Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales

by Greer Gilman

  The long wave slowed, against the steepening shingle of the dark. And now the grass was ocean; slow and slower lagged their wading steps, their oars, against that tide. The lads cried challenges, lashed on their fellows, flagging, flagging with the sun; the lasses raked and sang:

  You must kiss her and embrace her,

  Till she causes your heart to yield—

  One voice above the rest rang out, triumphant, hoarse:

  For there's never a faint-hearted soldier

  Can win on a battlefield.

  The scythes struck on, against that tide of dark. Against the quenchless lap of earth, the grass that stood and shivered. Stood.

  * * * *

  Up from Imber Beck came Kit, not spilling what he held. Deep pools and dappling, the rush and plunge of bright quick water on the stones. He'd washed him clean as dawn, walked naked in his old clean shirt. Grass at his ankles, wind stirring in his wet-combed hair, already lifting from its douse. A sparkling dancing day, a drying day. A day for playing hob. Wild thyme and trout, he thought: he'd lie and tickle.

  He came to Thea, sitting in a circle of great stones, on one had fallen, at the green hub of the wheel of Cloud. Its nave, whence it breathed. Old stones, they were, and worn fantastical: wind-gnawed and water-cavey, flawed and rippled with the frosts. White stones, whorled with mosses. They'd not mown here. Would not: had left them whitelands to the wandering sheep.

  Thea swung her heel and sang, like any shepherd's lass.

  "A lovegift,” said Kit, and held it out.

  A cup of rushes, lined with cool green leaves of hazel, wet with dew. And brimmed with raspberries, most perfect ripe: as soft as foxes’ paws, and with their prick. Their flowers wreathing round. A dowry for a queen of Elfin.

  "Ah,” said Thea. All her face alight with joy, as he'd not seen her. Taking them, she kissed him lightly on the wrist, just where his pulse beat blue. Where it was scratched with gathering, had beaded with bright blood. Love's bracelet. “Bravely won."

  For that he'd pick them naked, from the inward of the thicket out. By Cockridden and by Childerditch, he would, were the brambles backside of the moon.

  "Does it like thee, love?” he said. “That cup of imbers?"

  "I shall give them to my eldest daughter,” said Thea. And she ate.

  * * * *

  Ah, Margaret, that was firstborn of my spells, my new-created magic. I will tell it in thy blood, in time. Nine drops. No more.

  * * * *

  The field was called Crawcrooks. High and aslant the fell it lay, a stony piece, the last to harvest. They had reaped them all: Burnt Ridding, where the oats were lodged, the Light End and the Long Dark, and round by Mawkins Hey, by Brockholes, Beggary and Witchy Slang, the Whirl Ing and the Wren Graves, and out by Owler Hag. A nine day's stint.

  Kit bent to the sheaving. The barley stood white. When he closed his eyes, he saw it glittering still, but awned with violet black. It scarred his eyes with light. Another sheaf, a knot of straw. He swam in it. Straw bristled up his shirt-tail, down his neck. His arms and legs were torn and welted, scarified with straw. Weeds nettled; stubble pierced. Sweat sidled and stung. He ached with stooping, beaten down, astounded by the clangor of the sun. He thought it screamed at him, defiant; looking up, he knew it for a hawk. A stunning and a brazen noon.

  Before him went brown Madlin, Ailie Whinlaw, Kat and Bartlemy and Noll Ned Hewlin, with laggard Ciss to trail the rake. They moved breasthigh against the barley, all arrayed in its armor of light. Crouching, they cut it, striking off with their sickles: moon against sun. In their wake lay the barley, shorn and withering. Kit gathered it in armfuls, tying them with bands of straw that Thea twisted of the greenest corn. Beside him and behind worked Gib and Nick Scarrow, sheaving and stooking. No one spoke. The sun quelled them. Still he heard the rasp and rustle of the knives in corn.

  The barley was one element, of sun, earth, wind, and rain. A hoary world. Time stilled. Before him rose a whirring and a clack of wings: a covey clattering away. He saw a scutter and a lop of coneys, and at his feet the fumblings of a dawstruck mole. A-sway on the nodding corn, the gressops leapt and chirred. He saw the plash of poppies falling, and the blue-eyed blink of cornflowers, clean petticoats of bindweed. He saw the scurry of the denizens laid bare to light: whitespinners, jinny-long-legs, harvestmen. He felt the sooty velvet of the smutched ears of slain corn, black as my lady's mask. In the sundered corn, he found a mouse's nest, two short ears bound together in a daddle of straw, as deftly plaited as any kirn witch on a stack. There were ratlins within, rosebald, but willowing out with a fuzz. They blindly wormed and squeaked. No dam. No help for it. He stuck it like a bauble in his sunburnt hat, and bent to work.

  Then Ailie cried, “Whet!"

  The bottle went round, hand to hand. Kit stood and eased his back. Looked first to Thea. He stared out beyond the barley at the whiteleached sky, the moorland bruised with sun. He turned. All below him and behind lay fields, a piecework stitched with drystone walls. He saw the hardwon ploughlands, pale and stooked, all glittering as a card of pins. Beyond lay fold and fallow, and the tilting meadows, green with aftermath, called fog. Above, stood only sheepwalk, cropped and stony, and tumbling becks. He thought of throwing down his glove and lying naked in the rush of water.

  "Noon,” said Ailie.

  They'd an hour's halt. By ones and twos, they turned down the field, past the morning's thraves, sheaf leaning on sheaf, with another as henge. The men went flapping their shirts, their breeches with the knee strings undone. The women swung their sickles, in their broad hats and kerchiefs, their kilted petticoats, all urchined out with straw. Kit waited. Last of all came Thea, roundbellied in a borrowed apron, walking slow. Her hat was wreathed with poppyheads, how quickly bare: a few bright curving petals clung. He saw with a pang how sore her hands were, torn with spinning bands; how white her face. He said, “Thou wert to rest."

  "Where's the penny, then?” she said.

  He bent and stuck the mouse nest in a stook, carefully. It would not stand, being toppling heavy. “There's time. Shall we lie by the water?"

  She looked up at the fellside. “I'd need wings."

  "Rest then. Will I fetch thee water?"

  "Kat's gone."

  There was ale in the hedge. The reapers passed it round and drank; they sprawled and panted in the grass. Beneath an apron thrown over a hazelbush lay Madlin's baby, naked in a little shirt, beside his sleeping childish nurse. The cloth had been dabbled, for the cool; had long since dried taut, tented out on sticks. The shadows of the leaves moved lightly, dappled on the bairns. The baby waked and watched them, purse-mouthed, puzzling at air. “Ah,” said Kit, crouching, all alight. The pretty poppet. Madlin wiped her mouth, undid her freckled breast. The little quaily brat set to with jugging. Ciss's Jacky played at the field edge, making pisspies in the dust.

  They ate their baggin: curds and onions and the odd green bite; oatcake, cheese and ale. Kit had got brambles from a hedge for Thea. They were green and seedy, like eating broideries of beads; a few, as red as beaded blood: the needle's prick. Nothing else yet ripe. But there were crowcrooks on the moor; the sleeping girl had picked her apronful. Her mouth was stained with them. They had them for their afters: mistblue and midnight berries, tart, and bursting winy on the tongue.

  Off by the beck, Kat and Bartlemy were wading, splashing. They leapt and clashed like kids. He snatched at what she flaunted, held high out of reach; Kat lashed him with a bunch of whins. Whoop! cried the boy, and under he went. They saw her ranting on the stone, as gleeful as a goblin. Up he came behind her, and he caught her by the petticoats. A splash like young dolphins.

  "By dark,” said Ailie, squinting at the glinty stubble and the dwindling standing corn. “Later n'r last year, by a farthing moon."

  "It's coming on storm, I doubt,” said Gib.

  "We's have it done by then. Kirn and all."

  Ciss said, “Is't witch or wench this year?"

  Ailie looked cr
ows at her, but thumbed her sickle. “As it falls."

  The sickles lay about the grass, a halfyear's moons. A reiving wasp came on, and darted at the fruit. Ciss shrieked and cowered in her apron. Sibb in the hedgerow woke, saying, “Is't won yet? Mam?” Kit fanned Thea with his rushy hat. She was whitefaced, and her burning hair was flat with sweat. The red hair rode her like a demon.

  Ailie said, “Yer want to be lying down."

  Madlin put her baby to the other breast. “Are yer lighter by Gossamer? When is't?"

  At Hallows. They would never speak so in the harvest field; Kit knew that much. “Toward Lightfall,” he said.

  "When's that i’ Cloud?"

  "The Nine stars’ setting, that we call the Clew,” said Kit. “Nine Weaving?"

  "Cob's Web,” said Ailie, nodding.

  Nick Scarrow said, “I’ Slaith, we call ‘em Jack Daw's Seed.” His teeth showed whitely in his sunburnt face. He was a hireling stranger; he walked the harvest north. A marish man. He'd said they reaped with scythes there: not creeping women, but a sweep of men.

  "Aye, they's a queer lot, out Law,” said Gib.

  "Cunning wi’ tools.” Nick fleered at Thea's belly, with a sly and sidelong glance at Kit. “Will I thresh her for thee? Got a flail."

  Hewlin sniggered.

  "Aye, brock i't middle,” said Ailie. “It hangs."

  Kit said nothing, twisting straws. Nick shrugged. “Then hang her from a pole for t'crows. I seen yer crowland mawkins, out i't rain. A waste o seed.” He sauntered off upfield, to sleep under the hedge. Kit threw away the knot of straw. Toward Whinside, the sky had turned; it shook like foil in the heat. The corn was yellower: not glinting now, but glowering. The sun was in it, brighter as it shrank.

  Thea slept, and Madlin. Gib snored and Hewlin whistled; Ailie span hemp. The bluemouthed child made towns of pebbles. Ciss held Jacky in her lap and sighed. “At kirn feast, at Lowerstell, last year, they'd a fiddler til't dance."

  Kit felt a whitecold sickle at his heart. The fear had grown in him that all the cunning of his hands was lost with Thea's art. He never spoke of it; he dreamed of ships. “Will he be coming?"

  "Not up here, he won't. Up Annis’ arse."

  Ailie said, “Not for thy sake, Mistress Lightheels."

  "Never mind,” Kit said. “Do you rant, and I'll keep measure."

  "Wi’ yer tongue?” said Ailie. “Or have yer browt a pipe?"

  "Packed away,” he said soberly. “And the drum is broken."

  Ciss went on, “A new tune? I do love a new tune."

  "One I've made,” he said. “The oldest in the world."

  Ailie let her spindle fall, the coarse grey thread spin out. “There's Daw's awd crowd wants nobbut catgut. If y'd turn a penny. Hanged on a nail these ten years since."

  Kit's heart leapt up.

  Ciss poked at the stubble. “There's not,” she said. “There was a beggar come, asking would I cross his palm. He telled my cards."

  "No art i’ that,” said Ailie. “Thy fortune's i’ thy fork.” Down fell the spindle. “Wha tellt thee it were thine to give?"

  "Caggy awd thing, wha'd want it?” Ciss pouted. “And I never turned me back, but when pot boiled ower. Asides, there's nowt else missed, I counted spoons and all. And I's to journey til a far country, and wed a stranger on a dapple horse.” She turned to Kit. “Happen if yer see him ont road, yer could ask for it back. A tinker fellow like a white craw."

  Before he'd framed an answer, Kat came running down the fellside, with her long legs twinkling, bare and scratched. There was gorse in her hair. She'd forgotten the water jugs; but grinned, holding out a great bunch of white heather, haws, crawcrooks. “For t'kirn."

  Ailie took and laid it by her sickle, in its curve. “'Twill a’ to do."

  "So it better. Pains I taken wi't. Is there owt i’ yon poke?” Kat rifled for her share of bread and bit it, grinning. “Bat's sulking. He's soused."

  Kit watching thought he guessed the riddle. In Lune, in Askrigg, he had seen the images of bristling corn in kitchens down the dale, tied up with rags, with flowers dried to dust. The last sheaf was the Witch, they said; they gave her to the wrens to peck, at Lightfast: so the old year ate of her, to make it new. He said, “In my country, they do bind the Witch with rowans."

  "Does they?” Ailie said.

  Kat wrung her skirts. “I'd not wonder. For it's red and all."

  The Witch was eaten, and in turn she ate. Long since, the old wives said, they'd slain a child for her, an Ashes child: each spring a fall. They said the Old Witch lulled him in her lap. Kit knew her cradle songs. And still in Lune the countryfolk kept law: they stoned the wren and burned his crown, sowed blood and ashes with their hoarded seed, to slake the Witch. Kit saw her, squatting in the corn, with her tangled shock of hair, her scrawny shanks and long toes; her cheeks were of the reddest grain.

  "O’ course,” said Ailie. “Them outland folk is strange. I's heard they shear owls."

  Kit looked at Thea sleeping. He said, “There is a tale in Lune. They say the barley is the black earth's daughter, shut all winter in her dark. She rises. So they say."

  Ciss said, “They's witches all i’ Lune, Gib says."

  The spindle fell.

  Kit closed his eyes. He saw the Maiden rising, running from her mother's ancient dark. A green girl, dancing in the wind; but long strings tethered her, white-wiry, to her mother's womb. They held her, ripening to stillness, caught and cut. Three servingmen with knives of stone, her mother's minions, struck her down; they beat her with their flails. Her lover looked for her among the sheaves. He took each Perseis in his arms, and she was Annis, hoar and silent. On her face, the shrouding spiders scurried at their work. They told her death in inches. So he laid her out amid the lykes of straw. His eyes were dry. But she was lighter of the sun, their child. He saw it, in its swaddling bands of straw, unslain. Kit saw it, even through his lidded eyes: a glory and a dazzlement. He slept.

  Ailie glanced at him, scraw-boned as a rabbit, in his hempen shirt. “'Twill a’ to do,” she said.

  To Luneward did they reap the Witch. Here in Cloud, his elsewhere, they did say the corn was lying in the Witch's lap; she combed his silver hair and he did sleep. And then her cronies crept on him, they cut him off at knee. Not one before another: all at once, they slashed. Not I, said each crone to her other. Nor not I. ‘Twas she, my sister slew him. They were each and all the moon, his end: her sickle shearing and her millstone trundling round, her old black cauldron gaping for his bones.

  They shared him out as riddlecake, as round as the wheeling sun. They drank him and he made them giddy: for the turning of the sun is in his cup. As they drank, they played old bone games on their knuckles: moon reaps sun; sun mazes moon; and moon again wakes sun. They waked him through the winter and they scattered him: the earth his grave, his lap. His last sheaf was the Flaycraw. They hanged him on the Gallantry, to blacken in the wind and rain, to cry the crows. And so his green seed sprang.

  Crows called in the harvest field. The bluemouthed child looked up. White crows. They dazzled in the sun; then fell like cinders, black. She watched. She looked around her, squinting. They were all asleep, her mam and all. She bent to her play again, moved pebble in their maze. The black crows quarrelled in the corn.

  Kit woke hard. He saw crows rising in the field. His cheek was creased with straws; his arm, asleep where Thea lay on it. Drowsy and heavy, drenched with sleep, he rubbed his eyes and roused her. Ailie called them to the field. It shivered in the little wind; the dazed corn shook, it dazzled. To the east, the sky was sultry dark. They drank and hastened.

  As Kit went to field, he met Nick Scarrow loitering by a stook: a burnt man, blue-eyed. He held a reaping-hook and smiled. “Word's out ont road,” he said. “Thy Lunish piece. Wilt keep her when she's dropped yon brat? I's a mind to chaffer."

  "Crows eat thee,” said Kit.

  "Crows gat me,” said Nick, and slouched off.

  Kit slashed with a fury
at the rankest corn. A neck, he thought. A neck. “Come up,” called Ailie, so he fell to binding, furthest out. He saw that Thea went among the women, safe enough. The work unknotted him, it combed. The women called and answered at their reaping, keeping measure.

  Wha knocks at stone?

  Poor Peg alone.

  What's poor Peg lack?

  A rag t'her back.

  For salt and bread to lay her dead.

  And candlelight to gan by night.

  And what's she beg?

  A shroud to lap poor Tom.

  Poor Peg.

  They were cutting in a long slow spiral now, coiled inward on the standing corn. They went sunwise.

  Here, said the green witch. I am here.

  And gone. She ran with a rustling, greenfoot. Slower now. She was heavy with the sun, he'd catch her. Then he took her in his arms. She turned, and she was hoary, spidery with years. A blue-eyed, bearded hag, ca'd Crawcrooks.

  Now you can lay me down and love me, said the Witch. If you will.

  So he did and he was rooted in her. He was Cloud. His name was Nightless and Bare Bones, Dearbought, Come by Chance. To the east, they called him Babylon, he bowed before the wind as Wiselack, Slobeard, Urchins Hey. To the south, his names were Long Nap, Little Knowe, Leap Hedges; to the west, Sheer Ash, Jack Nackerty, and Nine Tree Crowd; to the north, they reaped Cold Hallows, Hanging Crows, Hobs Graves. The cold wind played on him, the old tune always.

  Then the slight moon and the dark of moon, the whitefaced breeding moon, came round him, bound him with their wreaths of straw. Their sickles ringed him like a running wheel. Then all at once, they slashed.

  A clip! they cried. A kiss, a clip! He toppled in their arms.

  "And so they ate thee,” said Whin. “All but bit t'wren had, and there's an end."

  "No,” said Kit, smiling. “They did but taste.” Kisses and a crown of poppies. Hurts and cream. A sweet mouth, blue with berrying; a shrewd mouth, taking sweets. And Ailie's warmest of them all and fierce, the brooding of a merlin's breast. Then he clouded. “No, ‘twas Thea that the moon ate."