Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (15 page)

Kit woke hard. He saw crows rising in the field. His cheek was creased with straws; his arm, asleep where Thea lay on it. Drowsy and heavy, drenched with sleep, he rubbed his eyes and roused her. Ailie called them to the field. It shivered in the little wind; the dazed corn shook, it dazzled. To the east, the sky was sultry dark. They drank and hastened.

As Kit went to field, he met Nick Scarrow loitering by a stook: a burnt man, blue-eyed. He held a reaping-hook and smiled. “Word's out ont road,” he said. “Thy Lunish piece. Wilt keep her when she's dropped yon brat? I's a mind to chaffer."

"Crows eat thee,” said Kit.

"Crows gat me,” said Nick, and slouched off.

Kit slashed with a fury at the rankest corn. A neck, he thought. A neck. “Come up,” called Ailie, so he fell to binding, furthest out. He saw that Thea went among the women, safe enough. The work unknotted him, it combed. The women called and answered at their reaping, keeping measure.

Wha knocks at stone?

Poor Peg alone.

What's poor Peg lack?

A rag t'her back.

For salt and bread to lay her dead.

And candlelight to gan by night.

And what's she beg?

A shroud to lap poor Tom.

Poor Peg.

They were cutting in a long slow spiral now, coiled inward on the standing corn. They went sunwise.

Here,
said the green witch.
I am here.

And gone. She ran with a rustling, greenfoot. Slower now. She was heavy with the sun, he'd catch her. Then he took her in his arms. She turned, and she was hoary, spidery with years. A blue-eyed, bearded hag, ca'd Crawcrooks.

Now you can lay me down and love me,
said the Witch.
If you will
.

So he did and he was rooted in her. He was Cloud. His name was Nightless and Bare Bones, Dearbought, Come by Chance. To the east, they called him Babylon, he bowed before the wind as Wiselack, Slobeard, Urchins Hey. To the south, his names were Long Nap, Little Knowe, Leap Hedges; to the west, Sheer Ash, Jack Nackerty, and Nine Tree Crowd; to the north, they reaped Cold Hallows, Hanging Crows, Hobs Graves. The cold wind played on him, the old tune always.

Then the slight moon and the dark of moon, the whitefaced breeding moon, came round him, bound him with their wreaths of straw. Their sickles ringed him like a running wheel. Then all at once, they slashed.

A clip!
they cried.
A kiss, a clip!
He toppled in their arms.

"And so they ate thee,” said Whin. “All but bit t'wren had, and there's an end."

"No,” said Kit, smiling. “They did but taste.” Kisses and a crown of poppies. Hurts and cream. A sweet mouth, blue with berrying; a shrewd mouth, taking sweets. And Ailie's warmest of them all and fierce, the brooding of a merlin's breast. Then he clouded. “No, ‘twas Thea that the moon ate."

Autumn. Moving on. No work. The purple of the moors had gone from froth of jam to fleasblood, then from bruise to black; the trees, from blaze to ruin. Rimefrost on the swiddened heath took place of gossamers. The bracken and the bents were smithwork, smoldering in mist, and glinting, brazen in the strike of sun. And barren. While Kit could, he'd gathered haws, hips, brambles, sloes and rowans. Bags of nuts, his pockets full and Thea's apron. And one October afternoon, he'd found a milky way of mushrumps, penny buns, spilled out amid the leaves. They'd had a bit of mutton fat, just then. A feast. Their meal was long since giving out, their poke thin-flanked and dusty. It was poaching now. Hares, moorhens. Snared and spatchcocked. Aye, he'd looked at sheep, dared not. Not yet. He dared not hang and leave her.

Then it came to thieving. Which he did repent; yet cared not. Scant enough scourings up here on Ask Moor. Back of beyond. A wary and a sken-eyed folk, who cracked doors on long noses, clapped shut. High barred windows, hurtling dogs on chains. He'd eyed geese, but got none. Filched trifles. Neeps and kindling and blue milk. Odd stockings. A smock for Thea, that he'd had to crack, left cat-iced in a drying yard. Handfuls of oatmeal. Eggs left for hobs.

Thin beggary and thinner shoes. More eyes, more spies, more calling crows. More canting fellows on the road who turned and stared and mocked. Their bold-eyed trulls, who called at Thea, crying out,
Brave rags with us. And hiring for thy hobby-horse.
And then a broadside flapping at a crossroads:
Lunish runagates,
it said. A kitfox and her cull. So they'd left the high road for the hags and thickets, laying up on the moors, in folds rough-thatched with heather, ruined barns. And moving on.

Thea had changed: all bones and belly, swollen fingers. Swollen buds, yet flagging, fretted and embrowned. A side tooth lost with knitting bones. Younger and older both, she seemed: a crone who danced her poppet on her knee and lulled it, and a wizened imp. Great belly and her scabby knees, her cracked and bluenailed hands. Nor mortal, neither, but a changeling, with that pinched white face, that goblin's shock of hair. Yet her bonefast beauty stayed.

She was—not happy, no. Ecstatic. Danced like chestnuts on a shovel. Slept scarce at all. Since harvest, so he'd thought her sunstruck. Moonsick then. Now still, now restless as a cat in pattens, to and fro. Thrang as Throp's wife, and at nothing, all hours of the sun and moon. Waking and working. So she called it, her work. Poor lass. As good brew ale in eggshells.

"Is't witchcraft?” he had asked.

"Riddles,” Thea said.

He saw her, crouching in her ragged smock, intent on patterning. Ah, hallows on us, but she'd made some wondrous things. All fleeting, left behind to wind, rain, earth, as soon as made. Unharvested, unheld. She scattered.

Sticks, stalks, leaves and stones. A living hazel branch, lapped all in poppy petals, blood and branching. Leaves picked and shaded in a long streak on the earth: from green through fire to dead black; from ashes to greenwhite. Twigs in a round rattle. Labyrinths of leaves, bark, foxfire punk; or drawn in rime. Spirals of cracked pebbles, scratched white with another. Cubbies of sticks. Snailings and green horns of leaves, or burnished brown as copper: stitched with thorns and plaited in one endless coil and spiral, nestled in the earth. Leaves laid round nothing, bright and brighter toward the O. The same, with pebbles, white and whiter round abyss or origin.

One day he'd found her wading in a beck for more smooth stones, her apron full. In frost. Wet through and blue and shivering. And would not come with him until he'd waded in.

A night and day spent weaving stalks, an airy web of them, infilling all the crook and curving of a great low bough.

And in brief snow, a ball of it, built round and pierced by sharp small living wood. A ball that rolled its own maze, green laid bare; that rounded on its journeying.

O ever and alas, my Thea. O my dearest girl, my love.

Stark mad.

Ah, Margaret, I did make new heavens of the earth. Cast out of that cold sky in which my lucid soul was stringed, I did undo myself, redo: not Thea of the braided hair, but tangly Thea, tattery Thea, Thea of the grubby knees who crouched and plaited in a tinker's petticoats. I was inventing a new magic, for the old was lost with my virginity, with my immortal maidenhead. Oh, I was changing, changing fearfully; yet rounding with thy whiteheart self was Thea: we were sisters, twinned like cherries on a stalk.

O that was ragged bliss, that autumn. What I put my hand to, twisted of itself. Beyond astonishment, I did and did. Would lie but barely in the white of dawn. Wake new-inspired. Rise and work, outdoing what outdid the last, and of that latest making least again, transcending old with new. O Margaret, had I but lived, I would have lived so still: that whirling joy, that weaving steady hand.

Carriwitchets, Kit would say.

He'd come and go and bring his hard-won sticks of firing, his stock of provender, prigged rags; would sit and watch. Would coax me, bid me eat or sleep. I felt him sometimes at my shoulder: awed, exasperated, fearful. Dawning with delight. He kept the horn of leaves until it crumbled into dust.

I worked in what I had to hand, could gather. Sticks, stalks, leaves and stones. All found, unbound and scattering after. I was profligate as frost, as fern. As autumn, lavish, that does set a tree, a wood of trees, ablaze: a thousand thousand tongues to speak one word. As curious as nature's self, whose rarest work is secretest, embow'ring stars within bright clouds of stars, and seed in seed.

It was the raspberries began it.

In that cup of imbers did I spell thy blood: nine drops that would unbind my lady's will of thee. Set time going in her very stronghold. Yet I made no breach for thee in her shrewd hedge, but set a riddle for thyself alone. I would not have thee ride another's soul away. Walk barefoot, bloodfoot, if needs must: not use another creature, no, not Morag's dog, as I did Kit.

For the rest, ‘twas winding spells, thyself thy clew. End and journeying and end, all rounded in a ball. Thine A and O.

Yet was I naked to the sky. I had no studied craft, no witchery, against my mother's furies, that would fall and rend. No roof.

In weaving of the garland, I had whispered secrets with that seely witch, that green unhallowed Malykorne.
No hallows until hallows,
she had said. As she, so I would be unhoused until her sister waked and hunted. Annis. If I could but win to Hallows—

So it came to stones. I strove, as Kit did, only to go on, to live and keep us until then. I had a garnet ring to stand for thee, that was a child's. I wish thou couldst have had it. Eight stones clustering about a ninth, a knot of seeds of blood. Much like the pomegranate I once found, that split and spilt within my hand. The riddle ring for Kit. And for myself, a ring like rain on gossamer, like cobwebs bright with dew. Nine Weaving. With my absence in't, the stone of Perseis I'd lost. Not wandering, but a falling star: astonishing and gone.

Her rings were woven in her fantasies. Her trash. One slid along a blade of grass, a small ring for her fingertip, a knot of drops of blood; another dangled from a scarlet thread, like rain in gossamer.

"Thea. Are there others?"

"Three. I have them safe.” And showed her hand.

She would not give them over, though he begged and ranted, reasoned and cajoled, ah, coaxed her as he would a moonsick child to leave her toys. Her babywork. Alas, her wits waned even as she rounded. A greensick girl, and breeding. “Thou'rt worn, dear heart, beyond thy strength. Shouldst have a featherbed, a woman by thee. Physick."

"Wilt take them of me sleeping?"

"No,” he said. “Not ever.” And he came and knelt by her, he stroked her urchin head, he rubbed her nape. Inside his shirt, thrice-knotted round his wrist, the serpent of his cunning sleeked and shone. What's done is done, he thought. I rue me of that cheat. “Ah, that undoes."

He wanted her assent.

"For thine own sake, Thea."

Silence. And the twist and glittering of toys.

"Aye, scatter stones at scarecrow brats, leave none for thine own child."

Thea sat back on her heels, smudged her brow with her muddy wrist. “Ah, it comes."

Or softly, with his hands clasped round her belly. “Plum and stone.” A rippling, as the round girl dived, down-dolphined in her eggshell ocean. “Sweet my love, thy lass wants nurture. Curds and cream. And swaddling. Thou hast not a clout for her."

At last, beyond all patience, starved and crazed with fear for them, he cracked her fist, uncurled her fingers from her hoard. Stone inward, she had worn them. Wore their imprint still, like Annis’ kiss.

She had not cried out. He stood appalled; yet could not stay at that: put down the rings, caress the stone-bruised hand, so rudely forced. Could not undo.

"Thea?"

"As it must be."

He went out.

The door was warped with rain, white-molded. Margaret pushed until it gave upon an empty room, a tower that a storm had wracked. Bare muted walls, smashed glass; and in the naked window, for the first time, sea-blink. O. For a time she gazed at it and wondered; then she turned. Naught else but a daw's nest down the chimney, scattered sticks and trash. She bent and stirred it; she unwove. Smashed eggshells. Sticks and mutes. A key. A pebble. And a bent black ring. She thumbed it, rubbed it in her apron, peering at the outworn letters. This way and that in the wintry light. All gone but a word.
Lightwode.

A voice in the air said, “Margaret."

That voice she knew; had heard it, ravelled with the wind, the sea. Not always. Since her doll was burnt, her dark-browed lulling nurse—O Norni—taken to her death. ‘Twas now and nowhere, like a gossamer, at first: a glint and gone. Was now her galaxy. Her ground. As tangled in her thought as roots in earth, that flower seldom, yet inhere. But never until this aloud.
Is't you?

"Thy daemon. Thou hast found the last, the lost star of the Nine, and overlooked. The one too quick for the eye."

Dusk. Late autumn, toward Hallows. Headlong on the road between Cold Law and Soulsgrave Hag, Kit hurtled. Three rings clenched in his right hand, thrust deep within his pocket; shame and fury at his heels. He knew not where he went. To Annis. Or to town. What town? Blind desperate, and pinched with argument and care, intent as a cat at kindling, he knew not where he was. The same place, always, the faster he ran. Round went the millstone, and over turned the wheel.
No bread, she has no bread. I had to. Anything they'd get. Bread, firing. One now, the others one by one. Bread, firing, a baby's coats. Ah, fool, a flock of sheep, a sheepwalk.
Fell and mutton, fleece and milk. He saw their lass run barefoot on the sward. Red hair, like fires on the hills. And round again:
no bread.

He was at the crossroads before he saw the gang. A cronying of crows. Too late, he was among them. A slouching spade-faced man, whiteheaded, all in black, greenblack and broken swagger, like a swung cock at a fair. A gallows poll, that head, like hemp unravelling. Three trulls a-dangle at his heels. They fleered at Kit; they jostled. Cawed. A black mort, with a blue and scornful eye, her breasts at her kerchief bare and bruised. “Here's game,” she said. “A goslin,” said a pale and sluttish drab. Pissed petticoats and trodden shoes. And Maudlin-drunk, or mad. He swung. A ranting, taunting, roaring girl, a striding and a ride-moon doxy in a soldier's cap and feather, with his long sword buckled at her side. Red shoes.