Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (28 page)

Oranges. They keep in Law.

"Is there not hallow days?” A spark of sugar leapt and fastened, burning, to her wrist. She sucked it. “Do yer not remember Ashes, there i’ Babylon?"

On brittle ground. “We keep not feasts."

"Here's Cloud i’ this household.” Stirring. “Did thy folk never tell thee of Ashes? Of Annis and t'world beyond?"

Behind. I left it.
For a moment, caught as in a glass, she knew not coming from her going. Margaret in the deep reached out to Margaret. To pull her in, to drown her. Or to fish her up. She knew not which. Carefully, she said, “I am schooled in goddesses. But I have done them no observance."

"None? Did sun not rise there?"

They sought him up, they sought him down

They spared not th’ featherbeds a-raking...?

Just then, the sugar turned to glass, a perfect crystalline.

"Now,” said Barbary. She put the fruit to the sugar. The imbers sank, enjewelling in their essence. Each star embedded in its sphere, becoming it, outspiralling until the heavens were one red. An alchemy.

And
O,
thought Margaret.
I remember. Was there was not a ring? I was cradled in the moon's lap, and she gave me—Took?
“I had an ashing. That I know. But it is lost."

In and out went the maids at the far end; in bounced Nan, still singing:

O I's had many and many's th’ maid

But th’ likes of yer I's never had baking!

Barbary pointed with her great spoon. “Stone pots. Did I not tell thee?"

"There now. Be forgetting my petticoats next.” Off went Nan.
” ... th’ crockery and platters breaking..."

Turning back to Margaret, the mistress said, “If it ever were, then it's in Ashes’ bag. So come to it, thou will be tellt."

Unclouded and a setting moon. It would be perfect dark. Margaret slid from shadow into shadow on the way to Law. Her heart beat like a nest of swans, uprising in a flare and clattering of wings, a wind of prophecy. Time's falconer, she bid it to her hand.

At the crossing of ways stood the Owlstone with its long wake of shadow. Margaret felt within the hollow of the stone. The eggs and the barleycake she'd left were gone.
Crows,
she thought.
Foxes.
But there was something else in the litter, sharp-edged to her searching fingertips. Knapped stone. She scrabbled it out: a leafshaped blade, an arrowhead, faintly glittering by moonset.
Daws’ nest?

A shadow at her back.

The wind that impelled her whirled her round to face—no huntsman, but the lounging crow lad. “Barley,” he said, palms outward in truce. Ale on him. He reeled a little where he stood.

Foreseeing made her tense and lucid as a waterdrop, ingathered. “Go away."

"My road as well as thine,” he said, and shrugged at heaven, where the Lyke Road shone like spilled silver. “Broad enough for a fiddler and as many as will.” She saw the flash of his teeth. “Thou's late abroad, Mag Moonwise. Ganging til a dance?"

"A silent one.” Woundless as water, she'd come round again, as if no dart had pierced. She turned her knowing like a stone of crystal in her mind: the skyroad within it like a twire of silver, herself like a flaw of air. “Let me by."

But still he strutted in her way, importunate. “I's gamed wi’ Grevil's sword,” he said. “Awd Noll's. I weared it for him, belt and all. Nowt else.” He laughed, leaned closer still. “I garred him kneel for it.” A whiff of somewhat alien, of smoke and civet. “But's there's one I's see'd this night will horse me. Wouldst thou up behind?"

"Afoot,” she said. “Thou wants the manage on't."

"Thou nettlebed.” But now he looked at her. “Thou's Ashes born, I'd swear: if ever vixen had a prick and stones."

She looked back at the crow lad, face to face. By the lees of moonlight, he was pale again, as if his dayself were his shadow. He'd cropped his hair, lopped off the dirty clags. Had doused it, seemingly. So lightened, it had lifted. It spiked about his head like thistledown.

She held out the sharded blade. “Yours?"

"Elfshot.” He mimed a bow. “My lady hunts."

"Where souls are. Not with arrows."

"Aye, and thou's rid out wi’ her."

"I walk."

"Thou jinny-howlet.” He bent close to her, breathed ale and awe. “There's bones i'th heather. See'd ‘em. Wind blaws through and through him, and there's none has tellt his death.” And lower still. “
Her
craws had his eyes."

"They take not souls, I think."

He looked oddly at her. “Thou hailstone. Didsta fall frae t'moon?"

"Walked,” said Margaret. The starglass bumped at her knee; the stars fizzed like cider in her blood. She looked to the heavens. “No word. And I'll show thee something."

"Up thy petticoats? Catched me a cunny?"

"In the Fool's cap,” she said.
Now
, said her tryst. Not looking back, she turned, and climbed the path.

"Black or white?” he called after. “Thy cunny. Black or white?” No answer. “Squirrel, by thy head.” No turning. Far behind, she heard his vaunting echo. “I's a star ...
star
... thou's not spied.” Gone? But he lagged her, shrugged and dallied to the bare hill, crowned with stones. The round earth's nave.

"Here's nowt,” he said. “Thou babby. Bare as thy lap."

"No tongue! All eyes!” She pointed heavenward. Bare nightscape. Silence. The crow lad sulked and fretted. Yet he stayed.

The great moon, gold, imperfect—half a token—set.

A star fell, flintstruck: a glint and gone.

"Ah,” said Margaret, breathing out.

He muttered softly—a charm?

"Soft,” she said. “'Twill come."

Another? Or imagined? There! Elsewhere, at the edge of sight. Faint, fleeting. For a space, no more. And then a nonpareil, a beauty. And its lightsake, hind and doe.

"There,” said Margaret.

Rolling back on the grass, the crow lad laughed. “Thou fond! Didsta comb them frae thy hair?"

"No.” Six—seven, flick and fall. Like lacemakers’ shuttles, this way and that. Nine. Trailing sleavesilk. “I foretold."

"So any goatboy could. Yon's nobbut Hailseed. Falls i't summer fields. I's found it oftentimes. Not catched one. Clarty stuff.” A sly look sideways. “Come harvest, Jack Daw dreams o riding, and he spills."

"That's thy lady's talk,” she said disdainfully. “More of thy jig."

"Not wi’ him, I never—” He sat up, tearing at the grass, his back to her. “Thou urchin. Thou hollybush. Misdoubt thou scattered them thysel."

A memory: oil of orange in a candle flame, swift sparks. “I've never seen them till now.” And thought: nor any stars of summer. Nor the sky itself, but through a slit.

"Bred up in a kist, wast ‘a?"

"Yes."

He said nothing; but she felt a shift in him, a sliding, like the slump of snow in thaw. Could fall heavy on her. Could resolve as mist.

They lay apart in the summer grass, looking up at one sky. By one and one, the stars fell. Flakes of cold fire. A riddle of embers.

The crow lad shifted in the dark. She saw a tawny star between his fingers like a ring. “Some says they's my lady's lops—Hey!—'Cause they's wick as fleas. And moon's her nail she cracks ‘em with.” Fleas in a black ewe's fell. “But up east, they says Daw's threshing out yon Sheaf. And Death's his flail."

A field of corn, all rooted in a sleeping man, a sheaf whose binding is a belt of stars.
She looked for the Hanged Man behind the hill. “He's cut down."

"Aye, toppled. He's til t'fields at dawn.” He gazed. “Awd wench I knawed—"

"Ah!” cried Margaret. Scattering bright.

"Said when a star falls, t'Nine is weaving."

Now she glanced to him from heaven.

"Said they's strands of Ashes’ hair. Burnt up."

A cold wind at her nape. She watched the bright shears slash and slash the web. The Skein is fate: the stories of the wood above, all braided toward an end. But these lightfallen stars were chancy; they undid. Untold. They sleaved the Skein. “And what thinkst thou?"

He laughed. “Yon sparks,” he said, “they's chimneysweepers. Weeds.” He puffed his cheeks and blew, outspread his empty hands. “Like that. They come to dust."

"I don't—Oh!"

Like sparks whirled from a burning brand. She leapt up, as if to greet a messenger, with arms outflung. A harbinger, that ran before—what coming? Not the dawn. Her face uplifted to the thronging stars, as if they'd cover her like snow.

The lightstorm struck. A windless rain of light, a swift-scrawled palimpsest, a tranquil fury. Margaret turned and turned to it, light-lashed and whirling in an ecstasy, a-dazzle and a-dance with stars. The heavens’ whipping top.

But the crow lad crouched and swore, like one beat down by hailstones. “Get by, thou fool!” As if the sky had shivered like a glass, still crazing; as if the shards were arrows of the Hunt. He caught her by the sleeve and cried, “Get down!” But she whirled away from him. The sky had overturned. Below her stood the stones of heaven, and above, the bladed earth, a-dazzle, like the wind in barley and the scythes that struck: light reaping light. And then no
as above
and no
below
, no
likeness
but light's self; no dark, no otherwere, no
this
and
this
, but
now
: a wave of light that stood and shivered. Stood.

A flickering at the shutter's edge. Not wind. His candle burned unwavering. A summer lightning, then? Grevil rubbed his eyes, that dazzled with his overwaking. And he bent again to study. Not for Margaret's eyes, this Lunish book. Yes, here, as he recalled; he wrote now in the margin,
Star Shott.
“Nostoch understandeth the nocturnall Pollution of some plethoricall and wanton Star...”
Quaere: if not Slae?
“...or rather excrement blown from the nostrills of some rheumatick planet...”
Here's catching of colds,
thought Grevil; but he noted,
Hee is Melancholie, rather.
“...in consistence like a gelly, and so trembling if touched.”
Our barren wives do gather it; and wantons that would dream on Paramours. They saye a mayd was got with Childe by a falling star; Shee knew no other gallant; and was brought to bed. Of what, I cannot read. Yet being of its temper, cold and moyst—or else by lawe of Adversaries,
vid.:
What does, undoes—they call it
Unmanfall.
The marrish Witches mell with it a sort of grease, that smutted on the bravest Verge will shrivel it. What mooncalves may be got of it, I know not; nor what dreams may come.

Before her lay a field by moonlight. Not silvery with it, though: as red as leaves in hallows. Light in grain. Earthfire, indwelling, even as the cold quick silver of the moon: slow fire that a breath would blaze. Reaped fire and rustling, bound in sheaves. The sun was harvest.

For the old moon's bread.

She knew that.

And a scarecrow—no, a traveller stood, he walked among the sheaves, the embers of the sun in shock. Long-coated like a shepherd, with a broad hat and a staff. His budget at his belted side. His black dog at his heel.

Astray. And wandering as he willed.

He dreams of this,
she thought.
Of the Unleaving. I am walking in his sleep. The Road—

The moon's hand waked her.

Barbary set down her water jug. “Past four, and still abed? Thou snail.” Grey morning, but foretasting gold. “They's lang afield. They'll be crying t'kirn at Out Riggs, and there's all to do."

Grevil stood dismounted at the headland, looking out upon his field. The last to reap. A good year: it would fill his barns. His sicklemen, of August weary, bent to work amid the standing corn. His bandsters sheaved and stacked. He watched the rope and slide of sinews in a shoulder, in a back; the clinging of a sweated shirt, the gold glint of an arm. They wore broad hats of sunburnt straw, with here and there a wreath of poppies: for they cried the neck today.
A kiss, a clip!
Their Leapfire black and sinewy this year, not fire but its coals. Gib Hawk. White dogteeth in his workburnt face. His mouth—
think not of it
—his mouth would taste of hurts. The bluest eyes.

Noll saw no hawkweed boy among the harvesters, still whiter than the shocks of barley. For the Ashes lad must not come nigh the harvest fields. ‘Twas lying with his dam. A blasphemy.
(And if one lay with him? As length to naked length entwined, one sweat? One ecstasy. Or thought of it, between the furrows, then...?)
His blood the earth had hungered for, unspilt, was now anathema. His print, his shadow even: they would taint the corn. And yet he was himself the harvest.

In and inward in their spiral, sunwise, crept the reapers with their knives. Noll had a snake-stone, split and polished, in his cabinet. Like this, a spiral, coiled and chambered on itself: but stone. It gendered naught.

A sheaf. Another sheaf. No eddy now: its eye. A patch no broader than his closet standing; then his table; then a man. They ringed it in a running wheel.

Their master now uncovered to his mistress Ashes, she that wed the corn; and stooping for his sickle blade, he joined them in the sacrifice. They waked the corn.

Naked in among the stones of Law, the crow lad who was Leapfire knelt. They'd bound him in a rope of straw. The mask was at his shoulder, bristling, woven of the corn. A crown of it: his power and his overthrow. He knew that passionless and smiling face: Noll's token that would not lie hid. He'd wear it at the last, when he had risen; and unseen, would see.

All round him and below, the fields lay bare. The neck was cried, the stooks were carried, Grevil's ploughland shorn and carted like a drab.

Before him lay his grave. They'd brought him hooded to this place at dark, and laid him in his long trance, in my lady's cleft. At whiles he waited; whiles he muttered to himself old ends of rimes: what he must say. Before the cockcrow they would bid him answer. Soon, it must be soon. How slowly, slowly ran this night; but it was paling: now he saw a little through the meshes of his blindfold. Nobbut sack. All round his burial, the earth was trodden in a maze, a spiralling. Not all the feet that hollowed it were dead. He saw them: shade on shadow in the dawn mist, walking, now this way and now that, and through and through. They mingled when they met, like fire. Ah, but cold.