Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (58 page)

But she looks up at it: the earthsky and the sea of fires. On it sails that Ship whose mast is rooted in the dark, and branching into heaven. See, its leaves forever fall as stars, light never on the earth below.

The sky's her self and story. It is all the mother that she has.

And at her back, a voice says,
Margaret, do you see the leaves?

Thea?

She is glass between an emptiness and night, a window for the frost to etch that presence. And it cracks her. She cannot see for tears.

Are you grieving for the fall of light? Unleaving?

Colder, by and by.

Yet you
will
weep.

And know why.

Cold in her pocket, safe within the Ashes coat, she has the other lens. Her starglass. As she holds it out, it fills with candlelight, is gold as morning.
I would know why
, says Margaret.
It's what I am.
Bright Perseis who brings the dawning and the dissolution of the lovely night. Burnt Eldins with her toy of fire. She knows it: she would make a thing as beautiful, complex as theirs, a One-of-All; but in her mind. A tale of numbers that would end their sky.

She's not spoken, but they answer her in thought.
So you will, if you but live.

And so she would: but now she weeps for Ashes, for the world that will have been.

Keep your glass now.

What you will do with it, will us undo: your mother and us all.

Still wet with tears, she lifts her face to them.
Then why do you let me in?

You're Ashes still, until your kindling—

Ashes, and you bring the Sun.

The guisers call you on.

The weaving waits on you.

It wants but a tale.

The way's through the witch's featherbed. She tumbles them in, and they're otherwheres, anywhere you like. The silly men pace on together, clattering of plays, of Is and Not; but Imbry laughs. She is Ashes, and she has her Will.

I would thou were away,
she says.

I care not what thou will, thou whin.
The crow lad struts his sword.

He's made her gown of flowers, so she makes his shirt of snow, his jacket of the sleet. He turns and touses her; they tumble on the moor. The sword's an awkwardness.
Thou hurt. Thou juniper.
He kisses where he's burned with snow.
Thou bramble.

Aye, thou chimneysweep. I catch.

I's hurtle thee.

Thou flaycraw. How?

Pushing up her smock, he fills her lap with nettles and with violets.

Now will I, thou ragbush? Will I now?
He kisses.
Now?

Aye, now,
says Imbry.
An thou will.

She makes his horse of January, mounts him on the wintry wind. He spurs.

A daze and dazzlement of cold: the sun in snow. It covers her, it fills her eyes, mouth, heart. She pierces it, she flowers.

The Fiddler and the Fool, the Sun and Ashes, are on the road somewhere. From Ask to Owlerdale, thinks Noll; Kit thinks Hare Law, the way from Kempy Mag's great barn. But somehow in the witch's cupboard that is full of Cloud: she's popped them all in—lad, lass, and new-found cousins—like a bundle of washing. They've talked all this while, the cousins. Not of folly in love, of the tangle of unwisdoms in their family's amorous history—Noll's lad, Kit's lass, Annot's lover—nor as yet of foundlings and of children lost. Not here.

For it still is nowhere, though their lantern makes them room. The Road's no place for winter's tales. Their talk is not of where they're going but of whence they came: the sisters, Damaris and Annot. Their mothers. They remember variants of Annot: maid and mother, dowered and dishonored, Cloud and Lune. But her stories were the same.

"...Tom o Cloud,” says Noll.

"Ah,” says Kit. “Did she tell thee of Brock's bagpipe?"

"That plays of itself? An I cried, she would call me that."

"Aye, and tuck me under her arm and down-dangle, up and down bravely till I laughed."

"Then was I Tom o Cloud,” says Noll. “Locked up in Law, in the witch's glass castle. And off she strides with me, to be the Sun."

"Ah, but he's for Mally's lap, she haps him all in snow. It's winter and her loom is bare. Wood's her cupboard, and her walls are thorn; her bower's all unswept. Thou can't get in but she lets thee. And she's Tom o Cloud's nurse. But Brock—ah, well now, Brock's death's gossip and she's keys to all locks. Will I tell ye how Brock stole him?"
says Kit, in an old wife's voice. Imp Jinny.

Noll looks back, the way they'd come. Bare moorland. Has it not been wood all this while? And a moon but a moment since? At full? No stars above: they walk on them. And if their lantern fails...? Bewilderment. “I fear me I am wood, but cousin...” He waves at back beyond, where a door might be. “Was that—? Were they—?"

"Our mistresses? Aye.” Kit paces on. “They've dealt with me before."

Now Grevil remembers.
Thou's lain wi’ me.
Cold awe at that. Himself had craved so poignantly, so long, for but a glimmering of otherness, a foolish fire; but meddle with a goddess? Is he cousined with a myth?

The myth speaks ruefully. “I am something overparted in this play."

Still Grevil says nothing, but Kit answers his unspoken words.

"I cannot. Yet I go on. Like a gossamer, from thorn to briar.” Dark all round them and the lantern travelling: a parenthesis of light, a walking interlude. “I would sooner go a shadow. It catches not."

A hill aside of them, and in and out of wood, they hear scuffling and taunts. The others’ lantern sways wildly. Then it stills, but their shadows leap.

"Ottering,” says Kit.

Grevil sighs. “Is it wise? Here?"

"I think it makes earth of air. As one that's to hang makes air of ocean: for he may not drown.” Then turning back, Kit says, “Did she sing thee the riddles?"

"What, kitrum katrum?” Still elsewhere.

"Aye, that. Mindst thou the air?"

Distractedly at first, Noll sings, “I have nine sisters beyond the sea, And these are the gifts they sent to me...” It's riddles, and a pattering of nonsense, to a tune that catches like a thicket of thorn. It snags him.

Under and over it, Kit begins another song. Noll tangles, trips up.

"No, keep on: ‘tis in parts."

And with a clash of keys like Brock's bag jangling, they start again, and break down laughing. Third time's the charm: they right their reel. Noll sings his pit-pattering. But underneath and counterwise, like the slow part of a round, Kit sings an older patterning: “I have two sisters beyond the sea, And these are the gifts they sent to me...” His burden's all of trees: a wood for the wanton fire, a world arising through the nothingness of Law, and Noll's dark ship a-sail in it. A spring upwelling through the riddles.

At first, heeding time and interval, they scarce note what they sing; then hearing, they stumble.

The Ship founders. The wood is gone.

"Where got you that?” says Noll.

"Of my mother.” Astonishment: as if he's raught in a bird's nest for a egg and found a owl. As if a toy has bitten him. “She got it in her travelling, she said. Of a Norlander."

"Or made it herself?"

Kit upturns his hands. “I learned to prattle it, parrotwise; I had forgotten till now."

"Again, I pray thee. I would learn this part."

Song and countersong, they interweave: a net of riddle under over riddle. It sustains. The world is thin here, cat ice, and the void is fathomless. The Riddles bear them up, all four.

They walk in silence for a space. The wood behind them falls to nothing like the ashes of a log.

Musing, Kit says, “Here's matter, but confusedly."

"Yet may be rede in it, as in a runish text,” says learned Grevil. “Art thou a journeyman? Of Cloud, that is."

"Not sworn,” says Kit. “Nor like to be."

"I have read of a Hallows mystery that was played by them long since, of Death's Gossips. They bring nine ashings at—that other mistress—her birth. Might this not be remnant of that mystery?"

Kits casts backward into memory. Her candle low, his mother bending to the fine fine needlework for other backs to wear; the copies of music for others, idler than herself, to play. Ink on her fingers. Pins in her sleeve. Prick song. “She did call it the Bear Song."

"Bear,” says Grevil. “Bear?” And he calls out, “Imbry?"

Underfoot is no earth. Ashes walks on light, on memory of light, sootblack and silver like the ashes of the moon. But for telling she would fall.

I am in my glass; I travel light.
She tells herself her journey, step by step, as if she's writing in her book. Here is that rift in the Lyke Road, called the Belly of the Crow, the Crop, the Rattlebag, the Riddlestones. Brock's Bag.

In the shifting sliding of the tarnish is a glint of gold. A souling? If it is, she hears no whisper of a tale. See there, another, drifted over with the darkdust of the Road. And there and there—faint myriads of suns that prick the nightmoor, dimly glittering. Time's embers. Though a fire settling would sing: these mortal suns, long cold, are silent.

Looking up, she sees my lady's Ravens wheeling overhead. They know their gain. They follow the seedsman; they follow the sword. So here about her is a field of souls, unfurrowed nightfell, sown with deaths. Unharvested, unsprung.

Stooping—for she would know why—she burrows in the dark. It tingles like a bank of snow, so light that it is merely cold; but the silvery blackness slides away from her. It cannot be held. Shadowing, it edges her with silver, shining like the moon in swift eclipse. It lights her briefly; leaves no stain.

But the coin of gold is real: has form and gravity. Is worn, as if with years of handling. There's a woman's face on it, not quite in profile: turning back as if to call another on. Her metal bears no coin stamp of authority: she looks not lordly but exultant and afraid. As if she ran in ecstasy to meet her death. But why? No telling. She will keep her secret; but she dares you follow.

Another step, another coin. On this, a boy, despairing. His mouth is open in one voiceless howl. And a third, a nullity, a newborn child. They clink a little in her hand. She cannot carry them; they weigh her down. She leaves them in a drift of dark.

And here a potsherd, written over with a fraction of its tale. She puzzles but she cannot read its emblems. Why a red horse? (Broken.) Why a wheel of running hares?

Here, a flint of elfshot, like a knife; and there, a shard of bone. She flinches: she has seen too many in her childhood, under Law. But this bone seems not charnel, but a frame of soul. If it were strung, it could have been a crowd of bone, to sing the spirit's death and journeying. It's daubed with char and ruddle in an ancient glyph: the Nine. And here's a long bone with the Fiddler's belt, the Three: but thirled in it, to make a flute. Unplayed. A cup of skull, from which the teller would have drunk her inspiration. Yet unfilled.

And here, an earring for a sorceress, a sibyl: in a ring of gold, an owl-eyed woman, winged; and yet a striking owl, with hands. Of all of the ashings, this still has a distant voice, still fainter than a dry leaf on the wind. It cries the same words over and again.
Of stone, of stone, of stone.
Like a bird's cry: but its plaint is knowing. It despairs. Ashes, hearing, understands all tongues; but this is strange to her. A flinder of a foreign tale. A leaf, of many, one. The tree long fallen in another world, its leaves dispersed and scattering. That tree was myth. Untold.

Then deep within the sky she hears—has heard unknowing all this while—another voice, half chanting, hoarse, demotic. Ah, she knows that rhythm with her blood. An Ashes tells. The dead souls string their scattered bones with her, they sing their tales through her. And singing, are set free. It's her breath fills the sail, that they might journey.

The traveller stands wondering. Askant, she sees a flickering of light. She turns. Too swiftly gone. But
there.
A spirit rises from the dark, a spiralling of soul like fire. The flower of that field. Another and another rises, briefer than the grass, a braid of fire, soul on soul—and see, the barren field's a meadow, summering the dark.

She is nowhere. She would fall; but Ashes sings the Road, sustains her.

The journeymen walk on. They're out on skyfell, on the soundless dark: a black frost faintly rimed with stars. Far far below them in Soulingdale, the river runs.

The crow lad sees a desolation of moorland, heath burnt over; he sees the cracked stumps of the waystones fallen, girning at him in the mist. He sees the midnight gallows, and the thing on the pole. But Marget's lateworms light him on. And he's steel at his side: that's sun and moon to him.

Kit sees neither sun nor moon; but sees the bright hair burning through the snow, the small face turning back at him, to bid him on. His lass.

Noll sees a greendark wood. He is afraid; but further, ever further in, he sees a flicker like a fall of leaves. Tom o Cloud.

But Imbry looking back sees the Horseman following. Nightshod, his riding makes no clatter on the Road. His mantle, like a smoke of silver, rises, rises from his burning cold: he is made of it, remade. Half turning back, she takes the Comb of stars, and with it, rime and rune, three times she combs her sloeblack hair: and of it, all about him, springs a thicket of its thorn, its leaves of fire.

Cold by the door: which is notional. A heel might drag it in the sand. Yet cross that sill and there is no returning: not by any road. A tower of stone may fall; these shadows never.