops thinking? The bit that notices little details? It’s good to be out in fresh air. Hmm.”
    “Is there something wrong?”
    “Well, this clearly appears to be a dream. If you would care to look, you’ll see that the steersman in yellow oilskins up there at the wheel is the Jolly Sailor off the wrappers of the tobacco that Granny Aching used to smoke. He always comes into our mind when we think about the sea, yes?”
    Tiffany looked up at the bearded figure, who gave her a cheerful wave.
    “Yes, that’s certainly him!” she said.
    “But I don’t think this is our dream, exactly,” said the Third Thoughts. “It’s too…real.”
    Tiffany reached down and picked up a handful of snow.
    “Feels real,” she said. “Feels cold.” She made a snowball and threw it at herself.
    “I really wish I wouldn’t do that,” said the other Tiffany, brushing the snow off her shoulder. “But you see what I mean? Dreams are never as…nondreamlike as this.”
    “I know what I mean,” said Tiffany. “I think they’re going to be real, and then something weird turns up.”
    “Exactly. I don’t like it all. If this is a dream, then something horrible is going to happen….”
    They looked ahead of the ship. There was a dismal, dirty bank of fog there, spreading out across the sea.
    “There’s something in the fog!” said the Tiffanys together.
    They turned and scurried up the ladder to the man at the wheel.
    “Keep away from the fog! Please don’t go near it!” Tiffany shouted.
    The Jolly Sailor took his pipe out of his mouth and looked puzzled.
    “A Good Smoke in Any Weather?” he said to Tiffany.
    “What?”
    “It’s all he can say!” said her Third Thoughts, grabbing the wheel. “Remember? That’s what he says on the label!”
    The Jolly Sailor pushed her away gently. “A Good Smoke in Any Weather,” he said soothingly. “In Any Weather.”
    “Look, we only want to—” Tiffany began, but her Third Thoughts, without a word, put a hand on her head and turned her around.
    Something was coming out of the fog.
    It was an iceberg, a large one, at least five times as high as the ship, as majestic as a