Wintersmith

Treason’s grave, and some of the snow had been scraped off.
    Oh no, Tiffany thought as she circled down, please say she hasn’t gone looking for the skulls!
    It turned out to be, in some ways, worse.
    She recognized the people around the grave. They were villagers, and they gave Tiffany the defiant, worried stares of people scared half to death by the small but possibly angry pointy hat in front of them. And there was something about the very deliberate way they weren’t looking at the mound that instantly drew her attention to it. It was covered in little torn scraps of paper, pinned down with sticks. They fluttered in the wind.
    She snatched up a couple:
Miss Treason please keep my boy Joe save at see.
Miss treason, Im goin bald pleas help.
Miss Treason, please find our Girl Becky what run away Im sorry.
    There were more. And just as she was about to speak sharply to the villagers for still bothering Miss Treason, she remembered the packets of Jolly Sailor tobacco that the shepherds even now left on the turf where the old shepherding hut had been. They didn’t write their petitions down, but they were there all the same, floating in the air:
    “Granny Aching, who herds the clouds in the blue sky, please watch my sheep.” “Granny Aching, cure my son.” “Granny Aching, find my lambs.”
    They were the prayers of small people, too afraid to bother the gods in their high places. They trusted in what they knew. They weren’t right or wrong. They were just…hopeful.
    Well, Miss Treason, she thought, you’re a myth now, as sure as anything. You might even make it to goddess. It’s not much fun, I can tell you.
    “And has Becky been found?” she said, turning to the people.
    A man avoided her gaze as he said: “I reckon Miss Treason’ll understand why the girl won’t be wantin’ to come home anytime soon.”
    Oh, thought Tiffany, one of those reasons.
    “Any news of the boy, then?” she said.
    “Ah, that one worked,” said a woman. “His mum got a letter yesterday sayin’ he’d been in a dreadful shipwreck but was picked up alive, which only goes to show.”
    Tiffany didn’t ask what it was that it went to show. It was enough that it had gone to show it.
    “Well, that’s good,” she said.
    “But lots of poor seamen got drownded,” the woman went on. “They hit an iceberg in the fog. A big floating mountain of ice shaped like a woman, they said. What d’you think of that?”
    “I expect if they’d been at sea long enough, anything would look like a woman, eh?” said the man, and chuckled. The women gave him a Look.
    “He didn’t say who she—if she looked like, you know…anyone?” said Tiffany, trying to sound nonchalant.
    “Depends where they were looking—” the man began cheerfully.
    “You ought to wash your brain out with soap and water,” said the woman, prodding him sharply in the chest.
    “Er, no, miss,” he said, looking down at his feet. “He just said her head was all covered with seagull—poo, miss.”
    This time, Tiffany tried not to sound relieved. She looked down at the fluttering bits of paper on the grave and back to the woman, who was trying to hide what might be a fresh request behind her back.
    “Do you believe in this stuff, Mrs. Carter?”
    The woman suddenly looked flustered. “Oh no, miss, of course not. But it’s just that…well, you know….”
    It makes you feel better, thought Tiffany. It’s something you can do when there’s nothing more to be done. And who knows, it might work. Yes, I know. It’s—
    Her hand itched. And now she realized that it had been itching for a while.
    “Oh yes?” she said under her breath. “You dare?”
    “Are you all right, miss?” said the man. Tiffany ignored him. A rider was approaching and snow followed after him, spreading and widening behind him like a cloak, soundless as a wish, thick as fog.
    Without taking her eyes off him, Tiffany reached into her pocket and gripped the tiny Cornucopia. Hah!
    She walked forward.
    The Wintersmith dismounted from his snow-white horse when it had drawn level with the old cottage.
    Tiffany stopped about twenty feet away, her heart pounding.
    “My lady,” said the Wintersmith, and bowed.
    He looked…better, and older.
    “I warn you! I’ve got a Cornucopia and I’m not afraid to use it!” said Tiffany. But she hesitated. He did look almost human, except for that fixed, strange grin. “How did you find me?” she said.
    “For you I have learned,” said the