Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (3 page)

She looks at him though all her rings. There's mischief in her face, a glittering on teeth and under lids.
An you will, I may.

At quickening, the white girl rises, lighter of herself; she undoes her mother's knots. Alone of all who travel Brock's road backward, out of Annis’ country, out of death, she walks it in her bones, and waking. Neither waif nor wraith nor nimbling hare, but Ashes and alone. The coin she's paid for crossing is of gold, and of her make: her winter's son. Yet she is born unknowing, out of cloud. Brock, who is Death's midwife, sains her, touches eyes, mouth, heart with rain. She haps the naked soul in earth.

All the dark months of her prisoning, in frost, in stone, her shadow's walked the earth, worn Ashes outward, souling in her tattered coat. She's kept the year alive. But on the eve of Ashes’ rising, the winter changeling is undone. From hedge to hall, the women and the girls give chase, laughing, pelting at the guisers’ Ashes, crying,
Thief!
Bright with mockery and thaw, they take her, torn and splattered, in the street.
What's she filched? Craw's stockings. Cat's pattens. Hey, thy awd man's pipe! And mine. And mine.
Gibing, they strip her, scrub her, tweak the tangles from her hair, the rougher for her knowing. All she's got by it—small silver or the gramarye of stars—is forfeit. All her secrets common as the rain. And they scry her, and they whisper—
Is it this year? From her Ashes? Is't Sun for Mally's lap?
They take her coat, her crown, her silence. Naked and nameless then, she's cauled and comforted, with round cakes and a caudle of the new milk. She is named. Then with candles they wake Ashes, and with carols, waiting for the silent children and the first wet bunch of snowdrops at the door.

They say that Ashes wears the black fell of an unborn lamb; her feet are bare. She watches over birthing ewes and flights the crows that quarrel, greedy for the young lambs’ eyes. Her green is wordless, though it dances in the wind; it speaks. Her cradle tongue is leaves. And where she walks grow flowers. They are white, and rooted in the darkness; they are frail and flower in the snow. It is death to bring them under a roof; but on the morn of Ashes’ waking, only then, her buds are seely and they must be brought within, to sain the corners of the hearth. The country people call them Drops of Ashes’ Milk. She is the coming out of darkness: light from the tallow, snowdrops from the earth, Bride from the winter hillside; and from Hell, the child returned.

She is silent, Ashes; but she sings her tale. The guisers strung the fiddle with her hair, the crowd of bone. It sings its one plaint, and the unwed, unchilded, dance:

It was lightward and no lover. Whin sat by the ragtree, casting bones. There were rings on her every finger, silver, like a frost. They caught and cast, unheeding, caught and cast. A thief, a journey by water. Sticks and crosses. All false.

The thorn was on a neb of moorland, at the meeting of two becks: a ragthorn, knotted with desires, spells for binding soul with soul and child in belly. Charms for twisting heartstrings, hemp. They were bright once and had faded, pale as winter skies. Bare twigs as yet. The sloe had flowered leafless, late; the spring was cold. In the moon-blanched heath a magpie hopped and flapped and eyed the hutchbones greedily. He scolded in his squally voice. “Good morrow, your lordship, and how is her ladyship?” called Whin. She knew him by his strut and cock: his Lady's idle huntsman, getting gauds in his beak. The bird took wing. The bare bones fell. “Here's a quarrel,” she said, and swept them up, and cast again. When Ash came, she would rend him, with his yellow hair. Or bind him to her, leave him. Let him dangle, damn his tongue. She'd dance a twelvemonth on his grave. Ah, but she would be his grave, his green was rooted in her earth. And she thought of his white teeth in the greeny darkness and his long and clever hands. His hair like a lapful of flowers.

Whin was long-eyed, dark and somber, with a broad disdainful mournful mouth and haughty chin. But there was mischief in her face, as there was silver glinting in her hair: nine threads, a spiderwork of frost. Her clothes were patchwork of a hundred shades of black: burnt moorland, moleskin, crows and thunder; but her scarf was gold, torn silk and floating like a rag of sunrise. Looking up, she started—even now—and then she sighed and whistled softly, through her teeth. “Yer early abroad,” she said. “Or late. T'fires are out."

Down the moor came a woman, slowly, feeling with a stick, and a child before her on a leash, its harness sewn with bells. Its hair was hawkweed. When it stumbled, it rang; she jerked it upright. Whin watched in silence as the two came onward: the beggar groping with her blackshod stick, the white child glittering and jangling. They were barefoot. She was all in whitish tatters, like the hook moon, scarved about her crowblack head, and starveling, with a pipe and tabor at her side. When she felt the rags on the branches brush her face, she called, “Wha's there?"

"A traveller,” said Whin. “Will you break fast wi’ us?"

"Oh aye,” said the beggar, with her long hands in the ribbons, harping, harping. “Gi's it here.” The blind woman slung down her heavy creel and sat, her stick across her knees, and held out her palm. Whin put bread on it. “Hallows with ye,” she said. The long hand twitched like a singed spider; it snatched.

"Since ye'd be casting it at daws afore t'night,” said the beggar.

"Wha said I's enough for twa?” said Whin.

The beggar crammed. She wolfed with her white eyes elsewhere, as if it were something else she wanted, that she tore. Her brat hid, grimed and wary, in her skirts, and mumped a crust. “And why else wouldst thou be laiking out ont moor, like a bush wi’ no bird in it?” said the beggar. “Happen he's at meat elsewhere.” She listened for Whin's stiffening. And grinning fiercely through her mouthful, “D'ye think I meant craw's pudding? Lap ale?” The bluenailed hand went out again, for sausage and dried apple, which she chewed and swallowed, chewed and spat into her fledgling's mouth. “Ye'd best be packing."

Whin drank. Too late to whistle up her dog, off elsewhere. The beggar took a long swig of Whin's aleskin. As she raised her arm to wipe her mouth, her sleeve fell back; the arm was scarry, roped and crossed with long dry welts. “Will you drink of mine?” she said, mocking; and undid her jacket for the clambering child, for anyone. Her breast was white as sloethorn.

Whin was cutting sausage with her streak of knife, and whistling softly through her teeth, as if her heart were thistledown, this way and that.
” ... if I was black, as I am white as the snaw that falls on yon fell dyke..."

The child suckled warily; it burrowed. The beggar pirled its hair; she nipped and fondled, scornfully. “It fats on me. D'ye see how I am waning?” She was slender as the moon, and white; and yet no girl, thought Whin: the moon's last crescent, not her first. Her hair was crowblack in a coif of twisted rags, the green of mistletoe, and hoary lichen blues. At her waist hung a pipe of a heron's legbone and a tabor of a white hare's skin. She had been beautiful; had crazed and marred. Her eyes were clouded, white as stones. There was a blue burn on her cheek, like gunpowder, and her wolfish teeth were gapped. Yet her breast was bell heather; her hands moved like moorbirds on her small wrists. They were voices, eyes. Looking elsewhere, she called to Whin, “You there. See all and say nowt. Can ye fiddle? Prig petticoats? I c'd do wi’ a mort."

Whin said, “I's suited."

"And what's thou here about?"

"Gettin birds’ nests,” said Whin, all innocence.

"What for, to hatch gowks?"

"Crack eggs to make crowds of."

"And what for?"

"Why, to play at craw's wake."

The beggar wried her mouth. “Thou's a fool."

"And what's thou after?” said Whin. “Has thy smock blown away?"

"Hares,” said the beggar.

"Black or white?"

"All grey to me.” The beggar set the child down, naked in its cutty shirt. “Gang off, I's empty as a beggar's budget."

"Wha's brat is thou?” said Whin to the babby.

"No one's. Cloud's,” said the beggar.

"Ah,” said Whin.

The beggar did up her jacket. The child sat by her petticoats with a rattle: a wren tumbled round within a clumsy cage. “Will we do now?"

"How's that?” said Whin.

"Ah,” said the beggar. “I give and take. My ware is not for town.” She looked sidelong. Like a snake among heather roots, her hand was in her petticoats. She found something small and breathed on it, spat and rubbed and breathed. “Here,” she said to Whin, holding out a round small mirror. “Is't glass?"

"It's that.” It was clouded, cold; she held it gingerly. There was earth on it, and in the carving. It was bone. She looked in it and saw another face, not hers: a witch, a woman all in green, grey green. A harewitch. A green girl, gaunt and big with child. The beggar was listening with her crooked face. “No,” said Whin. “My face is me own."

"A pretty toy,” the beggar said. “An ape had worn it in his cap."

Whin turned it; she ran her thumb round the edge. Earth bleared it. There was gravedust on her hands; she dared not wipe them. She kept her voice light. There are witches on the walk, between times. If you meet them, you must parry. “Here's thieving. Does they wake when yer come and go?"

"They keep no dogs,” said the beggar. “And they sleep. This?” Between her hands was a scarf like an April sky, warped with silver. It was cloud and iris, changing. It was earthstained, like the sky in water in a road, a rut. She drew it through and through her hands. A soul.

"Here's a fairing,” said Whin, and shivered.

"Aye, then,” said the beggar. “There's a many lads and lasses gangs to't hiring at that fair, cross river, and they bring twa pennies til their fee.” Her voice grew deeper. “'Here's fasten penny,’ they says. And mistress til them, ‘Can tha reap? And can tha shear?'” Her fingers found the wafted scarf; they snatched it from the air. “And then they's shorn."

Whin watched it fluttering. The scarf had changed, like brown leaves caught in ice. “That's not on every bush. Was never a hue and cry when you—?"

"Cut strings? Wha said I did?” Her fingers brushed, ah, lightly, at Whin's neck, where the gold scarf flaunted, like a rag of dawn.

Whin flinched, but flung her chin up. “I's a fancy to't drum."

"I's keeping that,” said the beggar. “For't guising."

"Did yer gang wi’ them? Guisers?"

"I were Ashes."

"Ah,” said Whin.

The child in the heather clapped its hands, it crowed. At its jangling, the small birds rose and called. Whin looked sidelong at it, smiling through her rings. “And you getten yer apron full. Here's catching of hares."

The beggar twitched its string. “I'd liefer gang lighter."

"Cold courting at Lightfast. Find a barn?"

"Back of Law, it were, and none to hear us. It were midnight and past, and still, but for t'vixens crying out on t'fell. On clicketing, they were, and shrieked as if their blood ran green. But for t'guisers ramping. See, they'd waked at every door, they'd drank wren's death. And went to piss its health at wall. ‘Up flies cock robin,’ says one, ‘and down wren'; and another, ‘Bones to't bitches.’ ‘And what'll we give to't blind?’ says third, and scrawns at fiddle. ‘Here's straw,’ they said. ‘And threshed enough,’ said I. But they'd a mind to dance, they'd swords. D'ye think brat's like its father sake? Is't Sun? Or has it Owler's face, all ashes? Hurchin's neb? Think it one of Jack Daw's get?"

"Nine on one?” said Whin, furious.

The stone-eyed beggar shrugged.

"Dogs."

"Boy and all,” said the beggar. “They set him on.” Thrub thrub went the fingers on the little drum and stopped the windless pipe. They pattered. “Happen not his brat. Nor old man's nowther. Cockfallen, he were.” She leaned toward Whin's silence, secret, smiling with her wry gapped mouth. Her eyes were changeless. “But I marked ‘em, aye, I marked ‘em all.” She drew a braid of hair from underneath her cap, undid the knot with swift sure fingers. Moving on the wind, the tress was silver, black and silver. It was wind, as full of blackness as the northwind is of snow. “There,” she said. In her fingers was an earring, gold, with a dangling stone, a bloodred stone. “D'ye know its make?"

Whin sat. Her hands were knotted, rimed with rings.
False,
said her heart's blood.
False.
The black hair stirred and stirred, so much of it, like shadow. The beggar leaned toward her silence, with her scarred white throat. “Is't torn, his ear?” She flipped the earring, nimbly as a juggler, tumbling it and sliding it on and off each finger, up and down. “What will you give for't?"

The child's white hair was dazzling in her eyes, like snow, like whirling snow. Whin turned her face. “It's common enough.” But the needles of the light had pierced her; she was caught and wound in hinting threads.

The beggar palmed it, pulled it from the air. “And which of nine?” she said, her white face small amid her hair. “There was one never slept that night, nor waked after. Drowned,” she said. “Wast thine? They found him in Ash Beck. They knowed him by his yellow hair, rayed out i't ice. Craws picked him, clean as stars. Or will. Or what tha will. Wouldst barley for a death?"

Her fingers pattered on the drum. “That's one. And which is thine? There's one he s'll take ship and burn. He s'll blaze i't rigging, d'ye see him fall? And ever after falling, so tha'lt see him when tha close thine eyes. That's one.

"And one s'll dance ont gallows, rant on air. Is't thine? His eyes to feed ravens, his rags to flay crows. D'ye see them rising? Brats clod stones. And sitha, there's a hedgebird wi’ a bellyful of him. And not his eyes. She stands by t'gallows. D'ye see her railing? That's one.