Wintersmith

bend.
    “Yes, he will,” she said. “And, you know, I almost feel sorry for him.”

    And so the Feegles sailed home. Apart from Billy Bigchin they couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but that minor problem was dwarfed by the major problem, which was that they didn’t bother with the idea of singing at the same pitch, or speed, or even with the same words. Also, minor fights soon broke out, as always happened even when Feegles were having fun, and so the sound that echoed among the rocks as the log sped toward the lip of the waterfall went something like:
    “Rowaarghgently boat ouchgentlydoon boat boat boatiddley boat stream boatlymerrily boatarrgh…CRIV ENn n nnn s ! ”
    And with its cargo of Feegles, the log tipped and disappeared, along with the accompanying song, into the mists.

    Tiffany flew over the long whaleback of the Chalk. It was a white whale now, but the snow didn’t look too deep here. The bitter winds that blew the snow onto the downs also blew it away. There were no trees and few walls to make it drift.
    As she drew nearer to home, she looked down onto the lower, sheltered fields. The lambing pens were already being set up. There was a lot of snow for this time of year—and whose fault was that?—but the ewes were on their own timetable, snow or not. Shepherds knew how bitter the weather could be at lambing; winter never gave in without a fight.
    She landed in the farmyard and said a few words to the broomstick. It wasn’t hers, after all. It rose again and shot off back to the mountains. A stick can always find its way home, if you know the trick.
    There were reunions, lots of laughter, a few tears, a general claiming that she had grown like a beanstalk and was already as tall as her mother and all the other things that get said at a time like this.
    Apart from the tiny Cornucopia in her pocket, she’d left everything behind—her diary, her clothes, everything. It didn’t matter. She hadn’t run away, she’d run to, and here she was, waiting for herself. She could feel her own ground under her boots again.
    She hung the pointy hat behind the door and went and helped the men setting up the pens.
    It was a good day. A bit of sun had managed to leak through the murk. Against the whiteness of the snow all colors seemed bright, as if the fact that they were here gave them some special brilliance. Old harnesses on the stable wall gleamed like silver; even the browns and grays that might once have appeared so drab seemed, now, to have a life of their own.
    She got out the box of paints and some precious paper and tried to paint what she was seeing, and there was a kind of magic there, too. It was all about light and dark. If you could get down on paper the shadow and the shine, the shape that any creature left in the world, then you could get the thing itself.
    She’d only ever drawn with colored chalks before. Paint was so much better.
    It was a good day. It was a day just for her. She could feel bits of herself opening up and coming out of hiding again. Tomorrow there would be the chores, and people very nervously coming up to the farm for the help of a witch. If the pain was strong enough, no one worried that the witch who was making it go away was someone you last remembered being two years old and running around with only her undershirt on.
    Tomorrow…might become anything. But today the winter world was full of color.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    The Pike
    T here was talk of strangeness all across the plains. There was the rowing boat belonging to the old man who lived in a shack just below the waterfall. It rowed itself away so fast, people said, that it skipped over the water like a dragonfly—but there was no one inside it. It was found tied up at Twoshirts, where the river ran under the coach road. But then the overnight mail coach that had been waiting outside the inn ran away by itself, with all the mailbags left behind. The coachman borrowed a horse to give chase and found the coach in the shadow of the Chalk with all the doors open and one horse missing.
    The horse was returned a couple of days later by a well-dressed young man who said he’d found it wandering. Surprisingly, then, it looked well fed and groomed.

    Very, very thick would be the best way to describe the walls of the castle. There were no guards at night, because they locked up at eight o’clock and went home. Instead, there was Old Robbins, who’d once been a guard and was now officially the night watchman, but