Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (26 page)

But the hele-stone walked. It strode from northward, from the wind's eye, with a naked blade: a tall pale moonwitch in a stormcloud of hair.
My lady?
No. Margaret drew a sharp-edged breath. No witch: her image in a bleared glass. A knife-blade eidolon.
Thou mole. ‘Tis but a bugbear witch, a shadow on a wall.
No woman even, but a guiser, all in stone-grey, ashes on his head. A man-witch played the part. He wore a hawk-nosed, faintly smiling mask, small atop his lean long body, smaller still amid his storm of hair; he bore a scythe.

The others hailed him, louting low. Crooked knees to him, bowed shaggy heads. Crouching, Margaret shrank, and stared him out of part. No witch. A ropy, ravelled fleece; a mask of bone. A man. What's that but shank and tallow? But a wick for an unseely fire. Whet! Stone on steel rang. Thrice and thrice, the guiser edged his blade. Slow tinder to that spark, he changed. The witch was in him, sightless as a fire by day: a shaking of the air. He shrank, annealed and vitrified by power. His reek of hair rose billowing. Cold fire. Margaret shivered in its blast.
There are witches still on Law
, said memory. The bloodstones in my lady's chain. Her crows.
Lie still. They hunt what flees them.

Now his daemon roused herself, she mantled in his body. Stalking long-toed in the grass, she turned, now this way and now that. The men stood still as poppyheads; she trod a maze among them, fox and geese. And yet whatever way she turned, her blind mask bent on each of them, it rode unmoving in the rack of time. She danced: the old moon, with the new moon in her arm.

Then all at once, she swung her scythe. And open-armed, the man she struck at leapt the blade. Blazed up, as if he were invulnerable as flame. A challenge. At his cry, his fellows wakened from her spell. In and out amid her trance, they slipped and shadowed, at her very heels: like birds that brave a taloned hawk. Like hares amid the standing corn. Again the witch struck, higher; and another dancer leapt. Bare legs, a bladeswidth from the naked steel. They danced with death. No music but their measure and the wind of her knife. No spell but their serpentine. Always, at the back of it, the rune of blood, unspilled.

The hay's the dance.

By turns, they leapt the scythe. Now high, now low. Stiff men and wary; lightfoot and limber. Stag leaps, goatish capers. A lop and tumble, like a hare. A wallow, like a weltered porpoise; a bogged heave like a sheep. Mute cockcrow. All in silence, quickening toward dawn.

With every swing the light rose and the shadows lay in swaths, as if the moonhag sheared the dark.

By one and one, the men fell back, dropped out. Now three still danced with her; now two. A crowblack fellow and a ragged boy, whiteheaded as a weed. And on this swing, the scythe flashed for the first time, glinting like a gull's wing. The dark man sprang and cleared it.
Blood?
Petals from a crown of poppies, lighting after him. As if her blade had rent the sky. He grimaced.

The boy's turn. Barely made. He staggered as he lighted.

Now the man's. He waited, coiled as a crossbow. Sprang. It was splendid. For the first time, they cried out.
A sun! A sun!

Swift now, the scythe flashed all about the witch, re-echoing about her like a pyre of lightning, like a bonefire kindled of the moon. It blazed amid the whirl and fury of her hair. Too bright for leaping. Yet the boy jumped, his white head flaring in the risen sun.

He fell like thistledown, to silence. Dazed, unhurt. No man called to him, nor clapped his shoulder. He got up, dusting his torn jacket. Shrugged.

The witch let fall her blade. Her hair drooped mournfully like smoke in rain; her robe clung, dark with sweat, against her body; clung and parted to disclose the naked man. Uncharred and unconsumed. Still passionless, the bone mask smiled. She beckoned to the sullen boy. He came to her; the moonface bent. A kiss. An accolade. And it was ended.

They were scattering to their labors, silent as they came.

Margaret hid.

He passed by her, the witch, long after all the rest. Burrowed in the underwood, she saw him, weary and dismasked, unwitched by daylight, with his bundle of guising. He stank of sweat and sorcery, green rank and acrid as a fox amid the thorns.

The brat lay like windfall in the grass beneath the ragtree, bruised with birth. He puzzled at the light, the leaves, the dappling of their shadows, doubling as they fell. When Brock came by, the boy was sleeping, nearly covered up in leaves. No fox, no crow, no witch had found him, cradled in the old moon's lap. His blood was not to spill. Not yet. And yet the earth would have him. Crouching by the thorn, she lifted him. He scented of his mother, blood and milk. The down about his head was white as barley. Naked as he came. Piss-wet. She sained him, eyes, mouth, heart; she happed him naked in her coat. Soul in earth in air in fire. He woke and wailed. “Here's a bagpipe that plays of itself,” she said, and danced him. “Here's a thirst.” Will Starvecraw, she named him. And off she strode with him to be the Sun.

Grevil's study was all shade, a box of drowned green light. Beyond the open window stood the orchard, deep in grass, downsloping to the water-meadows that lay white and shorn. The air was sweet with hay.

Grevil laid aside his flute. As if in Arcady, he'd loosed his bands, laid bare his wrists and throat. A sultry morning. Not a bird. As he studied, he ate cherries pensively, with ink-stained hands. The bowl was wreathed with dragons, blue and white. A rarity, but clouded now, a little crazed. Beside it lay a pair of ivory compasses, a bundle of blunt quills. Drawings of the stones at Askrigg and at Imber Lap.

Margaret at his side was elsewhere, by a river overhung with trees. Ash Beck.
The wood above,
said dreaming.
Here's the Lyke Way in thy glass.
She stood barefoot in the pebbled shoals, and watched the endless seine and shiver of green fire.
What the Nine are weaving.
Light in leaves. It flickered down and down the river, dazzling and a-dance. A riddle in the rune of light.
If stars ...
She waded out into the shallows, in the glint and dapple of the stream. It sang. A slow leaf fell to touch its shadow, rising from the air. Rimed. Drifted, eddying; was whirled away. She stooped and flicked a pebble up the stream. It skipped and started, skipped and sank. And at each leap—O wonderful, beyond all hooping—worlds began. As in her glass, enhaloing and interlaced. A skein of stories.

She was happy; and in shadow.

And yet more worlds, unbidden, came. There. And there. Outspreading. How—? Ah, rain. She heard the pattering on leaves. The river dimpled with the dint of rain. Rings wakened. Crossed and fretted and recrossed, until all the beck was one grey breadth of cockling silk. She lifted up her face. Unweaving rainbows—

The red squirrel called her back with scolding.

All gone but the travelling, fading at the limb of thought.
Map falling stars...?
she thought.
Sleave skein?
All writ in water. Gone.

Whisk, her master's squirrel, flounced from table to book-press, book-press to sill, chittering. The birds in the ivy racketed and slanged. She tipped the sanded page. “Your pardon, sir. Go on."

But her master was gazing out the window, a bob of black cherries on his hand like rings. Margaret followed his glance, puzzled. A cat in the currant bushes. Cheesecloths, sweetening in the sun. A mower, scything in the orchard grass.

O I am slain,
thought Grevil.
I am grass.

Burnt brown as a warden pear, his shirt laid open to the waist. At every stroke, he strides, he wades through downfall. O brave, the tyranny of youth.

Hard as a green pear, hid among leaves.

Soft as a sleepy pear, brown-sweet and bruising. Butter to the knife. Rough skin, the russeting. The bite of blue-veined cheese.

Brown warden of the trees. That mocks and vanishes.

At dawn. The brush of branches, wet against the face. Further. White as bloom.

Coming down by halflight over Nine Law, dazed with stars, Margaret never saw the boy till he called out. She started, casting wildly for a way to run. Sheer rock fall: not up there. Slough and hag behind her. No. Swift stony water: a long leap. She wavered. And the boy before her in the heather, watching.

"See'd a hind leap yon water. Not i’ petticoats,” he said.

Margaret faced him warily. He was crouched in a cave of bracken, paunching a hare with a streak of knife. After a moment, she knew him: the whiteheaded boy, the leaper of scythes. The moon's thrall.

"I saw you jump,” she said.

Setting had dwindled him: no leapfire, but a starveling boy. As black in grain as a goblin, imp-ragged, stunted as a scrog of thorn. Half naked, but for sharded rags. His hawkweed hair, that sunstruck was a burr of light, was clagged and sallowy, a ravel of rope-ends. He stank, beneath the reek of blood. He looked at her with cool eyes, green as hailstones.

"I see'd thee skulking. If my lady heared on it, he'd lesson thee."

His lady: the man-witch in robes. Not Annis. “He knows naught of me."

"He could. Thou's awd Noll's fey."

"Master Grevil? Do you know him?"

He stripped the fell from the flesh. “Knaw him? Aye, toyed him for a jacket but two days since."

Puzzlement.

"Jigged him. Danced his dawcock.” Blue bone-end, luminous. Raw meat. He looked sidelong at her, mocking. “Thou sloe, thou greenery. Dost knaw what I mean?"

Coldstruck, suddenly she did. “You cheaped yourself."

Now he bent, straking his worn blade in the grass. “'Twas he ‘at spilled, not I.” He tied the hare, leg through leg. “Cried out. I driven him."

With a cold qualm, she remembered Morag's hands on her: contemptuous, efficient. “Let me go.” She gathered up her skirts to get past him.

"Odd on.” As if he'd caught her by a trailing leash, she turned. “I see'd thee, owling after stars.” There was something in his blood-creased, blacknailed hand. He held it out: a snail shell, whorled and brinded. Tenantless. A coal of fire, it seemed: as if he could blow and it would brighten on his stithy. Night and firelight. A house. A heavens. “Bonny, in't?"

With her hands behind her back, she stared. Said nothing; stayed.

"Called Nine's Bower. Same as stars."

A hand before a candleflame; wreathed hair. A dream? A candle in a cloud of stars.

He closed his hand on it. “Yon hall.” He quirked his chin. “Thou's in and out like t'cat. Hunting t'moon."

"So?"

"Eggs.” He tossed the shell to her. It lay in the heather at her feet. “Milk. Meal. They's a kist full and ower. Thou could leave ‘em by Owlstone, nights."

"They'd be missed."

Impish suddenly, he grinned at her. “Thou say it's for hob."

No stars. No going out: rain beat down sullenly, ran swirling down the muddy cobbles of the yard. No candles left to read by. Restless, Margaret paced the attic by her room, beneath the bare planks, apple-stained. Gaunt comfort in that. The wind seethed in the heavy branches, bowing, blotching out the sky. At last, she sidled down her stair, and crept across the smoke-damp hall. There'd be rushlights in the kist; she'd nim a handful of them, tell her cards. In the passage by the buttery door, she halted, listening. A voice rose and fell in the kitchen, in the cadence of a tale.

"...so, on a winter's night, the moon's spindle near full..."

Margaret crept nearer, peered round the door. A covey of the maids sat by the fire, all at work; it was Barbary who spoke.

"...a lad come reeling ower hill, a fiddler frae a dance..."

Caught.

A maid glanced at another, smirking. Needles prinked.

Barbary knit on. “Pricked thysel, Ellender?"

"O no,” said the fair girl. “But that Meg Magpie is skulking i't cupboard."

"Stealing cream."

"Turning it, more like."

"None less for thee.” Barbary called to Margaret, “Come ben, if thou's a mind to hear."

Still Margaret havered on the sill. The brindled creature by the hearthstone yawned at her. Great elfstone eyes, sleek ash-and-ember flanks. Cruel teeth.

Doll's voice sharpened with disdain. “Not flayed of a kitlin, ista? Pretty puss."

"She hunts,” said Margaret.

"So she is made,” said Barbary, “as Tib to prattle and Tom to lie abed.” Heads bent demurely. “And mice i't buttery I'll not abide.” She beckoned Margaret with her chin. “Blue skein wants winding. Ont dresser."

But as Margaret edged in, there came a stamping in the hallan-end, a wind in the door. “There now,” said Barbary, setting by her wool, and rising. “There's Hob.” And bundle in apron, she slipped through the screens. They heard the mutter of a man's voice and the clang of pattens. Gone out. Through the door came such a fresh wild scent of earth and water, such a rush and a tumult of water and air, that Margaret nearly turned and ran out to it. Could not, before their eyes.

By the smoky fire, the maids unbent their tongues.

"That'll be fox amid geese,” said Nan wisely.

"Tinkers i't barn."

"Filching eggs."

"Firing hay."

Doll said lusciously, “That craw lad's been about. Skulking."

"What's he?” said Margaret. “A spirit?"

Nudge and smirk. “Aye, one o Noll's feys,” said Ellender.

And Cat, “If thou gang to't Hallinwood, he'll gi’ thee a green gown."

"Get mooncalves on thee."

"Goblins.” Whispering. “He disn't have a soul."

"Nor a shadow."

"He'll creep in at window, Suke, and steal thine."

"There now. That he won't,” said kindly Nan. “Not without thou call him in by name. And he hasn't none.” And to Margaret, “He's nowt. Nobbut beggarly. He were an Ashes brat."

"He should ha’ been dead."

"Bled back to't earth—"

"But she hidden him away, his mam."

"So he's nowt."

"Nameless."

"And she's Ashes ever."

Low-voiced: “Any man's."

Sukey Bet uncorked her thumb. “Our mam says he's Mall's basket."

They hooted.