Read Online Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online Page A

could have imagined, and it burned.
    She screamed. The Wintersmith’s snowy outline became a flurry of flakes. The snow around her feet erupted with a cry of “Crivens!” as a mass of Feegles grabbed her feet and carried her, upright, across the clearing and back in through the cottage’s doorway.
    Tiffany forced her hand open and, with trembling fingers, pulled the silver horse off her palm. It left a perfect print, a white horse on pink flesh. It wasn’t a burn, it was a…freeze.
    Miss Treason’s chair rumbled around on its wheels.
    “Come here, child,” she ordered.
    Still clasping her hand, trying to force back the tears, Tiffany walked over to her.
    “Stand right here by my chair, this instant!”
    Tiffany did so. This was no time to be disobedient.
    “I wish to look in your ear,” said Miss Treason. “Brush your hair aside.”
    Tiffany held back her hair, and winced when she heard the tickle of mouse whiskers. Then the creature was taken away.
    “Ah, I am surprised,” said Miss Treason. “I can see nothing.”
    “Er…what were you expecting to see?” Tiffany ventured.
    “Daylight!” snapped Miss Treason, so loudly that the mouse scuttled away. “Have you no brains at all, child?”
    “Ah dunno if anyone is interested,” said Rob Anybody, “but I think yon Wintersmith has offskied. An’ it’s stopped snowin’.”
    No one was listening. When witches row, they concentrate.
    “It was mine!”
    “A trinket!”
    “No!”
    “O’ course, this may not be the best time tae tell ye…” Rob went on, miserably.
    “You think you need it to be a witch?”
    “Yes!”
    “A witch needs no devices!”
    “You’ve used shambles!”
    “Used, yes! Don’t need. Not need !”
    “Ah mean, it’s quite meltin’ awa—” Rob said, smiling nervously.
    Anger grabbed Tiffany’s tongue. How dare this stupid old crone talk about not needing things!
    “Boffo!” she shouted. “Boffo, Boffo, Boffo!”
    Silence slammed down. After a while Miss Treason looked past Tiffany and said: “Ye wee Feegle schemies! Get oot o’ here right noo! Ah’ll ken it if ye don’t! This is hag business!”
    The room filled with a sort of whooshing noise, and the doorto the kitchen slammed shut.
    “So,” said Miss Treason, “you know about Boffo, do you?”
    “Yes,” said Tiffany, breathing heavily. “I do.”
    “Very well. And have you told anyone—?” Miss Treason paused and raised a finger to her lips. Then she banged a stick on the floor. “Ah said get oot, ye scunners! Off intae the woods w’ ye! Check that he’s really gang awa’! I’ll see yer guilt through yer own een if ye defy me!”
    From below there was the sound of a lot of potatoes rumbling as the Feegles scrambled out through the little ventilation grill.
    “Now they’ve gone,” said Miss Treason. “They’ll stay gone, too. Boffo will see to that.”
    Somehow, in the space of a few seconds, Miss Treason had become more human and a lot less scary. Well…slightly less scary.
    “How did you find out? Did you go looking for it? Did you go prowling and rummaging?” said Miss Treason.
    “No! I’m not like that! I found out by accident one day when you were having a nap!” Tiffany rubbed her hand.
    “Does that hurt a lot?” said Miss Treason, leaning forward. She might be blind, but—like all the senior witches who knew what they were doing—she noticed everything .
    “No, not now. It did, though. Look, I—”
    “Then you will learn to listen! Do you think the Wintersmith has gone?”
    “He just seemed to vanish—I mean, vanish even more. I think he just wanted to give me back my necklace.”
    “Do you think that is the sort of thing the spirit of Winter, who commands the blizzard and the frost, would really do?”
    “I don’t know, Miss Treason! He’s the only one I’ve met!”
    “You danced with him.”
    “I didn’t know I was going to!”
    “Nevertheless.”
    Tiffany waited, and then said: “Nevertheless what?”
    “Just