Wintersmith

she looked into the face of Summer, golden eyes became pits that drew her in.
    And then the summer filled her up. It must have been for only a few seconds, but inside them it went on for much longer. She felt what it was like to be the breeze through green corn on a spring day, to ripen an apple, to make the salmon leap the rapids—the sensations came all at once and merged into one great big, glistening, golden-yellow feeling of summer…
    …that grew hotter. Now the sun turned red in a burning sky. Tiffany drifted through air like warm oil into the searing calm of deep deserts, where even camels die. There was no living thing. Nothing moved except ash.
    She drifted down a dried-up riverbed, with pure white animal bones on the banks. There was no mud, not one drop of moisture in this oven of a land. This was a river of stones—agates banded like a cat’s eye, garnets lying loose, thunder eggs with their rings of color, stones of brown, orange, creamy white, some with black veins, all polished by the heat.
    “Here is the heart of the summer,” hissed the voice of the Summer Lady. “Fear me as much as the Wintersmith. We are not yours, though you give us shapes and names. Fire and ice we are, in balance. Do not come between us again….”
    And now, at last, there was movement. From out of gaps between the stones they came like stones brought alive: bronze and red, umber and yellow, black and white, with harlequin patterns and deadly gleaming scales.
    The snakes tested the boiling air with their forked tongues and hissed triumphantly.
    The vision vanished. The world came back.
    The water had poured away. The everlasting wind had teased the fogs and steams into long streamers of cloud, but the unconquered sun was finding its way through. And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it’s gone.
    Tiffany walked across the grass where the palace had been. There were a few pieces of ice left, but they would be gone in an hour. There were the clouds, but clouds drifted away. The normal world pressed in on her, with its dull little songs. She was walking on a stage after the play was over, and who now could say it had ever happened?
    Something sizzled on the grass. Tiffany reached down and picked up a piece of metal. It was still warm with the last of the heat that had twisted it out of shape, but you could see that it had once been a nail.
    No, I won’t take a gift to make the giver feel better, she thought. Why should I? I’ll find my own gifts. I was…“entertaining” to her, that’s all.
    But him—he made me roses and icebergs and frost and never understood….
    She turned suddenly at the sound of voices. The Feegles came bounding over the slope of the downs, at a speed just fast enough for a human to keep up. And Roland was keeping up, panting a little, his overlarge chain mail making him run like a duck.
    She laughed.

    Two weeks later Tiffany went back to Lancre. Roland took her as far as Twoshirts, and the pointy hat took her the rest of the way. That was a bit of luck. The driver remembered Miss Tick, and since there was a spare space on the roof of the coach, he wasn’t prepared to go through all that again. The roads were flooded, the ditches gurgled, the swollen rivers sucked at the bridges.
    First she visited Nanny Ogg, who had to be told everything. That saved some time, because once you’ve told Nanny Ogg, you’ve more or less told everyone else. When she heard exactly what Tiffany had done to the Wintersmith, she laughed and laughed.
    Tiffany borrowed Nanny’s broomstick and flew slowly across the forests to Miss Treason’s cottage.
    Things were going on. In the clearing, several men were digging the vegetable area, and lots of people were hanging around the door, so she landed back in the woods, shoved the broom into a rabbit hole and her hat under a bush, and walked back on foot.
    Stuck in a birch tree where the track entered the clearing was…a doll, maybe, made out of lots of twigs bound together. It was new, and a bit worrying. That was probably the idea.
    No one saw her raise the catch on the scullery door or slip inside the cottage. She leaned against the kitchen wall and went quiet.
    From the next room came the unmistakable voice of Annagramma at her most typically Annagrammatical.
    “—only a tree, do you understand? Cut it up and share the wood. Agreed? And now shake hands. Go on. I mean it.