Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (33 page)

"Witch. Burn thee."

"My lady eat thee."

She turned and walked down the hill, not blind with rage but lucid, crazed with Law. The air in shards still falling. She did not look backward at the stars.

Ablaze with fury, white as crystal fiery from the blast, Margaret strode down Hallinside. Rage enveloped her, unsouled her. She was turned my lady's vessel: void within and crazing as she cooled. White, straw-white, sullen red: she slaked through fury, shame, despair. Grey ashes. Slag.

Too late she saw that there were torches in the yard. The household was astir. And she was lated: hailed and hunted in a clatter of pattens. Even as she called her rage to arrow her, she knew it spent: a burnt stick whelmed and whirling in an icy river. There was no more heart in her to run. Faces flared out of shadow. Hands caught at her: pinned, plaited, tift and tucked. They did off her draggled apron, scolding; scrubbed her face with their apron corners; smoothed her elf-locked, leafy hair. The crowd bore Margaret away. No running now: the women thronged her, and on either side, a hind held fast. Their dolly, green and fading, like a thing of plaited straw.

A chained dog barked. Another, deeper, hurtling at his rope. Now all: a burden to the shrill of servants.

Looking up, she cracked like cat-ice to a booted heel.

Down from the road from Ask to Owlerdale came a knot of darkness and a scattering of sparks: a rade of travellers in black. Slow destiny. A footboy ran before, a laden packhorse lagged behind, her fate rode on: a horseman and a mantled woman, cloaked and hooded all in black.
I summoned her,
she thought.
My fury called her down.
They brought a stifling dark with them: a scarving, starless night. No air, no flying now. How the torches caught the blink and spiral of the falling leaves. The riders dipped below the turning; rose; impended. They were at the gate. Here, now: the horses stamped and whickered in the courtyard.

"Madam."

Grevil gave his hand to one alighting, a woman in a velvet mask and mantled like the dead of moon. He bared his head, he bent his knee to her.

"Where is the girl?” she said. An old voice: cracked, imperious.

Rough eager hands pushed Margaret forward. Dazed with horror, she sank to her knees. A crooked finger lifted her chin. Light lapped her face: a torch brought close, compelling sight. She needs must look upon her death. And saw—not my lady, but a stranger dismasked: a small face, crazed with age as china is, abrim with power. A witch. No Annis: yet the dark eyes held her gaze. They saw, not through her, but her flaw: where she might crack. “You are long returning,” said the Cloud witch. “Daughter Annot."

"...goes down at Eventide, her long way under Law; red
Morag
rising now exulteth in her
Kist & Keys
..."

Whin at the world's edge looks to where the stars are setting: at the Road that is a river, at the sea that bears no ship on it—or none of tree—the farther shore that is the impery of death. Her journey: she has sworn.

And from that journey only sun and stars return; and Ashes, who arose from dark, my lady's daughter and her runaway. The Witches walk that Road; the Ravens travel it, who bear away the souls of men, as treasure for my lady's crown. The Huntsman rides and reaves. But no one—willing soul in body—ever made this venture. She cannot. Or not by sea: unless her winding sheet's her sail. Her boat of Cloudish wood is wracked. She's left the bones of it to bleach on no man's sky, to puzzle all the passing dead. A riddle too for the astrologers, a stillborn falling star. Like Journeyman, she haunts the strand of night. This shore her biding place, betwixt.

It was here she met the Outlune fiddler whom the sea cast up. He drowned himself for death of love, and death, dismissive, cast him back. That journey was not his to take. Not yet. And it was here that she and Kit were parted when she told his Thea's death, death's daughter: Ashes, who did choose a mortal love. There, beyond the sea, their daughter is, if any live in that dread country. Under Law. And as Whin's sworn by black and white to seek his daughter, so he's pledged to find her son. Her Ashes brat the old Sun got on her, the boy she'd not give over to the furrow and the knife. No harvest of her blood. So cheating earth, she is forever bound to it: death's journeyman and Ashes ever, teller of the dead.

She turns the lost child's ashing in her hand, the ring of stones. A knot of blood.

No telling.

She has tried. And over and again, she's found herself unbodied in an empty room, has seen a cradle overturned, a burning doll. She's seen a bed, its curtains billowing. Its clawed rings inch and jangle in a moveless wind. Scattered on the floor are painted cards, in twos and threes and gatherings. But as she takes a step, but only one, the floor is sky, the stars are whirling thick about her face, like embers from a brand. And she is falling.

Now is otherwise. Now even as she looks, the pebbles at her feet are dabbled, bright with blood. Her own? The hand is bloodstarred but unhurt.

The ring is drops of blood, is gone.

Not hers.

As mourners do, she marks her face, as her master mistress Brock once did to her: with blood for ashes. Brow and eyelids, cheek and chin. Then mouth. She tastes it.

And the voices wake.

Whin, kneeling at the water's edge, fills up her hands with light. Pale fire: like that shining on the sea that limns the oar's edge, mingles in the wake. It overspills her cup of hands. That light is souls.

The Road that is a River is of souls: not one but many lives in time, a baffling and a braid of streams. The sea is stories. And a wave of them breaks over her: the salt and sting, exhilarating, and the glassy weight. It pulls. The water on her lips is bittersweet.

Whin walks into the sea.

It is another air of water and an earth of light. She walks on puzzled ground, like moorland, in a snow of stars. Not dead herself, she thinks—she hopes—her breath still clouds, her blood beads up and clots, her piss falls scalding on the rime—
there's rain for yer below.
And she desires: she would wap with Kit, left long ago. Not then and never will. She thirsts for it, sweet meddling in the blood. Alive; and yet she does not sleep nor hunger, but for others of her kind.

She drinks snow.

Some times the travellers she spies afar are standing stones; and times—but seldom now—the stones are naked travellers, by one and one, bent onward. Bairns and elders, lads and girls. The dead. But they are blind to her as stones: as silent. Only as they pass her by, she hears an echo of a telling: she is Ashes still.

An old hag with her white hair wild and loose about her, spinning snow. Her distaff is a branch of thorn.

...my father sold me for a plough of land...?

A horseman, shod with snow.

Two lovers, clear as glass new-blown, still burning redly where the pipes were broken off: her vixen and his wyrm.

...at midnight and myself by dawn...?

Once she came upon a space untrodden, with bloody swords flung down, with gouts and spatterings of blood across the snow. A wreath of gold. Nought else. And now she spies a gallows, raven-haunted, with the corbies made of snow.

...my songs unsung...?

Rough-coated as a bear, Whin shambles on.
Ship's thyself,
she thinks. And telling as she goes, she lays a keel of bone.

Keys. Shadows. Eyes.

In her room that now was Madam's closet, Margaret bent her neck to the crow-clawed waiting women, Grieve and Rue. They tugged her laces, twisted up her hair from off her shivering nape and shoulders, pinched her slight pale buds in mockery of ripeness. The gown they'd put her in was rich and strange, of cloud-changed shifting silk: steelblue, stormblue, dizzying with musk and wormwood, old and yet unworn. Her jacket and her petticoat, her stout nailed shoes, were locked away. They turned her round in this garb, as they would buy her on a stall. “Here's all to do,” said one, and tweaked a sleeve. Too long for walking in, too low for modesty; chill, billowing and cruelly stayed. “'Twill do,” the other said. In silence, Margaret rose and followed down the winding stair.

Tribunal waited in the wainscot parlor, swept bare of work: Madam in a great chair, with unmastered Grevil standing at her side; a knot of whispering servants at the sill beyond. As she passed, he could not meet her gaze; Barbary lifted her chin.

"Come, girl,” said Madam Covener, and beckoned Margaret to her chair. There were small things in her lap, like lenses—
No.
But my lady's child did not cry out, nor falter; she was schooled in dread. And it was not her glass dissected. No, the lady held, coin-small and bright, an image to her face: a portrait from her nephew's cabinet. Unlocked, his secrets naked to the eye. And,
Ah,
the craning household said.
Not hers,
thought Margaret.
Not I.
And yet she saw the gown, the lace, the tiring of the pale red hair limned perfectly, as in a dwindling glass, as in the pupil of my lady's eye, diminished.

Turning to her kinsman, Madam spoke.

"It was my brother's maggot, as thou knowst, to wed with an Outlune woman, dowerless and lawless. She did bear him daughters; yet being sickly, of a stillborn son she died. And ere she'd gone a small pace on that road, my brother hurried after, footboy to his folly, as if to light her the way. His bones are laid in Lunish earth. And there he left two girls amongst her barbarous kindred, blood of my blood. As my duty was, I fostered them—” Her glance bade Margaret curtsey. “—myself took ship to bring them unto Cloud, myself unlearned them of their Lunish errors, sained them, schooled and dowered them, and found them Cloudish husbands. Damaris, thy mother—"

Master Grevil bowed his head, hand outward: enough.

"Whelped but a whitely brood: all dead but her cade-lamb. And he unlike to get heirs."

"Madam, I—"

"Her sister Annot—"

All turned toward Margaret.

"—being of an age, was handfast to a gentleman of thirty plough, a lord of great pastures in the north. But on a May morning—"

Grevil broke in eagerly. “She rose before the dawn, and maid amongst maidens, went gathering green. So my nurse did tell it, who did braid her hair that very morn. And laid a cup for her returning, never tasted. Being heedless of our Cloudish custom, she did break a branch of my lady's thorn. And was stolen away under hill."

"And has returned."

Silence. Rain rattled the window glass.

Lifting his palm to her, he swore. “Madam, by this hand, this is no earthly may, but a changeling, nor of Cloud nor Lune."

"That folk are made of air. If they be cut, they wither like a swathe of grass.” Again, she looked at Margaret. “If you prick her, she will bleed."

Pensive, Grevil pleached his cuff; then countered. “If mortal, then a stranger to this realm. And by her manner, not of Lune. I—” Now turning of his ring. “I hear no echo of my mother's nor of Annot's voice in hers, and I have spoken with her many months."

"And I have searched her straitly. There are marks about her body that I ken. She is Annot found."

Still doubting. “Well I know that one who ventures in the sunless lands, the sky below, will turn again no minute older than the day she left, were she gone five hundred years—but was mine aunt then a child?"

"No; but thou wast then in petticoats and prattled of thy nurse's tales. Thou'rt dazed with balladry. Thine elders mind her well."

"As I do. Your pardon, aunt: but Annot stood to me as elder sister and as governess, nay, half my mother, and my dearest playfellow."

"Thou her lapdog rather, or a toy to prink. Her fancy marred thee. She did stuff thy wits with nonsense as a monkey's cheek with grapes."

Her mock, it seemed, met air. Grevil's gaze was elsewhere, inward. At last, he turned from memory, as from another room, a gallery. “Yet I know what I do know: that Annot sang."

Madam Covener looked at him, long-lidded. “And this girl does not?"

"Madam, I have heard her not."

"And you?” She turned to the knot of servants. “Does she sing at her needle?"

"Like a cuckoo i't nest,” a servant muttered.

And another: “Like an owl."

"Like any crow,” said Barbary. “Keeps measure but no music."

A dry disdain in Madam's face. “Think you she took cold beyond?” Then turning to the room: “You see. Their teind is what is dearest to their thralls: wits, eyes, tongues.

And souls?
thought Margaret.

No murmur now. “They have returned her, but her songs they keep."

The rain fell. In the gathered stillness, Barbary took the image up and studied it. “T'gown's like."

"And the girl?"

"I ne'er laid eyes on her. Awd Mistress Quarrenden, she set me on that summer after. There was t'linen to keep.” She set the image down. “And t'lad."

"Then I call one who did.” Madam beckoned to a servant at the threshold. “Mab Kelder."

Blind Mab hobbled to the silent girl, and felt her cheek and chin. “Aye, ‘tis her, ‘tis Mistress Annot, right enough. Did I not tell ye? And didn't I knit her same stockins?"

A murmur.

"'Twas good yarn as ever Jinny span, but she's dead and ashes—poor soul! And she'll never cry holly and ivy no more."

"That will do. Tom Arket."

"Happen she could be,” said the shepherd. “I's heared folk gan there and back, and no more changed than delf in a dunghill."

Madam Covener said, “Is this the girl?"

Crook Tom squinnied solemnly at Margaret. “Mistress Annot were another such as yon vixen, aye, bonewhite and blaze. Like as kits of ae kindle."

"And if she is,” said blunt Barbary. “What on't? She's away wi’ t'fairies yet."

"Such freaks may be physicked.” Madam Covener drank deep. “And she is handfast yet. Her lord lives on, thrice-widowed; and has garnered gold on gold, and rare learning. He is great among my lady's servants."

Barbary said, “Would such as he take a nameless girl, a hedgebird?"

"Her name I warrant. And her maidenhead.” Grieve glanced at Rue. “She is virgin."