Wintersmith

will be what’s important to them. Besides, they don’t think they’re poor, because everyone around here is poor! But they’re not so poor they can’t afford to do the right things! That would be poor!”
    Annagramma was staring at her with her mouth open.
    “Be careful what you say next,” said Tiffany, breathing heavily. “In fact, don’t say anything.”
    Breakfast was ham and eggs. It was eaten in polite silence. After that, in the same silence except that it was outdoors, they flew back to what people would probably always think of as Miss Treason’s cottage.
    There was a small boy loitering outside. As soon as they landed, he blurted out, “Mrs. Obble says the baby’s on the way an’ she said you’d give me a penny for goin’.”
    “You have got a bag, haven’t you?” said Tiffany, turning to Annagramma.
    “Yes, er, lots.”
    “I mean a call-out bag. You know, you keep it by the door with everything in it that you’ll need if…”
    Tiffany saw the terrified look on the girl’s face. “Okay, so you haven’t got a bag. We’ll just have to do the best we can. Give him a penny and let’s go.”
    “Can we get anyone to help if it goes wrong?” Annagramma asked as they left the ground.
    “We are the help,” said Tiffany simply. “And since this is your steading, I’m giving you the really tough job—”
    —which was keeping Mrs. Obble occupied. Mrs. Obble wasn’t a witch, although most people thought she was. She looked like one—that is, she looked like someone who’d bought everything in the Boffo catalogue on the day of the Special Offer on Hairy Warts—and she was mildly crazy and should not have been allowed within a mile of any mother who was going to have her first baby, since she would very conscientiously tell them (or cackle at them, anyway) about all the things that could go wrong in a way that made it sound as if they would all go wrong. She wasn’t a bad nurse, though, once you stopped her from putting a leaf-mold poultice on everything.
    Things went noisily and with a certain amount of fuss, but nothing like Mrs. Obble had predicted, and the result was a baby boy, who was not a bouncing baby but only because Tiffany caught him; Annagramma didn’t know how to hold babies.
    She did look good in a pointy hat, though, and since she was clearly older than Tiffany and did hardly any of the work, the other women assumed she was in charge.
    Tiffany left her holding the baby (the right way up, this time) and looking proud, and began the long flight back through the woods to Tir Nani Ogg. It was a crisp evening, but there was a bit of wind that blew stinging snow crystals off the trees. It was an exhausting journey and very, very cold. He can’t know where I am, she repeated to herself as she flew back in the dusk. And he’s not very clever. Winter has to end sometime, right?
    Er…how? said her Second Thoughts. Miss Tick said you just have to be there, but surely you have to do something else?
    I suppose I’ll have to walk around with my shoes off, Tiffany thought.
    Everywhere? her Second Thoughts wondered, as she swerved between the trees.
    It’s probably like being a queen, her Third Thoughts said. She just has to sit in a palace and maybe do a bit of driving around in a big coach and waving, and all over a huge kingdom monarching is going on.
    But as she avoided more trees, she also tried to avoid the little scurrying thought that was trying to creep into her mind: Sooner or later, one way or the other, he will find you…and how can he make himself a man?

    Assistant Postmaster Groat did not believe in doctors. They made you ill, he thought. So he put sulfur in his socks every morning and he was proud to say that he had never had a day’s illness in his life. This may have been because not many people cared to come very close to him, because of the smell. Something did, though. A gale roared into his post office when he was opening the door one morning and blew his socks clean off. *
    And no one heard the Wintersmith say: “Sulfur enough to make a man!”

    Nanny Ogg was sitting by the fire when Tiffany came in, stamping snow off her boots.
    “You look frozen all through,” Nanny said. “You need a glass of hot milk with a drop of brandy in it, that’s what you need.”
    “Ooh, yyess…” Tiffany managed through chattering teeth.
    “Get me one too, then, will you?” said Nanny. “Only joking. You get warmed up; I’ll see to the drink.”
    Tiffany’s