Wintersmith

I'm not the Summer Lady, she told herself. I can never be her. I'm in her shoes, but I can never be her. I might be able to make a few flowers grow, but I can never be her. She'll walk across the world and oceans of sap will rise in these dead trees and a million tons of grass will grow in a second. Can I do that? No. I'm a stupid child with a handful of tricks, that's all. I'm just Tiffany Aching, and I'm aching to go home.

Feeling guilty about the worm, she breathed some warm air on the soil and then pushed the leaves back to cover it. As she did so, there was a wet little sound, like the snapping of a frog's fingers, and the acorn split. A white shoot escaped from it and grew more than half an inch as she watched it.

Hurriedly she made a hole in the mold with her fingers, pushed the acorn in, and patted the soil back again.

Someone was watching her. She stood up and turned around quickly. There was no one to be seen, but that didn't mean a thing.

"I know you're there!" she said, still turning around. "Whoever you are!"

Her voice echoed among the black trees. Even to her it sounded thin and scared.

She found herself raising the Cornucopia.

"Show yourself," she quavered, "or—"

What? she wondered. I'll fill you full of fruit?

Some snow fell off a tree with a thump, making her jump and then feel even more foolish. Now she was flinching at the fall of a handful of snowflakes! A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.

She raised the Cornucopia and said, half-heartedly: "Strawberry…."

Something shot out of the Cornucopia with a pfut and made a red stain on a tree twenty feet away. Tiffany didn't bother to check; it always delivered what you asked for.

Which was more than she could say for herself.

And on top of everything else, it was her day to visit Annagramma. Tiffany sighed deeply. She'd probably get that wrong too.

Slowly, astride her broomstick, she disappeared among the trees.

After a minute or two, a green shoot thrust up from the patch of soil that she had breathed on, grew to a height of about six inches, and put out two green leaves.

Footsteps approached. They were not as crunchy as footsteps on frozen snow usually are.

There was a crunch now, though, of someone kneeling on the frosted leaves.

A pair of skinny but powerful hands gently dragged and sculpted the snow and leaves together to make a tall, thin wall around the shoot, enclosing it and protecting it from the wind like a soldier in a castle.

A small white kitten tried to nuzzle at it and was carefully lifted out of the way.

Then Granny Weatherwax walked back into the woods, leaving no footprints. You never teach anyone else everything you know.

Days went by. Annagramma learned, but it was a struggle. It was hard to teach someone who wouldn't admit that there was anything she didn't know, so there were conversations like this:

"You know how to prepare placebo root, do you?"

"Of course. Everyone knows that." And this was not the time to say, "Okay then, show me," because she'd mess around for a while and then say she had a headache. This was the time to say, "Good, watch me to see if I'm doing it right," and then do it perfectly. And you'd add things like: "As you know, Granny Weatherwax says that practically anything works instead of placebo root, but it's best to use the real thing if you can get it. If prepared in syrup, it's an amazing remedy for minor illnesses, but of course you already know this."

And Annagramma would say: "Of course."

A week later, in the forests, it was so cold some older trees exploded in the night. They hadn't seen that for a long time, the older people said. It happened when the sap froze, then tried to expand.

Annagramma was as vain as a canary in a room full of mirrors and panicked instantly when faced with anything she didn't know, but she was sharp at picking things up, and very good at appearing to know more than she really did, which is a valuable talent for a witch. Once, Tiffany noticed the Boffo catalogue open on the table with some things circled. She asked no questions. She was too busy.

A week after that, wells froze.

Tiffany went around the villages with Annagramma a few times and knew that she would make it, eventually. She'd got built-in Boffo. She was tall and arrogant and acted as if she knew everything even when she didn't have a clue. That would get her a long way. People listened to her.

They needed to. There were no roads open now; between cottages, people had cut tunnels full of cold blue light. Anything that needed to be moved was moved by broomstick. That included old people. They were lifted, bedclothes, walking sticks, and all, and moved into other houses. People packed together stayed warmer, and could pass the time by reminding one another that, however cold this was, it wasn't as cold as the cold you got when they were young.

After a while, they stopped saying that.