Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (11 page)

"Stoneblind. Off elsewhere, anyway."

"But if they follow—"

"I's a sling o stones. What I do."

Thea looked long at him. “Wouldst do it?"

"Owt I can."

Kit caught his breath, leapt in with, “Who's thy master, lad? I'd have a word with him. Wouldst come with us? Art fast?” He turned to Thea, bright with indignation, mischief, pleading. “He could play the boy."

"Got work. Hers,” the crow lad said, and becked at Thea. He glanced at Kit's coat. “I see yer ta'en already. Go yer ways."

Thea said to the boy. “Is it fast, then?"

"Clap and done.” He spat his hand; they shook.

Kit stood bewildered, like the child in the basket, whirled round in their play. Thea touched his arm. “Soft, love, ‘tis a game we play.” To the boy, she said, “What then?"

"Seek hallows."

"What way?"

"Gang wi’ t'sun."

"How far?"

"While it's hallows."

Thea stretched her hand out, with its tawny ring. A turn and flick, and it was bare: she held a scrawny orange. “For thy noon."

The crow lad caught it and he tossed it in the air. He laughed, looking up at it, his bright hair scattering day. “What's ta'en is anyone's.” Kit saw it fall.

"I'd an Ashes bairn,” said Whin. Her turn, gazing through the fire, chin on close-hugged knee. “And left him. Naked as he came, for owt as found him. Craws or kin.” And in a raw voice, small and wretchedly, she cried, “They would've cut his throat.” Still raw. As if a horny hand, a sailor's or a drystone waller's, cracked and bled. “Me mam and her gran would. For t'harvest. Starving earth, I is."

Kit said softly, “Was he yours, the crow lad? D'ye think?"

"I knaw not. Like enough, I doubt.” Whin rocked the small ring on her fingertip. “I cannot tell my blood."

"Ah,” said Kit. The fire shifted, sighed.

"Thowt it were guising, being Ashes. When I ta'en her coat. And I laughed that I were chosen out of all, that I could take owt I willed. Whatever lad. So long as I did play her part, walk earth until she waked. So long as I kept nowt."

Kit looked for the child in her, as black as he was white. Broad cheekbones and a mournful lip, her long AEgyptian eyes. “And you would still be Ashes. If you'd kept the boy. Still hunted.” Coverless as hares.

"What I is, is Ashes. Same as earth is earth. Her coat that she put on. And when I's doffed, I's done with, breath and bone. No giving back.” Whin leaned from shadow into shying light. “I could ha’ kept him, see."

The rain fell, water into water. After a time, Whin stirred the embers. “Blood or no. For his sake, for thy kindness, thanks."

"All mine, a hundredfold,” said Kit. “He saved us. For a time."

Margaret, see. Bright Hesperus, the moon's epitome, hangs at thy window. Perseis her lamp. When I was Thea, I did love that star, her winding journey through the maze, the quickset stars. ‘Tis lucent, there: a brilliant toy, a plaything from a mage's baby house. Burnt Eldin's bauble. Canst thou catch? Let my lady set her hedge as thick as gramarye, as high as ravens cry, the light will in at it.

In April of that wandering year, I spied a comet. In the Crowd of Bone it hung, toward Ninerise, in a thaw of fleeting snow. I waked and saw it, like a pearl dissolving in black wine; I drank that cup, light full of thee. And thou didst leap to it.

I knew then that I went with child.

Thea turned at the waystone, calling. What she said was blown away. And still she turned on the hillside, at the twelve winds’ nave; the fellies of the wheel were hills. “What's that?” said Kit, coming breathless behind.

"Those folk. Here's all their petticoats away."

It rained, a hill beyond them and a hill behind: a cold fine windy rain. From the ragwell, where they stood in light, they saw the stormdark clouds onsailing. They were tall and tattery, their skirts of ragged silver draggling heedless through the hills. Then the thorn tree shivered in its rags; the spring winced light, it puckered with a sudden doubt. The sky darkened and a hail came on: small hail, but sharp and green. Kit cowered from it. Thea ran to it and whirled about, catching hailstones in her hands. They filled them, greener as they massed, bluegreen.

"Come back,” called Kit. “Hey, Thea?” And he came a few steps, blindly, in the shattering of the hail. How it danced and it daunted, how it hissed and rattled on the ground. It beat him blind, it stung. “Hey!"

"Catching souls,” she called.

As sudden, it was past. The hill was white: a spring made glass, the sky made soul and shattered. Slateblue to the eastward, slashed with rain, the heels of storm rolled onward. All above, the lift was blue. He shook himself. Thea's head was haily crowned; it glittered when she turned. Her neck was bare. She flung her hoard of stones away. They scattered on the earth like seed. Cold seed, he thought. No crows would take. A cloud away, a rainbow sprang. It spanned the storm. She clapped her wizened hands and laughed. “Do you turn and I'll dance to it."

Somewhere up Owlerdale they sheltered from a passing rain with tinkers in a hedge. Two women, old and young, with baskets of fairings: cowslip tossy-balls and bunches of bright ribands; toys and tawdry. Kit spread them his coat. The blackthorn was tarnishing, the white in bud. The younger of their chance-met company was breaking buds of it, to whet her bacon; the elder thumbed her cards and smoked. Rain and blackthorn fell.

"That comet,” said Kit to Thea. “Ah, but it grows bright and bonny. Like a dandelion gone to seed and drifting."

"Whose clock?” said Thea. “And whose breath?"

Still wandering. It preyed on him, that wan and random look.

"Craws!” said the younger, counting wares. “Dropped whirlywhorl I't road."

The elder pointed with her pipestem. “Pick it up, then.” There it lay in a puddle, gaudy and forlorn.

"I'll get it,” said Kit, leaping up. Gallantry, perhaps; or smoke of shag. It mingled with the tinker's hair, smoke and piraling like old man's beard.

The younger bit her bread, then turned and offered it to Thea, all but her thumbpiece. Cold fat bacon and wild garlic.

Pinched mouth and shake of head.

"I cry you mercy,” Thea said. “A toothache."

A shrewd eye, like a stormcock's. “What did yer bite, then?"

But her aunt held out her pipe. “Here. Have a pull at me bacca. ‘Twill dill thy pugging tooth."

Thea twisted, spewed and spat. Lay weeping.

"Ah,” said Baccapipe. “Can read thy fortune wi'out cards."

And Bread-and-Bacon kicked her heels and sang,
” ... when me apron were low, Ye'd follow me after through frost and through snow..."

"Whisht.” The old one wiped Thea's mouth, felt her brow and wrist and belly with rough concern. “Not far gone, I'd say.” She quirked her chin at Kit coming. “Does he—?"

No.

"And do yer—?"

No again.

"Knowst mouse-ear?"

"Where?” said Thea.

"Ninewood. Up Ask ways, a two three mile.” She pointed over the hills. “Grows in among thorn."

And the younger sang again, blithe as a cuckoo that calls,
Not I!
At the nesting wren:
” ... but now that my apron is up to my knee..."

"Sneck,” said the elder.

Too late. Kit had tumbled. On his face, like wind in whitebeam, danced and paled his feelings: joy, awe, terror, tenderness, despair.

"Thea?” He knelt and wreathed her in his arms. “Canst walk? Can I get thee aught?” he said foolishly. “From anywhere, the moon.” He could not see her face. He thought he could feel the child; he saw it in his mind's eye, like a little comet, still travelling and trailing light: a seed-moon tumbling over and over through the air.

Now, Margaret, thou begin'st to wind. Slipping from thy bower, soft and warily, thou try'st the latch: my lady and her crow keep watch. Not always, thou hast found. The gore-crow hunts; my lady sleeps, but as the sun in Thule, riding on the rim of darkness. She but wets her lip in Lethe cup. Yet she sleeps. Locks and spells she's set on thee, and cage on cage: thou walk'st within a tower, in a maze, within a wall hedged round with thorn, encompassed in a bitter sea. Her lean hounds prowl the courts and coverts, and her huntsman wards the gates.

And further, they do keep thee innocent, they blanch thee, as a gardener doth a white root under stones. Thou art bedazed and physicked, purged, pinched, bled, stayed, examined, spied on. Whipped.

Yet they do not lock thy door, within so many locks. Nor mew thy seeking thoughts.

They slight thee, for thou canst not be dead Thea, thou unwanted wast her death; disdain thee for thy meddled blood. In their contempt is all thy hope. Thou art a dish that likes them not; they have no stomach for thy soul. Unconsidered, thou art half unseen, a sparrow in a wintry hedge. Whatever thou art let to find is all inconsequent, is haws.

Thou turn'st the key and slip'st.

Doors and doors. An arras and a winding stair.

Ah, these rooms I never saw. Thy journey, Margaret. Not mine.

Only to the next room, and the next.

Locked.

Nothing but a box of nutmegs.

Spectacles, in this, that make thy candle swerve and loom. Old iron. Rats.

A lock made like a witch, that bares her secrets to the key. That watches, mute and venomous. Not there.

In this, a heap of books, sea-ruined. Mooncalf'd bindings, white and swollen as a drowned face. Warp and white-rot, skin on skin. Down thou sit'st and try'st to pry the boards, to turn the bleared and cockled pages. Here, a drawing of a hand, anatomized. A riddle in geometry. A fugue of spiders.

And behind a faded arras—ghost of roses, greensick blue—a bright dark closet full of wonders and of dust. A mute virginals. Thy fingers press the slack and clatter of its keys, unclose its fretty soundboard, gnawed and rustling with mice. The lid within is painted with brief garlands—violets and wood anemones—as if the music dreamed them in the dark. Spring flowers thou hast never seen: thy fingers, wond'ring, trace. They pleach the silk of scarves, as sheer as iris; trace the windings of a table carpet, blood of nightingales and cry-at-midnight blue. Thou strok'st a jar, round-bellied—blear with dust, yet lucent underneath—of china, blue and white as clouded May.

"So y'd not've been at leap fires, then,” said Whin. “Being heavy."

"And light.” Kit had seen them, other years, in Lune. Had begged the wood for them, from door to door:

He'd danced with the highest: brave lads and bold heroes, and the lang tangly girls. Whirled higher, still higher, for the claps and cries, the eyes admiring or awed or scornful. Afterward, for clips and kisses. For the darker thing. By one and one, they'd pinched the embers—ah, another in thine hair. Thy shirt. By twos, had slipped away. He had lain on the dark hills; had made of charred petticoats, green gowns.

"No,” he said. “No, we went to the greenwood. To get leaves."

"O,” said Kit. “I drown.” He stood in heaven, in the place where all doors lead. That wood was deep in flowers of the inmost curve of blue, the blue of iris her embrace. Her eye within her rainbow, as the moon within the old moon's clasp. And Thea walked in that unearthly floating haze of flowers, amid the leafing trees, knee-deep in Paradise. It was the heart; and yet at every further step, ‘twas this. And this beyond. Each blue, the inwardest embrace, the bluest eye. An O annihilating all that's made.

The blue became his element, his air: he dove.

He saw a falling star beyond him. Thea.

Then ‘twas past. He scuffled through old beech leaves, brushed by nettles. Stung himself and swore. Close by, he whiffed the green stench of a fox. He turned. A bluebell wood, the bonniest he'd ever seen. Young slender beeches. Holly, celandines, and wood anemones. And Thea gathering leaves, green branches.

Where she walked was heaven still.

He lay in sky, and watched her, errant in the sky below. She'd slipped from her tumbled smock, stood clad in sky. He saw the crescent of her, white and glimmering: in the dark of moon, the moon. That other sky she walked was on the verge of green, bluegreen, and turning deeper into blue. Beyond the new leaves, it was dusk. The trees were pointlace yet, or bare or budding out: an airy seine. A star hung trembling in the air, like water on a leaf, about to fall, unfallen. And the moon within his orbit, gilding as she set.

By a thorn tree, at his side, she sat and wove a garland in her lap. A knot of May.

Drowsily, he said, “We munnot sleep."

"Why not?"

"The morn will be the Nine. Wouldst see them rising?"

"Ah,” said Thea, “but I am no maid."

He touched her small round belly. “Yet thou bringest may. A branch.” The rank sweet scent of thorn hung faintly on the air; the petals fell, as if the moon unleaved. “Shall we set a hedge of them, a hey of girls?"

"And call it Lightwood?” Thea said.

Kit said,

In another, rustic voice, he answered, “'Aye, ‘tis where the bushes harry birds. I dare not for the owls go in."

Thea said:

"Go on,” said Kit.

"Oh,” said Thea, “but I've left the book in Lune."

"Thou hast the way of it."

"By heart."

"And by thy heart.” He wreathed his hands about their child, and spoke the woman's part:

And darting kisses in her neck, he said, “What think'st thou, for our lass, of Perseis?"

"Not Eldins?"

"Ah.” Kit laughed softly for delight. “Will there be nine?"