"We can't just leave her to struggle," said Tiffany. "People might get hurt."

"Well, that wouldn't be our fault, would it?" said Petulia, dosing another pig. She cupped her hands and shouted over the din to a man at the other end of the pens: "Fred, this lot's done!" Then she climbed out of the pen, and Tiffany saw that she'd got her dress tucked up to her waist and was wearing a pair of heavy leather britches under it.

"They're making a real fuss this morning," she said. "Sounds like they're getting a bit frisky."

"Frisky?" said Tiffany. "Oh…yes."

"Listen, you can hear the boars yelling in their shed," said Petulia. "They can smell the spring."

"But it's not even Hogswatch yet!"

"It's the day after tomorrow. Anyway the springtime sleeps under the snow, my dad always says," said Petulia, washing her hands in a bucket.

No ums, said Tiffany's Third Thoughts. When she's working, Petulia never says "um." She's certain of things when she's working. She stands up straight. She's in charge.

"Look, it will be our fault if we can see something wrong and don't do anything about it," said Tiffany.

"Oh, Annagramma again," said Petulia. She shrugged. "Look, I can go over there maybe once a week after Hogswatch and show her some of the basic stuff. Will that make you happy?"

"I'm sure she'll be grateful."

"I'm sure she won't be. Have you asked any of the others?"

"No. I thought that if they knew you'd agreed, they probably would, too," said Tiffany.

"Hah! Well, I suppose that at least we can say we tried. You know, I used to think Annagramma was really clever because she knew a lot of words and could do sparkly spells? But show her a sick pig and she's useless!"

Tiffany told her about Mrs. Stumper's pig and Petulia looked shocked.

"We can't have that sort of thing," she said. "In a tree? Perhaps I'll try to drop in this afternoon then." She hesitated. "You know Granny Weatherwax won't be happy about this? Do we want to be caught between her and Mrs. Earwig?"

"Are we doing the right thing or not?" said Tiffany. "Anyway, what's the worst she could do to us?"

Petulia gave a short laugh with no humor in it at all. "Well," she said, "first, she could make our—"

"She won't."

"I wish I was as sure as you," said Petulia. "All right, then. For Mrs. Stumper's pig."

Tiffany flew above the treetops, and the occasional high twig brushed against her boots. There was just enough winter sunshine to make the snow crisp and glittery, like a frosted cake.

It had been a busy morning. The coven hadn't been very interested in helping Annagramma. The coven itself seemed a long time ago. It had been a busy winter.

"All we did was muck about while Annagramma bossed us around," Dimity Hubbub had said, while grinding minerals and very carefully tipping them, a bit at a time, into a tiny pot being heated by a candle. "I'm too busy to mess around with magic. It never did anything useful. You know her trouble? She thinks you can be a witch by buying enough things."

"She just needs to learn how to deal with people," said Tiffany.

At this point, the pot exploded.

"Well, I think we can safely say that wasn't your everyday toothache cure," said Dimity, picking bits of pot out of her hair. "All right, I can spare the odd day, if Petulia's doing it. But it won't do much good."

Lucy Warbeck was lying full length and fully clothed in a tin bath full of water when Tiffany came by. Her head was all the way under the surface, but when she saw Tiffany peering in, she held up a sign saying I'M NOT DROWNING! Miss Tick had said she would make a good witch finder, so she was training hard.

"I don't see why we should help Annagramma," she said as Tiffany helped her get dry. "She just likes putting people down with that sarcastic voice of hers. Anyway, what's it to you? You know she doesn't like you."

"I thought we've always got on…more or less," said Tiffany.

"Really? You can do stuff she can't even attempt! Like that thing where you go invisible…you do it and you make it look easy! But you come along to the meetings and act like the rest of us and help clear up afterward, and that drives her mad!"

"Look, I don't understand what you're going on about."

Lucy picked up another towel. "She can't stand the idea that someone's better than her but doesn't crow about it."

"Why should I do that?" said Tiffany, bewildered.

"Because that's what she'd do, if she was you," said Lucy, carefully pushing the knife and fork back into her piled-up hair.

It was much colder the next morning, a numb dull coldness that could practically freeze the flames on a fire.

Tiffany let the broomstick settle between the trees a little way from Nanny Ogg's cottage. The snow hadn't drifted much here, but it came up to her knees, and cold had put a crispness on it that crackled like a stale loaf when Tiffany trod it.

In theory she was out in the woods to get the hang of the Cornucopia, but really she was there to keep it out of the way. Nanny Ogg hadn't been too upset about the chickens. After all, she now owned five hundred hens, which were currently standing around in her shed going werk. But the floors were a mess, there were chicken doo-dahs even on the banisters, and as Granny had pointed out (in a whisper), supposing someone had said "sharks"?

The Cornucopia lay on her lap while she sat on a stump among snow-covered trees. Once the forest had been pretty. Now it was hateful. Dark trunks against snowdrifts, a striped world of black and white, bars against the light. She longed for horizons.

Funny…the Cornucopia was always very slightly warm, even out here, and seemed to know in advance what size it ought to be. "I grow, I shrink," thought Tiffany. And I'm feeling pretty small.

What next? What now? She'd kept hoping that the…the power would drop on her, just like the Cornucopia had done. It hadn't.

There was life under the snow. She felt it in her fingertips. Somewhere down there, out of reach, was the real Summer. Using the Cornucopia as a scoop, she scraped away at the snow until she reached dead leaves. There was life down there in the white webs of fungi and pale, new roots. A half-frozen worm crawled slowly away and burrowed under a leaf skeleton, fine as lace. Beside it was an acorn.

The woods weren't silent. They were holding their breath. They were all waiting for her, and she didn't know what to do.

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—"