Wintersmith

swan. It was so big that it was causing its own weather. It seemed to be moving slowly; there was white water around its base. Snow fell around it. Streamers of fog trailed behind it.
    The Jolly Sailor’s pipe dropped out of his mouth as he stared.
    “A Good Smoke!” he swore.
    The iceberg was Tiffany. It was a Tiffany hundreds of feet high, formed of glittering green ice, but it was still a Tiffany. There were seabirds perched on her head.
    “It can’t be the Wintersmith doing this!” said Tiffany. “I threw the horse away!” She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted: “I THREW THE HORSE AWAY!”
    Her voice echoed off the looming ice figure. A few birds took off from the huge cold head, screaming. Behind Tiffany, the ship’s wheel spun. The Jolly Sailor stamped a foot and pointed to the white sails above them.
    “A Good Smoke in Any Weather!” he commanded.
    “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean!” said Tiffany desperately.
    The man pointed to the sails and made frantic pulling motions with his hands.
    “A Good Smoke!”
    “Sorry, I just can’t understand you!”
    The sailor snorted and ran off toward a rope, which he hauled on in a great hurry.
    “It’s gotten weird,” said her Third Thoughts quietly.
    “Well, yes, I should think a huge iceberg shaped like me is a—”
    “No, that’s just strange. This is weird,” said her Third Thoughts. “We’ve got passengers. Look.” She pointed.
    Down on the main deck there was a row of hatches with big iron grids on them; Tiffany hadn’t noticed them before.
    Hands, hundreds of them, pale as roots under a log, groping and waving, were thrusting through the grids.
    “Passengers?” Tiffany whispered in horror. “Oh, no…”
    And then the screaming started. It would have been better, but not a lot better, if it had been cries of “Help! and “Save us,” but instead it was just screaming and wailing, just the sounds of people in pain and fear—
    No!
    “Come back inside my head,” she said grimly. “It’s too distracting to have you running around outside. Right now.”
    “I’ll walk in from behind you,” said her Third Thoughts. “Then it won’t seem so—”
    Tiffany felt a twinge of pain, and a change in her mind, and thought: Well, I suppose it could have been a lot messier.
    Okay. Let me think. Let all of me think.
    She watched the desperate hands, waving like weeds underwater, and thought: I’m in something like a dream, but I don’t think it’s mine. I’m on a ship, and we’re going to get killed by an iceberg that’s a giant figure of me.
    I think I liked it better when I was snowflakes….
    Whose dream is this?
    “What is this about, Wintersmith?” she asked, and her Third Thoughts, back where they should be, commented: It’s amazing, you can even see your own breath in the air.
    “Is this a warning?” Tiffany shouted. “What do you want?”
    You for my bride , said the Wintersmith. The words just arrived in her memory.
    Tiffany’s shoulders sank.
    You know this isn’t real, said her Third Thoughts. But it may be the shadow of something real….
    I shouldn’t have let Granny Weatherwax send Rob Anybody away like that—
    “Crivens! Shiver me timber!” shouted a voice behind her. And then there was the usual clamor:
    “It’s ‘timbers,’ ye dafty!”
    “Aye? But I can only find one!”
    “Splice the big plank! Daft Wullie’s just walked intae the watter!”
    “The big puddin’! I told him, just the one eye patch!”
    “With a yo hoho and a ho yoyo—”
    Feegles erupted from the cabin behind Tiffany, and Rob Anybody stopped in front of her as the rest streamed past. He saluted.
    “Sorry we’re a wee bittie late, but we had to find the black patches,” he said. “There’s sich a thing as style, ye ken.”
    Tiffany was speechless, but only for a moment. She pointed.
    “We’ve got to stop this ship from hitting that iceberg!”
    “Just that? Nae problemo!” Rob looked past her to the looming ice giantess and grinned. “He’s got yer nose just right, eh?”
    “Just stop it! Please?” Tiffany pleaded.
    “Aye-aye! C’mon, lads!”
    Watching the Feegles working was like watching ants, except that ants didn’t wear kilts and shout “Crivens!” all the time. Maybe it was because they could make one word do so much work that they seemed to have no problem at all with the Jolly Sailor’s orders. They swarmed across the deck. Mysterious ropes were pulled. Sails moved and billowed to a