Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (55 page)

"So, am I for Tom o Cloud? Or he?” said the fiddler, all journeyman now. “If we're to be Sisters, then we must have wigs."

"Which is Lightfast?” said Grevil at the same time. “What of Leapfire?"

And “What play?” said both.

Brock set down the empty cup; she stamped the fire out and banked it. “There's nobbut one. Both halves of it."

"What, with three of us?” the fiddler said.

"There's players ont road this night. All journeymen: and they must come."

They went, all three, with Brock before them. Grevil lagged, half weary, half enchanted, all at sea. For the snow, he could not tell their path: but uphill all the way. Then
somewhere
: pales of shadow in the snow. He looked about him. They were at the Nine Stones, where the earth had opened, and the green child come.

Brock stamped three times at hollowness, as if there were a door. And Leapfire in his crown of barley let them in. They walked between two stones, and were—not
else
but anywhere: a sort of stage. A blank on which the story's stamped: a crowd, a ship, the sun. True coin of history, though the metal be sheer gold or leaden. Room to rime.

There stood his lovely boy, his merlin. That he'd given to the gallows tree.

Who took no heed of him, but rounded on the fiddler. “Thou's not to be Leapfire,” said the lad. Updrawn like a candleflame. “He's mine by right o't ring. I kempt for him, I kempt ‘em all. I beat."

"I'd not dream of it,” the fiddler said.

The crow lad looked about the circle. “But here's no Ashes."

"There's to be,” said Brock. “She comes by another road."

He turned that over. “So if she's laggard, then I never rise."

"So it looks,” said Brock.

"I's hazard it. I want a thwack at Daddy Lightfast."

They do say,
When the door is opened to the wind, up leaps the candleflame.

Now at last he looked at Grevil. Not his face, but at his sword. “I's need that.” And he took and put it on.

The fiddler turned to ask their master mistress Brock the way.

There the lantern stood; but she was gone.

No word: but all at once they drew. And all about her, at her throat, there flashed a knot of swords. Of steel. Ashes saw the torches glinting in their blades, as if the fire licked them and it bled. Across and cross her, eddering: a hedge of steel.

And she felt nothing, nothing but a bluewhite fury:
I have work to do. They will not end it. They will
not.

The mistress of the witches now had doffed his guisering. Put off his mawkin Annis with her ropy fleece of hair. Unmasked of Corbet. Stood himself alone: Jack Daw, that some do call my lady's huntsman. But his hunt is only for himself. He smiled.

"Here's the moon come down to me,” said Daw. “Herself in her white smock. Is that not brave? But her darkness likes me better: in her wane and on her back."

He turned to his antimasque. “Tonight we play the Moon in Ashes and will foot it at her wake. I call the dance: longways, for as many as will."

They belled like stags at that, they sounded and they stamped.

Still none would lay a hand on her; but fenced about, she needs must go. Borne off in howling triumph. If she stumbled, then they drew the halter of their knives still closer round her neck.

All about were torches twisting, flakes of fire whirling up like leaves. She saw his rantsmen only in torn snatches, in and out of light. They all of them went masked, in red or yellow, or in black, in fells and feathers, and their stench was bestial: hags, stagheads, boars and bulls. All wreathed in ivy, or in misselcrowns like spills of seed, with staves and antlers ivy-garlanded. Some few had birdskulls braided in their hair. And one went all in tattercoats. Of yellow leaves? Not leaves, she saw in horror, but the hands of children: flayed, beseeching. For a tail, a snakeskin of a cock and balls. She knew the player witches by their tawdry: Bearskin, Bloodnails, Cap-and-Feather. And she knew a ranting lad, a boy that had these two nights guised with her: Kin Kempery. Who would not look at her, who could not look away.

When they hear his fiddle, they must dance: the dead of soul.

They led her to a threshing floor. They'd left the great doors open to the wind, for Lightfast. And the snow blew in, in wraiths arising like the chaff of summer, like the ghostly murder of the sun.

Still the rantsmen would not touch her. She was still death's heir and vicary, her voice on earth: and she was holy.

"What, flayed of Ashes?” Daw cried out. “Like mewling children hid behind the door?” They shook their heads; but none stood forward.

"None of you have cocks? Then I'll unsain her.” Lightly, Daw struck down the ring of swords, and stepped within their circle. Knife at throat, he stripped her of her coat of skin, upheld it. Brandished.

Still they waited on her voice to ban them all, cry out, bring down a fiery whirlwind on their heads. But she was mute.

She had another adversary. In her mind she saw black flakes of ashes of a burning card—the Tower—drifting down. But almost at the ground, they wheeled and winged, arising as a pack of crows. They hunted.

"Hah!” He shook her godhead, as a terrier a rat, and tossed to it to his men. How they gnarred at it and worried it, like dogs about a wounded bear; but could not rend it.

Bolder now, he slashed her other garb—her jacket, breeches, shirt—to ribands on her back.

Still mute. For this was not the nakedness she dreaded most. Now even open-eyed, she saw the ravens seeking for a way, a windeye, into here and now. They must not spy her out. She feared him, soul and body; but she feared her grandam more.

"I see my lady paints,” he said. “Yet Ashes will to ashes go, for all thy pranking in thy glass. It ill beseems thy bridal bed. Come, Madam. I will have thee naked.” And stooping he took up a handful of the sharp-edged sleet that puddled at their boots and scoured her, face and body, to the fork. Between. Cold filth ran trickling down her naked breasts, that stiffened with the chill and loathing of his touch.

Still mute.

Arms wried behind her back, he turned her to his men. “Look. Look. She swelts for it."

Lust, awe, horror, and contempt. A goblin glee. And yet—

"T'other bitch were blind,” called out a man.

"We'll come to that,” said Daw, still smiling. And her soul was cracked.
O my stars.
“But first I'd have her see our play. And last of all."

He cut the soulbag from her neck. Undrew the string and rummaged in it, brisk as a midwife in a brothel. Even his gang were silent, appalled by the blasphemy. That hoard of souls might be their kindred, lovers, friends. Their fathers and their mothers, bent with laboring; a brother in a far-off war; a green girl, much beloved, who had died unwed; a child newborn whose only tale was Ashes'. Hinds and shepherds, maids and tinkers, artisans and lords. He spilled them on his palm. All dust, the golden lads and girls. The tawny ring? Not there. He picked among the trinkets, toyed with them; he tried a child's ring on his fingers, longman, lickpot and his horny thumb: far too small for him. But here's a pretty coin of gold. He licked his fingertip to pick it up, no bigger than an elm seed: Arkenbold's. The Sun's. He glanced at Ashes, mocking openly. “I rolled the orange on the rotten ice. Thy Fool was in the way."

At that she tried to curse him, break her vow: and she could not. What she could utter was a speechless shapeless noise, a tongue-slit twittering.
Tu-whit. Tereu.
And at her gibberish a great fear lifted, and they mocked.

"She'll not tell tales of us."

"Aye, there's better uses for her tongue."

"Think you my lady will have gloves of her?"

"He'll take her arsy-varsy then. Your kidskin's dressed with dung."

Bloodnails laughed for admiration. “Here's a fiddle fit to play our mystery on her bones. An she be set in tune, the crowd he makes of her will wake the dead."

Daw let them triumph for a space; then stilled them, held her open like a sack.

And she was powerless. Her struggle was with Annis. She was holding back the storm of her, as if she held a nightmare by its mane of lightning, in the ramp and plunging of its madness, thundershod. She choked the bear deer vixen burning child within her that would out, the black hare and the crow's outcropping. In the cold flesh of her body she could feel the raven quilling out: a monster, barbed and taloned, brutal. It would own a raven's apprehension, knowing only flesh and gaudery; but a woman's body, cold and perfect to the nethermouth, the bloody and abhorred fork.

He spoke now as a priest, a hierophant of hell.

"Earth gapes for you.” Black silence. “See ye not this narrow road in her, so thick beset with thorns and briars? That way did you come of Law, and that way will descend, no more returning, to the underworld. That road is death."

His rantsmen groaned like branches in a storm.

"But this ae night, this Lightfast at the dark of moon, when Slae doth lie in Ashes, joying in her lap, the lord ascendant: on this very night, the way lies open, and the passage back from death. Who takes that narrow road with me this night, will live immortal."

She was holding back the earthquake now: a wood of lightning, thunderstroke on stroke, that all at once would outburst through the very stones—through her—and shatter them.

The rantsmen stamped and chanted now: one word, one word, one word.

Daw undid his cock. For all his cold and finical contempt, his mincing malice, he was stirred: his rage was at his fork. It stood to blunt and batter at her privities.

But first he'd pry her soul.

He seized her by the hair to pull her down, and howled. She felt the runes in it uprising in a whelm of power, like the white-hot embers from a forge. Unwilled. The hammer falls, the sparks fly up.

He fell back in a fury, cradling his hand.

Everything had stopped: light, time, space. Here. Now.

Then Bloodnails spoke. “Unwitch her."

Annis dreams. Her knowing is untellable; but in her sleep—unmoving, open-eyed—is fire. Whin feels it, braiding upward endlessly. It seeks her vengeance for her daughter's treachery; it seeks a vent. The earth will crack of her, calcine; the sea like molten glass will slump and shatter, falling endlessly within and in her void. Not ocean but a snow of salt. She would consume it all, to swallow up her faithless child. Her sleep is fathomless: the grave, unbirth, abyss. Her waking will annihilate.

It was braided in her hair, the witchery. It crackled like a fire of thorn, it spat and rang. It must be cut.

There was a sickle on a nail. Turning back for it, Daw spied a glitter, like a bit of ice, amid the rag and ruin of her Ashes coat. Unthawed? He picked it up: another witchery, of glass. No power in it he could feel but in her pain. So he held it up to her, and mocked her through its O of ice. Then cast it down. He cracked it underfoot. Again that wordless cry. It joyed him almost to the frenzy. Down he thrust her, naked, in the slather and the shards of glass. He set his knee upon her, pulling back a great bunch of her hair, as if he would cut her throat. But no: he sheared her godhead. Hacked it off like straw. He rived it in great handfuls, roughly, with his sickled knife, and cast it to the winds.

And at a whirl each handful that he strewed was fire, scattering bright, uprising on the air; each strand of it unbraiding into light, and fiercer light, as if the wind were bellows: red to golder red to sun at noon. And brighter still, bluewhite. Ablaze. A storm of light, like starfall but arising. Fire flaughts. The rafters of the great barn were a sudden sky, a fret of fire.

And down upon his witches fell a riddling rain of fire, a hail of elfshot. Cinders of the runes. The men shrieked and cowered, cursed and howled. Some stayed to beat the smouldering harvest out with snow, and kick it cold; most fled at once: not now his standing gang of heroes, but a rout of running men.

Shadows in the barn.
Plock. Plick.
The last few clinkers of the magic fell and scarred the earth.

And there was nothing in his hand.

Undone.

Ashes leaps up laughing, in a flare of ecstasy. She catches up her coat. Daw's done it. Thinking to unwitch her, he's unbound her with his sickle, set her free of Law.
Undone. And all to do.

She calls upon her sisters,
Ashes! Ashes!
And they all rise up.

The wood was overgrown, thought Grevil, since his father's time. By day he could have walked it endlong in a dozen verses; but the new-called journeymen had staggered round and round it for a candle's length, hallowing and brashing to affright the urchins. Puck-led and perplexed. There was a good path up Owlriggs: but no. They must gang by Unleaving, so Brock had said. By candlelight.

When yer come to't door, y'll have found it.

What door?

There's nobbut one. Thou ask at Mag Moonwise.

He bore the lantern. And perhaps his eyes were dazzled: for beyond its burr of light, he thought he saw a drift of leaves, the shadow of an endless fall. He thought the snow was moonlight. When he lowered his candle, he saw a slushy little copsewood, ending but a stone's throw from his hand. Perhaps the lantern made the wood.

Kit Crowd came scuffling up to him. “
But thou art mazed, sweet fool ...
” he quoted; and then ruefully: “This wood
is
dark."

"And I th’ moon's daughter in these rags of cloud shall bear thee light."
Grevil finished it. “Why a lantern, then, if not to see?"

"If we be stars, we bear it to be seen: so lantered men may gaze on us and say,
By t'witches, I's drunk.
"

"Go we blind, then? Do we company their rouse?"

"Being stars, we stray not, for the Road is broad.” Kit looked about. “Have we tried yon marish path?"

"Twice or thrice. It ends here."

Kit rimed, reminiscently:

"If stars,” said Grevil casting back, “then the Silly Sisters: fools by heavenly compulsion. And the girl, by her despised petticoats, twice Ashes.” He looked about for her: a scowling silent little impet, black as thorn. There, in among the scrogs.