Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales

by Greer Gilman

  "Y'll mind ye,” said a fifth, uncertainly. “At home."

  And strangely, she did know: she could feel it like a chink left open to a winter gale, a wind eye in the dark. “Not far,” she said.

  She led them on. Uphill.

  They followed her in silence, but in measure; one behind her played a reedy little tune on her pipe, over and again: a haunting little hirpling tune, a jaunty melancholy music, like a bird on a briar. They walked to that wistful measure, and the ting of silver struck. And at the skirts of the rabble, with a slow whorl and a clack of antlers: for their husbands’ horns were in their keeping.

  There were fires leaping up all round them on the hills.

  "Here,” said Margaret, among the stones. “I live here."

  A deeper silence, of unease. The piping bird had flown.

  The coat was in the Owlstone, curled up like a coalfox in its den. On the sleeping flank of it, there lay an owlegg in a garland of haws, like a halo round the scrawled and clouded moon. Its dream.

  Ah, but the scent of it: like a live thing. Wild. Not as a beast is wild, unreasoned ravening; but mindful in its passions: only folk use fire, make patterns of a spattering of stars. She snuffed at it. Of blood and honey like a bear; of earth and ashes like an empty grave, new-opened in the frost. Of time. Kneeling, she touched it, brushed it with a timid finger. It was warm as if a soul had slept in it, but lately risen; and it burned with cold: like frost on fire, snow on swiddened moorland. Smouldering with power.

  It would eat her. It was earth.

  And being graved in it, she would conceive the sky.

  Fearful, desirous, she took it in her arms; she made to put it on: enlarge herself.

  "Not yet, lass,” said Owl Barbary. “Yer must be waked."

  Behind her was a swift low argument: now what?

  "Here's nowther maid nor wife,” said one. “It's all gan othergates."

  "Nor mortal neither, if her bed is Law."

  "And when did Ashes take husband or master? As her cradle is otherwhere, I'll stand Ashwife,” said Owl Barbary. “But we'll need a hearth."

  "Low Imberthwaite's gainest,” said Moon.

  "Hawtreys,” said Owl. “They's a lass will have lated. They'll have an Ash-ale spread."

  "Good ale, Deb Hawtrey brews,” said Hareskin. “If she's a cup to drink it in."

  "That's us,” said Vixen, pushing up her mask. “But I'd best run tell our mam y'r coming, or she'll think I's Ashes. And she'd kindle cats.” And she took to her heels.

  "Doesn't she want more clouts to wash?” called someone after. But the girl was halfway down the far side of the hill.

  Margaret looked for her latewitch in the thrang, but they bore her on, jostling. As she was pulled away, she turned, looked backward at the Nine, the stones, until the green road sank between two walls, and they were shouldered out of sight.

  They came through a bewilderment of pea-sticks to a cottage, tousled and a-blink, as if they'd waked it.

  All at once shy and solemn, the guisers swept the doorstone for her, in slow circles. Soul! A soul!

  The door was opened by a flustered woman, bobbing, with her apron full of toys. A nearly white smock: but no maid. Roundbellied as a foxglove bud, that children pop. Thin-stemmed. Her wispy fairish hair astray, like owl's down from a ravelled nest. Like withywind. She tried to tuck it in her smutchy cap, but had a saucepan in that hand. Full of old shoes and a mousetrap. “Just tidying a bit. Come in if yer can.” Then quailing before the Owl's regard: “That's to say, Well-met-Ashes-may-you-hallow-all-within. I's flayed we's all at six and seven here.” And over her shoulder, she said, “Here's Ashes to eat yer. Mek yer curtsies."

  Behind her, round-eyed, open-mouthed, there was a tussy-mussy of children, as many as daisies, with their faces all upturned. They clutched fistfuls of apron and bobbed; or rather, squatted, bare-arsed boy and all.

  "That's not Ashes, it's a lady,” said one.

  "Husht,” said her mother.

  "I bring Ashes,” said Owl Barbary; and over her shoulder, “Thou, Alys Coteler, and Goslin Crackernut, thou. Stand Ashwives with me. All on yer else, stay without."

  The gravest of them, Owl and Moon and Hareskin, came within. They took Margaret's lantern and the Ashes coat, with reverence; then her sooty jacket and her hood, and led her by the fire.

  "Ale in plenty. Malbeit new,” said Dame Hawtrey, wending through the swags of laundry. “Tib! Thou serve our guests.” In the one room, sat the Vixen with her beaver up, nimbling her pick of cakes before the company's descent. Her apron full. “Mam?"

  "Here's ashes enough for allt world and their daughters,” said Owl, and set the lantern on the hob. A sluff of white ashes, spilling out from the hearth. She knelt by the fire to take Margaret's ruined slippers. “It's a fire o juniper,” said Dame Hawtrey. “That's luck. And eldins o Ninewood.” She hung out Margaret's stockings on the kettle hook; they dripped on the pudding bag. “And our Sukey Bet? Is she likely?"

  "Willing,” said Owl Barbary.

  Margaret stood shivering in her fine clothes, boned and broidered. Moon and Hareskin eyed her askance, like cats at a crab. There's fish in that.

  Hareskin stuck her boots, well-tallowed, in the coals. The cat, offended, stalked away. “Eh well. There's bride-cake for't geese i't morning."

  Moon drank. “All but t'gander. He'd hatchet for his breakfast. Supped apples and onions."

  "Shame,” said Hareskin regretfully. “Six pies they were to have, and pluck to't poor. Waste of a haunch o beef. Forby all them raisins i't cake."

  A clash of kitchenry. Moon was hunting. “They could have it for Ash-ale."

  "Mester Corbet'll be in a tantarum. Thwarted of his dainty."

  "He may rant himsel stamping through floor into cellar, but his goblin'll go bare to bed. Here's nutmeg. Does she keep a fork?"

  "Not that clout. Cat's pissed on it."

  Owl stood unpinning Margaret's limp kerchief, with the pins stuck neatly in her own sleeve, one by one.

  There was a scrabbling at the shutters, voices in the eaves. Boys squabbling at a spyhole, like swallows going in a barn. What d'ye see? Can tha see her? And triumphantly: I see'd her arse. Their catcalls overcrowed by furies: then a clash and a tumbling, thump and crash, as of a ladder fallen down; and on its heels, a lashing and a thwacking. Wounded yelps. A rout.

  "Lads,” said Moon with complacent scorn. “But we's besoms."

  "Eh,” said Hareskin. “Mind that Tom o Cloud that were spying at us? Year that Will's Beck were Ashes—Poor lass. Green i't earth."

  "Wed at Kindling and buried at Hallows,” said Moon darkly. Replete.

  "Yer mind him? T'awd luning in a flaycraw's jacket?"

  Sleeves.

  "Poor fellow,” said Owl Barbary. “Mad."

  "And they'd a fiddler and all. We'd've had a rare dance."

  "Now he's sent for, he can play for t'hanging,” said Moon. “Thrift."

  Stomacher.

  "Thou's til thy bed,” said Dame Hawtrey to her tadpole boy. “Or Ashes and her mam will eat thee! In a pie! Wi’ mustard!” And in a high cracked caw, half gentry and half ogress: “Another slice, my lady? Aye.” She crouched and caught him, rolling and squealing, and tickled his belly. “And then we'll pick on t'bones, pick on t'bones...” She bore him off behind a flagged curtain.

  Now her gown: shaken out with care. Now swift unlacing, aglets flying: Owl unhusked her of her bodice.

  "Poor Beck were another such. Russety,” said Hareskin. “Head and fork. We's not had a raddle Ashes since."

  "Tib's Tabby,” said the Moon.

  Petticoat.

  "Now then,” said Owl to Margaret, “Y'll remember what's to do. Same as ever were. Coat's what you are."

  Another Margaret, elsewhere and otherwise, had read those words of Ashes: in a drowned book, in a tower, under Law. “Cross all, keep nought..."

  Owl unpinned her hair, unbraided it, the bone pins bristling in her mouth.

  "Good. And
?"

  "Eh, but that's bonny hair,” said Dame Hawtrey, coming ben. She smoothed it. “Light through leaves."

  "...but silence,” Margaret said.

  "Aye. Hawd tongue,” said Moon. “Thou's mute, but if yer tell a death."

  Owl said, “Yer may have what yer will, but not ask it."

  "Man or maid, or owt anywise,” said Hareskin eagerly.

  "Or nowt,” said Owl Barbary.

  A clattering kept small, as Dame Hawtrey moved from shelf to table, fire to flake. At work.

  And Moon breathed barley in her ear: “They's to come at yer bidding, will or nill. But if yer ride a gallop on another's hobby, think on: ‘twill fall out afterward."

  Owl Barbary said, “So be it. And if any take his will of yer, unwilled—"

  "If he as much as meddles wi’ yer shadow—"

  "If he nobbut pisses upwind of yer—"

  "Then by Law, will my lady blast and wither him, her ravens take his soul untold."

  "—he's craws’ meat."

  I know, thought Margaret, shaken. They do clothe me as my lady's Ashes, but I am the thing itself, her creature that did guise as Margaret. Her runaway. There is a cleft in me to hell; and through me, she could burn this world to ash.

  "From Hallows until Kindling, ye may walk by night and take,” said Owl. “Whatever's in yer keeping then, is forfeit."

  "They unravelled all my knitting that I'd done,” said Hareskin.

  "Will or no,” said Moon.

  Owl Barbary: “Yer vixen's yer own."

  "But if ye kindle in Ashes, that bairn's blood is Cloud's."

  Then they lifted up her smock; they took with it her name, her tongue.

  Soul naked.

  All was changed. Candle; bread; air; bowl of eggs: all commonplace transfigured, numinous: as if her heavens were dissolving in it, light in light. The woman with a jug of milk seemed holy, pouring stillness into stillness from an endless spring of grace. As if the milk were Ashes, Ashes were the cup. As if her soul-in-body brimmed with soul, and still and still the light was filling her, indwelling, and would not be spilled.

  The Ashes child was bare as February. Bending like a snowdrop, Ashes’ flower, with the burden of the winter. Piercing it. The soul is earthclad that the green may pierce. She is the coming out of darkness: light from the tallow, snowdrops from the earth, Ashes from the winter hillside; and from Law, the child returned.

  She is Ashes and holy.

  Now the Ashwives knelt to her and murmured “Lady” and “My lady Ashes.” Owl, arising, sained her, touching eyes, mouth, heart with rain. “Be of earth. For all of us.” She happed the naked soul in Ashes’ coat.

  Still silently, the newborn wept. Not grief: but only that she felt so light, so strange and light.

  "Lift up yer heart,” said Owl. And drinking to her, “Hallows on ye.” Others knelt in turn and made small offerings: a caudle of milk in a mazer, swirled out a little on the hearthstone first; a something stilled, sweet fire in an eggshell that she was to break; a riddlecake, a little charred, with honey, shared in nine.

  "Lie there,” said Owl Barbary, folding up the smock. “Moon blanch thee."

  With ashes on her fingertip, Owl marked the girl's face: brow and eyelids, cheek and chin. Salt runnels on her cheeks. Then with a handful of grey ash and cinders, flinders of burnt stick, she rubbed her: throat and body, hands and feet. Her hair shone firestreaked through soot.

  Moon threw salt on the fire, so it sparkled. Quick now.

  Three at once they bent, rebraiding up her hair with runes of iron, charms of silver and of lead. Witchknots. Ashes’ sign. A wheel of running hares. Over and again, the moon. She jangled as she turned. They slipped the soulcoat from her shoulders, only to her waist; they clad her in a harden shirt. White-brown as fallow fields in winter; coarser than an old sack on a threshing-floor, but soft with years. Grey skin breeches next. And last, they hung the soulbag at her throat; she bowed her head beneath the cord.

  Undone.

  She reeled a little where she stood, in snuff. The awe had dwindled into bone-deep weariness. Could not be held. She tasted ashes on her lips; she felt the strange forked hampering of the breeches, skin between her legs. What on earth she most desired, she could not ask in words. Her starglass most of all. Her book. Her precious pack of cards. All nameless. All forfeit if she took.

  "Is't done?” said a small voice from the bed.

  "And all to do."

  "Will there be oranges?"

  "Thy lapful. But thou husht. Here's Ashes."

  Awed children, peering round the grimy hangings of the bed.

  Oranges. Again, she saw the tawny ring, aglow on Corbet's hand. Again, the crow lad, like an eggshell, crushed. To die without a soul; to hang—But now as Ashes she could take his ring. And not to keep: to give. Could claim his living body. Aye, and silver and a horse. So would he were away.

  She would; and could not lift her tongue to speak. As if a stone were in her mouth. Imploringly, she turned from face to face.

  "Coat knaws what y'd ask,” said Owl.

  Delving in the sooty pockets of the coat, she found a great bunch of iron keys in one; a something squared and sliding in the other, wrapped in a cloth. O my cards. But altered in her hand: larger, and of lighter paper, rough. Steeped in smoke. Undoing them she saw another set of cards, in woodcut. Jack Daw's pack.

  They were for a man's palm: she would need both hands. She cut them clumsily: The Tower. Ah, the Ashwives said; and stirred and murmured. Prickling with chagrin and wonderment, at far end of her wits, she thought: That card was burnt.

  * * * *

  A jangling in the heavens. Mally's in her winter house, whose rafters are the wood above, whose walls are night. You can't get in but she lets you; but Brock's anywhere. In at all doors and through crannies. She's keys to all locks. She lopes in, coatless, and she hunkers by the fire.

  In Cloud, a cold wind blows. The feathers of her mattress fall.

  Capless, in her crazy petticoats, old Mally stirs the pot. “Is't sure?'

  "Aye, braided in her hair.” A chink and clatter as Brock turns. “If she's kindled of a stone, she'll carry."

  "Good then,” says Mally, ladling out for Brock. “Her glass is full."

  Taking of the cup, the other drinks. “And if she cast it not? What rough beast then?"

  "Carry, I did say; not quicken.” Mally drinks of her crooked cup. “Nowt's what my sister is, and nowt will Ashes keep."

  "Can thou hold her so? Unquickening?"

  "Twa changes o't moon. No more. That long did Thea travail by my sister's malison, afore she lightened o yon bairn. And moon for moon, I's match her. Hallows til Lightfast."

  "And if young Marget meet her under Law, and fail?"

  "Then nowt s'll eat her up, in outward."

  "If Marget win?"

  Stars, clouds of stars are canted in her spectacles; then fire, flaring as she turns. “Then we's undone. I't world she's great with, we is nowt.” And taking up her broom, she says, “Here's all to do."

  Brock thrusts her hand into the fire, and lifts it up; it dances on her palm. “I's off then.” At the sill of now and here, she turns.

  Nonce would his fancy get,

  But Nancy she nill;

  Tib shall have Tom o Cloud,

  And Ashes have her will.

  * * * *

  The island was bare. Whin, captive, twisted round to look. No castle, as the stories told of Law; no blade of grass, no tree; but a fell of burnt moorland, scald as a fireship, and crowned with stones. All round it raged a wolfblack sea, a wind that ravened on the shore. Above it stood unlifting sky. No sun nor moon, nor slant of light, but mirk and shadowless. No stars. Or rather that they walked among them, or the lykes of stars, in the Unrising.

  They moved in silence for a time, still bent against the wind. “Here,” said Morag.

  They halted at a standing stone. It seemed a rough-carved image of a naked witch, squat-bellied, spindle-shanked, and
girning, crouching with her legs agape. Whin saw it was a thrall, enduring, blind as dark. It kenned them and it hated. “Bawbee Mag,” said Morag, calling it by name. She took her iron keys and chose one, with a muttered spell; she turned it in the witch's lock.

  Earth opened like a grave. Bonecold it was, astounding breath and blood.

  The child? Again Whin saw the blotch of birds that tore and quarrelled at the dying girl; she saw the bloodwet child upheld. Kit's lass. His daughter, that she'd sworn to find, and bring her, even from the depths of Law.

  "Down here,” said Morag and Whin followed, down and down a spiral stair, and in and out the turnings of a labyrinth. They's left me a thread, and I walk and I wind. She tried their tally on her knucklebones; could make no sense. A thread would tangle on itself, a trail of stones would scatter like a cloud of chaff. They were under Law.

  Witstarved, falling in a daze of dream, Whin stumbled on.

  She was roused by a reeling stench, a rustling mewling watchfulness. A squalid rancor. They were halted at a cave, howked out of glistening rock. The hag thrust in her torch between the iron bars. “Bred to the stone,” said Morag. “They were of thy kind.” A cageful of fledgling ravens, blind as worms, and writhing naked in the litter. Wenches to the fork, but winged and taloned. Ravenous beneath. Their mews was strewn with tirings of manflesh, raw bloody bones. Whin stood by the bars: not close. A raven stirred and mantled, gaping at both maws. She was naked, quilling out; she spread the wings that were her hands once, webbed. She was ringed through her privities, that gaped. Her will, her mortal tongue, her soul were gone. Her eyes still knew her fall. And hated.

  A monstrous regiment, a blood-dark Pleiades. And of her kind.

  A fury waked in her, not whirling but a whetstone. I see, thought Whin; and brushed her finger through a smoky torch: that bound her oath. I will.

  And now they spiralled up and upward; but they came not into light. Bare passages, where hung a few flagged tapestries, all blear with dust. Her webs. And nothing else, but here and there, great chests broke open, spilling wrack. Salt-ruined webs of velvet, bletted books. A virginals. Gnawed candles. Cups and oranges, all blue with rot. A sword. And there, the whirligig she'd cried for, that she'd broken, long years since. The knife she'd lost, that cut his cord. Her Ashes brat's. The stubble on her cold neck rose and pricked. That blade had severed her from kind. For what? For nothing but her will. She knew not even if the boy had lived an hour past her leaving him, birth-bloody, on the starven ground. She'd vowed to cut his throat with it, she'd sworn it to the gods: give back to Law what law decreed—his blood. But she had not. Starved earth to suckle him but once: and so she thirsted. She went on.