Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (40 page)

But now at her threshold were not stars but shadows: scythesmen lurking at the edge of sight. Dog stars. Of Corbet's pack. No running.

If she fell not Ashes—ah, then would Corbet's naked will possess her utterly. Blood knowing: she had tasted in his kiss her endless death. His craw would be her universe; the earthing of her grave, her sky. His fell of dark. She would wake to his wolf pelt on her, to the bloodreek of his body, clagged with ravening, acrawl with warlock souls. His vermin. His fleshworm—cold sick loathing in her throat. And colder still, a dread: that he would know in her my lady's part, that crystalline of soul. Would rend her own for what it carried, like a toad its jewel. Annihilate. Leave not a shard of self.

Her hands were at her mouth, to bite—A brightness in the air. She tasted light. Inscape of ennead. Orange in her nails.
The Nine.
The world recurved, refolding round her: the chambers of its cloven heart rejoining, cleave on cleave within its tracery of septs; the ravellings of peel rewinding, scarless but the stem. Pith and bittersweet and curving. She cradled it.

The chasm at the threshold closed: a crack. Time's great rift in her a heartbeat.

She drew a breath of cold clean air, another: lifting up her heart.

Still there,
she told herself.
Old mole. The wood's above. Thou need'st but shoulder heaven, but a heft and hope of glory.

Even now not last of all the household, Margaret followed Grevil's servants, through the steading and the intake to the green road over Law. All silent, with their lanterns dark, and the clanging of their pattens cloofed in mud.

A whisper: “Eh, but it's rare and mucky."

"Whisht.” Shocked solemnity.

A stumble and a hop.

A giggle.

"...flayed o clarting her shoon."

They were going to the Ninestones, walking back the way she came. The old way new. Slipshod in hallows as she was in May, in her outlandish finery. A maiden still, but barely. All else changed. The shape of air, the weight of darkness, and the taste and tuning of the wind. For solitude, a thrang of company. For stolen liberty, a leash. Her chance had altered: from a web spread wide as gossamer, aglint with possibilities, recrossing and recrossing, to this rope of law, this knot.

Madam's work. Accomplished hussif that she was. With Barbary's lifting of the spell on her came knowing of it: Prick-Madam and her ‘pothecary arts, her witches and their malefice had turned her like a new green cheese: a curding and a whey of blood, a working and a press. ‘Twas Morag's sort of spell, but ladylike: submission to their gaze and handling; a dulled and dunted acquiesence to her fate. They'd dressed her like a doll of wax. But bleeding, carnal in their lawn and laces: they'd changed her. She could not unspill.

But for this hour, she was free. The further from the house the lighter, striding.

At the crook in the green road, at the gap in the wall, she looked backward at the frame of Cloud, an earthstead stripped to cord and cratch that winter's down would pillow.
Here's still a room
, she thought.
This earth. Within a room of sky. Still closing in. But if the heavens are a painted cloth? and parted?

Hallowstide. The nap of summer grass, outworn at knee and elbow like a beggar's velvet gown. Slick leaves that scented of decay. Damp air that felted sound. No birds. The chirring of the summer voices fallen silent, with the hushing of the wind in leaves. Here now she heard the brawling of the water in the winter becks, crawse, clapper-tongued; the creak of boughs. The year was old and raw and riotous, a malkin squatting in a ditch to piss. Rag naked in the wind and rain.

Almost her blood rejoiced in it—the trees unbraided to the wind, the nightlong riding and the rant. All undoing and to do. Ah, she'd glory in it, by herself alone. But for the cronying with witches. But for crows.

At dawn, they would gather at the hallows tree, and break their fast—
No. I cannot bear that.
Still the white head flared before her, falling. Jerked and dangled. For her chains of handfast he'd get twisted rope. And darker even than her marriage-bed, the belly of the crow.

A crossroads. She was turned about. Gone thwartwise: and her covey out of sight. No Ashes: she was not of Cloud, was never in the game.
Now. Run,
she thought; and “Oh,” she cried. Half sob and half derisive laugh.
In ruined shoes. At Hallows.
She could hear Corbet's pack of bandoggs brashing in the wood.
They hunt
. She nearly cast herself down by the dyke-wall, in a crisping slough, and wailed.

But there was something coming. Quiet as the moon.

At her back, half seen, she felt a gathering of girls. They came by one and two from every windrent farm and loaning, from Lightbeck and from Littledale, from Askwith and Imberthwaite, from Owlriggs and Aikenmoor and Nine Thorn How. Like winter becks, but silent: river into river braiding, running backward to their springs. They lifted her, as water takes a ship; her sail, desponding, filled. They bore her on.

The Old Moon with her lantern, and her eldins on her back.

Looking up at Nine Law in its hackle and its hood of mist, she thought she saw a windthrawn straggled hedge where there was none—bare grass and stone—and in its fold, a tree, a thorn, unleaving in a flame of fire. All a flickering in a mist. She sleeved her eyes. None such. There was a knot of cummers crouching at a fire, occulting it, like kneestones to the standing circle. Their blaze was at sunstill—not a leaping, but a low.

As Margaret browed the hill where the women sat, they rose, turned outward to the lanternbearers with a ring of brands. One, taller than the rest, a stone-cloaked silent woman, raised her hands, palm outward, for a deeper silence; then the others spoke in turn.

"Embers til Ashes."

"Ashes til earth."

"And out o dark, kindling."

"Will ye dance among them all?"

A murmur and a nod, like wind in grass. Margaret dipped and rose.

One beckoned for the lantern in her hands; she touched it with a spill. It flowered. In the flare of light, she caught a glint of spectacles, moonwhite with misting, and a leaf-red cap. Gnarled hands. The latewitch huffed the horn and glazing of her owl eyes; she wiped them in her ragged petticoats, and perched them on her owlish nose. Snecked Margaret's latch.

Thou see now. All's to do.

Margaret took her light and bobbed; then turning was entranced. A sort of errant stars had fallen, like a dew of fire: all about, below, beyond her, lanterns flowered on the fells. The embers of the dying year. Its kindling. They were flakes of fire like the swirls and eddyings of leaves, adrift, uplifted on a wind of time.
So many.
Leaf on shadow lighting, leaves on leaves of souls. All wick and wandering. All those who living once had lated here, since Ashes first was earth. All time as one. A wood of girls.

Unleaving.

All of them had gone, would go, with Ashes into earth. And she alone would rise in flesh, returning out of dark. Alone would bear the old year's crown, the everturning of her death and life. Yet this ae night her sisters wakened to a silent music, clothing with the tune. A crowd—ah, not of bone, but spirit, all of spirit, strung with souls.

They bid her to the dance.

And still a space the lantern-bearer stood and turned: as if she waited out a figure in a dance. Kept measure. Then it played for her.

It took her elsewhere: to the nonce-wood. In among the stones. Dark, clear within: a rain just fallen, glittering on bare twigs. In and out, and ever in she travelled, willing in a maze of fire, a labyrinth of thorn. Astray. And ever just beyond, she saw another lantern, of a colder fire, making worlds. At every step, the candle called a web, a withying of light about it; and at every further step, ‘twas
here
: the light unweaving and rewoven, flawlessly, and not a spark of water spilt. A whirlwind of tranquillity: the world unmoved by moving, as a tree before the haloed moon.
Where I am, is hallows.

And there came to her an image of the heavens as a burr of light. No outwall and no adamant infixed with stars: no sphere. The crystalline not shattered but dissolved in air. Aethereal. The stars like bright and hanging water swirled about her head. They giddied her.

So I can do. Still heaven.

And turning in her stride, she called the creel of stars about her: that wickerwork of light she knew, her cradle that had rocked her sleep. Her ship of dreams. She saw the old bright interlace of patterns.
I am candle and it curves to me.
A lilting in her step; then slower.
Where I stand is why. And if—
Stone still.

She dared not; yet she took a step beyond: and in an ecstasy of fear, she saw the pattern of the moveless stars unwreathe, resolve in strange new shapes. A Bear, a Serpent. There, a Hive of Bees. And still more stars, beyond the stars she knew: a swarm, a storm of them, as many as the snow. But still. It was her mind that travelled. The warp is set; the shuttle flies. How far?

Can I get there by candlelight?

Her candle crouched and spired.
Not yet.
Ah, but a little further, but another step to see—

Cold out.

Left darkling on a hillside, downward from the dance. Mazed and mired. All unstrung, the cadence of the silent music fading with the twire of smoke. The dancers fading like a frost, the earth indrawing them. Unriming. Somewhere was a hurlyburly and the whirl of fire. And in the windrent sky were stars. Gazing up, she saw the Fiddler standing, naked in his rags of cloud.

Sand-heavy, stunned and breathless, Whin lay trampled in the roaring dark. A wave clapped hard on her, stonecold and shattering. Not water, though it drowned. Cold fire, quick adamant, edged air. She drowned in Annis, in her endless night, in shards of sky. A wave. Another, clout and harrow. She was dragged to seaward; should crawl. To what ground? Beyond this
now
lay only chaos and a querning sea. Time's millstones, grinding bones for bread. No sun, no moon, no rune of stars. Nowhere.

She scrabbled in the drift for ground.

A colder shadow fell on her, a thrill of malice and a reek of blood.

Harestill beneath a hawk. No flight: and then a wave downtrod her, heavy as a lion's paw.

A clawed hand caught her shoulder, turned her upward to no sky; bent back her naked throat. A hag with a flintstruck knife crouched over her.

No voice.

Whin fended, her bloody hand outward.

This blood above all blood: the hawkwife scented it. She roused, unmantling her wings, outspread her stifling dark. A glint of stone-white body, flintstruck like her knife—she was her knife, all fell intent. A gape of triumph. But a flicker; then she furled. Was a blackclad, barelegged crone, her coats and apron kilted to the hip.

Curtly, she jerked Whin's head backward, thrust a flask between her lips. Half-drowned again, with fire. A drench like molten copper slugged her belly, seared her throat; it scoured like a chimneysweeper's brush. Whin twisted, choked, and spat. A bitter taste, corpse-money in her mouth. Yet it revived her. Burning wire in her sinews, barbs and needles in her blood; but she could stagger to her feet. Must follow.

"By my lady, thou art bid,” said Morag.

Had the stars called out to her? A voice, a crowd of them cried out around her, hallowing her name. The hills re-echoed with it, in a whorl of fire.

Ashes that was Margaret looked up. Not eastward where the Nine were rising, like a chalk of silver; nor the west, where Ashes now had set. Gone downward under Law. All round her head, she saw the Guisers at full gallop, in and out of cloud. They'd torn the sky in tatters with their onset: stars and myth and guisers, myth and stars, all whirling in on her.

On earth.

A throng with torches. Waifs of fire scattered upward from the brands: unfurling, fled. A hurlyburly and tohubohu of voices, cry on cry, like a clamoring of winter geese:
Ashes! We's Ashes!
Fire and gabbleratchet, a clangor of wood on iron, the belling of ramshorns, and a drum.

They ringed her like a running wheel.

Men?

No: women by their voices. But in men's coats inward out. Slouched hats and draggled petticoats. An owl mask, beaked and feathered; tattercoats; a hood of hareskins, black and white; a pannier worn snailwise; a company of besoms, all a-bristle at the cobwebbed moon, to sweep the rafters of the sky; the moon herself, with a great white dish of pewter at her breast, her thornbush at her back; a vixen's brush worn jouncing at a fork; and in among them all, a greatboned striding woman in a crackpot helm, her grizzled hair unbound and flying out behind her: a skillet for a buckler and a naked sword.

The clangor of the ladles ceased.

All, all of them, the laters and the kindlers and the striding crones: all louted low to her, with hand and knee, like men. Like ploughboys, all unpracticed in that grace. The great virago, kneeling, turned her hilts to her. And the stiffest, gravest of them, in the moon's guise, cauled with cloud, made a stiff leg and a stick, and said, “Hallows with ye, Ashes. And well-met."

Hands to mouth.

"Yer candle's out,” said Owl beside her. Barbary. “Cold coming i't frost.” She raised her torch at the Lyke Road.

"A lang way by yer lane,” another said.

"Coat's where yer left it,” said a fourth.

There was an eddy in the thrang: some swirled toward Grevil's, sunwise; some north and east, to Corbet's hall. Some, wavering, stood.

"Y'll mind ye,” said a fifth, uncertainly. “At home."

And strangely, she did know: she could feel it like a chink left open to a winter gale, a wind eye in the dark. “Not far,” she said.

She led them on. Uphill.

They followed her in silence, but in measure; one behind her played a reedy little tune on her pipe, over and again: a haunting little hirpling tune, a jaunty melancholy music, like a bird on a briar. They walked to that wistful measure, and the
ting
of silver struck. And at the skirts of the rabble, with a slow whorl and a clack of antlers: for their husbands’ horns were in their keeping.