"Rob says ye're old enough tae come doon intae the Underworld," said Hamish over his shoulder. "Rob's gone tae fetch the Hero. Ye are a lucky wee laddie!"

The bird banked.

Below, the snow…fled. There was no more melting, it simply drew back from the lambing pen like the tide going out or a deep breath being taken, with no more sound than a sigh.

Morag skimmed over the lambing field, where men were looking around in puzzlement. "One deid ship and a dozen deid lambs," said Hamish, "but no big wee hag! He's taken her."

"Where to?"

Hamish steered Morag up in a big wide circle. Around the farm the snow had stopped falling. But up on the downs it was still dropping like hammers.

And then it took a shape.

"Up there," he said.

All right, I'm alive. I'm pretty sure about that.

Yes.

And I can feel the cold all around me, but I don't feel cold, which would be pretty hard to explain to anyone else.

And I can't move. Not at all.

White all around me. And inside my head, all white.

Who am I?

I can remember the name Tiffany. I hope that was me.

White all around me. That happened before. It was a kind of dream or memory or something else I don't have a word for. And all around me, whiteness falling. And building up around me, and lifting me up. It was…the chalk lands being built, silently, under ancient seas.

That's what my name means.

It means Land Under Wave.

And, like a wave, color came flooding back into her mind. It was mostly the redness of rage.

How dare he!

To kill the lambs!

Granny Aching wouldn't have allowed that. She never lost a lamb. She could bring them back to life.

I should never have left here in the first place, Tiffany thought. Perhaps I should have stayed and tried to learn things by myself. But if I hadn't gone, would I still be me? Know what I know? Would I have been as strong as my grandmother, or would I just be a cackler? Well, I'll be strong now.

When the killing weather was blind nature, you could only cuss; but if it was walking about on two legs…then it was war. And there would be a reckoning!

She tried to move, and now the whiteness gave way. It felt like hard snow, but it wasn't cold to her touch; it fell away, leaving a hole.

A smooth, slightly transparent floor stretched away in front of her. There were big pillars rising up to a ceiling that was hidden by some sort of fog.

There were walls made of the same stuff as the floor. They looked like ice—she could even see little bubbles inside them—but were no more than cool when she touched them.

It was a very large room. There was no furniture of any sort. It was just the sort of room a king would build to say "Look, I can afford to waste all this space!"

Her footsteps echoed as she explored. No, not even a chair. And how comfortable would it be if she found one?

She did, eventually, find a staircase that went up (unless, of course, you started at the top). It led to another hall that at least had furniture. They were the sort of couches that rich ladies were supposed to lounge on, looking tired but beautiful. Oh, and there were urns, quite big urns, and statues, too, all in the same warm ice. The statues showed athletes and gods, very much like the pictures in Chaffinch's Mythology, doing ancient things like hurling javelins or killing huge snakes with their bare hands. They didn't have a stitch of clothing between them, but all the men wore fig leaves, which Tiffany, in a spirit of enquiry, found would not come off.

And there was a fire. The first strange thing about it was that the logs were also of the same ice. The other strange thing was that the flames were blue—and cold.

This level had tall pointed windows, but they began a long way from the floor and showed nothing but the sky, where the pale sun was a ghost among the clouds.

Another staircase, very grand this time, led up to yet another floor with more statues and couches and urns. Who could live in a place like this? Someone who didn't need to eat or sleep, that's who. Someone who didn't need to be comfortable.

"Wintersmith!"

Her voice bounced from wall to wall, sending back "ITH…Ith…ith…" until it died away.

Another staircase, then, and this time there was something new. On a plinth, where there might have been a statue, was a crown. It floated in the air a few feet above the base, turning gently, and glittered with frost. A little bit farther on was another statue, smaller than most, but around this one, blue and green and gold lights danced and shimmered.

They looked just like the Hublights that could sometimes be seen in the depths of winter floating over the mountains at the center of the world. Some people thought they were alive.

The statue was the same height as Tiffany.

"Wintersmith!" There was still no reply. A nice palace with no kitchen, no bed…. He didn't need to eat or sleep, so who was it for?

She knew the answer already: me.

She reached out to touch the dancing lights, and they swarmed up her arm and spread across her body, making a dress that glittered like moonlight on snowfields. She was shocked, then angry. Then she wished she had a mirror, felt guilty about that, and went back to being angry again, and resolved that if by chance she did find a mirror, the only reason she'd look in it would be to check how angry she was.

After searching for a while, she found a mirror, which was nothing more than a wall of ice of such a dark green that it was almost black.

She did look angry. And immensely, beautifully sparkly. There were little glints of gold on the blue and green, just like there were in the sky on wintry nights.

"Wintersmith!"

He must be watching her. He could be anywhere.

"All right! I'm here! You know that!"

"Yes. I do," said the Wintersmith behind her.

Tiffany spun around and slapped him across the face, then slapped him again with her other hand.

It was like hitting rock. He was learning very quickly now.

"That's for the lambs," she said, trying to shake some life back into her fingers. "How dare you! You didn't have to!"

He looked much more human. Either he was wearing real clothes or he had worked hard on making them look real. He'd actually managed to look…well, handsome. Not cold anymore, just…cool.

He's nothing but a snowman, her Second Thoughts protested. Remember that. He's just too smart to have coal for eyes or a carrot for a nose.

"Ouch," said the Wintersmith, as if he'd just remembered to say it.

"I demand that you let me go!" Tiffany snapped. "Right now!" That's right, her Second Thoughts said. You want him to end up cowering behind the saucepans on top of the kitchen dresser. As it were…

"At this moment," said the Wintersmith very calmly, "I am a gale wrecking ships a thousand miles away. I am freezing water pipes in a snowbound town. I am freezing the sweat on a dying man, lost in a terrible blizzard. I creep silently under doors. I hang from gutters. I stroke the fur of the sleeping bear, deep in her cave, and course in the blood of the fishes under the ice."

"I don't care!" said Tiffany. "I don't want to be here! And you shouldn't be here either!"

"Child, will you walk with me?" said the Wintersmith. "I will not harm you. You are safe here."

"What from?" said Tiffany, and then, because too much time around Miss Tick does something to your conversation, even in times of stress, she changed this to: "From what?"

"Death," said the Wintersmith. "Here you will never die."

At the back of the Feegles' chalk pit, more chalk had been carved out of the wall to make a tunnel about five feet high and perhaps as long.