Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (47 page)

A moon had rounded and had waned, another moon was new, since she had bled in Annot's place: and still her sheets were stainless as the fallen snow. A sorcery of time. As if a shivered egg had risen, rounding from its fall; as if a rarity of glass, once shattered, had renewed itself, a bubble had unburst. Herself. A secret that she held in wariness, in rising joy. A gift. She had not asked, but it was guessed and given. Ashes’ privilege. Her will.

Biting off her black sheepskin mittens, she blew her nails; then in the hoarfrost on a stone, she drew the sign for
sky
: two curves that crossed. The Lyke Road and the Skein: the rune of memory and the run of time.

Mirror to the wider sky, epitome: she left it, for the Sun to take.

Now,
thought Whin,
afore she's wearied o me.
She looked into the dazzle and fury of the souls.
Brave now ‘d take her fancy.
And she plunged, down-diving through a shattering of adamant to black abyss, a sea-rift where the souls were caved: a den of dragons, sleepless guardians, each brooding on its hoard. Its hoard was self. They reared up at her like snakesheads, rattling their wings. They struck. Their hate was like a stench; their hurlyburly was a cataract, astounding. All about her, in her, venoming her thoughts: a seething, whispering, wailing of disbodied voices, cursing and caressing in a thousand tongues; a clamoring, despairing rant of souls.

A tale's a braid, is't? Here's clags want combing.

For they told no tales but riddles. Rants, plaints, wordless lamentation, grievances, mad rages, pangs of memory indrawn about a festering thorn.

And who undid the nine witchknots? ... I've lost a sheath and knife I'll never ... Lady, will you weep for me? ... Cover her face, mine eyes ... Craws eat thee, cock and eyes ... O bonny babes, if you were mine ... some violets, but they wither'd all ... of stone, cold stone ... and never shall for you ... lest I come search for thee, dress me up grandly ... so much blood in him? ... a thing arm'd with a rake ... woe to my sister, false ... and all alone the grave I made ... How could you lay me down ... by, by lully lullay ... by the greenwood side ... and love me, now? ... two eyes of tree, of tree ... I saw the new moon late ... Come down the stair ... mine eyes dazzle ... come down and rock him ... with the old moon in her arm ... that thief and whore is at my door, let no one rise ... Lief mother, let me in...?

Whin drew a long breath.
No wonder t'awd lass is mad, wi’ yon chunnering worms to chide her. Blinded by t'uproar.

They were all of them untold: that teind of Cloudish souls who had no friends to bid for them, no ashings. They had died alone, forsaken or too proud to beg or bend: the witches and the whores; the hanged, drowned, slain on battlefields; the murdered and the murdering; the mad; the Ashesfast. The ditchborn brat, his strangling mother, dead of him in turn; the father of them both. All, all of them—the wolf's heads and the hapless innocents—were Annis's alike. Crowsmeat. Sleepless stones.

This endless brief while, Whin was listening, listening in the outcry for her son—not here? O goddesses, not here. But she felt a shifting in my lady. She would lose her and be lost. No time.

"This,” she said, emerging into silence. Stunned with it. The stone she held was like moonblood. She knew not its tongue.

My lady's blind gaze was fixed on elsewhere. “Bodva of Idho? The whore is dead of me. Long since."

"Herself?” said Whin in practiced awe. She'd not heard of her, so many thousand years undone; but an Ashes must be swift to improvise. “I's never tellt so great a soul. There's nonesuch now i’ Cloud."

"Carrion,” said Annis.

"So dragons may eat dragons. Did she not—?"

"—dare front me?"

"And so has paid. And will pay, evermore.” As she herself would thole, if Annis wearied of her tale. She thought of it, that endless sleepless ecstasy of rage, self-companied, self-loathing. Of the tumult and the stench.

"Did I not say thou wert my daughter's vicary? As thy state is higher, so thy death is worse.” Annis plucked at the braid of fire on her wrist, as if it galled her. “I would hear this witch's end. But so: thou shalt find me, if thou canst, among my congeries all eight who stole the shards of me, to breed a mockery of tainted flesh. If thou failst, thou art Morag's and her pander's, for their game eternally. If thou art perfect, for thy recompense—” My lady raised her face; reflections of her soulstones rocked and wavered in the cavernous dark, as if the air were heavier than air, as if light drowned. “I shall tell thee. For a ninth."

A horseman coming. Ashes rose, uncertain and alone: but it was Grevil's voice at her door; and Grevil alone that she opened to, bowing as he had that May morning: but all had changed. “Is it your will that I enter?"

She nodded.

He looked about the bare room, gloves in hand. Smoke-blackened thatch. Bare walls, rain-islanded. Chalked floor, stars fading into dust of stars. “'Tis cold for long study.” Constraint; formality; a kind of sorrow. They stood strangely at odds, disproportioned: as if she looked backward through her glass. “If there is aught—I will send such bare necessities as you may want; and such comforts as your state allows.” Nothing could she ask in law, but turned her hand palm outward: Ashes’ sign. “'Twill come, a basket, if you will or no,” he said. “So Mistress Barbary hath ordained.” A shadow of a smile. “You need not fear more copying beneath the bread; my horn is dry."

What should a ghost with bread? with fire? My table is of souls, in Law; my mother bade me eat.

Still his gaze was sidelong, glancing from her at the sigils, riddle and rede, on the hearthstone. Chalk and raddle and charred wood. Moon and stars. “You read a darker book than I can give you, you that write with fire on the hills.” He spoke as from a text:
"That mastery is of womankind: to journey pathless in the dark."

Still silent.

He picked up a trencher on the table; set it down. “They are afraid of you, the men. Of Ashes.”
Of Ashes that they call Death's whore:
but that he could not say. “If you had kindred here, to laugh and say,
My sister guising
or
My brother's lass in breeks
—If I had sway—"

No answer.

"I had hoped—” Again he looked sidelong at the scuffle of signs. “The boy is fled; I am glad of that. He is—but thou knowest, Ashes, all my heart—the boy is dear to me. I thank you for my Will.” And to her unvoiced question: “No. If Corbet had taken him, his vengeance would be public. No secret murder but great show. Hanged and gibbeted: as one nails vermin to a tree as warning to all upstart crows."

He wheeled about.

"I would you were beyond the sea; beyond his malice. I would you might be safer under my roof; but mine aunt bears no great love toward you. Yet covets: as she would a string of stones. For this neck or for that: but under lock and key."

She knew that. Still she stood.

Now he turned from the hearthroom to the glazen window, leaning on the sill, and gazing at the deepset pane, that in the gathering wintry dusk gave back his face. As if he haunted Jinny's orchard, looking in, moon pale amid the trees.

They gather in her trees, the dead. Untold, unleaving, they arise and flutter, swirl and fall. They clamor, silent as the snow in snow, they beat themselves, unbodied, at the windows of her memory, at the doors of sleep. They quarrel for the crumbs of her, her apronful of dreams. They starve.

"Thou gravity.” A low voice. “I could believe that you are Ashes indeed."

Am I not?

He stooped and took a brand, and lit her stump of tallow on its dish. So early dark. He stood, the candle shaded by his hand. “They do say, our wisewives, that each who bears the part is very Ashes, aye, that giddy girl, and this; yet some that wear the coat become it. Mistress Jin...” Still gazing. Light licked shadow: lapping, lapping at the eaves, and yet the dark still overspilled. “As a boy I would not cross this threshold, no not the shadow of her smoke, for awe. My nurse did say that heedless boys who stole her witch's apples died of cramp; I craved a colder fruit of her, an older root, still green; and would not take, for dread.” He set the candle on the table; watched it steadying. “She told my mother's death."

That cloth is done,
said inwit.
And the loom is bare

"My father—” A wind in the keyhole, that set the candle cowering in its dish. He broke the furl of wax; it flared. “I am fit for naught,” he said. “Old wives."

A longdrawn silence.

"Will you tell a death?” He took the gold ring from his hand. His father's seal, the Ship. His white face overstamped with it: the wax of him all ship and masted ship heeled over, fallen stars. “No kindred. One I—knew.” She took it: cold and heavy, canted, sleek: a whirlpool in her hand, the sea his grief. It whelmed her. Salt and wave. The ship of him at breaking ...
Drowned,
she thought. But saw no spirit striving in the wrack but Grevil's, overfraught with grief and love. Clawing in her hair to draw her down. “Not your mourning,” said her unaccustomed voice. “His soul.” His face in shadow, fire in her hand. From within his coat, his shirt, he took a thing of tinsel, silver-black, and laid it in her hand: a star.

All gold, what she saw then: a huntsman in a harvest field, a restless careless ranting boy, a-dazzle like the wind in barley. Not to sheave. Cloud towered at the back of him: it brooded thunder, burnished brighter yet the gold of harvest. There was hail to come. He held a moorcock in his hand, bloodwet: still plump with August, ruffled and agape.
I'll the pluck of it,
he mocking said,
and thou the quill.

He spoke through Ashes, in her voice. She saw the grief and wonderment in Grevil's face, as if his soul were sky in which these planets moved. It dizzied her.
It is a glass,
she thought,
this telling; I can see what is, that never yet was seen.

She told night-lording Hulver and his starry train.

Cracked, cracked with voyaging, her hands, voice, spirit cankered with the salt of witches: Whin told on, though wave on wave astounded her. Her ship was will. No stars to reckon by. No north but in the tending of her blood; no blood but in the body left astounded in the hall: that slept, and yet took hurt of travelling. A witchfire played about her mast, now, nowhere, madding her with visions. There were voices in the shrouds.

My lady was another sky, a sea of air; the souls in it that swam not stars but cold and burning planets, brilliantly malign: the monsters of her deep. Whin told them all, the great stones and the islands scattering between; and telling each, was twinned with her as if they lay within one belly, braiding blood with blood of hers, and soul with soul.

She'd gone too far for turning, so went farther on.

She told how Bodva of Idho got herself with child of Annis; but miscarried of the stone. A mole, a moonegg of the Witch, and likest to a raven, so they say—she thought of Morag's thralls, abhorring them—but with a woman's dugs, a harpy's lust, insatiable. She fed on flesh, quick or carrion, drank moonblood and manseed; but her prey was souls. Her bane was Askell's lady, waking by the hallows tree, whereon he hung. That same Asenath slew her, stooping on his corse.

"And fools made tales of it,” said Morag.

Whin dared much; but she dared not drink the cup of bone that Morag set beside her, black wine and milk; nor eat the strips of withered flesh.

"Go on,” my lady said.

"And Hrakki o Scar would use no blood, but argued,
stone o stone.
So she did match her soul wi’ it."

"What end?"

"Her witch is stone and sleeps. I sailed a nine weeks north and see'd it.” But Whin is there now, in its overshadowing. Her small boat shudders on the waves. The witch is huger than a hillside, black and lucid as the starless night; but faulted. Flawed through. She's swallowed up the moon and stars, drunk down the bowl of night; but in her the sky is buckled, like a sheet of silver leaf, infolding on itself. Cloud coils from her, her hair is boreal, and all that windward coast a wrack of ships. The stone is cold to crack the marrow, craze the blood. And deep within lies Hrakki's knife, a sickle like the waning moon, but nowhere, caught a thousand times in seeming. It is broken. Her sister Hrima set upon the stone with it, to break a shard, or pry the soul away; and shattered, as her flesh were ice: her soul was long subsumed.

Ashes that was Thea's daughter dreamed. There was a bowl of pomegranates set before my lady at her meat. And every lobe of each a clustering of blood, and every seed a soul. My lady chose; then looked to Ashes, beckoning, as she did draw her ravens down to feast.
Come, Madam. Here is banqueting.

She loathed; and yet she hungered for it. Not a word: yet Annis knew.

For thy bellyful? What wouldst thou give?

To eat of it, my lady?

To be eaten.
She had split the orb of it; and inward of its lips lay glistening galaxies, packed world on world.

My secrets.

Thou art glass to me. What other?

Surfeit and desire and sickening: a rage was in her blood.
All that is,
said Ashes; and she gave the sky.

It rattled like a dice-box in my lady's hand, a black orb like a blasted pomegranate; then it split, spilled stars that dimmed with falling. They were on some lightless shore; the sand was all of stars, extinct. Their ashes. Out beyond, the tideless sea was stale with tumbling, like a rucked and sweated bed.
Come,
my lady said,
Thy secrets.
And she raught with bloodnailed hands to split her, fork to eyes.

She woke. She knew not who she was, nor in what bed; but dry-mouthed, drenched with fear, she lay upon the anvil of her dream, heart hammering, until the chink of metal, amulet on amulet, recalled her. Ashes. Groping for her coat, she wrapped it round her, skin to skin, her fingers buried in its matted fleece; yet slept no more. A daemon in her wept and raged with longing for a thing she knew not and abhorred; until at first light of a bitter day she rose, and pricked a finger for an ashing. Yet she made no trance; no vision came, no words. As Ashes, she was blinded to herself. She could not tell her blood.