Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales

by Greer Gilman

  She held out her shallow cup to Whin. “Come, girl, by my knee. A pledge."

  Whin shook her head. “Cry you mercy."

  "Ah, thou art wise in tales. Take nothing in the lykeworld: neither flesh nor wine. But thy gossips have misled thee. Here thou art eaten. Thy heart like a pomegranate, slowly, seed by seed.” She tipped the bowl so that Whin saw an eyeblink of the draft. Blue milk. “Thy dam—” She raised it to her lip, and drank. “Thy dam, I think, scarce suckled thee. But cast thee naked to the sea as waif. A witch of the Unleaving—"

  "Lish as an otter, aye, and fierce to bite,” said the huntsman. “Fish below the fork."

  "But served.” Again my lady held the cup to Whin. “Now wouldst drink rebirth?"

  Whin took the cup, old bone and brown as winter earth; she poured a little in her palm, swirled blood and milk and ashes. “To yer bonny hind,” she said, and spilled it on the earth as offering.

  "And to the hunt,” my lady said; and turning to her servants, “Search her."

  The huntsman caught Whin's arms and held her fast, with hands her blood remembered. Gloves, she told herself. “Turn and turn,” he said. “This time I bid thee. And I ride.” Morag set to work with her knife. She slashed Whin's jacket from her back, her shirt and breeches all to ribands; stripped her of her will and all. Turned out the Ashes bag disdainfully. No rings. A barren purse.

  "Stop at flesh,” said my lady. “For now."

  "I'll but redd her for the glass.” But Morag's comb undid, it ravelled will and memory and soul. Her nails cracked psyche as she would a flea. A knot, the witch's voice said, wasped within her ear. Will I undo it?

  Blood and milk. Her son lay naked on her breast, newborn, like bruised fruit trodden in the grass. White bloom on him, like sloes. Soft down. Her windfall.

  Will I shear that?

  "No.” A low cry, torn from her.

  "Time enough for that,” said my lady.

  "Will I set her to the glass?” said Morag.

  "Anon,” said my lady. Beckoning, she bid Whin stand before her, naked in her rags. “Here's folly. Thou hast braved the wolfish sea, breached Law. Walked naked to thy weird. Didst thou think to put thyself into a song?"

  "I's not so green as that,” said Whin. “Tale's eaten me, as is."

  "What then? Prig stars to pounce the oversky? Befool me with a bairn of wax? Mine eyes are not yet glass.” Her voice darkened. “Or cam'st thou for my daughter's braid?” Stark now, of metal heavier than gold, than lead: bluefaced in her coil of cloud. All slag and cinders but her chain of fire. “To string a fiddle for her bawd thy cockpiece?"

  "No."

  "What then?"

  Whin's tongue was heavy as a stone. Her mind a millstone cracked. Sea-drubbed and clapperclawed, amazed, she swayed a little as she stood. There was no earth, no sky, no otherwise, no in and out, no elsewhere—only Annis, castled in her mind. Herself in self involving, wick in winding sheet. Riddle in rune. And nought in all this wrack of others’ memory her own. But silence: and her six wits scuttling like rats in a ruin.

  What's within but mirk and mist? Long ago, Whin lay on fishnets in a wicker basket, while the guisers stalked and roared. But I's a sun frae Mally's kist.

  "I could tell a death."

  * * * *

  The guiser in grey went before them with the wren's crown on a pole, pale ribbons floating out. When Ashes looked behind, the dance was shadows in a slow hey, endlessly enweaving to a faded music. Longways for as many as will; or that would be or that ever were. Faint Starres and numberless. And then had gone.

  They were elsewhere, in a wood now, all unleaved but oak. A windthrawn straggled wood, aslant a hillside. On Law. Cloudrooted, it was kindred to the standing stones, but older far: had branched and drifted over them a thousand thousand times. Indwelt.

  And wood within that wood, of gold, another wood unleaving. Still and still they drifted, leaf on shadow lighting, leaves on leaves: an endless fall of gold that silent spoke in leaves of prophecy; was fleeting still. O Hallows. By the Owlstone, drifted deep in leaves, there sat two sisters, close as moon and dark of moon, that wove one garland on their knees, of light.

  O, said Ashes silently. No tongue, no breath. All eyes.

  Nowhere. And yet—

  A soul. A soul, called the guiser, knocking with her staff. For it's cold by th’ door.

  Lift latch, said the latewitch crossly. I's get me hands full.

  The leaves whirled up around them; fell. And there was no one but the witch within. No light, no leaves, no hallows. Nothing but an out-at-elbow shabby wood. Setting by a clumsy wreath, the latewitch rose and bustled. Fierce and raggish in her tattered petticoats and leaf-red cap, her hair like a ravelled owl's nest: sticks, mutes, feathers, broken shells, and all.

  Shut door; thou's letting wind out.

  Leap fire, last fire, fire we sing, the guiser chanted.

  If it's guising, I's nowt brewed for yer. Nobbut small. A shrewd glance at the crow lad in his silver mantle, walking in his sleep. Sun's far astray. Should be wound on t'Spindle, all a maze.

  Clipsed, said the guiser, leaning her staff in a notional corner. Then sliding back into ritual, she chanted, Owl's down and Fiddler born. Year's in Ashes. Will I kindle Thorn?

  Kindling's wet, said the latewitch. Thou could try.

  The guiser crouched and scuffled in the leaftrash, uncovering the ashes of a fire, cold out. She took a handful of black sticks and ashes, and she blew on them. A ravelling of smoke; a little twiring flame, a-dance within her hands. A hearthfire. She set it down and cosseted with sticks until it crackled. Rustling about, she found a crackpot, tipsy on its one leg, canted over. It was full of white rot and spiders.

  Wassail, said the witch.

  Cold hail, said the guiser, shaking out the pot. Cold hail and sneck posset. Thou's ever been a clashy hussif. Crowdling wi’ thee's like ingling an urchin.

  There's owlnuts and arains all up on t'shelf. If thou wants any more thou can sing it thysel.

  Gi's thy cap, awd lass, and I'll scour pot.

  Still Ashes gazed and grieved.

  All amort? The witch picked up the dwindled wreath; it dangled idly on her finger. Lang making. Every year and all, for nowt. She cast the O of branches on the fire. Even as Ashes cried out in silent grief, it blazed up in green leaves and fleeting flowers, brief as snow; then was russeted and rich with fruit; then firestruck, its every tendril cast in gold, consuming. It was ashes of snow.

  But why...?

  What thou is, braided i’ thy blood. It were twined for thee.

  And the ... other. Where...?

  My sister daughter? Ashes. Wind.

  She looked shrewdly at the girl's face through her owl-glazed eyes. Not avid and abhorring, like my lady's eyes; nor yet disdainful, gloating like her crow's: not kind but true. Thou braids of her, thy mother. She were Ashes, eld of all.

  All grief entwisted in that poignant grief: that leafblade, firenew, to pierce her heart. You knew her? Saw her face?

  Thou knaws her inmost of all. She tellt thee.

  Lost forever now: that ghostly voice, heart-heard.

  Tellt her own death and thy souling in one skein, thy swaddling her shroud; as thou will tell my end.

  A long moment of dismay. Mistress, I would not.

  And will. And will know why. The witch bent for the Ashes garland on the hearthstone. Wreathed in snow: she tabored it. Thy will is in thy glass. Bare sticks and withered leaves. She held it up: as if it were a glass between them, each mirror to the other's face. Not O but arrow. Journey's what thou is. Unhallowing. Silently, she bade and Ashes bent to her. She set the wilted garland on her brow: sharp thorns, too sharp to wear. She touched her smutchy face. Salt ashes. Colder, by and by.

  Here's spring. A knarl of water in a puzzling of ice. The witch cracked it with her heel, and crouched and filled her gnarly hands. Thou's dry, she said. Will weep thy fill. And Ashes took the witch's hands within her hands, and drank of them. She tasted hallows
and her death. A bitter twang. And then the Cloud ale pierced her from within, it cracked her, as a white thread cracks a hazelnut, unfolding green. Dost like of it? She nodded, mute. Tales, said the witch. They go on.

  The trees had bent and gathered now as rafters; were infilling with her kitchenry of stars. Broom, she said, and took the guiser's staff. She stooped and gathered up her apron full of leaves, a wicker basket on her hip.

  Back door, she called; unsnecked the air. She beckoned Ashes and the sleeping Sun. He moved as in a waking dream. A step and they were elsewhere, walking out on skyfell, on a black moor rimed with stars. There was a tumbled sheepfold out back of beyond. The witch tipped out her basket in a blizzard of down, that filled the sheepfold to the corners of the eaves; she shook her apron out, and it was filled with tatters of a coat of leaves. She lifted, lofting out a patchwork of the years of earth to make their bed. Then she took the wren's pole and upended it, unweaving as it overturned: a besom when it touched the earth. She swept slow hallows round the fold.

  Come, lad. Thou sleep. She took the moonclad Sun by the shoulders, shook him out, as if he were a featherbed of ragged light laid softly on the earth. Leap fire. Light wood.

  And to Ashes, weeping in her crown, she gave a small thing, as round as a hazelnut, shining as a moon: she held it in her palm. Keep hallows til thou wake. Thou's all to do.

  And turning at the not-a-door, through which light spilled, she nodded.

  I's bid yer goodnight.

  * * * *

  They were bedded, as the crow lad saw it, in an empty house: swept bare, but long since given over to the ministry of spiders and the mapwork of officious damp. As cold as any barn. He knew it though: Imp Jinny's that were dead. Her bare loom and the ghosts of apples. Faint comfort in that. The soulers feared her as a witch. Ashesfast, they called her, and they sained themselves: wore coat turned inward out. They'd left their swagger at the threshold. Changed their key: the bagpipes shrivelled like a trodden toad; the fiddle shrunken to a quivering of catgut and a windlestraw. The boldfaced drum gone slack. Clipped mirth and cold bawdry now: a whispering haste. They touched as little as they could of Jin's. The bedstead, that was stripped to cord and cratch, heaped up with musty straw and heather and a faded patchwork. A fire in the cold hearth laid, a swift blaze that would die. It cast a creel of shadows on the walls. A cage to close them in like wrens.

  Touched Ashes not at all. Kissed him but gingerly. No heart for ribaldry, to toy and kittle with the bride.

  Get Ashes brat, the boldest of the guisers called; and snecked the door behind.

  To bed, but not to bed with her. He cannot; and she nill.

  She sat in the fell coat and breeches on the bed, chin resting on her knees drawn up and brooded in her arms: a knot too hard to ravel out. Fierce as an eyas leashed, forbidding as a standing stone. Far elsewhere.

  All in the long loud nightmare of their coming hither, she'd paced aside of him, grim and glowering with chastity. For all their raillery, she would not clip him. And they'd dared not shove and grapple her, sained Ashes. In her coat and all. There was elfshot in the air about her, lightning in her collied face, banked fire even in her jangling braids, and hail in her regard.

  Colder now; and still more terrible. As black as starcoal, burning cold as Law. A black thought in a blacker shade. The very shadow of her coat annulled.

  She is Ashes and holy.

  Still shivering with awe and dread, he shrank from her, as if the coat would burn him. He'd been burnt. Could smell the blood on it, as if it were a shepherd's coat at lambing. But the blood was his. They gave the Ashes child to her; they slit and spilled him in her furrows. Run. But he couldn't run, naked in this tawdry. They had ringed the house like cats a mousehole; they would take and hang him, shriller in their mockery for his hampered flight. This bed was all his hallows in the wide world. Crows’ meat or Ashes’ will his choice. Cold sanctuary.

  ...is Ashes and...?

  He bent, flailed down by memory. The lash on endless lash of lives.

  Get it into her. Snail tracks on her body, snotted in her sootblack hair. Stripped naked she is Ashes still: black fleece and bloodclot at her fork. Agape like a nest of crows. Eight hold her down: but still she twists and curses in the filthy straw. Craws eat thee, cock and eyes. The bone mask smiling, touchless as the moon; but naked all below. Flayed ganderneck. Crinked hair and tallow and the wrinkled cods. Thy knees, boy. On thy knees. He holds the felly of the cartwheel, sick and shaken, in the reeling stench. A scalded strangled red, a glutted red, like something gibbetted: and standing like a forearm and a fist. Witch. Burn thee. On his knees in dead wet leaves. A bloodthread at his knife's edge: not to spill, to silence her. He fears her and it mads him. Sets him on. Cold Ashes to his hand: a small tuft, like a leveret's scut; a snail's horn, glistening. He pries. Is withered in her blast. My lady eat thee. And again the mask. Thy knees.

  Ah, he'd swallowed dragonseed. It thrawed in him, and twisted, scale and talon serpentined within his gut. He could not spew it up. So it had spawned. Bred dragons on him. Of his soul. They writhed within him so he could not sleep.

  Crow-haunted, all his dark. Asleep or waking.

  He had dreams.

  A great house like his master's, dark. A silver glass. He looked in it, and saw a mask like his mistress's, that smiled. Bone of my bone, it said. How cam'st thou by my face?

  And waked with shouting,

  Cheat them. Kill thysel. And even in despair, he laughed. What, hang? They'd cut him down to ride. Whatever death he took a mockery to them. A use. If he knew a bane, a poison though? Could taint his carrion. Envenoming.

  Crow-haunted in the dark. And still he sat brooding, his garland awry and crumpled petticoats, dandling a straw.

  About the dead hour of the night, he heard no latch nor footfall, but a small still jangling; and there came and stood a shadow at their bedfeet.

  That greyclad guiser, she that turned the keys. Ashes still.

  Lost. No will to fight. He half raised his face, gone stark with weariness and grief endured. A mask like his mistress's, past tears.

  Fellcoat and her braided runes: the death of him.

  "And how does thou like thy bedmaking?"

  At Brock's bidding he must turn and look behind. And there lay Margaret, sleeping in the Ashes coat, as in a den of bears, with her hand curled childishly beside her ghostgrey cheek. Not eaten yet. Still Marget. Marget that had madded him and Marget that he'd teased. Marget he was fond on. There he stood a breath, bewildered: as if a door had opened on a house grown great and strange. A breath, then: Marget that he'd pried and smutched. My lady eat thee. And for that shame she'd saved him from the gallows tree. Had see'd him naked as a worm. His soul and all.

  A small harsh voice. “...she nill."

  "And why should she?” said Brock.

  Far and far away he heard the cock crow. Twice, thrice, whitegold, it speared and awned, like barley from the black of earth. He wept.

  After a time, still racked and shuddering, he tried to tell her. Hopeless to unravel all. He tried. “Jin's dead. She were kind to me."

  "She were greater than that,” said Brock; and touched his snotted cheek. Not death but wakening. “Thou knaws what they call this house."

  Puzzled. “Fold Hall."

  "Same as i't sky,” said Brock. “And on that Road.” White awe. He felt the cold hair hackling on his nape and all his misery a frost of fear. “Kept house for travellers. Tellt Ashes all her days.” And looking at the stark loom where the tales were strung. “See, all yer kind is weftways, hither and yon; but she lived crossways to this world: set warp for t'Nine to weave. Their journeywoman."

  She rose and lifted, tucked the sleeping girl beneath the patchwork. “Here's one o Jin's patterns, is Marget. An she'd clicket thee, she'd cheat thy lady Corbet and her lady, that is greater far. And so round again: another Ashes til t'earth. But she nill. And there's an end on't."

  Turning from the bed, she made up the fire;
found, set on a pot. “Thou sleep."

  Still smaller, his voice. “I'd not. I's dreams."

  Turning back, she plucked the garland from his brow, and threw it in the fire. In the blaze of it, he lifted up. “Thou lookst like a gimmer ghost in yon nightrail,” she said. Stooping, riffling through her pack, she tossed the lad a shirt and breeches: “Get thee doffed."

  Then she went and tended to her pot while he strove with the broidered billows, half drowned in petticoats; over her shoulder, she handed him her knife to cut the laces with. Appareled as a man, he brisked himself a bit. Sat up and sleeved his face.

  She brought a cup to the bedstock.

  "A soul,” said Brock, and gave him to drink: a caudle of ale and eggs and barley bread, a-swirl with spices. Strong. It quelled the dragon in his belly. Heartened him. The guiser perched at ease beside him on the bed. They drank together, turn and turn about. She'd meat for him as well: hare pasty with a whet of rowan. Ewe-cheese. Oatcake. He was ravenous, he found.

  "So thou's been Noll's ingle."

  The boy shrugged.

  "Of thy will?"

  Cast linen but clean. Fine broken meats. A respite from hard labor and short straw. A coin. A clip. The kindling of his better's needfire; the outplay of his frenzy and remorse. The mastery.

  "Ne'er laid stick to me. I liked gadding him.” He turned the cup, considering. Half smiled. “But he's mazed like. Maggots in his wits. Talked hobhouchin out o books at me. Did stars dance at Leapfire? Was there elfins at Calderstanes?"

  Brock drank. “And thy witchmaster? Mistress Scaldcraw?"

  No more in the cup. “I thowt she ... that he'd ... art to gi’ me, power and place; but he ta'en.” Looking at the stained and shadowed wall. Bare rafters. “Noll's nobbut fond on boys. He's sackless. But wi’ my lady ... with him it were..."

  "Will it bruise? Cry out?” She pricked the air with her knife. Quick first, then caressingly. “At this? Will it weep for me?"

  A flinch. A shudder. Then an upward nod. That cold sheer smiling enmity: that will to break. So not to weep again, he raged. “And that lickarse Noll, he selled him Marget. He'd...” There he stopped, with thinking on his rusty knife. The tuft. No better than his puppetmaster. He wried himself, rocking. All unmanned.