Wintersmith

wood, after all, so they’re tryin’ to grow.”
    “Mrs. Ogg?” said Tiffany.
    “Yes?”
    “Please? I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about! I keep my feet very clean! And I think I’m a giant iceberg!”
    Nanny Ogg gave her a slow, kind look. Tiffany stared into dark, twinkling eyes. Don’t try to trick her or hold anything back from those eyes, said her Third Thoughts. Everyone says she’s been Granny Weatherwax’s best friend since they were girls. And that means that under all those wrinkles must be nerves of steel.
    “Kettle’s on downstairs,” said Nanny brightly. “Why don’t you come down and tell me all about it?”
    Tiffany had looked up “strumpet” in the Unexpurgated Dictionary, and found it meant “a woman who is no better than she should be” and “a lady of easy virtue.” This, she decided after some working out, meant that Mrs. Gytha Ogg, known as Nanny, was a very respectable person. She found virtue easy, for one thing. And if she was no better than she should be, then she was just as good as she ought to be.
    She had a feeling that Miss Treason hadn’t meant this, but you couldn’t argue with logic.
    Nanny Ogg was good at listening, at least. She listened like a great big ear, and before Tiffany realized it, she was telling her everything. Everything. Nanny sat on the opposite side of the big kitchen table, puffing gently at a pipe with a hedgehog carved on it. Sometimes she’d ask a little question, like “Why was that?” or “And then what happened?” and off they’d go again. Nanny’s friendly little smile could drag out of you things you didn’t know you knew.
    While they talked, Tiffany’s Third Thoughts scanned the room out of the corners of her eyes.
    It was wonderfully clean and bright, and there were ornaments everywhere—cheap, jolly ones, the sort that have things like “To the World’s Best Mum” on them. And where there weren’t ornaments, there were pictures of babies and children and families.
    Tiffany had thought that only grand folk lived in homes like this. There were oil lamps! There was a bath, made of tin, hanging conveniently on a hook outside the privy! There was a pump actually indoors! But Nanny ambled around in her rather worn black dress, not grand at all.
    From the best chair in the room of ornaments, a large gray cat watched Tiffany with a half-open eye that glinted with absolute evil. Nanny had referred to him as “Greebo…don’t mind him, he’s just a big old softie,” which Tiffany knew enough to interpret as “he’ll have his claws in your leg if you go anywhere near him.”
    Tiffany talked as she hadn’t talked to anyone before. It must be a kind of magic, her Third Thoughts concluded. Witches soon picked up ways of controlling people with their voices, but Nanny Ogg listened at you.
    “This lad Roland who is not your young man,” said Nanny, when Tiffany had paused for breath. “Thinking of marrying him, are you?”
    Don’t lie, her Third Thoughts insisted.
    “I…well, your mind comes up with all kinds of things when you’re not paying attention, doesn’t it?” said Tiffany. “It’s not like thinking. Anyway, all the other boys I’ve met just stare at their stupid feet! Petulia says it’s because of the hat.”
    “Well, taking it off helps,” said Nanny Ogg. “Mind you, so did a low-cut bodice, when I was a girl. Stopped ’em lookin’ at their stupid feet, I don’t mind telling you!”
    Tiffany saw the dark eyes locked onto her. She burst out laughing. Mrs. Ogg’s face broke into a huge grin that should have been locked up for the sake of public decency, and for some reason Tiffany felt a lot better. She’d passed some kind of test.
    “Mind you, that probably wouldn’t work with the Wintersmith, of course,” said Nanny, and the gloom came down again.
    “I didn’t mind the snowflakes,” said Tiffany. “But the iceberg—I think that was a bit much.”
    “Showing off in front of the girls,” said Nanny, puffing at her hedgehog pipe. “Yes, they do that.”
    “But he can kill people!”
    “He’s Winter. It’s what he does. But I reckon he’s in a bit of a tizzy because he’s never been in love with a human before.”
    “In love?”
    “Well, he probably thinks he is.”
    Once again the eyes watched her carefully.
    “He’s an elemental, and they’re simple, really,” Nanny Ogg went on. “But he’s trying to be human. And that’s complicated. We’re packed with stuff