Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales

by Greer Gilman

  The crow lad sees a great stone hall where Corbet sits in judgment. At his side, as pale as ashes, crowned with bone, sits Marget, naked as a needle. Flaunting her, he coys her breast, he paddles in her plash with soulringed hands: his winter bride, his thrall.

  Kit sees a crossroads on a darkling moor; he sees the gallows tree, sees Jack Daw swaggering with his gang of whores. There's one—O gods—there's one with shorn red hair. A clawed fist seizes on his heart; it drags it through his ribs. She turns, the witch-child in her tawdry finery, the fireship; she kills him at a glance, contemptuous. It mocks the pain it gives. Not Thea, no: her child and his. Their daughter.

  Grevil sees his mother in her grave. He looks down on her, her bruised face and the flowers withering. She's empty, open like a coat for Ashes to put on.

  But Imbry sees work to do. Her prentice piece. She slips away, as Brock has told her. Steal it so.

  * * * *

  Imbry eels her way through the maze of passages, all interwreathing, spur and spiral, like a cage of thorns. A net. She slips it, minnowing: that seine was spread for greater souls, for gods and heroes and high witches.

  Keep ae hand ay to't wall, said Brock: but Imbry knows where the godhead is, same as like fire, only cold. The awe is like a loathing, like an ecstasy: the wound and its cautery, the venom and its trance, as if unwillingly her soul is frenzied at a rape.

  Nobbut Ashes, she tells herself: awd coat's what she is. She's led blind Ashes. Washed her when she's pissed herself; dilled her when she's waked with ranting, rocking of herself and crying out, There's one falls burning frae a mast. And which is thine?

  No. She mun keep her wits about her, like a needle, eye and end, and all follows. Mind her way: in's ae thing, but out away's another. Her blood sings in her heart to drown the terror, in a wordless lalling. No cradle song: but in the drub and driving of the tune, it's for the waulkers at the wool, the threshers in the barn. It sings the tumbling of the drums. Mouth music.

  The way turns inward to the eye of Law. She feels the seawind of my lady's melancholy, and a few small drops—ah, not of rain. A sliding shiver and a knowingness. A spatter of souls. And she's in a mist of them, a firefog, a throng of ghosts that mingle through and through her, beading in her started hair, and sliding down her spine. Black spirits and white, red spirits and grey. Her milk-eyed mistress. Thrimni who was drowned; his sons. The windwife who had sold the charm. Life-starved, they mouth at her, athirst for what they cannot feel, that cannot warm them. They are thronging at her eyes, mouth, sex, to drink the tumbling of the blood. Cannot.

  Crazy with fear, she flails the air and shouts, Shog off, yer malleyshags. Ash black yer, will yer leave me go?

  Desperately she fumbles for the comb to scatter them like lice; but feels it sleeking through her heartstrings, sleaving out her fear. It lulls her, lulls her, though the hand is bodiless, as no hand ever has or will.

  Mam?

  * * * *

  Illusory.

  The child, the bride, the mother: shadows all, all air and malice.

  Crying out, Kit catches at his nameless child to sain her, and she changes to a slithering snake, unfleshed. Hold fast, he thinks, bewildered: but it's gone in a shrug of silver, writhing burning through the rock like molten silver in a snowbank, lightning through a cloud. Quicksilver in its moving; in its venom, sublimate. His hand's unburnt. Daw and his drabs are punkfire, scattering like a kicked clump of puckfists, in a smoke of spores.

  Thou's dead, thou crawsmeat. Draw. The crow lad grips his sword and glowers. But the daemon and his thrall are mist: not of water but a fume that catches at the throat, that stops the breath. A bitterness.

  The earth has closed about its hoard of bones. Still dead, thinks Grevil. And will be and be forever. That is no illusion.

  Gone.

  All but the maker of the interludes: she slipped the lock; now bars the way. A daemon, bloody to the shoulder, soberclad: white apron and black cap. A crow-faced malignancy. Morag: Kit remembers her. But sees her now unswaddled of illusion; sees her nakedly. She is atrocity. Had love so muddled him, that fool he was, so mittened up his wits, that he could see this harpy as a servingwoman, this hell as a castle? He drinks lye to look on her. He sees again her kitchen, heaped with game; sees her squatting with a hare to gut, that never was a hare. The clawed hands forage in the blue meagre flesh.

  ...in a vixen's belly, in a babby—and they's woe to snatch, worse than honey...?

  Here is Law.

  Noll touches Kit's sleeve, questioning.

  "Her servant. She that held the knife,” says Kit; then looking round, appalled, “Imbry?"

  "Stalkin brats,” says the lad and hunches doubtfully. “She'd not be held."

  Grevil gapes. Children? Here? In this—? Then he sees Kit's face. His child. He takes his cousin's shaking arm, and it is wrenched from him.

  The old crow says, “Your suit?"

  The Fiddler bows. That mask at least can move and speak: though in it, Kit is curled and howling. “Tell your mistress that we bring the Sun.” The guising looks at her. “And take what belongs to it. The living are not hers."

  "Thy whore is dead,” says Morag. “Eaten and shat."

  All his soul and body rises to a shriek; but his will wears the mask: “I know. I would have my daughter."

  "As she is?” The pebble eyes evade him.

  The crow lad has half drawn; Grevil's hand restrains him.

  "Even as she is."

  "As you have bidden, so you must play it out. So Law is kept."

  "And your mistress?"

  "Will attend no gallantry; but after she will see you paid.” Hands folded in her apron. “You will wish for that easy death you slipped: merely to be eaten, soul and flesh."

  By now the hall is full of spirits, crowding in, still crowding: lap on overlap like water, fall on fall. If leaves then ill-intended, scrabbling at their faces, avid of their senses, hating them. If water then a blood-dimmed tide.

  The Fiddler turns to his fellows. “Now, my brave boys. Once through and away.” He takes the staff and it sinews him: he's furled of sunlight, rooted in unsullied earth; he's lapped with bright water, leaving into air. A breath. Another. “Now."

  Overturning the staff for a besom, now the Fiddler's the Moon. Light from her imagined lenses glances all about, it dances in death's rafters like a cloud of fireflies. Like Cloud. And she dances too, slow-sweeping round her fellows, driving back the drift of souls, the shadows. Where she sweeps is hallows. Where her sister's not, she is.

  The Fool bustles on, like a scarecrow to the stake. But in the players’ space, Noll halts. He's overwhelmed. His terror shakes him, even to sickness, and his tongue is dry. Like a shamed child, he's pissed himself. Confusion: what his legs know is a bow. So much: and nothing more. Not his name, his sex, his kind. If he speaks, he will whimper.

  The Old Moon brisks round him officiously, brushing at his legs as if she would sweep him up and out. And at the touch of twigs, he feels Tom o Cloud like sunlight on his face, like leaves and light through leaves. And every leaf a word, a page, a story of the world: no tongue he cannot read. Speak, lady. ‘Tis your cue.

  The play begins.

  * * * *

  Whin's braided the eighth tale into a ninth, of a witch's daughter. All this endless while she's held my lady in her glass, with gazing on her glittering self; she's stilled her with the comb. It lulls, it lulls her, sleeking out the nightlong hair, soul starred and scattering. Brightness falls from her. They sit in glittering drifts of hailstones, in the blood of souls.

  The one is left: my lady's daughter that were Ashes. Kit's lass, that went with child afore she'd bled, and could not bear it for her mother's spell. Old story, that is, but turns out mostly otherwise. If they still lived, the guisers out beyond—poor gaudy fools, cold hail they'd get from Morag and her huntsman—would be telling it. O Mistress, she will die of her bellyful. In the guising, the Old Moon saw to that. Undid, and let her lighten of her bairn. A S
un, and every year a Sun in Cloud: but under Law, a lass. And she'll not rise again to dance. Fordone and no undoing her. And yet, thinks Whin, her death's still fiercely brooded, like a living thing. But why?

  Or cam'st thou for my daughter's braid? My lady's told her what she fears, forbidding her, and fear's both lock and key: as Brock's own journeyman Whin knows. So the braid's what binds her to herself, the virgin to the rock? There are laws to the godgame. Stone breaks scissors, scissors cut braid ... No knife. They took that first of all: as if mere smithy craft could scathe their woundless immortality. She did wonder at that. Small chance of thievery without a blade.

  Unbraid it? She's tried. This will not sleave with singing. Even but a thought of it runs fire through her nerves; a touch would burn her hand to bone and cinders. Wake the dragon: who would blast, annihilating.

  And yet while Annis slept, Whin's wound a coil of hair about my lady's wrist, herself in self involving. Night and fire mingled, bone and blood.

  Can't tell her daughter from herself.

  Time's past. And having glutted on the guisers, Morag will return, and there's an end on it. While then, Whin tells. Her voice is giving out, a husk and gravelling; her thread is done. Nothing for it but go on.

  What is your nine O? Green goes the Ashes O...?

  She plays as the guisers do, for the sun returning: for time.

  * * * *

  He is Leapfire, lord of summer.

  Up and down his golden shadow strides the field and rants.

  The place is anywhere. The mind, avoiding nullity, will have it here: a field, an empty ring of stones, scant snow. It will have illusion; or it mads. All here is emptiness; all but the scythe blade rusting in the fallows, rootbound: that is real. The Road's end. Otherwise is blackness bleeding through imagined frost, a cat ice on abyss. They walk on rime.

  But Leapfire—ah, he's glorious, the Fool thinks: like a fire, where he is, is center, and he curves a world about him. As he strides, bright flaws of fire seem to break from him, stream upward like a comet's hair. He flames amazement.

  The Sun cries out his challenge in the Fiddler's silence:

  Stand forth, awd winter, fell and black

  And fight, or thou is flayed.

  And the Fool flings wide—no door. There is no outwardness, no hearth, no hallows in this world. Though even nought is bounded, this is limenless. Winter's where they stand, their everywhere: nought else.

  Yet he summons it. Walk in, awd Lightfast.

  Nothing comes. The Fool twists his cap of straw; the Fiddler sighs; Leapfire quivers like a bow.

  Walk in.

  But he precipitates; falls out of air. Sharp-sided, many-faced: he is the scythesmen's witch; the guisers’ Lightfast; Master Corbet, glittering with rings; Old Slae that carries off the weeping Perseis; Jack Daw, whiteheaded, all in black, greenblack and broken swagger, like a swung cock at a fair. A pack of selves, and all one self: the Old Sun, hoary with expired light. Old crow of all.

  They know him well, though each a face of him. That cold sheer smiling enmity: that will to break. He speaks not to Leapfire, lord to lord, but to the upstart crow lad, feathered out with guising.

  Onward comes the rope-ripe boy:

  My seed, mine enemy, my toy.

  Falling, he will gar me rise;

  My crows will eat him, cock and eyes.

  Summer deigns no answer, draws; then letting fall his belt, ungirding godhead, he stands forth.

  'Tis Leapfire calls thee into't ring;

  Lief would I fall, an light would spring.

  Smiling, Winter draws his sword: old steel, sheathed in ruined velvet, scarred with use; bright only at its edge, death-polished.

  Leapfire attacks. Youth and rage will carry him through seconds of his onset: enough to startle Daw, almost to daunt him. He falls back a step; but artfully. He lets the boy wear himself out with slashing, futile in his fury; parries him at will. A chance scratch seems to bloody Daw's arm; it frenzies his adversary. Then leaning forward, as if inquiring, Daw disarms him. The sword spins over and half over, clangs on the ground. Daw sets his foot on it.

  The Sun, eclipsed, looks back at him with dark-drowned eyes. His face is almost blank with horror.

  "Yield?"

  Live, thinks Grevil; though the Fool must watch.

  Leapfire cannot speak. He shakes his head.

  Stooping for the sword, old Lightfast tosses him his own.

  Once more the boy assails him, slashing in a frenzy at the smiling face, stabbing at air; once more the old god thrusts.

  And Grevil stands as if the sword has pierced him, slain with shock. He sees the boy transfixed and twitching; sees the old god, face to face with him, caress him, kiss his mouth, blood-welling. “Whore. And whore's brat.” Then the god withdraws, he shakes his sword free from the toppling body.

  The ground shakes, unmooring.

  The crow lad falls, blood runs; the world begins.

  * * * *

  Even through the tumult of souls, Whin feels the shadow at the door: that will be Morag and the glass. Her end. She lifts her face to meet it square, defying it—and startled, nearly laughs. She's looking in another sort of mirror, at another self.

  There's a thief in the shadows, crouching. Cap and fellcoat: with a gang, then, of guisers. They'd have sent their Ashes as they played. Who stares at her and shivers. Mirror's not the other way. Whin sees the girl see no great witch, no hero, but a journeywoman in a sark of blood. Old blood, inglorious. An elding body. Grey black and gory, like a badger in a trap. Fordone. She can feel the drumming of the Ashes’ heart from here. Mad scared and—Whin laughs silently—reverberant with sex. What, here? With ghosts? And how can Annis not feel the roar of blood, like sea-break in a cave?

  Feels nothing, only self. Does naught, only brood on absence. That's why there's Morag: for her talons, for her eyes. And she has just now been diverted. Stepped outby.

  Still telling, rising to a roil of story, Whin beckons to the brat: Soft now. Blind, not deaf. But quick.

  The brat—O marvellous!—upholds a glint of metal. Tosses it. Whin catches, clumsy with her long travail; she cuts herself on scissors. But she knows their metal in the marrow of her spine: that knife with which she cut the cord. Her son's blood tempered it.

  Softly, softly now, she closes on the braid.

  As the blades meet, round about her neck she feels the guisers’ knot of swords, their wheeling to the measure of her heartbeat, fast and faster in her terror, giddying—and all at once they draw.

  Her blood's the braid. It leaps from her, unbraiding from her body in a rush of red. It whirls away in fire. Felled.

  Darkness.

  * * * *

  Ashes comes to my lady's tower, to the threshold: where is nothing still, but absolute. Its gravity annuls her. In her veins is lead, envenoming; her soul is in a slow eclipse. On groping for her lens, she sees it milkblind, blank as any stone. Her gown the Nine have given her, of twilight, now is leached as white as ashes, livid. She is home.

  Three times she stamps the groundless air. Dry-voiced, she calls to death, “Lief mother, let me in."

  * * * *

  Sea-heavy, torn like water, towering: the night sky breaks in fury on their heads. The goddess rises up in tempest. She is called.

  Imbry cowering in the wrack waits death. Confusedly, amid the lancing of the lightnings, the contusion of the thunderclaps, she sees the stars, wave-warped, as if the sky were ocean; sees the tatterings of light. Then the nightwave overwhelms her, and she's drowned.

  Long afterward, her stopped heart beats again; she draws a saw-edged breath.

  My lady?

  Gone.

  Sea-hammered, thunderstoned, she raises up her head. She sees the other Ashes lying trodden like a shipwrecked sailor.

  Dead?

  Creeping warily along the ground, Imbry touches her. Still breathing. Turns her. Cold as stone though. Swounded. Where the ravelling of the braid has touched her are a thousand wales,
fine whips of fire. Blood on blood. The sark of older blood not hers, may be: she's weltered like a midwife. But she's ill enough, in truth, and stinks of kenneling. Rag-naked, rope-cut, chapped and cracked and starved.

  Imbry haps her in the bear coat; then for want of else, she combs her dirt-rough hair. That's all the comfort she knows. But it works: the Ashes wakes. And not mad: her gaze is curious, self-mocking, shrewd. “I's old for saining.” A leaf-scratch of a whisper.

  "Thowt yer were drownded,” says Imbry. “Thowt I were."

  "No chance, brat. Thou's to hang.” Grimacing, as if her bones ache, the Ashes sits, runs fingers through her hackled hair, as if to free them with the fading spells, to limber. She considers young Ashes. Black imp like herself were. Like a hollybush dragged through a chimney. Aye, she'd scratch Sun's face. “Thou keep yon comb then. Keep it well."

  "I is.” Then remembering, Imbry fetches out a leather bottle from her budget. “Our master mistress Brock, she sended yer this."

  "Here's rain in April. Halse ye.” Whin drinks long and long before she lowers it and sighs. “Ah. That'd set stones to dance.” And seeing Imbry's look, she passes it over. “There's a snuff yet i't bottle. Cloud ale."

  It's water.

  "Pull's up, lass, and I's lag thee after.” Stiffly she rises, raxing. “If it's guising, thou's work to do."

  At that, Imbry startles. “Craws! I mun gang now. They's be lating me to lap Sun."

  "So thou's done,” says old Ashes, smiling. “Had thy will. And will."

  Imbry pinks: not with modesty.

  "Wick sword, has he? He's been thumping yer awd Lightfast then?"

  "We's brought no Winter,” says Imbry. “T'witch said bid him and he'd come."

  Whin knows what Lightfast loiters here. She pales. “Run, lass. Thou's wanted. Run."

  * * * *

  No Ashes.

  Grevil takes her part in silence. Holds the dead Sun in his lap and cradles him. No words, he has no words. He gathers up the sheaf of him; he rocks, he rocks him at his breast, the bright youth: Cloud in Ashes. Closes the astonished eyes. He strokes the rough bright hair, the cheek forever beardless now. He sains him—eyes, mouth, heart—with hand alone. No tears. He cannot weep as yet. He bends to kiss the cold mouth, bright with blood. Still warm—O goddesses—and clotted with his death. As warm as embers. Yet no breath will kindle now. The play does not go on: the sun rise dancing and the summer wake. No spring will come.