Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales

by Greer Gilman

  * * * *

  Somewhere up Owlerdale they sheltered from a passing rain with tinkers in a hedge. Two women, old and young, with baskets of fairings: cowslip tossy-balls and bunches of bright ribands; toys and tawdry. Kit spread them his coat. The blackthorn was tarnishing, the white in bud. The younger of their chance-met company was breaking buds of it, to whet her bacon; the elder thumbed her cards and smoked. Rain and blackthorn fell.

  "That comet,” said Kit to Thea. “Ah, but it grows bright and bonny. Like a dandelion gone to seed and drifting."

  "Whose clock?” said Thea. “And whose breath?"

  Still wandering. It preyed on him, that wan and random look.

  "Craws!” said the younger, counting wares. “Dropped whirlywhorl I't road."

  The elder pointed with her pipestem. “Pick it up, then.” There it lay in a puddle, gaudy and forlorn.

  "I'll get it,” said Kit, leaping up. Gallantry, perhaps; or smoke of shag. It mingled with the tinker's hair, smoke and piraling like old man's beard.

  The younger bit her bread, then turned and offered it to Thea, all but her thumbpiece. Cold fat bacon and wild garlic.

  Pinched mouth and shake of head.

  "I cry you mercy,” Thea said. “A toothache."

  A shrewd eye, like a stormcock's. “What did yer bite, then?"

  But her aunt held out her pipe. “Here. Have a pull at me bacca. ‘Twill dill thy pugging tooth."

  Thea twisted, spewed and spat. Lay weeping.

  "Ah,” said Baccapipe. “Can read thy fortune wi'out cards."

  And Bread-and-Bacon kicked her heels and sang, ” ... when me apron were low, Ye'd follow me after through frost and through snow..."

  "Whisht.” The old one wiped Thea's mouth, felt her brow and wrist and belly with rough concern. “Not far gone, I'd say.” She quirked her chin at Kit coming. “Does he—?"

  No.

  "And do yer—?"

  No again.

  "Knowst mouse-ear?"

  "Where?” said Thea.

  "Ninewood. Up Ask ways, a two three mile.” She pointed over the hills. “Grows in among thorn."

  And the younger sang again, blithe as a cuckoo that calls, Not I! At the nesting wren: ” ... but now that my apron is up to my knee..."

  "Sneck,” said the elder.

  Too late. Kit had tumbled. On his face, like wind in whitebeam, danced and paled his feelings: joy, awe, terror, tenderness, despair.

  "Thea?” He knelt and wreathed her in his arms. “Canst walk? Can I get thee aught?” he said foolishly. “From anywhere, the moon.” He could not see her face. He thought he could feel the child; he saw it in his mind's eye, like a little comet, still travelling and trailing light: a seed-moon tumbling over and over through the air.

  * * * *

  Now, Margaret, thou begin'st to wind. Slipping from thy bower, soft and warily, thou try'st the latch: my lady and her crow keep watch. Not always, thou hast found. The gore-crow hunts; my lady sleeps, but as the sun in Thule, riding on the rim of darkness. She but wets her lip in Lethe cup. Yet she sleeps. Locks and spells she's set on thee, and cage on cage: thou walk'st within a tower, in a maze, within a wall hedged round with thorn, encompassed in a bitter sea. Her lean hounds prowl the courts and coverts, and her huntsman wards the gates.

  And further, they do keep thee innocent, they blanch thee, as a gardener doth a white root under stones. Thou art bedazed and physicked, purged, pinched, bled, stayed, examined, spied on. Whipped.

  Yet they do not lock thy door, within so many locks. Nor mew thy seeking thoughts.

  They slight thee, for thou canst not be dead Thea, thou unwanted wast her death; disdain thee for thy meddled blood. In their contempt is all thy hope. Thou art a dish that likes them not; they have no stomach for thy soul. Unconsidered, thou art half unseen, a sparrow in a wintry hedge. Whatever thou art let to find is all inconsequent, is haws.

  Thou turn'st the key and slip'st.

  Doors and doors. An arras and a winding stair.

  Ah, these rooms I never saw. Thy journey, Margaret. Not mine.

  Only to the next room, and the next.

  Locked.

  Nothing but a box of nutmegs.

  Spectacles, in this, that make thy candle swerve and loom. Old iron. Rats.

  A lock made like a witch, that bares her secrets to the key. That watches, mute and venomous. Not there.

  In this, a heap of books, sea-ruined. Mooncalf'd bindings, white and swollen as a drowned face. Warp and white-rot, skin on skin. Down thou sit'st and try'st to pry the boards, to turn the bleared and cockled pages. Here, a drawing of a hand, anatomized. A riddle in geometry. A fugue of spiders.

  And behind a faded arras—ghost of roses, greensick blue—a bright dark closet full of wonders and of dust. A mute virginals. Thy fingers press the slack and clatter of its keys, unclose its fretty soundboard, gnawed and rustling with mice. The lid within is painted with brief garlands—violets and wood anemones—as if the music dreamed them in the dark. Spring flowers thou hast never seen: thy fingers, wond'ring, trace. They pleach the silk of scarves, as sheer as iris; trace the windings of a table carpet, blood of nightingales and cry-at-midnight blue. Thou strok'st a jar, round-bellied—blear with dust, yet lucent underneath—of china, blue and white as clouded May.

  * * * *

  "So y'd not've been at leap fires, then,” said Whin. “Being heavy."

  "And light.” Kit had seen them, other years, in Lune. Had begged the wood for them, from door to door:

  Sticks to burn vixens,

  Stones for the crow,

  Clips for us green lads

  And girls, as we go.

  He'd danced with the highest: brave lads and bold heroes, and the lang tangly girls. Whirled higher, still higher, for the claps and cries, the eyes admiring or awed or scornful. Afterward, for clips and kisses. For the darker thing. By one and one, they'd pinched the embers—ah, another in thine hair. Thy shirt. By twos, had slipped away. He had lain on the dark hills; had made of charred petticoats, green gowns.

  "No,” he said. “No, we went to the greenwood. To get leaves."

  * * * *

  "O,” said Kit. “I drown.” He stood in heaven, in the place where all doors lead. That wood was deep in flowers of the inmost curve of blue, the blue of iris her embrace. Her eye within her rainbow, as the moon within the old moon's clasp. And Thea walked in that unearthly floating haze of flowers, amid the leafing trees, knee-deep in Paradise. It was the heart; and yet at every further step, ‘twas this. And this beyond. Each blue, the inwardest embrace, the bluest eye. An O annihilating all that's made.

  The blue became his element, his air: he dove.

  He saw a falling star beyond him. Thea.

  Then ‘twas past. He scuffled through old beech leaves, brushed by nettles. Stung himself and swore. Close by, he whiffed the green stench of a fox. He turned. A bluebell wood, the bonniest he'd ever seen. Young slender beeches. Holly, celandines, and wood anemones. And Thea gathering leaves, green branches.

  Where she walked was heaven still.

  He lay in sky, and watched her, errant in the sky below. She'd slipped from her tumbled smock, stood clad in sky. He saw the crescent of her, white and glimmering: in the dark of moon, the moon. That other sky she walked was on the verge of green, bluegreen, and turning deeper into blue. Beyond the new leaves, it was dusk. The trees were pointlace yet, or bare or budding out: an airy seine. A star hung trembling in the air, like water on a leaf, about to fall, unfallen. And the moon within his orbit, gilding as she set.

  By a thorn tree, at his side, she sat and wove a garland in her lap. A knot of May.

  Drowsily, he said, “We munnot sleep."

  "Why not?"

  "The morn will be the Nine. Wouldst see them rising?"

  "Ah,” said Thea, “but I am no maid."

  He touched her small round belly. “Yet thou bringest may. A branch.” The rank sweet scent of thorn hung faintly on the air; the petals fell
, as if the moon unleaved. “Shall we set a hedge of them, a hey of girls?"

  "And call it Lightwood?” Thea said.

  Kit said,

  Let no man break

  A branch of it, for leavy Tom doth wake.

  And keep his lash of girls ungarlanded.

  That wood is hallows.

  In another, rustic voice, he answered, “'Aye, ‘tis where the bushes harry birds. I dare not for the owls go in."

  Thea said:

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

  And I—

  "Go on,” said Kit.

  And I th'moon's daughter in these rags of cloud

  Shall bear thee light.

  "Oh,” said Thea, “but I've left the book in Lune."

  "Thou hast the way of it."

  "By heart."

  "And by thy heart.” He wreathed his hands about their child, and spoke the woman's part:

  The lady goes with me.

  For that her star is wandering, I name

  Her Perseis...

  And darting kisses in her neck, he said, “What think'st thou, for our lass, of Perseis?"

  "Not Eldins?"

  "Ah.” Kit laughed softly for delight. “Will there be nine?"

  "Less one,” said Thea, bending to her wreath.

  Whin said, “Did yer not guess what she twined?"

  "No,” said Kit. “I was a fool."

  Why d'ye pull that bitter little herb, that herb that grows so grey...? Ah, she'd pulled those leaves alone. “A man."

  A silence. Somewhere in the wood, a bird poured silver from a narrow neck. Thea stirred. “Kit?"

  "Hmm?"

  "Does it end so?"

  "Which?"

  "The tale. With Annis turned to stone."

  "At sunrise? Aye, and it begins."

  "There was another tale,” she said. “About the moon in a thorn bush."

  "Malykorne."

  "What's she?"

  "The Cloud witch. Annis’ sister, some do say. Her bed's where the sun is waked. He sleeps the winter there."

  "And now?"

  "Wakes wood."

  "Ah."

  Darkness and the moonspill of the may. Green is nowhere, it unselves the wood. As lovers are unselved: not tree embracing tree, but one. But wood. A riddle, he thought drowsily. Within a wood, another wood, a grove where grows no green; within a moon, another moon, and nowhere to be seen. A bird in the dark leaves answered, but he never heard. Two, two eyes, the owl cried out. Of tree, of tree, of tree. Kit slept.

  * * * *

  I will tell this in the dark. That crown I wove for thee. And on May Eve, of all unseely nights: that nadir of the wake of Souls, and darkness’ dark of moon. Unhallows.

  Ah, love, I had despaired of thee.

  I was unwitched. Thou knitting reeled up all my powers, left us naked to my lady's malice. Soul and body, I went heavy with thy death. My great kite belly would undo us all. And so I did, undid. I would not have thee bloodfast, earthbound, for my dam to take. Nor turn thee Annis, stone within my stone.

  * * * *

  Toward midnight, turning, Kit awoke and saw a fireflash amid the low woods, heard a brash of leaves: and there in the glade he saw a kitlin fox, a vixen dancing like a flake of fire in the wind.

  He turned to Thea, shook her softly. “Hush, love. Look."

  She woke and saw. He felt her at his side turned cold as hailstones. “Kill it,” Thea said.

  A stillness. “What?"

  "I am heavy, I can do no spell. Now. Quick."

  And still he watched. The patter of the paws was quick, like rain on leaves. A clickety vixen. April in its veins. It danced like a burning leaf, the aftercolor of the greenblue sky.

  "What harm in it?” he said. “The pretty kitlin."

  "Eyes,” she said.

  They turned and flashed, a deepsunk dazzling green. The fire was green.

  She said, “It wears the fox's fell."

  He'd heard no bark. No fox was ever so still, so fiery. None scented of green thorn. He rose, unsure. A stone?

  But it was gone.

  He turned back and saw Thea, huddled naked on the ground. He bent and wrapped her in her scattered clothes, for fear of eyes, of lairing eyes. Cold in his arms, she cried, “No witch. I am no witch. I cannot meet her in the air."

  Kit said, “Who'd harm thee? I would keep thee. I would try.” A hopeless tenderness consumed him, like a candle swaling in his bones. “It's what I'm for."

  She twisted from him. To the child in her, she cried, “My blood is thy undoing."

  "'Tis my blood as well,” said Kit. “I do not use thee."

  Thea said, “But I use thee. Poor fool, have you not seen? Thou wert my cock-horse, that I rid away."

  No ship, no ship beneath him, and the cold wave's shock. Salt-blind, he flailed at her. “Then find thyself a jade to bear thee, and another when he's flagged. Any stick will do to ride on."

  Silence. Her cheek went paler still. His hands unclenched. At last, softly, she said, “And to burn, at need. The slower, being green. I would not watch thee burn.” She turned her face from him; he saw the white neck, the tumbled quenchless hair. “I am thy death."

  And rising, naked in her smock, she ran. He followed blindly, pushing on at hazard through bushes and briars. Heedless of their lash, he scrambled onward, deeper in the wood. The wood was endless. Thea? Further on, he saw her glimmering; then white in whiteness, she was gone.

  His heart turned snow.

  * * * *

  When I got thee, I had not yet bled. Nor will now, being air. That bower and that bed of state, my lady dressed for Annis, all in hangings of deep crimson velvet, rich as for the progress of a queen, though in her exile. Not that blue and meagre hag, that bugbear Annis, that doth stalk the fells of Cloud; not she, that winter's tale, that dwindled bloodfast crone: but Annis, air and dark made crystalline, before her fall.

  I was born thirteen, as thou art now; I saw the Nine rise and the Gallows wheel and set an hundred enneads of times; and at thirteen, I lived a year, and died.

  My lady did conceive, create me green and virgin for her sorcery; but kept me for herself. Her study and her moving jewel, her toy, her book. The pupil of her eye, that she did dote upon, so year by year put off the consummation of her art, for lessoning.

  For play.

  In her conjurations—often in her storms—my lady witch would gaze in me, the glass that Morag held: bare April, but for winter's chain. Herself was January, all in black and branching velvet, flakes of frost at neck and wrist. Come, Madam, she would say. Undo. And then undo my coil of hair, unbraid it through and through her hands. Lie there, my art. And still would gaze, devouring my stillness, as the eye drinks light. I shivered in her admiration. Then, only then, her wintry hand would touch, her cold mouth kiss; and quickening, the witch would toy and pinch and fondle, aye, and tongue her silent glass, till she, not I, cried out and shuddered. Cracked.

  Cried out: her jewel, her epiphany, her nonpareil; her book of gramarye, her limbeck and her light. Her A and O.

  And yet not hers.

  Know you that the stone my lady wears is Annis, shattered in her fall and vanished, all but that cold shard of night. Her self that was.

  That moment of her breaking, time began. Light wakened from its grave in her. Unbound, the moon did bind her to that sickled and disdained hag thou see'st, that ashes of herself: the witch. Time chained her to this rock. And for a thousand thousand changes of the moon did Annis brood on her disparagement, the lightwrack of her Law. She sought to gather up her flaws of night, anneal them in her glass: that glass from which she drew me, naked and unsouled. Her self.

  With me, my lady did enact her fall: the cry and shattering. And with each reiterated crack, her glass would round itself, quicksilver to its wound. But not her soul. My brooch of nakedness did pierce her, bind her bloodfast to her baser self: that hag who eats children.

  That was not what she designed.

 
She had made me for the stone. The seed of Law. And on the morrow of the night I fled her would have wound the stair, unlocked the bloodred chamber, set the stone within my womb. Bred crystal of my blood. That stone would turn me stone from inward, Gorgon to itself, until—

  * * * *

  And then he saw her. Moonlight. ‘Twas the moon had dazzled him. No more. Light fell, leaves shifted. Thea stood agaze. Stone still and breathing silence. Hush. Look, there.

  He turned. A clearing, silver as a coin with dew, and tarnished as the moon's broad face. And in that O of light, like Mally-in-the-moon, a-bristle with her bush of thorn, he saw an elfish figure, to and fro. A child? (A tree afoot?) Not ancient, though as small and sickle as the old moon's bones: a barelegged child. A branching girl. They do get flowers of a hallows eve. Alone?

  A lash of thorn whipped back and welted him. He sleeved the salt blood from his eyes. He blinked and saw her, not in leaves but rags: the ruins of a stolen coat, perhaps, a soldier's or a scarecrow's, or a lover's run a-wood. Mad Maudlin's, that was Tom's old coat. It fell from her in shards, as stiff as any bark with years. There were twigs of thorn in wilting flower in her hair, down, eggshells, feathers. Cross and cross the O she went, not getting branches: walking patterns to herself, as furious fantastic as a poet in her bower, her labyrinth her language. Then a start, and back she skitted, ticklish as a spider on her web, to tweak some nebulous chiasmus. A hussif of trees.

  Daft as a besom, he thought. Poor lass.

  But Thea said to her, “Is't hallows?"

  "While it is. Thy time's to come.” The green girl scrabbled in her rags, howked out a pair of crooked spectacles and rubbed them in the tatters of a leaf-red cap. She perched them on her nose. A grubby girl, with greenstained knees, scabbed knees and elbows. As she turned, Kit saw her crescent body shining through the rags. A downy girl. He stirred and her seeing mocked him: a fierce howlet's face. All beak and eyes. “Shift,” she said. “I's thrang."

  But Thea said, “I am what you do."

  "Ah,” said the girl. “What's that?"

  "Undo."

  The girl glanced at Kit. “I see thou's done already what thou can't undo.” He felt her elfshot eyes. Her breasts were April, but the eyes were January, haily, and the tongue a cold and clashy March. Scathed, he felt himself, dishevelled in his raffish coat, with moss and toadstools in his hair. Leaves everywhere. And ramping after Thea, like a woodwose in a mumming. Mad for love.