Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (2 page)

The girl lies waiting in the high laithe, knife in hand. Hail rattles on the slates. She cannot hear—what? Hunters. Closer still, she holds the knife, the same which cut the cord. Her breasts seep milk, unsuckled. Ah, they ache. Her blood wells, she is rust and burning; blood will draw
them
. Talons. Wings. Her mind is black and bright with fever. She would slip them, fight them, but her body clags her. It is sodden; it is burning. Sticks and carrion. The wind wauls, the rooftrees creak; below is muck and sleet and stone. She's drawn the ruined ladder up. Holed up. She stares at dark until the earth cants, until the knife's edge calls her back. Sharp across her palm: a heartline. White, then red. Her blood and milk spilled on the musty straw. That will call them, that will draw them from the dark, the tree, the bairn. But the earth starves for what she will not give it. Their voices tell her she is famine, she is hailseed, withering, the cold share in the dust.

She was Ashes. Ah, she'd flyted with them, wives and lasses, as they'd stripped her of her guising, scrubbed her, tugged the witchknots from her hair.
Cross all and keep nowt
, they'd told her, turning out the sooty pockets, folding up the tattered coat; and late and morning, privily, desperately, she'd drenched and drenched, but could not rid her belly of the seed. She's Ashes still. Still guising, in a tinker's jacket, oh, a brave lad, with her bloody hole. Caught in Ashes. Holed up. Crouching, clenching, in her darklong pain, she'd heard the shadows of the women mocking, turning out the pockets of the coat. Knife. Haws. Pebbles. Eggshells. There, the whirligig she'd cried for, that she'd broken, long years since. They hold up a skint and bloody hare.
Here's one been poaching.
Shivering, she shuts her eyes, but still she sees the brat like bruised fruit trodden in the grass, the cry between her legs. Windfall for the old ones. Ashes to ashes. His furled hand, like bracken. His blind mouth at her tit. If they'd found him there, they'd slain him, for the earth to drink.
Keep nowt.
She'd hung no rags to the hallows tree, when she'd left him. She'd not beg awd ones. And she'd nowt to give. Her hair was cut long since and burned. Her tongue was dry. But she'd wrapped him in a stolen jacket, nowt of Ashes. Twined a stranger's tawdry ring about his neck. Why? For the daws to pyke at? She's seen the crows make carrion of halfborn lambs, their stripped skulls staring from their mothers’ forks. On the slates, the dry rain dances, shards of Annis, shards of souls. Heel of hands against her aching eyes, until it's red, all red as foxes, and their green stench in the rain.

At Hallows Eve, Ashes’ mother hunts, unthralled from her stone. She is the wintersoul, the goddess of the high wild places, fells and springs and standing stones, the mistress of the deer. Her child's her prey.

Her mother Annis hates her, that her child (her child) is not herself. She wears her daughter at her throat in chains of ice, her blood as rings; she tears the new Sun, red with birthblood, from her daughter's side.

In winter, Ashes dies, is graved within her mother's dark.

And her bairn's shut up in Annis’ kist,
says an old wife, jangling her bunch of keys.
Down where she sits i’ dark, and tells her hoard of souls. And he's Sun for her crown. So all t'world's cold as Law and blind as herself.
She leans and whispers.
D'ye hear her at window with her nails?
The dark-eyed children huddle by the hearth and stare at her, the old wife crouching with her cards of wool. Her shadows cross her shadows, like a creel unweaving.
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 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?

Why?
says the boldest.

For a bagpipe that plays of itself,
says the eldest, as she rocks the babby.
Hush, ba
.

For a bellows til her blaze.

Not for Annis.

But there are some say Ashes journeys on the river of her milk, that she's the lost star from the knot of stars they call Black Annie's Necklace, or Nine Weaving, or the Clew, that rises with the fall of leaves, a web like gossamer and rain. The Nine are sisters, and they weave the green world and the other with a mingled skein of light and dark, weave soul and shroud and sail; but Ashes winds the Sun within her, that the old Moon shears.

And some say no, that Ashes is a waif on earth, and scattered with the leaves. She rocks the cradle in the midnight kitchen, where no coal nor candle is, in houses where a child has died. And some have heard her lulling in the dying embers; seen her shadow in the moonspill, in the leaf's hand at the pane.

The woman in the stubble field moves slowly, searching. Her palms are creased with blood. Her tangled hair is grey. There is something that she's lost: a knife among the weeds, a stone from off her ring. Her child, she says. If you suckle at her dry breast, drink her darkness, she must speak your fortune, love and death. She once told other fates, with other lips. And still she squats among the furrows, lifting up her ragged skirts for anyone or none. She holds herself open, like an old sack in a barn. No seed within, all threshed to chaff and silence. She was Ashes. She is no one. By the sticks of the scarecrow, she crouches, scrabbling at the clodded earth and crying, “Mam. Mam, let me in!"

There must be one called Ashes at the wren's wake, when they bring the sun. At Hallows, she is chosen. All the girls and women go with candles, lating on the hills. And if a man by chance (unchance) should see one, she will say she's catching hares, she's after birds’ nests, though it rattle down with sleet and wind. They both know that she lies. Her covey are not seeking with their candles, but are sought. And one by one, the tapers dwindle, or are daunted by the wind; the last left burning is the chosen. Or they scry her in an O of water from the Ashes spring, at midnight, when the Nine are highest. They will see her tangled in their sleave of light, as naked as a branch of sloethorn, naked as the moon. And though the moon in water's shaken by their riddling hands, its shards come round and round. Then swiftly as the newfound Ashes runs, longlegged as a hare, she'll find the old coat waiting at her bed's head, stiff with soot and sweat and blood. She walks in it at Lightfast, on the longest night, the sun's birth and the dark of moon. She smutches children's faces with her blacknailed hands. And their mothers say,
Be good, or she will steal thee. Here's a penny for her bag.
Her mother's tree is hung (thou knows) with skins of children, ah, they rattle like the winter leaves, they clap their hands.

The starved lad in the cornfield shivers, crying hoarsely as the crows he flights. He claps them from the piercing green, away like cinders into Annis’ ground. Clodded feet, cracked clapper, and his hair like what's o'clock, white dazzle.
Piss-a-bed,
the sheep-lads cry him. What he fears is that the Ashes child will dance among the furrows, rising to his cry. What he fears is that the crows will eat him. They will pick his pretty eyes. And he dreads his master's belt. Yet he sings at his charing. At nights, he makes the maids laugh, strutting valiant with the kern-stick, up and down.
Hunting hares?
calls Gill.
Aye, under thine apron,
he pipes, as the Sun does, guising. And they laugh and give him barley-sugar, curds and ale.
Thou's a bold chuck,
cries Nanny.
Will I show thee a bush for thy bird?
And he, flown and shining, with the foam of lambswool on his lip,
I's not catched one. But I will, come Lightfast. I'll bring stones, I'll knock it stark.
How they crow! And Mall with the jug cries,
My cage is too great for thy cock robin, ‘twill fly out at door.

Now he shakes with cold and clacks his rattle, and the cold mist eats his cry. The Ashes child will rise, unsowing from the corn: a whorl of blood, a waif. Craws Annis will crouch in the hedgerow, waiting; she will pounce and tear him with her iron nails, and hang his tatters from the thorn. Jack Daw will make a fiddle of his bones. He knuckles at his stinging eyes. He wants to cry. He sings. Back and forth, he strides the headland, as the guisers do, and quavers.
My mother was burned for a witch, My father was hanged from a tree ...
When he sees the hare start from the furrow, he yells, and hurls a stone.

The moon's love's the hare, his death is dark of moon. He is her last prey, light's body, as the midnight soul, night's Ashes, is her first: All Hallows Eve, May Eve, her A and O. In spring, the waning of her year, she hunts in green: not vivid, but a cold grey green, as pale as lichened stone; afoot, for her hunt is scattered. And she hunts by night. Where her feet have passed is white with dew. Swift and mad, the hare runs, towards hallows, to the thicket's lap, unhallowing in white. He sees the white moon tangled in her thorn. Her lap is sanctuary. He would lie there panting, with his old rough jacket torn, his blood on the branches, red as haws. But at dawn, the hey is down. The white girl rises from the tree; she dances on the hill, unknowing ruth. Yet he runs to her rising, eastward to the sky. Behind him runs his deerlegged death, his pale death. There are some now blind have seen her, all in grey as stone, greygreen in moving. No, another says, as red as a roe deer or the moon in slow eclipse. At dawn, she will be stone.

They are sisters, stone and thorn tree, dark and light of one moon. Annis, Malykorne. And they are rivals for the hare, his love, his death: each bears him in her lap, as child, as lover and as lyke. They wake his body and he leaps within them, quick and starkening; they bear him light. Turning, they are each the other, childing and devouring: the cauldron and the sickle and the cold bright bow. Each holds, beholds, the other in her glass. And for a space between the night and morning, they are one, the old moon in the new moon's arms, the paling of her breast. The scragged hare slips them as they clasp. He's for Brock's bag, caught kicking.

Wouldst know thy fortune?
her lover says. And laughing, as his bright hair ruffles at her breath,
Ah. What's o'clock?

Not yet
, she says, low-voiced. (The stone in his ear, like the blood of its piercing. The bruised root stirring on his thigh.)
Not dawning yet. Nor moon nor sun.

Will not it rise?
he says, rounding.

And go to seed.
She smiles, remembering.
Not yet. I've plucked it green.

The boy kneels, drunken, in the barn. They hold her down for him, the moon's bitch, twisting, cursing in the filthy straw. A vixen in a trap. He holds the felly of the cartwheel, sick and shaken, in the reeling stench. Cold muck and angry flesh. Their seed in snail tracks on her body, snotted in her sootblack hair. Their blood—his own blood—in her nails. She is Ashes and holy. He fumbles, tries to turn his face. He's not thirteen. “Get it into her, mawkin!” calls the bagman, wilting. Ashes and fear. “Thinks it's to piss with.” “Hey, crow-lad! Turn it up a peg.” “Spit in t'hole.” And the man with the daggled ribbons, his fiddle safe in straw, cries, “Flayed it's thy mam?"

The black hare's bonny, as they sing: she lies under aprons, she's love under hedges. And she's harried to the huntsman's death, the swift undoing of his gun. But the white hare's death, they say: a maid forsaken or a child unmourned, returning from her narrow grave. A love betrayed. Her false lad will meet her on the moor at dusk, a pale thing fleeting; he will think he gives chase. But she flees him and she follows, haunting like the ghost of love. She draws him to his death. And after he will run, a shadow on the hills, a hare: the moon's prey and her shadow. Love's the black hare, but the white is death. And one's the other one, now white, now black, and he and she, uncanny as the changing moon. They say the hare lays eggs; it bears the sun within a moon. A riddle. Break it and there's nought within.

He holds her ring up, glancing through it with his quick blue eye; and laughs, and pockets it. A riddle. What's all the world and nothing?

O
, says she,
thine heart. ‘Tis for any hand. Thyself would fill it.

And he,
Nay, it is th’ owl in thine ivy bush. It sulks by day.

Aye,
says she,
and hares by night.

Thy wit, all vanity and teeth.

Thy grave.

At midnight, then? I'll bring a spade and we'll dig for it.
His white teeth glimmer, ah, he knows how prettily; and daring her, himself (for the thorn's unchancy, and this May night most of all), he says,
At the ragtree?

At moonrise.

Between the blackthorn and the white is called the moon's weft, as the warp is autumn, Hallows, when her chosen sleeps. He dreams of lying in her lap, within the circle of her flowering thorn; his dreams wake wood. Between the scythe and frost he's earthfast, and his visions light as leaves. He keeps the hallows of the earth. And winterlong he hangs in heaven, naked, in a chain of stars. He rises to her rimes. When Ashes hangs the blackthorn with her hail of flowers, white as sleet, as white as souls, then in that moon the barley's seeded, and the new green pricks the earth. He's scattered and reborn. As in the earth, so in the furrows of the clouds, his Sheaf is scattered, whited from the sky until he rises dawnward, dancing in his coat of sparks. He overcrows the sun; he calls the heavens to the earth to dance. And in their keep, the Nine weave for their sister's bridal, and their threads are quick, their shuttles green and airy, black and white and red as blood. They clothe her in her spring and fall. In the dark before May morn, the Flaycraw dances, harping for the Nine to rise, the thorn to flower and the fires to burn, the wakers on the hills to dance.
The hey is down,
they cry.
Craw's hanged!
They leap the fires, lightfoot; crown their revelry with green. Not sloe. The blackthorn's death and life-in-death; the white is love. The bride alone is silent, rounding with the sun.