Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett [47]
As she dried her face, she thought she heard a muffled sound outside and went over to the window. There was frost on—
Oh, no…oh…no…no! He was at it again!
The frost ferns spelled the word “Tiffany.” Over and over.
She grabbed a rag and wiped them off, but the ice only formed again, thicker.
She hurried downstairs. The ferns were all over the windows, and when she tried to wipe them off, the rag froze to the glass. It creaked when she pulled at it.
Her name, all over the window. Over all the windows. Maybe over all the windows in all the mountains. Everywhere.
He’d come back. That was dreadful!
But also, just a bit…cool….
She didn’t think the word, because as far as Tiffany knew the word meant “slightly cold.” But she thought the thought, even so. It was a hot little thought.
“In my day young men would just carve the girl’s initials on a tree,” said Miss Treason, coming down the stairs one careful step at a time. Too late, Tiffany felt the tickle behind her eyes.
“It’s not funny, Miss Treason! What shall I do?”
“I don’t know. If possible, be yourself.”
Miss Treason bent down creakily and opened her hand. The seeing-eye mouse hopped down onto the floor, turned, and stared at her with tiny black eyes for a moment. She prodded it with a finger. “Go on, off you go. Thank you,” she said, and then it scuttled off to a hole.
Tiffany helped her upright, and the old witch said: “You’re starting to snivel, aren’t you.”
“Well, it’s all a bit—” Tiffany began. The little mouse had looked so lost and forlorn.
“Don’t cry,” said Miss Treason. “Living this long’s not as wonderful as people think. I mean, you get the same amount of youth as everyone else, but a great big extra helping of being very old and deaf and creaky. Now, blow your nose and help me on with the ravens’ perch.”
“He might still be out there…” Tiffany mumbled, as she eased the perch onto the thin shoulders.
Then she rubbed at the window again and saw shapes and movement.
“Oh…they came…” she said.
“What?” said Miss Treason. She stopped. “There’s lots of people out there!”
“Er…yes,” said Tiffany.
“What do you know about this, my girl?”
“Well, you see, they kept asking when—”
“Fetch my skulls! They mustn’t see me without my skulls! How does my hair look?” said Miss Treason, frantically winding up her clock.
“It looks nice—”
“Nice? Nice? Are you mad? Mess it up this minute!” Miss Treason demanded. “And fetch my most raggedy cloak! This one’s far too clean! Move yourself, child!”
It took several minutes to get Miss Treason ready, and a lot of the time was spent convincing her that taking the skulls out in daylight might be dangerous, in case they got dropped and someone saw the labels. Then Tiffany opened the door.
A murmur of conversation crashed into silence.
There were people in a crowd all around the door. As Miss Treason stepped forward, it parted to leave a clear path.
To her horror, Tiffany saw a dug grave on the other side of the clearing. She hadn’t expected that. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but a dug grave wasn’t it.
“Who dug—?”
“Our blue friends,” said Miss Treason. “I asked them to.”
And then the crowd started to cheer. Women hurried forward with big bunches of yew, holly, and mistletoe, the only green things growing. People were laughing. People were crying. They clustered around the witch, forcing Tiffany out to the edge of the crowd. She went quiet and listened.
“We don’t know what we’ll do without you, Miss Treason.”—“I don’t think we’ll get another witch as good as you, Miss Treason!”—“We never thought you’d go, Miss Treason. You brought my ol’ granddad into the world.”—
Walking into the grave, Tiffany thought. Well, that’s style. That is…solid gold Boffo. They’ll remember that for the rest of their lives—
“In that case you shall keep all the puppies but one—” Miss Treason had stopped to organize the crowd. “The custom is to give that one to the owner of the dog. You should have kept the bitch