Wintersmith

swinging beneath him and a voice nearby said, “Get up here quick, laddie!”
    He grabbed the thin leather harness above him and pulled, and the talons gently released their grip. Then, hand over hand in the wind of the flight, he dragged himself across the bird’s feathers until he could grab the belt of Hamish the aviator.
    “Rob says ye’re old enough tae come doon intae the Underworld,” said Hamish over his shoulder. “Rob’s gone tae fetch the Hero. Ye are a lucky wee laddie!”
    The bird banked.
    Below, the snow…fled. There was no more melting, it simply drew back from the lambing pen like the tide going out or a deep breath being taken, with no more sound than a sigh.
    Morag skimmed over the lambing field, where men were looking around in puzzlement. “One deid ship and a dozen deid lambs,” said Hamish, “but no big wee hag! He’s taken her.”
    “Where to?”
    Hamish steered Morag up in a big wide circle. Around the farm the snow had stopped falling. But up on the downs it was still dropping like hammers.
    And then it took a shape.
    “Up there,” he said.

    All right, I’m alive. I’m pretty sure about that.
    Yes.
    And I can feel the cold all around me, but I don’t feel cold, which would be pretty hard to explain to anyone else.
    And I can’t move. Not at all.
    White all around me. And inside my head, all white.
    Who am I?
    I can remember the name Tiffany. I hope that was me.
    White all around me. That happened before. It was a kind of dream or memory or something else I don’t have a word for. And all around me, whiteness falling. And building up around me, and lifting me up. It was…the chalk lands being built, silently, under ancient seas.
    That’s what my name means.
    It means Land Under Wave.
    And, like a wave, color came flooding back into her mind. It was mostly the redness of rage.
    How dare he!
    To kill the lambs!
    Granny Aching wouldn’t have allowed that. She never lost a lamb. She could bring them back to life.
    I should never have left here in the first place, Tiffany thought. Perhaps I should have stayed and tried to learn things by myself. But if I hadn’t gone, would I still be me? Know what I know? Would I have been as strong as my grandmother, or would I just be a cackler? Well, I’ll be strong now.
    When the killing weather was blind nature, you could only cuss; but if it was walking about on two legs…then it was war. And there would be a reckoning!
    She tried to move, and now the whiteness gave way. It felt like hard snow, but it wasn’t cold to her touch; it fell away, leaving a hole.
    A smooth, slightly transparent floor stretched away in front of her. There were big pillars rising up to a ceiling that was hidden by some sort of fog.
    There were walls made of the same stuff as the floor. They looked like ice—she could even see little bubbles inside them—but were no more than cool when she touched them.
    It was a very large room. There was no furniture of any sort. It was just the sort of room a king would build to say “Look, I can afford to waste all this space!”
    Her footsteps echoed as she explored. No, not even a chair. And how comfortable would it be if she found one?
    She did, eventually, find a staircase that went up (unless, of course, you started at the top). It led to another hall that at least had furniture. They were the sort of couches that rich ladies were supposed to lounge on, looking tired but beautiful. Oh, and there were urns, quite big urns, and statues, too, all in the same warm ice. The statues showed athletes and gods, very much like the pictures in Chaffinch’s Mythology , doing ancient things like hurling javelins or killing huge snakes with their bare hands. They didn’t have a stitch of clothing between them, but all the men wore fig leaves, which Tiffany, in a spirit of enquiry, found would not come off.
    And there was a fire. The first strange thing about it was that the logs were also of the same ice. The other strange thing was that the flames were blue—and cold.
    This level had tall pointed windows, but they began a long way from the floor and showed nothing but the sky, where the pale sun was a ghost among the clouds.
    Another staircase, very grand this time, led up to yet another floor with more statues and couches and urns. Who could live in a place like this? Someone who didn’t need to eat or sleep, that’s who. Someone who didn’t need to be comfortable.
    “Wintersmith!”
    Her voice bounced from wall to