Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (50 page)

They staggered back, appalled.

"What, beard him in's den?"

"He's rended twenty score o kempions. All bones about his lair."

"He'll reckon thee."

"Crack bones and craunch marrow."

"And wha's to gather up thine atomy?"

Mag Moonwise called out briskly, “Ashes! Here's a telling. Hob Houchin's to die, and he's willed me his bagpipe."

Weeping, the elder shepherd clipped him round the neck. “I ever loved thee"—they clung and blubbered—"and thou ow'st me three farthings and that bacca as thou burnt last Kindle Wake. Here's a bag for't smoke."

"O what's to become o me wife and babbies?” cried the Fool. Down he fell, and took Lightfast by the knees. “Would thou keep them?"

"As me own,” said Lightfast. “As they are."

"But for mine and a passing tinker's,” Leapfire said. “Her kettle had a hole."

Fil Fadget went about him with a string, taking measures for a coffin.

"By dawcock, what's a wren?” cried a ranting lad. “I's slay yer nine on them—have at yer! Aye, t'awd cock and his whelps. Fit ‘em blindfold and bare arse. Wi’ a windlestraw, one hand.” He slashed at shadows with his lath. “Hah!"

"Good,” said Hob aside to him, “but so"—he mimed a stroke, which Leapfire jumped—"and so.” It doubled back and smacked his arse. “Plays better."

"Not much pick on a wren,” said Fadget doubtfully. A string of babbies swung and rattled on his back.

"Owt else she'd fancy?’ said Wick Billy. “I could do her an egg."

"Craw pie."

"Cock pudden."

"Rhubarb and oysters."

"Odd on.” Mag Moonwise rummaged up her petticoats, smacked her own hand. “Cheek!” And she howked out a sausage.

The Fool considered it, between finger and thumb. Lofted it. “Flies ill,” he said. He stuck a feather of his cap in it. It tilted. A second feather. Now it spiralled and stalled. A third, at a jaunty cock. “So now.” He closed on it. A great shrill tirade seemed to pour from his fingers. He smiled; then clouded.

"Aye, but she'd have it in a hare's wame. And they's ill to catch. And t'plucking on ‘em—!"

"Black or white?” said a ranting lad—the other one, not he that practiced thwacking at his tail.

"Then all roundt room, up aprons, lating it,” said Hob aside to them. “Not Ned Arket's Bet. He'd kill us."

"Nor not Mistress Barbary,” said a doleful voice.

"Thou never!"

"No. But I prigged her cherries once. Has a tongue ‘d grate nutmegs."

Hob
h'rm
'd. “Now busk it."

And they fell to slap and tickle, snatching at offended air.

Fool again, the Fool bewailed himself.

"And that stuffed in a vixen's belly, in a babby—and they's woe to snatch, worse than honey, O I dare not for its mammy's tongue—"

"I could get yer one for next year,” said the ranter. “But y'd ‘a to clean it yersel."

"—in a hind's paunch in a bear's maw—"

Here Mag raised her petticoats and smirked. They fell back, appalled.

"—wi’ an urchin in its mouth.” He drew a breath. “Wi’ mustard."

The old shepherd sang out.

"I could spare yer a babby,” said the plaintive fellow with the dolls. “Or me wife, now, she'd pickle rarely."

"And yer tig's a flaysome beast,” cried the Fool. “Plays magpie's bagpipes all about yer ears like a hail o wapses til he's run yer mad. He'd play yer nine wits mazy."

"Twins?” said the married man.

"And then t'seething o my lady's pot! There's not breath enough in me to blaw her fire, nor sticks enough to kindle, for she'd have it raw."

The Fool cried out, “O where sall I get a kempion to slay this tig?” And roundabout he turned, and called, “My cockerel for a kempion!"

...there come twa witches out o Lune...?

In come the witches—Rianty and Silvry—in their mantles of the sky, nightblue and starry. Scarves of silvery gauze are at their shoulders, wafting as they turn.

O brave,
says Annot in his ear.
They've come by the Lyke Road, and they trail it.

Are they women?

Goddesses.

Noll puzzles. They are maidenlike; yet wear bright swords and bucklers. Witchery, he thinks: for naked they are boys. Or so his nurse hath said. Their coats bespell them.

They've lanterns,
he says.

They're lating Ashes, who is yet to come. Hush now, they speak their argument.

The world is winterfast, and they will turn it. Annot's told that play to him; has acted it, all voices, in her room. He will remember when he reads the verses, later, later. He will weep. Now what he hears of it is music, fitfully, in gusts: a wind full of whirling leaves, a wild confusion. Some words he leaps at, snatches from the air; most others oversail him.

Now they've gone aside.

Here's Tom o Cloud shivering in the snow. He stamps and blows his nail. He's bristled like an urchin's back beneath a load of eldins.
Kin kindling,
he calls it. He is wood; his words are strange. The witches enter and amaze him; he amuses them.
His dreams do prick him and he flowers.
Annot's laughing at poor Tom, so Noll laughs too, uncertainly. As if their breath would blow him out. He's like a candleflame that burns the brighter for the wind that threatens. He might snuff.

They three will break the winter: they have sworn.

So now they journey in imagined snow. A man you're not to note sweeps back the rushes, laying bare the flags. The ground's chalked out as riddlestones, as islands in abyss. The ground's bewitched: for what is drawn is chasm. Where they've walked a moment since is fathomless. A cold wind wuthers up from it. Earth gapes for them, and they must cross. Beyond is Law.

An hollow music plays, as if the earth's voice spoke.

They dance the Riddles. Leaping cross and cross them, in a crouch of terror: stone to stone. Noll watches in an ecstasy of fear. A stumble, and they'd fall forever. He can see them, even open-eyed: the black ice of the bodies and the cold white fire streaming upward like a comet's tail. They cannot win the brink. And then another music interweaves: a net of fiddle under over fiddle. It sustains. Now Tom o Cloud uncurls like bracken; now the witches dance the wilder, and the outswing of their lanterns traces fire in the air. They leap his staff, they tumble backward. He dances leaf light and askew: should fall. He never does. The wind that scatters raises him; the wind is story.

Horsed upon huffcap, he is lord of all, of earth, air, fire. He is mounted on the wind, bright shod with barleycorn and summer-spurred, the blood of barley in his veins.

He is Leapfire, lord of summer.

What I is,
the crow lad thinks. A god in grain. Threshed out. And that other ranting on the floor is but his shadow; and the boy that crouches by the ingle but his chaff. This sword's his own; this bravery of blue and gold. His feats. He's foughten all, and slayed ‘em all. They lie about his feet like havoc in a hayfield.

Up and down his golden shadow strides the floor and rants. He brags it, to and fro.

And the Fool flings wide the door on winter dark, on frost and famine, and the starving wind. He calls to it.
Walk in, awd Lightfast.

A cold blast quells the fire.

Here is Law; and everywhere is Annis. Now, nowhere, anywhere: she plays like lightning on the fells. Her black hair fills the room like wind, like night; the candles crouch and flare.

Noll is trembling. Annot whispers,
Will I take thee out?

I want to see.

She colls him; she is glad of his small warmth.

Now comes the slender music of the Cloudwood, like a pattering of rain, and then the twining of the Sisters’ viols. Enter three champions. Annot gazes on the brown girl, the witch boy, half in love. In moving, she is perfectness, that still is sullen and farouche. A tarnished Silvry.

Here is Law,
says Tom o Cloud.
I would be elsewhere, were it on a sinking ship, atwixt a bear and honey.

Is the sorceress not here?

And happen at her book. I would not for the moon disturb her.

We are come to her undoing
.

Turn and turn, the sisters call her down:

Down from the fellside in a shock of winter strides Black Annis. She may take what shape she wills; goes now in a witch's like: not dwindled but distilled. The little sun is leashed before her, crouching, like a fire slaked with ash. His mistress wears a crown of souls, like hailstorm, and her very bones are moon.

Ah,
breathes Annot. This is marvellous. No bloodnailed hag disfigured on a ballad sheet; nor yet an old wives’ tale, a bugbear to affright the children. No grisly ghost, that stamping on the floor cries out,
more meat!
This witch is beautiful as frost is, fair and fell. Sheer deity.

Unmasked.

They say a man-witch dances Annis; but no man's throat was ever white as blackthorn, nor his wrist and hand so fine. They say that it's a woman bred to it in dark, that knows no living tongue. That in her secrets, she is neither. Of no mortal kind: a spirit summoned or a waft. The same witch always, anywhere, at once. Herself: for in devouring the mask becomes her.

Who calls me to the dance?

Three journeymen.

And I the mistress. Will you gage?

For the turning of the sun, we will.

This lateworm? What, this lowling? This catchfire gendered on a heap of punk? This Ashes-lap?
He crouches at my lady's feet, his glory dimmed. A golden lad that was, and come to this: a chimneysweeper. She could huff and he would scatter.
Tinsel. But your wager is souls.
She touches him, as if she sains him.
Eyes, mouth, heart: be stone.
Then she turns to the challenge.
I will dance the ay and O.

Tom o Cloud stands forth.
I will dance the light of leaves.

But he has not danced but a single dance, once round, when he is done. He whirls his staff at her, and through and through her like a mist. As good kill water with a knife: she slips him still, still-closing, woundless as a white hag rising from the moor. It whelms him. At a breath, he stands astounded, rooted in the earth. His arms, outflung as if to strike at her, outbranch; his leaves of tatters fall. His black staff flowers into frost and breaks. As frost will fell a tree, she fells him; he is winterslain.

Noll is stricken. Annot rocks him in her lap.

Hush, love. He will rise. I promise. As the sun will rise.
With a dabbled napkin, she amends his face.
'Tis but a winter's tale. Look now, the sisters come to dance for him.

So fleeting childish grief is: he is rainbow through his tears, he's rapt.

Two on one, they draw on her, at fence. They stand triskelion, a wheel of witches. Then the swords fall clanging to the earth.

His death was not the wager settled. Still I dance the ay and O.

The dark witch—Silvry, with her tarnished hair—stands forth.
I will dance the dayspring.

Sunwise, thrice and thrice around she heels it, leap and landing, lightfoot to the drub of drum. At every turn she raises up her shield a little higher in its arc until—O heavens—she uplifts the Sun. It brightens, burning through the cataract of cloud: an ember at her heel, a shoulderknot of fire, a glory. How it blazes in her vault! It glitters in my lady's crown, like daybreak in a shattering of hail.

And Annis in a rage cries out:
Who slipped my sister that was bound? Who broached her?
Whirling, ranting, how she storms. Her great black sleeves fly out like raven's wings.
Who turned the glass that night may run? Who let her rune of blood to run? How came she lighter of a Sun?
Riddles, riddles. How she stamps it! How she ramps and rages, spurning with her heel.

Annot shivers. In the witch's fury she's recalled her grim aunt stalking from her sister's childbed, bare arms bloody to the shoulder. Three days crying out upon the moon, that would not lighten her. And then the still child in the bearing-cloth, as blue as lead. A girl. And yet again her sister breeds, will kindle ere the greening Ashes rises from the dark.
O my sister. She will rise from this. She must.

The second witch stands forth.

I will dance the darklong, and the changes of the moon.

And moonwise, thrice and thrice around she heels it and uplifts the Moon. At every turn it changes, childing of itself. The riddle read: it is the gendering Moon that does, undoes the knot of blood in woman, and the Moon that lightens her; the Moon that goes with child of mutability. It rounds: is bright edged at the first, a bow new bent; and at the full, sheer silver to the brim. Night's glass.

My lady gazes. She is lost in admiration, in the mazes of the moon. She holds it as a mirror. And it seems another Annis gazes out at her. The one is all of night and silver; and the other bloodfast, hag and whore: her shadow self, outrooted and despised. They draw each other in the glass. They meddle; they are gone. The glass lies empty on the ground.

The witches lift it up, exulting. In it is the sky in little, flawless: sun, moon, stars, and all. A swirl of silver for the Road. All incrystalled in the glass, and still as frostwork on a pane. Down they cast the mirrorworld. It shatters, scattering across the floor like hailstones.

Gleefully, the household scrambles for the shards of Annis; but their garner melts away. ‘Twas painted on a round of ice.

And the Sun, the burning boy, uprises. Doffs his coat for cloth of tinsel. But the tree—poor Tom—is leafless still, lies earthfast.