Wintersmith recap

Tiffany Aching, thirteen and apprenticed to the ancient, blind Miss Treason, is taken to watch the dark, silent dance that turns the year from summer to winter, and, unable to stop herself, steps into it and dances with the Wintersmith. The elemental spirit of winter takes her for the Summer Lady, falls in love with her, and begins to court her with snowflakes shaped like her face, roses of ice, and icebergs carved into her likeness, while Tiffany finds that green shoots spring where she walks and that part of the Summer Lady's role has come to rest on her. Miss Treason dies at a time of her own choosing, and Tiffany moves to Nanny Ogg's while quietly holding together the steading her rival Annagramma has inherited. Winter deepens and will not end, because the story has been broken. The Wintersmith builds himself a human body to win her, the Nac Mac Feegle and Roland go down into the underworld to bring the Summer Lady back, and a great snowfall buries the Chalk. Tiffany goes to the Wintersmith's ice palace and ends him with the summer heat she has been carrying, giving the season back to its rightful owner.

Previously, in earlier books: Tiffany Aching, granddaughter of a much-loved Chalk shepherd, discovered she had a witch's talent while still a child. When her small brother was carried off by the Queen of the Fairies, she went into that country of dreams and brought him home, helped by the Nac Mac Feegle, the tiny blue fighting men who guard the Chalk and call her their hag. Sent into the mountains for a proper apprenticeship, she learned that real witchcraft is hard, humble, unpaid work for other people, and was caught and possessed by a hiver, an ancient mindless thing drawn to powerful minds. She freed herself by giving it what it had never had, an awareness of itself and of its own death, and in doing so earned the rare respect of Granny Weatherwax, the mountains' most formidable witch. Tiffany is now thirteen, still training away from home, still watched over by the Feegle, and increasingly aware that she is the Chalk's witch and that the Chalk is waiting for her to come back to it.

Tiffany is apprenticed to Miss Treason, a witch of one hundred and thirteen who is blind and deaf and gets around it by borrowing the senses of animals. Her cottage is full of clocks and skulls and everything else the villagers expect of a terrifying old witch, and she holds court over local quarrels with a judgement nobody dares argue with. She takes Tiffany to see the dark dance, an old, silent midwinter rite in which the village men dance the turning of the year and hand the world from the Summer Lady to the Wintersmith. Tiffany is told to watch and on no account to join in. Watching the two figures circle each other, she is caught by the shape of the thing, steps into the dance, and takes the Summer Lady's place opposite the Wintersmith. The dance closes over her, and something in the world's arrangements shifts.

The consequences begin at once. The Wintersmith has noticed Tiffany, and has taken her for the Summer Lady he is supposed to dance with. Snowflakes begin falling in the shape of her face, frost draws her likeness on windows, and winter arrives early and personally. Miss Treason, Miss Tick, and Granny Weatherwax all understand what has happened: Tiffany has walked into an old story that has been running since long before people, and stories of that kind do not care who is standing in the wrong place, they simply carry on. Part of the Summer Lady's role has come to rest on Tiffany, and the real Summer Lady is somewhere she should not be. The Feegle, who have followed Tiffany into the mountains as usual, take the view that the problem can be solved by hitting it, and are told that this particular problem is made of weather.

Miss Treason, who has always known exactly how long she has, announces the day of her death, holds her own funeral party for the whole district, and dies at the time she chose. Tiffany moves down to Lancre to stay with Nanny Ogg, who is cheerfully expert in the sort of trouble Tiffany is now in and explains that the Wintersmith is courting her. Miss Treason's cottage and steading go not to Tiffany but to Annagramma, the domineering leader of the local circle of young witches, who has been trained in theory and knows nothing whatever about the practical business of looking after frightened, poor, dying people. Meanwhile summer follows Tiffany about: green shoots spring up where her feet touch the ground, and she cannot make it stop. The Wintersmith's courtship becomes larger and stranger, running to roses of ice and icebergs shaped like her, and he begins to wonder what he would have to do to meet her as a man.

Winter settles in and will not move on, because the year's story has been broken and the Summer Lady is not where she should be. Tiffany, working out of Nanny Ogg's cottage, quietly organizes Petulia and the other trainees into propping Annagramma up without ever letting her know, taking on the night calls and the deaths and the difficult neighbours that Annagramma cannot handle. The Feegle, with Rob Anybody struggling to explain any of it to Jeannie, begin planning a raid on the underworld to fetch the Summer Lady back. The Wintersmith, working from an old song about what a man is made of, starts gathering the substances of a human body so that he can build himself one and be the kind of suitor Tiffany might accept. Granny Weatherwax makes it plain that nobody else can finish this: Tiffany stepped into the dance and Tiffany will have to step out of it.

Roland, home from school and tired of being the boy in the story who never does anything, goes down into the underworld with the Feegle to bring the Summer Lady out, and comes back with her and with a cornucopia, a horn that produces endless food and is very hard to switch off. Above ground the winter turns lethal. An enormous snowfall buries the mountains and reaches the Chalk, killing sheep, blocking roads, and burying farms and the people in them, and the witches spend themselves digging out survivors while the cornucopia feeds those who are cut off. The Wintersmith, now walking about in a body of his own making, comes looking for Tiffany, and Tiffany understands that he cannot be argued with, frightened off, or fought, because he is not a person who wants something, he is winter itself with a person's idea stuck in it.

Tiffany goes out through the snow to the Wintersmith's palace of ice and lets him have what he has been asking for all year. Because she has been carrying the Summer Lady's power ever since she stepped into the dance, her acceptance is fatal to him: she takes his hand and kisses him, and the heat she holds melts him away, breaking the winter and letting the year move on. The Summer Lady comes back to claim her own role, and Tiffany gives the power up without argument, having learned what it costs to improvise in a story that is older than people. The thaw reaches the Chalk. Annagramma, discovering how much she has been carried, is left to build something honest out of her steading, and Tiffany's part in it is finally acknowledged. Roland returns from the underworld visibly older and no longer willing to be pushed around by his relatives, and Tiffany goes home to the Chalk with the year running properly again and no further interest in being the girl everybody is looking at.

Winter refuses to end, burying the mountains and the Chalk under an enormous snowfall that kills livestock and traps whole villages, and the Wintersmith completes the human body he has been assembling out of the substances a man is made of, so that he can court Tiffany as a man. The Feegle, with Roland, reach the underworld and bring the Summer Lady back, along with a cornucopia that produces endless food, which is used to feed the snowbound. Tiffany goes to the Wintersmith's palace of ice and faces him. Because she has been carrying the Summer Lady's power since she stepped into the dance, she is able to give him what he has spent the book asking for: she accepts him and kisses him, and the heat she carries melts him away, ending the winter. The Summer Lady returns to take back her own role, and Tiffany hands the power over willingly, understanding at last that the seasons are a story that must be danced properly rather than improvised. Annagramma, propped up all year by Tiffany and the other trainees, finally learns that she has been helped and begins to make an honest job of her steading. Roland returns home a different young man, having gone into the underworld and come out again. Tiffany goes back to the Chalk older, steadier, and no longer interested in being noticed.