Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (5 page)

In the dark, a white face, staring: a man, all bone and shivering, three-quarters drowned. “Who's there?” he tries to call. Whin sets the lantern down. “A journeyman,” she says. “A traveller.” He sprawls against the stonework, tangled in an iron ring; the next wave frets at him, the next. His coat is gone, his head and feet are bare. A stranger out of Lune, thinks Whin. Uncloudish. Yet he bids her by her calling. “Ashes?” At his throat he wears a skin bag, smaller than a purse. His hands are white past bleeding, bruised; he signs to her, take this. She fumbles with the knots, she bites at them and tumbles out his hoard: cold rings.

"Will you tell a death?"

They are silver and endless on her hard brown palm. White stones like frost. A knot of blood. “Could yer not sell them?"

"None would take. No ship. They—"

"Throwed yer over? I see yer to hang."

He shudders. “It is not my passage that I seek."

"A fire,” says Whin. “And drink ye. I'd not shift stones for yer grave."

She squats beside him, lugs him further up the strand. Stripping off his icy rags, she laps him in the old coat, black as nightfall, stiff as death. He'd not starve yet. She leaves him hallowed in the lantern's fleet.

There's wood enough, but sodden. Whin flings the heavy, takes the dry stuff, salt with frost. She stacks it, leeward of a quain of rock; strikes, kindles, drives her iron for the can. Waiting for the blaze, she chafes the stranger, lays him naked to her breast: blue hands, bruised feet, his starved and wrinkled cock and balls, his belly, slack against his spine, until the blood runs shining, sheeting on his dazed white face. The fire leaps. A boy, for all his haggard look. His eyes are sunken, shut; his beard is soft. Not twenty. Younger than herself. She lays him, not ungently, on the stones.

"Not sleep,” he whispers. “Tell."

"Drink.” The ale in the can's hot; she stirs a slurry of meal in, a scrape off her knuckled ginger. Strong. She holds it to his lips.

"Tell."

Whin drinks. “I will then.” She turns the cold rings on her hand. They are silver and endless; they are night, moon, mourning. They would weigh her down. Whin sees the pale boat waiting and the soul that bellies in the dark wind, quick with death; the telling is the shroud that stays it, that the soul can journey. Let her go.

It's what I is. Death's midwife.

And she sets the first ring on.

O death.
She sees the wheel hurled downward, burning, and the scattered crows. She sees a white wrist circled with a braid of burning hair, a bluenailed hand; it casts, it casts a blackness on the stony ground. Shards of witchglass, ashes of bone.

And she herself is scattered and restrung. She is the crowd of bone, the dead soul's stringing, and her voice.

Whin's hand is beating, beating on the earth. She sings.

It's in an outland tongue at first, a dancing driving lilt, a skirl and keening; then the tongue's her own.
There are pools in the river, and the river calls him.
All white in whiteness where it rises; swift in running, deepest where the red leaf eddies in the pool. Whorl and headlong, she sings the river's journey: glint and shadow, dint of rain, the running to the downfall and the shivered bow of light.

No more.

Even as she wakes from trance, the ring is ice, is water. Gone.

She sees the fire, sunken into embers; sees the drawn face staring. Far beyond, the sea shifts, turning its sleepless bed. Far gone.

"The child,” he whispers.

Ah. The child. Whin presses at her eyes until the red's green as leaves, new leaves.
Ashes. Ashes.
See, the crows at the furrows wheel and fall, they tear at—
No. Leave off. That were back and elsewhere.
A long draught of the caudle, slab with standing. Raking back her hair, salt-fretted with the roke and sweat, Whin slips the small ring on her hand.

And there is nothing. Whiteness. Round she turns, and round; she stumbles, groping for a gossamer, a clew. No thread, there is no thread. A creak of wood. A ship? And then a lalling nowhere, like a woman at her wheel; but small. Arms crossed before her face, Whin blunders at the mist. It reddens and dissolves; it dances. And she's in an empty room. She sees a cradle overset; she sees a tangle of bright silks. In the roar and crackling of thorns, she sees a burning doll, its blind face like a poppyhead, the petals like a cry.

"The child?” His voice is sharp with fear.

"Not dead."

He shuts his eyes. “Ah."

Whin slips the small ring up her finger, rocks it with her thumb. Not dead, she'd swear it. How? Not born?

But where is here? The world is white now, greying like a ghost. Are they now lost in what she'd sung? Whin stares a moment, mutely; then she turns her palm and raises it. It fills with snow. She tastes the water in the hollow of her hand, the salt and sweet.

Bending to the man, she brushes him; she touches eyes, mouth, heart. “Thou sleep."

A girl is reading in a garden where no flowers grow. It is formal and mathematical, a maze, an abstract of the heavens done in yew and stone. A garden made for moonlight and for winter, changeless but for sky and snow and drifting leaves: a box of drowned green light. It is autumn now. The fountain's dry; the stone girl weeps no more. Her lap is full of leaves. The lawn is grey as gossamers with rime. The living girl's dishevelled, in a cloud of breath; she's hunched against the cold in woven velvet, wadded silk: old finery, too thin. Leaves light on her. She holds her book aslant to catch the light, and peers through cracked spectacles: “...one king's daughter said to another...” Her breakfast's in a napkin: cake, an orange. Costly, alien, aglow. Round she turns it in her cold lap, cradles, sniffs. Straying from her hood, her tangled hair is pale red, light through leaves; her tumbled gown is stormcloud blue. Her slipshod feet are wet. Softly as she's come, she cannot hide her track: her feet, her draggling skirts have torn the hoarfrost, tarnishing. You cannot read her face: an egg, a riddle. What is it lives within a maze, within a wall, within a hedge of thorn? And on an island, not a winter's day in riding round. Yet she's never seen the sea.

A bird cries.
Margaret?
Startled, she looks up and round. The orange rolls unheeded from her lap. There, back of her, a black bird flutters to the earth, as ragged as an ash. Its cry fades like a cinder, glows and fades. Bearded, it regards her with its black eye; hops and drags a mirror in the wounded frost.

Ah, Margaret, it was cold in Cloud, the wandering. I mind a night of frost, a white hag on the hillsides; it was all ways white, whatever way we turned. Kit bore a lantern that he dared not light; my mother's crows have eyes. Round we turned like children in a game; like tops, still giddy, lest we fall.

Here's not yet dark, he said. And none to light our heels. I hear that Will the piper's to the hedgehogs’ shearing.

A cup, I said, to drink their health.

A game, said he. Wilt thou have
Aprons all untied
? I'll show thee. Or
Cross my river to Babylon.

Light words. But doubtful mind, I thought: elated, ill at ease. What should he with this bird of paradise? I was no hedgeling to be coaxed and whistled; yet had lighted on him, haggard to his hand. Brave plumes. And trailing jesses of another's leash.

Thy candle's quenched, said I. Will I light thee another?

And willing, said he. Wouldst bear it then?

And go the lighter for't.

Then soberly he said: the bridge is drowned. I know not the way.

We stood. And all the trees beyond us like a crowd of bones. No stars. I'd never gone by night, without to see the stars. And in my mind I saw what I'd undone: my mother's chain of stones, the clasp of winter from my throat. Her chain of witches’ souls. I saw them in the mist, the others in the game, caught out, cast out. They stood like stones, but clearer than the coldest night: in each, a dark witch rayed with blood; in each, the wintry stars. In the last, like an altar stone, there lay the image of a woman sleeping, with the hooked moon at her heart. She was the fell they stood upon, her hair unwreathing in a coil of cloud. This cloud.
I am braided in her hair,
I said, as if my mother lessoned me; and then recalling me, I touched my throat, all bare but for a scarf.

That chain was my knowledge. I put it off with my undoing and I walked unstarry in that mazing whiteness: unwitch, unmaiden and unwise. They say the moon does so. But I was never maid—ah, Margaret, thou'rt full young to see, but thou must see. Thou know'st my mother got me in her glass. And so I was as left hand to her right. I was her make in all things hidden, and I knew as I was known. Ah, but never with an other, I had never been unknown; nor seen, as through a cloud, the hearth and shadow of another's soul. My love, we got thee all unknowing, out of cloud.

But now your breath clouds the glass: too near, you gaze too near. And so see no one in the mist: a whiteness, waning with your breath. Oh, I am all undone. My mother loosed the knot long since; she laid the chain of me aside. The soul slipped by her. White in whiteness: what I am is white.

"So yer run off wi’ a witch's daughter?” said Whin. “Were yer mad or what?"

"Dazzled,” said the man at last, and softly.

"And t'lass?” A silence, long enough so that Whin thought he slept.

"Ah. No witch. In the end."

Kit stood. Whatever way he turned was white, as white as nowhere.

"Thea?"

"Soft,” she said. “Catch hold."

Among the standing shapes of stones, a stone put back its hood and turned. He saw her, Thea, looking back at him, her curled hand at her throat. Stumbling in the mist, he caught her and he took her cold true hand. The lantern of her hair was grey. With hag, he saw: it ghosted them. Brocaded both alike: his russet and her raiment stiff and fine with it. Her face was muffled in a scarf, the whitest at her lips. His hair, when he put it from his eyes, was hackled with frost. “Where's this?"

"Cloud,” said Thea. “Is there earth?"

"I know not,” he said. He looked about, bewildered, at the mist. “How came we here?"

"By ship."

He remembered; or had dreamed the like. They were in her mother's garden, in among the stones like hooded watchers and the labyrinth of yews. ‘Twas dusk and shadowless, the maze, the stones configured as the starry sky. They were playing at a game with lanterns?
Hide fox, and all after.
How the errant star of her shone out, now there, now elsewhere in the dark. Their lamps conjoined. He saw her, still, but as a light is still, still dancing in his eyes. He kissed her—ah, it drowned him deep, that kiss. In her, his soul translated, like a tree of fire, burning in her bluegreen dusk.
Come away with me,
he said, now ardent, now amazed, the words like Perseids.
To Cloud. And let thy mother—

Nothing. He remembered nothing, like a sleeper waked. Cold moonlight, musty straw. A jangling, as of keys. The dream had troubled him with joy; he wore the stone of it, both bright and heavy, at his heart.

He said, bemused, “My lady sent for you. ‘Twas in her closet."

"I had found a door,” she said. “The sky has doors."

"And locks?"

"'Tis done. Undone."

He saw a little image, clear as in a dream: a string of stones cast by, like blood spilled on the hoary earth.

"But how—?"

"Thy fiddle was the ship."

Dismayed, he halted. “What?"

"'Twas wood of Cloud. It played the wind behind us."

"Ah,” said Kit, and rubbed his eyes. Salt wind: it stung. “I gave it thee. And would again, were't all the sinews of my heart.” And yet remembered nothing of the gift, the journey.
Ship?
As in a waking dream, he saw the sail of sky, bluegreen against a darker sky, all riddled with the stars. He saw the lantern at the mast. Their hands together at his lips were salt. “What tune?"

"Light leaves on water."

"Ah, it played that when its leaves were green. Waked wood.” Still unsteady, his voice. That shock of severing still white, which at a thought would bleed. And so he laid light words to it, like cobwebs to a wound. He knelt to mend his lantern. “Here's a fret. ‘Tis out. And I've left my flint and steel.” He grimaced ruefully. “And come to that, thy book, and all. Hadst thou nothing thou wouldst take?"

"There was not time. The door stood open."

Suddenly he stood and said, “We've done it, then?"

"We do,” said Thea. “Grammar."

"Ah,” said Kit. “How the old crows’ beaks will clack. Canst see them at their feast? Here's bones.” And hopping on the ground, he cocked an eye at her, with such a glance of balked fury that she laughed aloud.

"The crow and her marrow, they quarrel for the glass."
Then gathering up her skirts, “Let's on,” she cried.

"What way?"

"Any way. Away."

"All Cloud's to choose."

"I know. To where the fiddles grow."

"And shake the tree? I'll play no windfall, for the green are sharp."

"But we must cross a river by the dawn."

Round they turned like children in a game, and in and out among the stones. They called and bantered, dizzy with unlawful joy. Kit fell. His lantern slid away, it skated from his grasp; then he was up again, bruised and laughing. “Hey!” Then seeing her a-shake with cold, he sobered. “Canst thou make us fire?"

"No,” said Thea.

"Nor can I,” he said. “I doubt we'll starve then, but we find some cotter's hearth.” He cast his coat round her, crazy with the ice. “Or a tinker's camp. And chaffer for his russet coat.”
A mantle of the starry sky.
Her gown was thin, the color of the bloom on sloes, embroidered as the Milky Way: light shaken out, lace dandled. Not for travelling, he thought. A gown for walking in her mother's hall, from glass to glass. And it would snow.

"So this is Cloud,” he said. “'Tis like a tale of witches, well enough by the fire.
Once afore the moon was round, and on a night in Cloud ...
Hast kindred here?"

"None,” said Thea, “in this world. But hast not thou?"

"In Lune I had.” He bent for the lantern. “We'd best on."