Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (17 page)

Hide fox, and all after.

As in a dream, Kit ran from one to the next, imploring, and they turned from him. None would speak. They shook their heads: some smiling, some pitying or shocked or scornful; some averting their eyes.

A weeping man, half naked, in a Bedlam coat.

One tossed a coin.

A knot of them, their backs turned. Gossips. Blindly, hopelessly, he touched a sleeve. “I beg of you—” A stone. A ring of them, like crones in cloaks. But one stone turned, the hood fell back. It was a woman with a darkened lantern, waiting, gazing out: like a sailor for landfall, like a scryer at eclipse. He was a gull at her masthead, a dog at her skirts: no more.

Down the fell, a light went dark. Another, upwind, and a girl knelt, doing up her shoe latch, looking round. And yet another, pinning up her hair. All waiting.

One by one, the candles all went out.

But one.

A child this woman, sheltering a dying candle in a tin. She brooded fiercely on it, willed it. In its doubtful glow, her face was rapt and shining. Awed. Her first time on the fells? Her flame lurched sideways, righted, leapt again. The last?

From up the fell, a voice called,
Ashes! We's Ashes!

O the last. As her candle flickered out, she whirled for joy.

Another and another voice took up the cry, like vixens, greenfire in their blood. Hallooing to the dark of moon.
Ashes!
They were running now, a rout of women, whirling torches in the kindled dark. And still the child wheeled, giddy, in among the stones, the only silence.
Ashes!

And alone, but for the ragman. She took to her heels.

I tell this to the air; yet I must speak.

My mother fed me to her crows, she burned my bones and scattered them; my braided hair she keeps. By that bright O of fire did she call me back from life to Law; by those shrewd knots torment me. She would not undo. Seven weeks she watched me naked, travailing from Hallows until Lightfast eve; then Morag's knife did let thee crying from my side, and I was light.

Margaret knelt and pried a stone up in the hearth; she dug. From under it, she took a ring, a clew of thread. A key.

Turning back from the stones, Kit saw the fire at their fold and ran, calling, stumbling on his whiteblind feet. He saw the ravens falling from the sky. One, another, turning women as they fell. They were clear as night, and starless; where their wings beat back the thronging air was cloud and fire. As they touched the earth, it whitened, widening from their talons of the frost. They shrank as small as stones.

Kit fell. A thrawn hand caught him, and another, and a throng. Horned feet kicked through him like a pile of leaves; they scattered him like sparks. “Out!” he cried and struggled, held and haled. A torch was thrust at his face. There were witches all round him: men and crones, in black and rags of black, and goat fells, stiff with blood. They bore a cage of thorns and withies, hung with bloody rags and hair, with flakes of skin: the palms of children's hands, like yellow leaves, a-flutter.

Empty.

"Here's a fool,” said one, a warlock.

"A soul,” another said. A hag, all pelt and bones. The soulstones clattered in her hank of hair, with knops of birdskulls, braided through the orbits.

"A soul, a soul,” the guisers cried.

Kit fought against their hands. “You let me go."

"You let us in,” they chanted. “Let us in your house of bone."

And a man like a staghead oak, a blasted tree, cried, “Room!"

A tall witch with a great black fleece of hair flung back came striding through. It was a man, pale and sneering in a woman's robe, his strong arms naked to the shoulders, dark with blood. Death's midwife. Or a blasphemous Ashes?

"Annis!” they cried. “Annis wakes."

He prodded Kit with his staff. “What's this? A blindworm?"

"For your breakfast, my lady."

"For your bed."

"'Tis Ashes’ bawd."

The stick against his throat had silenced him, half strangled him. He saw a black wood rising; it was leaved with faces. Thronged with crows.

"Bags I,” said a voice.

The crowd parted. Kit saw a figure in a leathern cap, a coat of matted fleece. Ashes of juniper, a cloud of ashes at his eyes and lips. It whispered in his ear. “Thou's not to die for her,” said Brock. “Thy lass did say."

"No,” he tried to say. His mouth was full of ashes, he was blind with snow.

"Now,” said Brock. “An thou will.” And kissed his mouth.

He felt a tremor, a wind in his bones. She covered him like snow. Beneath the sway of stars, he felt the green blades pierce his side, the awned heads bow and brindle in the reaping wind. A sickle gathered him, a sheaf. Time threshed. His chaff was stars, his bones were blackness, strung and shining. A sword, a belt of stars. A crow called.

Then he knew no more.

Hallows morning.

Kit awoke on the hillside in the falling snow, all white and shades of white, but for the black unkindly stones. After a time, he could stand, could hobble. Halt and dazzled with the snow, and inch by crippled inch, he made his way back to their shieling. Knowing what he'd find. Dread knowing.

Gone.

And more than gone. Pulled stone from stone, and torched and trampled in a great wide circle, salt with snow. Cold out. All her toys.

"Go,” she'd said. And so he'd gone.

He would have died for her.

He fell to his knees where their hearth had been, the ashes at the heart of ashes. Nothing left: all taken, lost, betrayed. But there, a something like a wren's dulled eye, its dead claw, in the snow. A ring. Not hoarded, so not lost. He scratched for it, and found the other; turned them in his fingers. Blood and tears.

Margaret knelt amid cold ashes, drawing mazes on the hearth. They'd left no book to her, no ink, no candle: whips of juniper to gaze on, and the drowsy wine. My lady's glass, which was black adamant: she could not break.

And so she did what she had left to her: undid. Ate nothing they had given her, but dwindled out an orange she had kept, a heel of bread; drank snow from her window sill. She worked by scant starlight at the puzzle of her cage. Scrawled figures with a stick of charcoal; rubbed them out, redrew them, all in black upon the hearthstone, what was white with snow without: the labyrinth of yew and stone. If she did journey, she could not rub out.

So then: for her door, she had the jackdaw's key; then came the maze she would unriddle and the hedge of thorn, the wintry sea. The world. Beyond that, she could see no way. A ship? But only to have touched the sea, washed Morag from her skin; to glimpse a world unbounded by my lady's walls. She set herself to reach the sea. The garden was configured as the starry sky; that much she knew, had read her book beside the white girl crowned with leaves, with leaves and flowers in her stony lap. And water running down and down her face: it wept for her, who could not weep. Bound Ashes, in a box of yew.

She knew now what she was; what she was for.
A hole to fill,
said Morag truffling.
Naught else.
Yet had my lady smiled and pinched.
A limbeck. See, how sweetly she distills.
Had kissed: how scornfully, and yet had lingered. It was almost a caress. The bracelet burned against her skin.
I have sent to fetch thee a rare dowry. Dishes for thy maiden banket; jewels for thy chain. Thy first shall be thy father's soul.

For a long time afterward, Margaret had sat, and turned and turned the hidden cards.

O the Nine, ah yes, the Nine would come and carry her away. She heard the clatter of their wings; she saw them, children of the rising light, like swans. Her heart rose up. Being mute, she could not cry to them; they lighted, children as they touched the earth, but a glory of their wings about them, like a snow.
Sister, come with us,
they said.
I will,
said Margaret's heart,
but have no wings. No ship.
And turned it up: that Ship whose mast is green and rooted, flowering as stars. And then bright Journeyman, the thief.

A rattle in the keyhole. A black stick on the floor. She'd risen to it, curtsied, with the cards behind her: all in haste. But three had fallen from her lap like leaves; their tales had withered at my lady's glance.
See, thou hast overlooked the Tower. That takes all.
The witch had stooped for it, mock-courteous, and held it to her branching candle; dropped it burning to the floor.
And which next shall I take? Thy cockboat? Or thy nest of geese?
Her gaze schooled Margaret's; they would bind her if she flinched.
Thy choosing, Madam. It will make a game.

The Hare.
My lady's wrist was bare, no braid.

Aha, the Master Lightcock. Thou'rt seed of his, didst know? Shall watch him burn. And my sweet crow shall have his stones, to bait her dogs withal.
Then she had signed to Morag with the box.
Undo.

And after they had gone.

It seemed that someone else took over, swift and secret, while the old lost Margaret sat, dreaming in a drift of cards.
Thou timorous, thou creeping hodmandod,
she thought:
thou snail that tangles in her trail of dreams. Draw in thy tender horns? Thou liest between the thrush and stone.
That other self, herself, had thought of riding, light a horseman as the moon; her mantle of the flying silver, fleeting on the wind. But now her new shrewd voice said,
Shoes and stockings, stout ones. In that room with the sea-chests. Thou needs must walk. Will need the way.

And so she sat, and drew what she remembered of the labyrinth, the doors.

"No ship,” said Kit. “When thou didst come on me, and take me up from drowning, there had been no ship. No storm. I'd gone in after her."

"I know,” said Whin. “But thou was not to follow her. Thy lass did spell for thee."

"Not drown,” said Kit. “I know. I am for hanging in yon braid. That I did twist myself."

"What for?” said Whin. “Thou's never telled."

"To hold fast.” Kit clasped his hands, unclasped. “Ah, not to Thea—what I loved in her I held like moonlight in a sieve, I riddled rainbow. ‘Twas a falling star, that nowhere is and yet is light. No, what I braided was a face she turned to me, a mask: that lady who did run away with me, did overturn her fortune for my sake. Mine own. The moon that turned and turned from me, yet bent within mine orb. Thought I. So kept that vanity, that she did shear. At first.” A silence. “And after, I would keep myself, as I had thought I was. Would be. That Kit who called down witches with his airs. Not Thea's bow-stick, but a one who played.” He bit his lip; looked up. “And she owed me a fiddle, I did tell myself. No matter; yet it rubbed. And at the last—moon blind me—I could not endure to tell her of my folly."

Whin passed the cup. “What now?"

"If not for Thea's sake, yet I will die, as all must die. And I would live ere then.” A something lightened in his face. “And see our lass."

Asleep. Thy cards lie scattered on the floor, in knots and wheels, and painted gatherings. I cannot turn them. There, the Ship and the Rattlebag, the Hanged Lad and the Nine. Burnt Eldins. Ashes. And the Crowd of Bone: that fiddle that the old year plays of Ashes, of her bones. They strung it with her long bright hair. Itself and all alone, it sings, its one plaint always: of her death. Sings truth in riddles.

In a tale, thou Margaret wouldst brave my lady, even in her glass. Wouldst find my nine bones that were left; unbraid my hair and string the fiddle for thy father's hand to play. And thou wouldst dance to it, his daughter and my death. And down the witch would tumble, burning, in her iron shoes.

But I have sung my tale. Unstrung myself. Have told out all my thread but this, the endknot: they were always one, the braid that bound us and the strings that spoke.

Thou canst not hear the ghost now, Margaret: thou art child no more.

But thou art Margaret, thyself: no witch's blade can rive that knot intrinsicate we knit for thee, of love and pain. Thou art the daughter of my heart's blood and my soul. Bone of my bone, and heartstrings of my heart. To Kit I would restore thee: not his fiddle but my heart, translated. Not for him to play, but thou to dance for him, to sing thine own tale always, light and dark.

"So,” said Whin. “Yer off."

They stood by her coble, sunk in snow to the black rim, as a mussel shell in sand. A white morning, toward Kindle Wake.

"I'll set thee on,” said Kit.

Together, they dug out her boat and laded it; they pushed it down the blackweed shingle, salt and frost, to the water's edge. A wave crisped his boot. But only one. The tide was turning outward.

They clipped hard, clapped back and shoulder.

Kit said, “Thou ask at my daughter."

"And thou at my son,” said Whin.

"I will that. Farewell."

Then they pushed her black coble into the sea. As it slipped, Whin leapt the gunwales; locked oars. It rode the swell, it hove. The next wave took her out. Kit watched from the shore. Whin rowed easily, strongly, turning only just to check her heading. Luneward. And to Law.

So they parted.

Kit took up his scant gear, new and raw. A knife, a cloak, a cookpot, and a flint and steel. Grey worsted stockings and a harden shirt. A stone in his pocket, with a leaf on it. He set out on his journeying; turned inland, in the snow.

I am walking, to the knees in earth: long-toed, reaching, rough of knees; gnarled wrists knotted, flowering at fingers’ ends. They see, though I am blind. White, wet, my petals fall and fleck—like moons, like childing moons—my cold black bark. My lap is full of snow. In winter do I bear the misselbough, the Nine, entangled in my crown.

I was Ashes.

I am rising from the dark, and rooted; I am walking from my mother's dark.

My green leaves speak in season, in their turn, unfolding word by word till all is green and silent, lost in green, unselved. The green is wordless, though it spells the earth, it sings the wind. Rooted, I dance, unbraided to the wind. And then by leaf and leaf, I turn, take fire and prophesy. They spill, a tale of leaves, of endless leaves. My green is no one, everywhere, as wood as love; my age is selving. In my nakedness, I crouch and listen.