Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (7 page)

He saw her fury; though her hair was braided close, she blazed as whitely as a falling star. He felt his spirit rise to her. Arrow to her bow. “Love, let me in."

She turned to him. “Crack the glass and I will."

It was his heart that cracked; but like an acorn, that the oak might spring.

He slipped the ring from his finger. “Thea. Love,” he said. “With my heart, ‘tis what I have.” His mother's ring of tawdry silver, black with years. A riddling posy.

Thea turned it round and read.
"Lief wode I fall, an light wode spring.
Or this way, look:
I fall and light: would spring leafwood."
Round again:
"Anne Lightwode: spring leaf. Would I fall?"
She looked to him and smiled; she slipped it on her finger.

O the falling star. ‘Twas in his hands.

The traveller, watching as she would a play, took out her bacca and her bit of black pipe. “Key's under bush,” she said. “Look well to yer locks."

And still Kit stood amazed.

"As for yer guising.” The traveller undid her pack, and pulled from it a heap of leaves; she shook it out and there were sleeves to it, and dangling buttons made of horn. It was a coat in tatters. “Craws weren't having it,” she said. “What's ta'en is anyone's."

"Is there a hat to it?” said Kit, recovering.

"And feather,” said the traveller. She swung the coat round Thea's shoulders. It hung to her heels.

Kit grinned. “Ah. Wilt thou go for a ranting girl?"

"Aye, and bid them stand,” the traveller said.

"Here's purses full,” said Kit.

"I'll nothing but thy ring,” said Thea, whirling round on him. “Or will it come to swordplay?"

"Wouldst kill me naked?"

"And would die beside thee."

He reeled her in. “And then I rise."

"Oh,” said Thea. “'Tis my part. And I am of out it."

"So I am in,” said Kit, and caught her by the coattail, laughing. “Turns,” he said; so she let him try it on. He flaunted in it, up and down. He looked all mischief, with his leafish face. And in the flaycraw's voice, the fool's, he said, “I'll riddle thee. What leaves and still it stands?"

"A tree,” said Thea. “Turns?"

The traveller shrugged. “For either, as it likes you. And if she's a lad, I's shears."

Thea rounded on her. “Where?"

"No,” cried Kit, dismayed. “I beg thee. Not thy hair.” He'd not yet seen it down, not played with it undone. It would unravel like a fugue. He thought of all the braided strands of it, the bright and somber and the burning strands, the viol and clarion. “And yet...” His token glinting on her hand: he dared. “I'd have a lock of it, sweet witch, for journey's sake."

"In knots, as witches sell the wind?"

"Aye, knotted: for undone ‘twould quicken stone."

A parry and no promise: “Thou wouldst thaw my lady's glass?"

"Like April snow. And all thy combs would flower, leafless, from the wood, and make of thy undoing, crowns of May.” A tendril, like a wisp of fire, twining by her cheek: he traced it, marvelling. So cold, so bright and cold.

Not fencing now: the blade itself: “Wouldst braid thy gallows? Wear it?"

"Nearer than my breath. I'll knot my soul in it.” It burned in him already, bright in every vein: a tree. He took her in his arms. “And being strung upon my bones, ‘twill play the same tune still, for sun and moon, and all the starry hey to dance."

Her lips were colder than the moon's, and soft. He felt him falling in a drift of snow, bedazzled, over ears. Her lap, he thought, she lulls them in her lap. Moon and stars. He saw the burning bush. He saw the bird of her, flown up amid her branches—that he could not take. He shook himself, remembering the traveller's eyes, and shrugged the greatcoat off. “I'll go no more a-guising. ‘Tis the fiddler's turn to dance."

"To pipe and drum,” the traveller said.

Thea and the traveller took the coat between them, lofting it and laying it upon the springing heather, so it made a bed. They stood at head and foot of it, as in the figure of a dance; the traveller spoke.

"What thou gets here, thou mun leave betimes."

"I must bear it,” Thea said.

"And will."

"Undone and done."

The traveller crouched and tweaked a corner of the coat aside, tucked something in, and rose. “What is ta'en here, cracks t'glass. What is tinder s'll be ash. Go lighter of it, intil dark.” She flung a pair of shears on the makeshift bed. They lay there open, like a striding stork. She turned and gathered up her pack. “I's off."

They saw her go. They lay together on the coat, of leaves as deep as hallows. After a time, unspeaking, they undid her hair, and went into another night.

O the dark. Thou hear'st not, Margaret. I will tell this to the darkness.

I would not be Thea: so I did, undid. The thing of naught. Ablaze and all unhallowed in that night, I cracked the glass. Blasphemed my lady, that was Annis. That was all myself. Of my own will, I overset her holiest of laws; I broke her will of me, her mirror and her chain. Set Cloud for Law, and darkness for her glass. Blood in the stone's place, the place of secrets. Rose for thorn.

The traveller came to the stones. They stood looking out on darkness, on the bare white shoulder of the fell. That knowe is Law. The sky was starless; yet they mirrored in their O that constellation called Nine Weaving or the Clasp. The wintry mantle they had pinned was gone. Softly, she went in and out among them with her dying torch. All doors are hers; but these stood open. There was no one where the girl had been. The torch went out. The traveller turned among the empty stones, toward morning, sunwise.

Ah!
cried Brock. She saw the falling star, now, nowhere, in the wintry sky. Her seeing sained it. Wheeling round, she dropped the black end of the besom to the earth, ashes on the frost. She snuffed the wind. It was rising, high above the earth. The sky had flawed with stars, with scarves and spanglings of light. Her eyes were good; she told the eight stars in the Nine, and one beside. It danced with them. The ashes told its name.

Beyond her lay the long bare fells, rimewhite, unwhitening. Through patches of the fading snow there pierced a greener white of snowdrops, that do spring in Ashes’ wake. Her flowers. Drops of Milk, the country folk do call them, Ashes’ Buds. They bring the light with them returning, rising from her mother's dark: all seely innocence. Yet they are death to pluck; and yet they must be gathered, woven for her crown by earthly hands. By Ashes. Not herself, but in her stead: a lass each winter who must wear the burden of her name, her silence, walking in her sleep. That godhead lights on whom she chooses: Ashes for her sake, her shadow, souling in a coat of skin. Her winter's lyke.

As Brock walked on, she passed a windbare thicket leaning all one way, and saw the curled green shoots of bracken, green amid the scrawl of last year's leaves; she saw the tassels of the oak unbraiding. Saw the selving wood. A hare loped by her, giddy with the moon; she slung no stone at it. It danced in a dizzy spiral. At last she came to where the Clew was caught, like sheep's wool, in the branches of a leafless thorn. Nearer to the earth there hung a garland and a tattered coat, cast by. And at its roots, asleep in winter's lap, there lay a greenwhite girl. Brock bent and sained her, touching eyes, mouth, heart with ashes. Until the dawn she watched by the sleeping girl.

Thea slept and she was kindled: all within her side the star became a knot of stars, a congeries, a cloud, a soul. It waked within her turning sky. Her hair unwreathing was the red of dawn.

Kit woke to see his new-made lover squatting naked in the ashy coat, her shorn hair flickering about her skull. So white, her goblin face. So young.
What have I done?
he thought.
O dark, what is she doing?
On the hearth lay the long sheaf of her sundered hair, not fading like shorn grass, but fiery. Bright as bracken in the rain, as bright as copper molten in a forge, a riverspill of fire on the muddy stones. She was burning it, strand by strand. Crouching, she stirred the embers with the shears.

"No,” he said. “Thea."

The child witch turned to him. White as frost, as frail. Blood and ashes on her thighs; the tuft of small fire that a breath would blaze. All naked but the coat of skin. She rose and held a ring to him, white-gemmed, as if she gave away her tears. She spoke in a child's imperious voice. “Go your ways. You have well served me."

Coldstruck, he stared at her. The eyes saw no one. Mad?

She crouched again, to riddle through the ashes with a rusty sieve.

He caught her. Sharp and soft, a thornbush deep in snow. Like branches she recoiled, and all her witchcraft fell away, like snow, like scattered snow. She crouched amid the shards. “Not done,” she said. “I was not done."

Kit knelt beside.

"Thea. Love. Wake up.” He stroked the hackles of her hair, so cold, so cold. “Thou'rt dreaming."

In his arms, she changed, thawed, cleft. His goblin rose.

And afterward, she slept at last. Lying watching her, the slight moon, turning always from his gaze, he saw a fireglint beyond her: a long strand of her hair, caught shining on a splint of wood. The last. He ran it through and through his hands. He saw the girl in the wintry garden, turning back to call him on; he saw the lantern of her hair. Again and yet again, he played the fugue of its undoing. Heartstrings. Not for burning. With his fiddler's hands he wound it round and round, and tucked it safe beside his heart.

"Gone,” said Kit.

Whin said nothing; she could see it still, or the ghost of it: a bracelet of bright hair about the bone. Like stolen fire. He'd wear it to his grave.
Beyond,
she thought.
Would string his stars.
She shelled another mussel for the broth, another; tossed the leavings on the heap. Clack. Click. Clack. At last: “And wha'd take that and leave rings?"

"Crows. Her mother—I betrayed her. In the end."

Whin cracked and thumbed another mussel. Knife-edge and morsel. Weed. “Ah. Craws wi’ beards."

Kit turned his face. Not yet, thought Whin. And yet he'd tell.

Wet underfoot. Burnt moorland or bare stone; bracken, bent or tussock: all were underlaid with squelch. “A world warped with water,” Thea said, and wrung her coat skirts. Water curling from the cloud, like raw wool from a carder's combs. White water at a ford, frayed out, like torn lace at a roaring lad's throat. Fine icy water in the air. “At least,” said Kit, “it's not raining.” He did not say: we cannot lie in this. “There'll be a barn,” he said. But now he could not tell if they were climbing, if they'd come this way before. Bright and brighter blazed the rust of bracken in its mockery of fire. The color of her hair, the color of desire, flickering on nothing, on the barren moor. Could water burn?

Her face turning back at him was like the moon from cloud; he leapt to it, it hooked him through the heart, the bone-caged heart.

"Look,” said Thea, beckoning. “A walker on the hill.” She called out, “Stay, thou shepherd!” And she ran. Kit ran after, calling, “Wait.” And there was no one there: a waystone, squatting in the bracken like a hussif at her hearth. Thea touched the stone, her face between dismay and laughter. “See, she looms. ‘Tis her weather."

"Hush,” said Kit. “I doubt another day she brews.” And fumbling beneath his pocket flap, he found a bit of bread, their last, and left it in a hollow of the stone. “There, awd lass. For a skein of sun."

And to Thea, “There'll be houses, wait on. We can barter and lie snug as hobs. Curds and barley straw."

"What way?” said Thea.

When they turned from her, the stone was fogbound, roofed and walled with cloud; they saw no way. “Away,” said Kit. “'Tis all one.” They heard the clank and rattle of a sheep on stones, a bird's disconsolate cry. And then a tap, a tapping, gathering like rain: a hammer on a forge.

"A fire,” said Kit.

And stumbling, sliding down a track, they found a trod, stones driven edgewise for laden hooves; a wall, a fire in the mist. They tumbled from the old girl's lap, as if they'd been shaken from her apron, out of cloud and into rain.

And out of rain and by his fire sat a tinker at his work, his anvil driven in the ground, his lean bitch skulking by his side. A sere man, spare and shaggy, like a twist of tobacco. His dog, the mingled grey of ashes, smoke. He'd a tussy of coney skins hung to his tentflap; a jangle of saucepans and riddles and shears.

"How d'ye do?” said Kit, doffing his drowned hat. “Well, I hope, sir."

"What d'ye lack?” said the tinker.

"A knife,” said Kit. “A cookpot. And a flint and steel. That blanket."

Clink! went the hammer on the rounding can. “A good cloak, is that. Awd bitch whelped on yon cloak. What d'ye give?"

Kit unfolded Thea's starry mantle.

The tinker eyed the velvet shrewdly; pinched a fold with black nails. “Molecatcher, ista? Owt else?"

"A glass."

An eyebrow. Then a shrug. “Gi's here.” He ran his thumb round the frame of it, tilting his eye at them; considered; spat. “Done."

Kit knelt to bundle the stuff. A good knife indeed, well-hefted, sharp. “Yon road?"

"Goes longways.” The velvet cloth had vanished in his pack. “And there's folk and not. Dogs."

"What honest work for strangers?"

A shrewd glance at Thea: draggled silk and drab russet, and a started vixen's brush of hair. “Whoring. Thieving."

Kit flushed. “Not while I've breath."

"Brave words to starve on. There's begging o course. Any trade in yer hands?"

"I could fiddle—” Kit began. And turned his palms up ruefully.

"And I could ride pillion, if I'd a horse and a whip."

Thea slipped the rings from her fingers. “Would these not bring us silver? For a crowd and a bow?"

"Aye, and a dance on the gallantry. Wha's to say they's not been thieved?” The bright eyes slid sideways at Kit. “I can see yer not to drown."

"They're not—” said Kit, and stopped. They were.

But Thea held a ring up, flicked it shining at the heather's roots. “If thou'd not stoop for it, then let it branch and bear silver."