Wintersmith

to be fetched from its hook on the back of the privy, which was at the bottom of the garden, and dragged through the dark, freezing night to a place of honor in front of the fire. Then kettles had to be heated over the fire and on the black kitchen stove, and getting even six inches of warm water was an effort. Afterward, the water all had to be scooped out and into the sink and the bath moved into a corner, ready to be taken outside in the morning. When you had to do all that, you might as well scrub every inch.
    Tiffany did one extra thing: She wrote PRIVATE !! on a piece of cardboard and wedged it in the hanging lamp in the center of the room so that it could be read only from above. She wasn’t sure it would put off any inquisitive gods, but she felt better for doing it.
    That night she slept without dreaming. In the morning snow had put a fresh coating on the drifts, and a couple of Nanny Ogg’s grandchildren were building her a snowman on the lawn. They came in after a while and demanded a carrot for the nose and two lumps of coal for the eyes.
    Nanny took her to the isolated village of Slice, where people were always glad and surprised to see someone they weren’t related to. Nanny Ogg ambled from cottage to cottage along the paths cut in the snow, drinking enough cups of tea to float an elephant and doing witchcraft in small ways. Mostly it seemed to just consist of gossip, but once you got the hang of it, you could hear the magic happening. Nanny Ogg changed the way people thought, even if it was only for a few minutes. She left people thinking they were slightly better people. They weren’t, but as Nanny said, it gave them something to live up to.
    Then there was another night without dreams, but Tiffany woke up with a snap at half past five, feeling…odd.
    She rubbed the frost off the window and saw the snowman by moonlight.
    Why do we do it? she wondered. As soon as there’s snow, we build snowmen. We do worship the Wintersmith, in a way. We make the snow human…. We give him coal eyes and a carrot nose to bring him alive. Oh, and I see the children gave him a scarf. That’s what a snowman needs, a scarf to keep him warm….
    She went down into the silent kitchen, and for want of anything else to do she scrubbed the table. Doing something with her hands helped her think.
    Something had changed, and it was her. She’d been worrying about what he would do and what he would think, as if she were just a leaf being blown about by the wind. She dreaded hearing his voice in her head, where he had no right to be.
    Well, not now. Not anymore.
    He ought to be worried about her.
    Yes, she’d made a mistake. Yes, it was her fault. But she wasn’t going to be bullied. You couldn’t let boys go around raining on your lava and ogling other people’s watercolors.
    Find the story, Granny Weatherwax always said. She believed that the world was full of story shapes. If you let them, they controlled you. But if you studied them, if you found out about them…you could use them, you could change them….
    Miss Treason had known all about stories, yes? She’d spun them like a spiderweb, to give herself power. And they worked because people wanted to believe them. And Nanny Ogg told a story, too. Fat, jolly Nanny Ogg, who liked a drink (and another drink, thank you kindly) and was everyone’s favorite grandmother…but those twinkling little eyes could bore into your head and read all your secrets.
    Even Granny Aching had a story. She’d lived in the old shepherding hut, high on the hills, listening to the wind blowing over the turf. She was mysterious, alone—and the stories floated up and gathered around her, all those stories about her finding lost lambs even though she was dead, all those stories about her, still, watching over people….
    People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense.
    Well, her story wasn’t going to be the story of a little girl who got pushed around. There was no sense in that.
    Except…he’s not actually bad. The gods in the Mythology , they seemed to get the hang of being human—a bit too human, sometimes—but how could a snowstorm or a gale ever find out? He was dangerous and scary—but you couldn’t help feeling sorry for him….
    Someone hammered on Nanny Ogg’s back door. It turned out to be a tall figure in black.
    “Wrong house,” said Tiffany. “No one here is even a bit