Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (56 page)

"And the lad must be Leapfire, so he says—yon sword's a great argument—and being light of heels, then Tom o Cloud. I hope that he be quick of study."

They looked where crow lad practiced with the sword, in his private ecstasy. “The rogue will have the edge off that,” said Grevil; but his heart leapt with the lad. A painful joy.
Alive.
That he unwillingly had sentenced: yet had done. So was lost to him. “And I the Fool."

"And by this kit of catlings, I the Fiddler. So our play is fitted. Like the tinker's ass, three legs and one eye blind. For it halts with no villainy to whip it on."

The crow lad swashed.

He danced beyond the candle's limen, in among the wafting leaves.

"How does he that, that tumble?” said Kit marvelling. “In a wood, no less.” With an updragged branch he tried the swing askew of it—
I will dance the light of leaves
—and tripped himself up. “But how would he know the play? It is the gallantry's sworn mystery."

"And in books,” said Grevil. “I have read three or four of it; from Lune even.” He looked at the crow lad. “I wager he has not."

They called the stripling and the girl to them. “D'ye know the masque of the Silly Sisters?”
What gentry stuff is this?
said their stares. “The Witches?"

"Cracked t'sky,” Will said warily. “Them?"

"Know'st thou the guising of it?"

Now he was shocked. “There's nobbut one guising, time out o mind and evermore. It's t'
guising
."

They asked silent Imbry.

"They stown away her Comb and taken Ship wi't."

"Ashes?” Imbry shrugged. “Her Comb?"

"Stars.” She pointed up at cloud through branches. None the wiser. So she took a twig and scratched the pattern in the snow. The Crowd of Bone. “Called storms wi’ it. For soulwrack for her shore. But I's not heard on a guising of it.” She scuffed it out. “There's carols for't Ship."

"The sail's o th’ siller, the mast's o th’ tree,"
sang Kit to her startlement. And aside to Grevil, he said: “Elding play from Arrish. That won't be in books."

"It could be,” said Grevil. “There's that fallen oak again."

"Comes round like a burden.” Kit pondered. “So: will it do in halves, this play? Or must we put it back together? ‘Tis like an egg in flinders: it will hatch no cockerel to crow the sun."

"Patch it?"

On they travelled, in a hey of plays

I will dance the light of leaves.

Stand forth, awd winter, fell and black...?

...The lady goes with me. For that her star is wandering, I name her...?

...Leapfire bold. Walk in.

But thou art mazed, sweet fool. The wood is dark...?

...in a vixen's belly...?

His dreams do prick him...?

...and they's woe to snatch, worse than honey.

Let him in....

...in a bear's maw...?

...and he flowers.

By that I made his buttons fly.

O rare Cosmography.

...wi’ an urchin in its mouth!

I will dance the dayspring.

What, no mustard?

Still I dance the ay and O.

"Enough,” said Kit. “'Tis not a play but a gallimaufry. It wants a frame.” He thought a pace. “Tom's the hinge—no, Tom's the heart of it; Ashes is the hinge, it turns on her. Like so—” With steepled fingers and his thumbs he made a three-cornered figure. “Here's Witch and Witch and Ashes at the point—"

Grevil did likewise. “—and Ashes and Fiddler and Fool.” Point to point they met and twisted over, gimmaling like guisers that would make a lock of swords, a star. It encircled an imagined sacrifice. They drew.

"And so he tumbles down,” said Kit, “and rises up. Both of him."

"Yes,” said Grevil. “Yes. Could we do that?"

"Not as we are. Still only three of us.” Kit looked at the lantern. “That candle's near out. Have we another?"

"No."

"Our play is like to be brief, then. With a bergamask of bones.” Kit hunched for cold and jigged a little, dolefully.

But on a sudden, Grevil stamped. He would have struck his hands together, but for the lantern. “But look you: down he tumbles, Tom o Cloud, and off with his coat then, and rises up Leapfire. Guising underneath."

"Yes,"
said Kit. “'Twould play in dumbshow rarely well.” Then he clapped and kicked the leaves up. “And when he lies in Ashes’ lap, she doffs
her
coat, and rises up in green. She springs."

For a moment Noll looked inward. “And happen green Ashes and the Sun may wed?"

"'Tis then a comedy,” said Kit. “And so a jig and done."

"So may it fall."

The lantern snuffed. But they were standing in a kitchen garth, within a hedge of thorn. Imbry was putting snow down the crow lad's jacket. And a moon was setting.

"By trod,” said Kit, “how came we here?"

"From elsewhere,” Grevil said. Noll spoke with Tom's remembered voice. “
Here is Law. I would be elsewhere, were it on a sinking ship, atwixt a bear and honey."

"Is the sorceress not here?"

"And happen at her book. I would not for the moon disturb her."

And she is running through a cloud of Ashes. Before her, white in white, they rise, as if she's breathed them on the air: a hey of girls, whitesilver as a wood in April, frost and flowering. A blackthorn winter. She is woven in their dance. Like thorn amid their blossoming, her ashen black and bloodstreaked self enwreathes itself in whiteness, in the mingling of the may. A garland, all of Ashes.

Turning back, she sees the steep of heaven, like a hill of air, of crystalline: sheer nightfell. It's the way she's come. She sees the endless snow of stars beneath her, giddying. Far far below her in the fathomless, she sees—O marvellous—a toy, a plaything from a mage's baby house, a bluegreen bauble like a seeing-stone. Or like her own eye looking up at her, an iris. Cloud in cloud inlapped. She laughs for wonder.

Where I stand is why.

She's on the Lyke Road, in among Nine Weaving. In her glass. What she has seen with it, now is: a myriad of Nine. As if her seeing of it made this
where,
this
now.
A wood upwelling through a map.
O rare Cosmography.

And still inchoate. From an Ashes, all invisible as air but in her edges, silvery black, there rises up another Ashes; from
her
nakedness, another still, unbraiding from her body in a silver frost, subliming. Sky of sky. In each of them, in knee or shoulderblade, in brow or cleft, there is another silvery wood at dance, another flowering of light. In their becoming is their perfectness, their everlasting in their birth. Here is time's nursery.

Will be its ashes?
But she puts that thought aside.

For now and ever now, she dances with her sisters to a silent music, to the Crowd of Bone. Itself and all alone it sings, at Lightfast: when the Ninestones hear, they carol. In their myriad is grace, enwheeling her: a power not of regiment but commonality.

Turning in the dance, she sees one who is otherwise, who dances like a flame of fire in the mist. But she is elsewhere always, here and gone. Or she is any of them, lighting as she will on any, as she does in Cloud. As ever, she's the last still burning, who was Ashes first of all. Their ember. Last of all of them, her daughter sees the crescent of her, turning always from her sight; she sees the quenchless fire of her hair.

She runs after.

Black-thacked and skew of timber, this cot has a louring look. The journeymen stamp and trample to a halt in the up-churned yard.
"Cold by the door and my candle burns low ... “
says Grevil, trailing off. Bold Leapfire hawks and swaggers; green Ashes sleeves her nose.

"Seemly, seemly, Master Drum,” says the fiddler; then something changes in his face, a light and shadow. Softly, ruefully, he says, “If thou's a lad, thou doff thy hat, see."

"What now?” says Grevil.

"'Tis the Fool his office to knock; and the Second Witch to conjure."

"Am I that?"

"Turn and turn. We'll cast for it."

"Talk then. Yer t'grammary,” says the crow lad. Not fondly: but he speaks. Grevil looks backward at the scuffled snow, that is crossed and overcrossed with footmarks, like the writing on a page. What's said can never be unsaid. Unsentenced. He begins,
"By the elding of the moon..."

The door opens, and a fierce small person in the Awd Moon's petticoats peers round it, like an owl in an ivy bush. Leaves of tatters and a leaf-red cap. Owl's beak and elfshot eyes, redoubled in her glazy spectacles. One glass is cracked. It gives a scornful and a mocking twist to that eyebrow.

"If it's guising, yer a bit few."

They look to the Fool. He bows to her, with backswept hat and hand at heart, louting low as to a goddess: to the Moon.

"We bring the Sun. All else is mummery."

No hilt to finish up his flourish at.

Kit bows. The crow lad, capless, jerks and hinges, and the sword pokes sideways. Imbry, with her cap in fist, ducks.

She looks them up and down. The strangers to the world, bewildered in it, yet the ones who made the game; the child the ship brought over; and the flaycraw. Landfallen, lightborn, lost. It happens over and again

"Yer late."

Grevil rises. There's a mischief in him now. “Mistress, we were much amazed. Your wood is riddling; and no maiden came to light us hence."

"Get in with yer."

They duck after through the low door, into heaped and crowded otherwhere, a looming dusk. Her workroom. In the dim and glimmer, slowly, Grevil makes things out. Or up. A fire, with a canting cauldron. Swags of washing or of cobwebs, maybe? Chaos and old nighties. All her mending and remaking, endless. Are they baskets of hailstones? Creels of cloud? Her carding combs are snarled in it; her spindle faintly gleams. Leaves, feathers, eggshells. Lanterns in the rafters, and a sickle hanging: and low as her roof is, Grevil knows he cannot reach them down. Here is earthsky. The Unleaving.

The lad is still casting about for a guiser, for some horny-handed smith in petticoats. “Is Master Moonwise in?"

"Moon's what I is. Would thou beard me?"

In the flash of her regard, he winces; but he stands his ground. “So yer Ashes like, Mistress? It gangs round yer?"

"Aye."

"Will yer dance?"

Grevil gapes horrified. And yet it tickles him, the thought of froward godhead frolicking in garlands.
Here's an undertaking.

"I'd not set foot i’ Law, else there's a thunderclap, and nowt hereafter. She's where I's not.” She sets her besom in a corner. It roots and branches. “But I's swept t'Road afore yer.” There's ale on the fire; she ladles it out. “Now drink, and I's fettle yer, and set yer on."

Grevil watches as the cup goes round. Imbry's avid and unwilling, scowling at the taste: as if it were the thing of naught that changes everything, desired and despised. The crow lad, Kit are tranced, twice-tasting of each drop, as if the draught has wakened echoes in them, memory or dreams:
I know this; I remember now.

When it comes to him, he raises it to Malykorne. There stands her crosspatch avatar, her mask of irony; here lies her true reflection in the cup, brimful of her: sheer light.
"O light, and genitresse of Light, that walks Night-mantled, taking Heaven for a maske ... “
He drinks. It tastes of hallows and his death. Would make him poet, take his voice: and all at once. A whip and halter to the soul. He will wake for it, weeping, all his life.

The eyebrow in the cracked lens quirks at him.

No words now but a childish rime. His nurse's. “I see the moon, and the moon sees me...” He's forgotten. “Hally us all."

"So now,” says the Moon. “Off away, when yer kitted out. Here's properties."

"What, have you stuff for a guising?” says the fiddler. “For a masque?"

"Whatever's i't sky. What yer ask at. Not else."

"By your leave, a moment.” The Fiddler and the Fool consult in hurried whispers.

"Busk, busk!” she cries, and thwacks her ladle on the pot.

"A coat of sparks,” says Kit.

"A cap of tatters,” Grevil says.

She beats the fire so the sparks fly up; they swarm in the rafters, in the swags of washing. She pulls down a woadblue jacket, smouldering. “Here.” She thrusts it in Kit's hands; he takes it, warily. But it is cool as lateworms to the touch, then cold as frost; the embers breathe and brighten, at his shoulders, at his belt with three bright stars. Astonished, he can only duck his head in thanks.

In a corner is a bunch of withies, red and white; and on a shelf, a bundle of rushlights in a wisp of hay: the Fool's coat and his cap of tatters. In her hands they glow a little, faintly: a wistful flittering light. Will dances in the wisp. Donning them, dithering back and forth, the Fool tries out a line or two. “O my son!” he cries. “My only son and heir is slain. Call for a midwife!” But his mourning's for the crow lad's love.

"Witches next,” says Kit aside to Grevil. “What d'ye think?"

Boldly, the Fool calls for “mantles of the sky and mirrors of the Sun and Moon."

She takes great swathes of dusty arainweb, that in her hands are bright with dewfall, shining as the Road, and pins them round the Witches with her thorns: petticoats and scarves. From kist and cupboard, hook and nail, she scrabbles out a clanging armoury: kettlecaps; stomachers of cullenders; graters for greaves. Here's a rusty great frying pan for one, a ladle for his sword. Here's a sickle for the other, and a sieve and shears.

Bemused, Kit studies his unreflection in his pan. “They are beardless boys who play this."

Grevil gazes in his riddle; turns it to his fellow. “We are old now, and unfair.” Men dressed as women dressed as men. Each in the mirror of his other sees a mawkin: not fair witchery but striding termagants.

What else?
They're lating Ashes, who is yet to come.
“We've a lantern,” says Grevil. “But no light."

Kit upraises a withered apple-john. “
What's within but mirk and mist? But I's a sun frae Mally's kist."