The Wintersmith had never seen before, never felt before, never heard before. You could not do those things unless you were… apart, in the dark behind the eyes. Before, he hadn’t been apart; he’d been a part, a part of the whole universe of tug and pressure, sound and light, flowing, dancing. He’d run storms against mountains forever, but he’d never known what a mountain was until today.

The dark behind the eyes… what a precious thing. It gave you your… you-ness.

“Well, I must say I’ve never thought about the word ‘conundrum’,” she said slowly, “but it is certainly metallic and slithery.”

“I like words,” said Preston. “‘Forgiveness’: doesn’t it sound like what it is? Doesn’t it sound like a silk handkerchief gently falling down? And what about “susurration”? Doesn’t it sound like whispered plots and dark mysteries? …Sorry, is something wrong?”

“Yes, I think something may be wrong,” said Tiffany, looking at Preston’s worried face.

“Susurration” was her favourite word; she had never met anyone else who even knew it.

And if you come back, Cunning Man, there will be another witch like me. There will always be another witch like me, because there are always going to be things like you, because we make space for them. But right now, on this bleeding piece of earth, I am the witch and you are nothing. By the blinking of my eyes, something wicked this way dies.

He said, “Miss Tiffany, the witch… would you be so good as to tell me: what is the sound of love?”

Tiffany looked at his face. The noise from the tug-of-war was silenced. The birds stopped singing. In the grass, the grasshoppers stopped rubbing their legs together and looked up. The earth moved slightly as even the chalk giant (perhaps) strained to hear, and the silence flowed over the world until all there was was Preston, who was always there.

And Tiffany said, “Listen.”