Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (22 page)

The leaf-witch touches her cheek. “Come, lass. Farther still."

She lets herself be drawn. Stumbling in a waking dream, she thinks the lightwebs weigh her down; she thinks the leaf-witch draws her by a heartstring, ah, it tugs her by the ribs. Thorns pluck at her and thrawn roots trip.
No coin.
She tries to turn her pockets out, to pay her fare in light; but they are empty. She has gathered nothing.

"Here."

Where?
she thinks, half-waking. Wading to the knee in drifted leaves.
No wood.
She sees a thorn tree by a tumbled wall, unleaving. All but leafless; yet there spills from it an endless tale of leaves. In her half-sleep, she could spell them, all the stories of a world. The wood above.

"In hallows,” says the witch.

Beside the hawtree stands a hulk of tumbled stone. A fold once, or a shieling. Roofless huddle and a sill. The leaf-witch draws her in and laps her in a ragged patchwork. Of the leaves, and patched with sky? Of cloud and heaven, clouted with the leaves? In tatters now, however made: outworn undone. There's a needle rusting in the ravelled stuff. It pricks. She sees faint traceries of silver, patterns of a half-remembered sky: an earth unquilting of the stars.

"Light down wi’ thee,” the leaf-witch says. “Wake wood."

Margaret sleeps.

In his study, Grevil waked and read. He turned the pages over, written in that childish careful hand. “Of Leapfire, and the like Observances...” Fair copy: she had set herself to make pleached alleys of his plash and thicket. He could see her as she bent to work: the inky fingers and ill-fortuned hair, pale sorrel, wisping from its plaits. A child. A runaway. But of what kindred? By her carriage, gently born, and kitted like an antick queen (dragged backward through a hedge); yet knew—or feigned to know—no more of courtship than a tinker's brat. An innocent. No witch, he'd swear it. Nor an elfin, by her inky hands. A changeling that the folk had blinded of her memory? Yet spoke the elder language, offhand, like a poet or a Lunish mage. The language of the dead.

"Of Leapfire..."

But beyond the page he saw a daylit fire, pale, a troubling of the air; he saw the dreadful gardener with his rake.
He sweeps the way for Ashes,
said the voices at his back. His hand was in a colder hand; his new coat that was leafgreen yesterday crowblack, as if the fire had burned it. Black amid black skirts behind him. Through the tangled smoke, he saw the swirl and fall of birds, of leaves like birds. Of ashes on the wind.

All souls.

The air was full of stories, silent voices that would speak.

A something cold and gentle brushed him, and another, cheek and chin. A flurry. Eyes, mouth, heart: all ice. His mother snowed.

In his free hand, the flowers wilted in the bud. He cast them to the ground, as he was told.

Lyke to the earth's lap, lightly on the Road.

Long after, he had asked the women, spinsters in the sun and gleaners, Ashes all:
What unleafs in the Unleaving?
And the blue-eyed witch woolgathering had said,
All souls that's not been tellt.
Her apron full, she'd plucked the tendrils from the thorn.
If thou didst know their tongue, they'd tell thee allt stories o't world.

He'd writ it down.

Aye, prick it out,
the witch had said.
An thou were cloven, thou might hear. But thou's an inch too many for yon sprights. At cockcrow, they's away.

Alone of all the living, Ashes—any woman in her turn—could hear, translate the spirits, wind their stories into shrouds. And being told, the stories of the dead unbound them. Ropes of snow.

And still untold they thronged him, struck him whiteblind with their wings of snow. They beat against the portals of his soul. The dead. Their silence was their song, was time.

He looked again at Margaret's page.

A revenant?

An earthly nourice sits and sings, and ay she rocks an empty cradle by the hearth. She's spelling to her sea-drowned daughter, Imbry that she bore, to bring her to her landfall, to the shore of Cloud; as she has spelled these seven years. In Law is timeless, neither sun nor moon will ever be: and every breath is drawn a new bereavement and a hope. Her milk child, listening, lulls to sleep.

But at a sound elsewhere, the sleeper woke, was Margaret, remembering that her nurse was gone. Was taken: for those Scarrish arts she practiced. That she taught.

Cloud now.

Unbounded; yet bereft. The consolations of her cell—her nurse's touch, her mother's ghostly voice—were gone. No comb nor candlelight, no cradling play of string. No lap. No leaves—
Ah, Margaret, do you see them fall?
No tale.

Herself alone: then she would voyage.

Clouded from the view, bright Journeyman plies onward, slyest of the wandering stars. She's rising. She is never risen, ever at the brim of Law: dusk-diving, whelming in the wave of light. Her dance is with the sun; she dares it. Thief, they call her, and the Ferrier, whose River is the starry Road: her lading is of souls.

Coatless, Brock crouches by a fire of weed. Beyond it, there is nothing but the drub and hishing of the waves, the glint and fading of the shingle; and her boat, drawn up and laden. She awaits the tide.

In Grevil's study by the guttered candle lay a map of all the heavens; on it, like the unknown constellations of a dream—
of course
—there stood an empty wineglass and a pair of compasses, a flute, a quill, a congeries of nutshells and a knife, the twire of lemon peel it cut. A Vanitas. There lay the pages of a manuscript, emended in the writer's hand. The moonlight fell aslant, moved on. Across the heavens retrograde, towards dawn, there ran a scuttling scrying mouse. Unlike a falling star, it paused a moment, scenting marrow; and was gone. The still-life and the text remained.

"...two roads to a Life, as figur'd in the starry Sky, recross'd: the Lyke Road and the Zodiack, the river and the Mill it drives, the hallow'd and Profane.

"That one we call the Sun's road, that we tread with him, the slow wheel of the Year. So that company of Players that we call Brock's Journeymen doth lie a night at this Sign or at that in turn, as doth the Sun in his Houses: at the Keys, the Coffer, at the Harvester, the Hind, so many Inns. Then rising, they pack on.

"There is an Other road that is our dreams, their Play. It is what Ashes tells. From what Green room we know not, the Soul is call'd; and enters at that Crossroads where the Fiddler and the Witches meet. Their Scene is at the soul Spring in the roots of Thorn: as Countryfolk do say, in Mally's yard. So in a myriade of myriades of Lives one Comoedie is play'd: we play, disfiguring in turn the Fool, the knott of Swords, the Lanthorn-Bearer; brave the Ravens and the Scythe. How long's the Lyke Road? says the riddle: just as long as thou draw'st breath; however long, too brief. We die in Ashes’ lap, wherein the Sun is born."

By the third of her allotted candles—they were dwindling—Margaret read.
I bid thee goodnight,
Mistress Barbary had said withdrawing: so she studied, waking nightlong with the dark, to bathe in it, renew herself. The day astounded her. It was—a clamoring of light, a forge, a chariot with fiery wheels, with horses fire-shod. A sea. And she an inland creature, of the underworld, bred up in darkness like a pot-blanched plant. Unbalanced with the light, she marvelled how these Cloudish creatures swam in it; stood, walked the dizzy earth. She staggered through their working hours, timesick, daunted by the bright and battering sun.

But now the failing day was quenched, the channer of the birds died down. Oblivious, she read until the candle crouched and flared. She startled. No one there. A wind had risen, that was all. The rain had stopped.

She knelt up on the bed, her finger in her place; twitched back the curtain.

Fire pooled and eddied in the quarrels of glass, that tilted it, now this way and now that, as on a choppy sea. Night wavered. Not the moon but her own face, pale amid the trees, looked in.

She bent and blew the candle out; then pushed the casement wide.

O heavens.

Stars. Thick as sparks from a fire of juniper. At first, a dazzlement, a shock of ecstasy: but even as she stood, her mind, swift-sorting, strung the patterns. Arm in arm, knee deep in apple trees, she saw the Witches on the Road. They looked as Norni drew them in the ashes of the hearth, in secret; like her card, but glorious. The fire-folk. One had a wisp of cloud for scarf, the tatters of a cloak of rain; the other swung the new moon at her hip, a budget with a star for coin.

And looking, Margaret laughed for wonderment: but silently. She'd learned that first of all, to make no sound, betray no vestige of her mortal blood. She sat back on her heels and rocked herself for joy and terror. And the household slept. No crowd of them ran out, half-dressed, to marvel at the city in the air.
Look, look up at the skies! O look.
So this was ... commonplace? What gods were they in Cloud, to leave such jewels scattered in a farmyard? Were they careless of their wealth? Or cunning? Did they mean to trap her, catch her gazing at forbidden stars? A thief of light. She shook with it. But even as she waited, shivering, for the sound of keys, the cold wind in the door, she thought:
So little of it.
But a strip of sky above the trees, a hem of petticoat. She would see more. And if they punished her, she would have seen.

No coal nor candlelight betrayed her. Soft as shadow now, she slipped into the greater room, the loft. She listened at the stairhead. Nothing but the wind in branches and the settling of the boards. No keys, no clattering of feet, no stench of butchery and fear. But she could smell the pears and apples on their slatted boards, like wine but sweeter far; could feel the buzz in them of prisoned summer, like the ferment in her blood. Could almost feel the tree in every timber, singing in its nailed captivity. Could feel the stones.

Barefoot on the wide bare boards, she stole to the farther window, clambered on a kist to reach the sill. Drew breath; and then undid the shutter, swung the glass.

Unleaving.

Norni's stars, that came not under Law, true North; and Thea's, painted in her cards: the Ship, the Ladle, and the bright Swan, barely risen, skimming low aslant the trees; the Lantern and the Knot of Swords. The Crowd of Bone that sang her mother's death. Ablaze. But not as painted: wheeling in a deepless sky, the Ladle spilling, and the great Ship overturned.
I spoke them truly; I am shipwrecked.
And again she laughed, astonished, through her tears.
O I am drowned.

"Here,” said Grevil, turning from his inlaid cabinet. “Here's elfshot. This—” He held a leafshaped blade of flint, no bigger than his thumbnail, white as salt. “—from Imberthwaite. It struck a tailor as he sat a-fishing. He was never at home in this world again. They say. His widow afterward did say he heard the bridles in his dream and followed."

He laid it on the page beside his drawing: like, but as the light to shadow.

"And this—” he said. Another, sharp as fire, gold as honey, wave-knapped. “This lay buried in a barrow mound. A thousand years, may be; or ten, a myriad. Perchance it lay in dark when first my lady's Ashes rose; slept still when she did wake."

In dark.
She turned it over in her hand: so light. Small substance; all intent. He answered what she did not ask.

"An ashing. A tale of one who bore it. A map for journey after death. Like this—” He slid another and another drawer to show his curiosities. A coin, a shard of pottery, slip-glazed; a bear of ivory; a bone. “Like this—” He touched the gold ring at his ear. “—that will be mine.” He looked at her. “We go not into dark untold.” No emphasis, perhaps, on
we
.

Another drawer. He turned a jewel that was in it, of an owl-eyed deity. Of gold: the earth could mar it not. He bent his face from her, as if the telling were a secret, inmost of his heart. His hands that held a pen, a blade with skill, shook ever when he spoke.

"It is mine argument that men do write the map of heaven on this earth, in stone, in history, in myth; but that the heavens write it in ourselves, in earth.” Again the sliding in and out of drawers. A leaf in stone; a pebble, water-thirled; a thumbling skull; a shell; a dragonfly. “That earth itself is ashing for the great world's soul."

The Nine their book,
she thought.
'Tis writ in wind, in snow; and that he cannot keep.

Now Grevil smiled. “A star appearing in the Anvil, they do say, was Tharrin's soul. A comet: for the which he ever wore his hair unbraided, so was caught by it. He hanged in riding out to hail his star, so he did fall with its return.” He bent. “Now these—” This drawer was full of hailstones, rattling.

Witches’ souls. Faint malice in them still. She looked away.

"'Tis said that witches do instone themselves—and others, aye. They draw their enemies by name, to braid them in their hair. To hoard.” A click of pebbles as he raked through them. “They say my lady's crown is souls."

He could not know.

Shut and open. And this other drawer of ships, and each no bigger than a shell: as if a fleet were wracked in it. “Ah, these are pretty toys."

But Margaret stood elsewhere, in a storm of memory. As if a key had turned, a cabinet stood open, now she saw a white bed in a tower, and a book, its leaves blown backward in a wind. Her keep.
But I ran,
she said.
I am not locked in it.
And reason answered:
it is locked in you.
Box in box. Another storm: and Norni crouching, combing, by the bead of fire in a lamp, to bring the boat ashore, bring Imbry's boat...?

"...in Scarristack. They call them soulboats there. They brim them full of oil, and set them burning on the sea, ‘tis said, to bring the dead to the Unleaving. As we walk the Road.” He was all alight with it, imagining. “But see now.” And he held to her a pebble scrawled and flecked. She took it; it weighed nothing in her hand. Not stone but eggshell.

Now she looked to him. “'Tis light."