Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales

by Greer Gilman

  "None if she takes none. She's a bairn,” said Hob.

  "Of an age,” said the crone. Then turning to Ashes, “Y'll mind then, what's to do."

  She dared not shake her head. Would not, for those gloating eyes.

  "'Tis Hallowstide,” said Hob, seeing her bewilderment. “Yer to soul at every house, be it hovel or hall, where folk has died this year, and tell them.” Ashes nodded. “And in likewise yer to wake Sun at Lightfast. Or there's never spring.” He was speaking now at both of them: a sort of catechism. “Ashes walks her lane, by moon or dark, and none's to harm nor hinder, but to give her what she will: for Ashes’ sake. She bears light out o darkness. Ye mun let her in."

  "Aye, teach your granny,” said the crone. “I tellt thy dad.” She eyed her cup regretfully “So get yersel clad, Mistress. I come to bid yer to a telling."

  * * * *

  Ashes that was Whin stands silent in a strange room, in a great house. None that ever she has known; yet knows: as if she's told it into being, told herself into the story; or would tell. She's at the childbed of a girl scarce older than herself: outworn at twenty. They've left the windows open for the soul to fleet; let in a seeking wind, a sift of snow, that stirs the broidered hangings of the bed, that makes the daylit candles dip and flare. Fine candles, breathing honey at the faint cold stench within: corruption, and the overbearing musk and myrrh.

  The body wears fine plaited linen, thin as silk; bone lace; black ribands, pearls that in their lustre recapitulate and mock her youth anulled: epitomes of light. And on her, white on white, there lies a finer needlework of snow. At Ashes’ touch it sullies, puddles. All in vain, the keeper of the linen dragons it; she scowls at Ashes with her smutchy fingers and her claggy boots. In vain. Her finery's to spoil. That other smock they've burned: the blood was unassailable. This change the last of them. The earth will alter it.

  By Ashes’ side a slight girl, all in black, bends swiftly to the bed, steps back. A glance of light-through-leaf-red hair. She wakens something. Time runs.

  In the cold blue hands, nailbitten like a child's, she's put a knot of Ashes buds, half green, but opening to wither. White and frail. As if the bride has gathered them that morn to bring the year within. As if she were a maiden still, not brought to bed. A lass that's been a-kindling, still a-shiver with the rising in the wintry dark, the whispering company, the carolling: the mischief of holiness. As if she's just now risen from the black earth, pierced the snow. Returned: like Ashes, putting off her coat of earth.

  All seemly, all serenity, and beautifully composed: but for her bruised mouth from the gag.

  But for her death.

  There's been knifework here, the child howked out of her: what lies there is a husk of girl, as empty as a gutted fish.

  No breath within.

  And Ashes feels her own foreboding worm within her. Since she lay with the lighthaired guiser, with the Sun at Lightfast, she's not bled. Late and morning, privily, desperately, she's drenched and drenched herself; has stolen physick of her grandam, but the winter herbs—grey dust—have lost their virtue, and the knot of blood in her is fast. Will not be twined of her. She teems with it, is rounding with the child she will have left to crows and foxes; with child with loss. Keep nowt. She's dreamed of miscarrying; has seen the issue like an imp of fire, like an imber of blood. It danced within her eyes. Now sleepless, sick with purging, she sees slow cinders float before her eyes; she hears the old crows gloating on her fall. Ah, she would flyte with them, give mock for mock. But Ashes has her tongue. At daybreak is her vigil ended: they will strip her of her coat, her crown, her silence; will ransack her, soul and body. Scrub her vixen, scour out her secrets. Claim her bastard for the earth to drink.

  But now they bid her by her calling. “Ashes."

  There stands the young master, astounded with grief. Not weeping yet, the wound of her severing still white. He is all in sable, unshaven; his handkerchief woven in his gold-ringed fingers, ringbruised with wrenching, wadded at his mouth. He is sick at what he's lain with, what his stones have made of it, no longer she: his alchemy.

  There lies what he has bred of her: a mewling manchild, squall and stink in swaddling clouts, his small face crumpled like a poppy bud, and gaping with his thwarted mouth.

  There stand the bride's young Lunish kindred. All in black, the witch's fosterlings: the dead girl's sickly elder child, a boy in petticoats; her leaf-red sister pinched with grief and rage. Her hands are twisted in her apron, blacknailed with digging, bruised with ice. A green girl and betrothed, for all her whey face and her ginger hair. Her naunt would wed her to a brutish husband, bed her with her death, for pride of alchemy: breed gold. For a tower and a name and forty plough, she fain would bury her, a scant year's bride.

  And by the bedfoot stands the foster-mother: she that held the knife, that paunched her daughter like a hare, alive: a widow, dowried of broad lands, a matriarch, triumphant with descent. A witch. Her eyes see through the coat to Ashes’ bellyful and smile with scorn. Thy childbed is a ditch, they say, thy mourners crows; thy nameless brat will dung the furrows for my lineage, their bread. So her shrewd eyes; but before the company her face and bearing say my lady Ashes: just so, her deference and condescension as she holds the cup to her: “Drink ye of my daughter's life."

  "And to't sun returning,” says Ashes in her rusty voice, and beckons to the nurse. She lifts up the child above his vessel of the ravaged earth.

  All eyes on him, the cynosure; but Ashes’ glance is elsewhere. The leaf-red girl has turned to her. She beckons. After. Come to me.

  But the telling takes Ashes, as a wind unleaves a tree. She tells an empty cradle, rocking on a sea of gold; she tells a bright leaf whirling from a hand that snatched; she tells a crowd of bone.

  Only when she's wakened, risen gasping from the sky she's shattered, from the whelming dark, does Ashes look to see what token in her hand: and sees a grain of sand within a winding sheet, a shroud of light. A pearl.

  * * * *

  "So she died,” my lady said. “So all you mortals end. What tale in that?"

  "A beginning,” said Whin. “Will I tell ye another?"

  "There is but one. I got her in my glass."

  "And then?"

  "There is only now."

  But Whin thought, So got herself her precious self, all fettled and unflawed: but never spilled hersel out in her. Kept her for a toy. Why's that? But for a tale o sorts. For then and then.

  Aloud, she said, “A tale's a braid. It goes on."

  * * * *

  Ashes that was Margaret walked behind a shepherd on the Lyke Way: not of stars, but the green road over Soulingmoor to the place of bones. A bright frost in the morning as they set him on his last long way had turned to white mist as they mounted: so that they walked from stone to stone. He lay o'er the green branches of his bier, the sheaf of him, white-bearded, with his sheepcrook and his bag. His broad sons bore him up, his black dogs at heel. Behind him went a guiser with a knot of swords upraised; his old wife followed weeping in the east wind, with her sickle, stone, and cup; and before them all, his daughter's eldest daughter with the lantern of their house to late his way. Last of all before the lesser company of mourners, Ashes followed in her smutched and tangled guise, as black as holly-blotch. She was thinking on the deferent of Journeyman, and mingled with its silver coil, the arc and fall of fire in the juggler's hands: the travelling of light.

  Elsewhere and otherwise, she scarcely heard the consort of headcolds, serpent and sackbut, at her back; much less the whispering of gossips.

  "...bed were all a-tumble..."

  "Did he spill?"

  "Aye, t'sheets was clagged wi’ it.” And bending to her gossip's ear. “But never a drop of her blood..."

  "...crept out o nights, I heared. All night..."

  "...rare gazing on her back..."

  A bombard blast. “...never thowt to have our nuncle tellt by a Lunish hussy..."

  "...brazen...” A shawm.

/>   "...be turning out her bag come Kindle night..."

  "For shame,” said tall Barbary, striding from behind. “And yer kinsman not green i't earth.” But she looked grieved at Ashes.

  Unseen of all, the raven with the old man's soul flew down and downward on the sheer bright river of mourning, under Law.

  At the ring of stones called the Fold, they halted at the sill. The girl with the lantern, bright-cheeked and rough-handed, hoarse with cold, spoke first: “We knaw by t'moon...” And round the circle of the rhyme, by the sky and stars, until they knew by the ground, and thumped it thrice. A breath, and once again: “A soul. A soul. A mortal soul.” And crying out in grief at last: “Lief mother, let us in.” Down they set the cold corse on a stone within. Then the solemn guiser, in a gruff shy unaccustomed voice, said, “I were headed and I rise to dance.” And last, the old wife turned to the waif in tattercoats outwith, and bid her in: “Ashes. Will ye tell a death?"

  * * * *

  Behind Whin in the shadows of the great house, a whisper. Ashes?

  Even at the threshold, on the hinge between the snow light and the shadows, Ashes turns. Still Ashes, on the edge of infamy, of Whin's disgrace. And it's the leaf-red girl who calls. Her silks, new-starlinged, shiver in the risen draft. Her face is bleak and burning all at once, with fury and despair. My lady Ashes?

  A child. No elder than herself that was, and greener than herself newborn. The chit would show some pretty trinket that she'd feign to lose, an earring or an amulet, and ask—What is't she'd ask? A hobbyhorse to ride upon? An heir? To brim with death, as did that gutted creature on the bed? To rid herself, howk out some blind mole in her cellarage? Or is it honey with her draught of wedlock that she craves?

  Tell me a ship, she says. I would away.

  Ashes’ tongue is loosed, true telling. Even now. Y'd go living?

  The lass nods.

  Crouching on the doorstone, Ashes fills her hands with snow. A sea is in them, and a sworl of mist. She sees a marriage bed, at anchor in a sea of blood. Lass ‘d go the lighter, then. A pinnace, laden with contraband. She sees its sail conceiving, light of love; she sees the mast of tree. Alone, she says. T'keel's o thy laying. Thine apron's thy sail. Wouldst round?

  I'd bear it.

  Infamy?

  The girl in mourning turns her silver ring. Looks inward. Fleetingly her face unshadows. Lief would I fall, an light would spring.

  Ashes beckons to her, spreads her lap. Gi's here.

  And the bruised hand opens on a sheath and knife.

  * * * *

  White in white: Ashes that had framed the starglass travelled in her outbreath like a comet. Alone and away, after weary company; returning to her hearth, her hold, her solitude. Cakes in her sack. She looked out on her sky below, her landskip all to wander in; and all the wood above. She smiled. No glass: she'd sworn to that. No book. But time and silence, and the winter stars. And if—

  And if these patterns in the sky are not immutable, not fixed like nailheads in a roof? In mind, she lay beneath a canopy of silver apples, traced in them the changeless patterns of the night. Then Ashes rose, unwreathing like the momentary whorls of leaves that dance, and break away to dance. Unconstellating. Bodiless she rose through apples, and beyond the tree into a moveless fall of leaves, of light. Unleaving. And beyond that in an endless snow of stars. They fell not, but she rose. She tumbled in the air of Ashes, in the stars that broke away to dance. She laughed. My glass is journeying.

  A moon had rounded and had waned, another moon was new, since she had bled in Annot's place: and still her sheets were stainless as the fallen snow. A sorcery of time. As if a shivered egg had risen, rounding from its fall; as if a rarity of glass, once shattered, had renewed itself, a bubble had unburst. Herself. A secret that she held in wariness, in rising joy. A gift. She had not asked, but it was guessed and given. Ashes’ privilege. Her will.

  Biting off her black sheepskin mittens, she blew her nails; then in the hoarfrost on a stone, she drew the sign for sky: two curves that crossed. The Lyke Road and the Skein: the rune of memory and the run of time.

  Mirror to the wider sky, epitome: she left it, for the Sun to take.

  * * * *

  Now, thought Whin, afore she's wearied o me. She looked into the dazzle and fury of the souls. Brave now ‘d take her fancy. And she plunged, down-diving through a shattering of adamant to black abyss, a sea-rift where the souls were caved: a den of dragons, sleepless guardians, each brooding on its hoard. Its hoard was self. They reared up at her like snakesheads, rattling their wings. They struck. Their hate was like a stench; their hurlyburly was a cataract, astounding. All about her, in her, venoming her thoughts: a seething, whispering, wailing of disbodied voices, cursing and caressing in a thousand tongues; a clamoring, despairing rant of souls.

  A tale's a braid, is't? Here's clags want combing.

  For they told no tales but riddles. Rants, plaints, wordless lamentation, grievances, mad rages, pangs of memory indrawn about a festering thorn.

  And who undid the nine witchknots? ... I've lost a sheath and knife I'll never ... Lady, will you weep for me? ... Cover her face, mine eyes ... Craws eat thee, cock and eyes ... O bonny babes, if you were mine ... some violets, but they wither'd all ... of stone, cold stone ... and never shall for you ... lest I come search for thee, dress me up grandly ... so much blood in him? ... a thing arm'd with a rake ... woe to my sister, false ... and all alone the grave I made ... How could you lay me down ... by, by lully lullay ... by the greenwood side ... and love me, now? ... two eyes of tree, of tree ... I saw the new moon late ... Come down the stair ... mine eyes dazzle ... come down and rock him ... with the old moon in her arm ... that thief and whore is at my door, let no one rise ... Lief mother, let me in...?

  Whin drew a long breath. No wonder t'awd lass is mad, wi’ yon chunnering worms to chide her. Blinded by t'uproar.

  They were all of them untold: that teind of Cloudish souls who had no friends to bid for them, no ashings. They had died alone, forsaken or too proud to beg or bend: the witches and the whores; the hanged, drowned, slain on battlefields; the murdered and the murdering; the mad; the Ashesfast. The ditchborn brat, his strangling mother, dead of him in turn; the father of them both. All, all of them—the wolf's heads and the hapless innocents—were Annis's alike. Crowsmeat. Sleepless stones.

  This endless brief while, Whin was listening, listening in the outcry for her son—not here? O goddesses, not here. But she felt a shifting in my lady. She would lose her and be lost. No time.

  "This,” she said, emerging into silence. Stunned with it. The stone she held was like moonblood. She knew not its tongue.

  My lady's blind gaze was fixed on elsewhere. “Bodva of Idho? The whore is dead of me. Long since."

  "Herself?” said Whin in practiced awe. She'd not heard of her, so many thousand years undone; but an Ashes must be swift to improvise. “I's never tellt so great a soul. There's nonesuch now i’ Cloud."

  "Carrion,” said Annis.

  "So dragons may eat dragons. Did she not—?"

  "—dare front me?"

  "And so has paid. And will pay, evermore.” As she herself would thole, if Annis wearied of her tale. She thought of it, that endless sleepless ecstasy of rage, self-companied, self-loathing. Of the tumult and the stench.

  "Did I not say thou wert my daughter's vicary? As thy state is higher, so thy death is worse.” Annis plucked at the braid of fire on her wrist, as if it galled her. “I would hear this witch's end. But so: thou shalt find me, if thou canst, among my congeries all eight who stole the shards of me, to breed a mockery of tainted flesh. If thou failst, thou art Morag's and her pander's, for their game eternally. If thou art perfect, for thy recompense—” My lady raised her face; reflections of her soulstones rocked and wavered in the cavernous dark, as if the air were heavier than air, as if light drowned. “I shall tell thee. For a ninth."

  * * * *

  A horseman coming. Ashes rose, uncertain and a
lone: but it was Grevil's voice at her door; and Grevil alone that she opened to, bowing as he had that May morning: but all had changed. “Is it your will that I enter?"

  She nodded.

  He looked about the bare room, gloves in hand. Smoke-blackened thatch. Bare walls, rain-islanded. Chalked floor, stars fading into dust of stars. “'Tis cold for long study.” Constraint; formality; a kind of sorrow. They stood strangely at odds, disproportioned: as if she looked backward through her glass. “If there is aught—I will send such bare necessities as you may want; and such comforts as your state allows.” Nothing could she ask in law, but turned her hand palm outward: Ashes’ sign. “'Twill come, a basket, if you will or no,” he said. “So Mistress Barbary hath ordained.” A shadow of a smile. “You need not fear more copying beneath the bread; my horn is dry."

  What should a ghost with bread? with fire? My table is of souls, in Law; my mother bade me eat.

  Still his gaze was sidelong, glancing from her at the sigils, riddle and rede, on the hearthstone. Chalk and raddle and charred wood. Moon and stars. “You read a darker book than I can give you, you that write with fire on the hills.” He spoke as from a text: "That mastery is of womankind: to journey pathless in the dark."

  Still silent.

  He picked up a trencher on the table; set it down. “They are afraid of you, the men. Of Ashes.” Of Ashes that they call Death's whore: but that he could not say. “If you had kindred here, to laugh and say, My sister guising or My brother's lass in breeks—If I had sway—"

  No answer.

  "I had hoped—” Again he looked sidelong at the scuffle of signs. “The boy is fled; I am glad of that. He is—but thou knowest, Ashes, all my heart—the boy is dear to me. I thank you for my Will.” And to her unvoiced question: “No. If Corbet had taken him, his vengeance would be public. No secret murder but great show. Hanged and gibbeted: as one nails vermin to a tree as warning to all upstart crows."