Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (53 page)

Three kings out of Lune and three of Law hold up their knot of swords—O how the wheel becomes it! See, a marvel in its making. Witchcraft. Now they tumble it from hand to hand. Bold Leapfire that outfaced them all—braved Lightfast and his gallantry—he's spellfast by it and he stands amazed. They coll him with their knives. Still dancing, though the fiddle's silent, and the pipes; the drubbing of their feet their drum. They've ringed him in a running wheel. And all at once they draw and down he topples in the rushes. Dead.

Crouched behind the kist, the Ashes child bites back his cry. The bright ale's burnt away in him, all but the headsway. And the dread of edge: the tale is fathomless and he will fall.

Has fallen with the murdered Sun. His slayers stand, aglow like stithies, soot and ashes sliding down their sweated cheeks. Bright crowns. Their black rags settling, stirring in the draught: the door stands open to the year. My lady's crows. He should clap them from the corse, cry out and clap them; but he dare not for the wintry Sun: old Lightfast with his boneface smiling and his burning hair, his great arms bloody to the shoulder. He bestrides the corse.
O where shall we our breakfast take?

The crow lad rocks and mourns.

Now the black-browed Ashes steals beside her dead Sun, kneeling; now she takes him in her lap.

Awakening, the bagpipe brangles. Cockcrow.

Wae's me,
cries the Fool.
Cat's kitted and me eldest father's son is dead. His daughter lies in straw and like to die of toothache. And wha's to milk t'ducks?
The company howl and mock. The crow lad scowls at their impiety.
O willow day, and where's to find a gossip for her lying in?
And he runs about: he looks up the chimney, under the cat. He tugs the maids’ aprons and they turn away. They're laughing.

In comes Mag Moonwise, brisking with her besom. The Fool follows wailing and wringing of his hands.
O Mistress, you must come til Ashes! For she's got hersel wi’ child by Winter and she cannot lighter be.
He tears his hair away in handfuls, scatters straw. She sweeps it up.

Aye, bedstraw's what comes o green gowns.

Walking on his knees.
O Mistress, she will die of her bellyful.

And what wilta give?

My belt wi’ three bright stars.

Dead leaves,
says she.

My cockhorse then, that's siller-shod.

I's a besom for to ride away.

Me fiddle and me bow.

For a ship? But I's eggshells for to fleet.

Then I's nowt nobbut mesel.

She peers sidelong through her glazes.
What's i’ thy peascod?
And she ferrets as he frisks and dances—
Oh! Ah! Ooh!
—pulls out a pouch and bacca pipe, still burning, and she sticks it in her mouth.

And which is it?

Turning on the wriggling giggling maids, she pokes and kittles with her broomstick.
Aye, it likes thee, does a bit o wood. What's brooded up thy petticoats?

And she rummages up Betty's skirts, pulls out a rotten apple.
Here's a brave babby, by his red nose, aye, he braids of his mam
. Bet smirks and blushes.
And a squinny, same's his daddy, aye, a brave lad wi’ a spade
—they elbow and jeer—
aye, here's catching o moles.
She cowdles it and dandles it and chucks it by the chin; then bites it through. The women shriek. Cheekful and mumping, she hurls away the core.

Now up Gill's smock. A string of black puddings.

A mousetrap from the missus’ fork. That makes the crow lad laugh, unwilling and amazed. The men stamp and whistle, crying out,
Snap! its head off then.

What do she bait it wi'? Bacon rind?

Cut cheese,
says Awd Moon. She ferrets in her bodice for a tit—a turnip, earthy from the ground—and munches. Tosses it to the Fool.
Here, carve thysel a head.

And turning on her heel, she's elsewise, like the moon that hags. She crouches, casting shade on shadow on the walls. And now she takes the wren's cage in her hand, the ribands stirring in the wind of January like a witch's hair unbound. Its shadow is her other self, her sister. Now she goes to Leapfire's birth. She'll sup him with her ladle and he'll rise. But she halts; and stooping, prods behind the meal-kist with her staff.

Here's a rat.

'Tis Ashes’ brat,
the maids cry out.
She hidden him.

He's ditchborn.

Winter-got.

Himself's his father.

Why then earth owes him, for he's of her blood.

The old Moon hales him out, upholds him stricken in the smoke and shadow, in the lickerous light. For all to see: his white hair and his nothingness. Unsouled: an emptiness enfleshed. There are no words now: one roaring in his ears. Ashes opens for him like a bearmouth, bloody; like his grave. They give him to the earth her lap.

Now
, says Ashes, and she kisses him with open mouth, and takes his breath away. She strokes his cursed head and clips him to her body. Rocking, rocking.
Now. Lay me now.
But Ashes cannot speak. She tells.

So he is dead.

The stench of her: earth, blood, ashes. Wench. He's pissed himself; it mingles, scalding, with her pelt. Her wolfish coat's undone; she bares her tit to him. Slackwhite and the starting nipple, bloodbrown as a flea. He gapes at it, the godthing. Quick he turns his face, wries round; but with her ashy hand, she pries his mouth, she puts him to her dug. He would spurn it out of awe and loathing; but it hards him. Kindles will. He burrows in; he suckles in an ecstasy of need and rage. He bites it in his blissful fury.

And the blue milk spurts, though she's a maid. He fills his fathomless with her, he wins, he wins, he wins.

But she's Ashes, and she's stronger.

Kneeling up, she twists and clenches: with a cry she looses him, asprawl on the rushes in a gush of blood.

Stunned, he sees the sky turned over and the striding stars: the Fool, the Fiddler, and the Swords. And Lightfast with the knife that cut him from his birthright and his ecstasy. The winter Sun his midwife and his death. The old god hales him by the heels, upholds him, over and again, forever.

Done
, the old Moon says.
Undone
.

And all to do.

Let's finish,
says the Sun. It whispers in his ear,
Crows eat thee, cock and eyes.
Then turning in his splendor, lordly to the crowd, he calls out.

What have we?

And the voices cry, as in the harvest field,
A neck! A neck! A neck!

Her part is silence.

Ashes—any Ashes—takes the dead Sun in her lap and cradles him, soulnaked, for a moment still. And sains him—eyes, mouth, heart—with ashes. But it runs like water on his wan and bloodied face. Is milk.

He blinks in wonderment; he lifts a hand before his eyes, as if she dazzles him. As if she were the Sun. He wakes.

"I were headed and I rise to dance,” cries Leapfire, springing up.

And as many as will take hands for the Wakesun, serpentining through the great hall in a mad maze of carollers, and out into the fallen snow. The Fiddler plays for them, astride the starry sky. They shout his wake.

A cold awakening, the fell beneath him stiff with rime, the scent of burning in his blood. Cold out, the ashes of his needfire, drifted on the wind, unwhited by the whirl of snow. Will Ashes lay with winter, naked in her lap. Had died in her, his mouth upon her hoarwhite breast, his fingers twining in the sootblack heather at her plash. Gnarled roots and deepless water. Wellspring. In the blackest ice, whitecracked, worldstarry, he could see the glint of metal, frozen fathomless. Tellings. There were men's souls drowned in her, beyond his reach: a blade, the rowel of a spur. His ring, still falling, like an ember, like a wintry sun. His soul.

And there were voices in the air.

...white bones...?

A cronying of crows. They'd pick him clean as stars.

...when they are bare ... the wind sall blaw...?

Far far away he heard the stamp and jangle of his slayers, and the small clack of their swords. His death they tumbled slowly hand to hand, aloft: the knot of swords. His blood was beaded on their music, on the threading of the pipe, the drum that halted with his heart. They took the white road upward.

Frost on fire, ashes on the snow.

It tasted of her body, salt.

A cry went up, like reapers in the corn, the last sheaf won:
In ashes! Sun in ashes!

Light rent him, and he woke.

No lap. No lover. Gone.

He knelt up. Shadowless about him, white on white, was Law. He knew the road that he must take, his journey. Not the sun's road, Lightfast to Leapfire through the wheeling year; but the soul's way that spanned it, whiter than the haloed moon.
Yon road's what Ashes walks,
awd Jinny'd said. She'd told him all the stars that run from dayspring to the verge of night, the Gallows to the Scythe. He knew the steadings on the way, the fields intaken from the nightfells, from the starry commons: Mall i't Wood's, inby of morning; Jinny's Fold, outwith; and yonderly, the Lantern and the stony keep of Law. The stations of the soul.

He knew his part; had kempt for it at leaping of the scythes. Not this ae night, but evermore, for ay and O: the dance. And there began the wheedling of a little pipe, a small drum's thud. He followed.

It was all to do.

A white stone. Whin sworled it in her palm. Beyond her in the shadow lay no hall, no witch enthroned—that semblance gone—but a waiting silence. But a dark. It drank of Whin. Drank soul and memory from her shallow cup of skull. Cracked marrow for her tales. All else of Annis but that lust for otherness, for story, was unstrung and scattered. Gone: but for the braid of fire that strung, restrung her endlessly, that fed her will.
Nobbut game,
thought Whin.
A pair o lasses sat ont ground to play at cockal bones. Turn and turn: here's toss.
A stone like a seedling moon, moonwhite against her earthblack, bloodcracked hand.
Blood's thy road.
She closed upon it. In the silence, she began. “Once afore t'moon were round, and on a night in Cloud, there were twa sisters..."

In Ashes’ dream, the Moon brayed bones in her mortar, for to paint her face. The whiter still she daubed it, the bloodier she grew. The hungrier: so hunted for the bones to to crack, to grind, to daub her haggard face. She followed through the sky.

A pounding. Margaret that was Ashes waked, lay still and shuddering, unknowing where she lay. Her bed. Her bed in Jinny's house. The pounding in her heart. Still dark. It could be midnight, morning. They had fetched the sun, but he was slow in coming from his cellarage. No daylight yet to leach the terror from her blood.

Again the dreadful pounding: from without. A stranger at her door. A death. It had to be. She pulled the clothes about her ears.

Again.

And hooly, hooly, she rose up, put on her office with her coat. No more. Then with a candle, barefoot in her shirt, she slipped the lock.

There stood Hob Hawtrey in the sleet and wind, bareheaded, with his black hair and his jacket white-dashed like the bark of blackthorn, and his lantern cold out.
Ah no.
He tried, but he couldn't speak: as if they both were Ashes. But he shook with urgency, as if he ran to fetch a midwife or a surgeon, not a layer-out. He would not look at her, averting with his out-turned hand. Her face. She'd washed it. Even in extremity, he was abashed to look on her, on Ashes in her naked face.

Kneeling at the hearth she sained herself; then swiftly dressed: she gathered breeches, undercoat and stockings, boots and cap. No comb nor mirror now, not if she told. But a coal from the embers, a candle from the ark. Her lantern.

By the moon, they'd parted not an hour since.

They ran.

Sukey opened to them, barefoot in the slushy hallan, and in caught-up clothes. She hurled herself at Ashes, flailing with her fists. “Witch! Annywitch!” she cried, and clawed her face. “Yer didn't sain him.” Ashes caught her wrists.
We were coming here tonight,
she couldn't say.
Hob had it all laid it out.
Sukey wrenched herself away, sobbing.

"Hush, love,” said Hob. “Thy mam's poorly."

And others of the Hawtrey daughters bent to Ashes, whispering, “She nobbut turned to blaw t'fire—"

"Dad were guising."

"Like that—and he'd slipped her."

"Skirring on t'ice. See'd us do it and he wanted. It brock."

Ashes closed her eyes. As if she fell with him, she saw the black ice whiten as it tipped. She saw the witchboys thwart the guising floor. They broke the sky. Yet Ashes then had worked her mystery in play, had cradled and the Sun had waked. Not here.

Candles in the room.

Deb Hawtrey sat in the rushes with her white-headed boy, quite still, and sprawling on her knees. No lap: she was as great with child as she might go. Her cap askew, her hair half down her back in cat's tails.

She was singing him to sleep.

"Love? Here's Ashes."

But she held a finger to her lips, and lulled him.

Hob knelt beside them, touched his son's cold cheek, the curve of it. He kissed his lips. No breath. He bowed as if his heart were crushed within him; but he did not weep. “My heart is in the ground.” He stood. He had an ashing in his hand, a coin. The smallest of its metal: but of gold. “His name's Arkenbold."

She told the Sun.

Between sleep and waking, elsewhere on that Lightfast morn, the crow lad saw himself: a bright ring in the ashes. Night's journeyman, the winter Sun who walks the road beyond the world's end, over and again. Dayteller. In his setting were the moon and stars.

The god that he'd lain with was vanished.