by Greer Gilman
The hand with its great ring held the face: a sere unshaking hand; a white face, like a scrap of paper to be written over, like a mirror to be filled. “There is something of my daughter in you."
"Aye, the whore,” said Morag.
"Alike in straying,” said my lady. Still she held her gaze. “Chastise her."
"Thy vixen, Madam.” And when Margaret made no move, the servant took her bedgown, pushed her smock to her armpits. Held her wrists and bent her back across the kist, her new breasts and her belly all disclosed, a gibbous moon. Thrust her legs apart.
Slow blood.
My lady spoke, a cold still fury in her voice. “And who undid that knot?"
Morag said, “Not art, I'll warrant, but the worm in her. Your glass is carrion."
"Is of my adamant. A blank, but that I grave her with my icon and my law. And offscum else: yet will transmute."
"Or spoil, as did her dam. Your poppet. Waiting on the stars."
Whiter still, my lady's face. “It will be done, and presently. By this moon's dark."
A catechism then.
"What was thy mother?"
"Your daughter,” Margaret said.
"A whore. Which is?"
She knew not. “One who strays?"
"'Twill do. Puts carrion in Annis’ place. Which is?"
"We name it not."
"That errant part, wherein thy mother did betray me."
"Crow's fee,” said Morag, pinching. “And the vixen's earth."
Margaret endured. The crow's contemptuous, efficient hands; my lady's avid eyes. And even in her dread and terror, sick with shame, she thought, Like Thea?
Then the rod, and no more thought.
They left her on the floor, amid the fallen needles, the scattering of twigs.
My lady turned at the door. “It is time thou learned thy glass."
A key snicked in the lock.
For a long time she lay weeping in her dabbled smock. Blood with hidden blood.
No voice. She heard no voice.
* * * *
Kit hurried, huddled in his flapping coat. It would snow by dark. Black moor, white sky; but knit, the whiteness tangled in the ground as rime, the blackness branching up as trees. A scant wood, leafless now. Sloes, rowans, all gone by. Firing. He bent to get sticks. It still was light; but stiffening towards dusk. Ravenwards. And Thea waiting, pacing in their roofless shieling, by the ashes of a hearth. She made cairns of stones. She did and she undid. He dared not leave her; they would starve without. No sticks to burn; no bread. A handful of dampish meal, half acorns, bitter as the wind.
The braid was gone. He saw it glinting everywhere.
There. In that bush. He stumbled toward it.
Gone.
He stood. He would have wept, if he'd remembered how. It was all too much, too much. He stood. Dazed, cold, defeated, sleepless, starved, lightheaded, lousy. Fizzing with lice. His feet recalled him, white cold, wet; he'd blundered. Cat ice.
Looking down, he saw a tump in the marshy ground: a spring, turfed over, housed with three great stones. Kneeling, he touched the lintel of the low door, lichened; found the blind runes graven in the rock. Help us, he said to darkness, spinning out a thread of silver. Lighten her, my love. He touched the water. No one. In the wood beyond, a stormcock sang. No solace here. He rose. On a tree hung knots of rags, frayed, faded to the blue of a winter sky. Another sky, some other now or then, caught here. And in among the ravellings of sky, a rag of iris. Thea's scarf.
* * * *
Kit. Margaret. Ah, you do not hear me. She is gone until her time comes round; she cannot let you in. No hallows anywhere. Not yet.
* * * *
At the corners of their shieling, raised on cairns, Kit saw her barricade: spiked crowns and spirallings of ice, frail caltrops. Morning stars. He dropped his sticks and ran. From wall to ashes, wall to wall, he found her, pacing and clenching. Blood on her lip. Then something wrenched her, as a laundress would a rag.
"Thea. How long—?"
She caught his sleeve, his coat, as on a breaking ship. Another wrench and shudder. “Kit.” Like burning wax, her face: it warped and ran. Almost Thea leapt from it, as flame from a candle, blowing out. “Undo it."
"Love?"
"Undo the knot,” said Thea. “That braid you took of me. Undo it."
Still he stood.
"To let the child be born. I cannot lighten else. I cannot meet them."
O sweet hallows on us. “Gone,” he said.
"What?"
"Taken. Gone."
"Ah no.” A great cry, twisting.
"Thea—"
She whirled on him, white-fiery. “Run. Now."
"I'll not leave thee. I will not."
"For a woman's help. I die else.” Wrench and leap. “Now. Get thee hence."
He turned at the threshold. “O my heart's love."
"Go."
No time, no time.
He ran.
* * * *
Whin dreamed of ravens. An ill-chancy dream, an omen. Then a telling. A trance. She saw a girl still barely living, filthy, naked on the icy ground. Her childbed. Saw the stubble of red hair, the new milk seeping from her breasts. The glazing eyes. A witch stood watching her, a corbie perched upon her hand. She stroked its beard, she ruffled it; it preened the bracelet at her wrist, of braided fire. Ah, the sweetest morsels for my chuck, my Morag, said the witch. The crow's fee and the eyes. Down it flapped, it picked the tidbits. Still the girl breathed, the blood ran, the death cry rattled in her throat. Then the witch called down her crows. They clustered at the bloody womb. They tore.
Whin woke yelling.
Still Kit slept on. He twitched and whimpered. Whin sat up and shook with rage. She cursed the raven and the witch; she cursed the knife that loosed the child, the braid, the shears that cut it. Cursed her master mistress Brock who had entangled her in this atrocity, to see and see and see. Change nothing.
Then up she got, and ran down to the shingle, to the water's edge. She'd drown the soulbag, wash the ashes from her face. Walk inland. She would be no more death's journeyman. Running, she tore her rings off, death by death, to hurl them in the sea.
Brock stood between salt water and the strand. “I'd not do that,” she said.
"Could yer not have let her live?” cried Whin. “Not see'd to it that she went wi’ child, smick smack, afore she'd much as bled? Thou meddlesome. And all for nowt. A tale of Ashes."
"It's done, and long since done,” said Brock.
"And nowt to do wi’ me."
"And all to do.” The sea swashed, swashed. “There's bairn."
* * * *
O thank hallows. There, a woman with a lantern. Hale and canny, she looked: brisk, in pattens and a hood. Kit caught her apron. “My lass. Please. Needs a woman by her.” And she raised her candle, looking through him with a smile would scoop apples, a shankbone smile—I know two of that—and turned away. Up the fell.
He ran after. “Pity on us. For the love—"
Another crossed the trod. A sonsy girl, a goosedown girl and slatternly, who bore a flat candlestick, as if she tumbled up to bed. “Miss—? Can lead me to a midwife? My lass—” She blinked and giggled, turned away.
Another and another still. All with candles, all the girls and women of the dale end, lating on the hills. Now there, now elsewhere in the cloudy dark, as if they danced Nine Weaving. Round they turned like children in a game, a-bob and wheeling, in and out, through bushes and through briars. They were seeking with their candles—lambs at Hallows? Birds’ nests? They were sought.
Hide fox, and all after.
As in a dream, Kit ran from one to the next, imploring, and they turned from him. None would speak. They shook their heads: some smiling, some pitying or shocked or scornful; some averting their eyes.
A weeping man, half naked, in a Bedlam coat.
One tossed a coin.
A knot of them, their backs turned. Gossips. Blindly, hopelessly, he touch
ed a sleeve. “I beg of you—” A stone. A ring of them, like crones in cloaks. But one stone turned, the hood fell back. It was a woman with a darkened lantern, waiting, gazing out: like a sailor for landfall, like a scryer at eclipse. He was a gull at her masthead, a dog at her skirts: no more.
Down the fell, a light went dark. Another, upwind, and a girl knelt, doing up her shoe latch, looking round. And yet another, pinning up her hair. All waiting.
One by one, the candles all went out.
But one.
A child this woman, sheltering a dying candle in a tin. She brooded fiercely on it, willed it. In its doubtful glow, her face was rapt and shining. Awed. Her first time on the fells? Her flame lurched sideways, righted, leapt again. The last?
From up the fell, a voice called, Ashes! We's Ashes!
O the last. As her candle flickered out, she whirled for joy.
Another and another voice took up the cry, like vixens, greenfire in their blood. Hallooing to the dark of moon. Ashes! They were running now, a rout of women, whirling torches in the kindled dark. And still the child wheeled, giddy, in among the stones, the only silence. Ashes!
And alone, but for the ragman. She took to her heels.
* * * *
I tell this to the air; yet I must speak.
My mother fed me to her crows, she burned my bones and scattered them; my braided hair she keeps. By that bright O of fire did she call me back from life to Law; by those shrewd knots torment me. She would not undo. Seven weeks she watched me naked, travailing from Hallows until Lightfast eve; then Morag's knife did let thee crying from my side, and I was light.
* * * *
Margaret knelt and pried a stone up in the hearth; she dug. From under it, she took a ring, a clew of thread. A key.
* * * *
Turning back from the stones, Kit saw the fire at their fold and ran, calling, stumbling on his whiteblind feet. He saw the ravens falling from the sky. One, another, turning women as they fell. They were clear as night, and starless; where their wings beat back the thronging air was cloud and fire. As they touched the earth, it whitened, widening from their talons of the frost. They shrank as small as stones.
Kit fell. A thrawn hand caught him, and another, and a throng. Horned feet kicked through him like a pile of leaves; they scattered him like sparks. “Out!” he cried and struggled, held and haled. A torch was thrust at his face. There were witches all round him: men and crones, in black and rags of black, and goat fells, stiff with blood. They bore a cage of thorns and withies, hung with bloody rags and hair, with flakes of skin: the palms of children's hands, like yellow leaves, a-flutter.
Empty.
"Here's a fool,” said one, a warlock.
"A soul,” another said. A hag, all pelt and bones. The soulstones clattered in her hank of hair, with knops of birdskulls, braided through the orbits.
"A soul, a soul,” the guisers cried.
Kit fought against their hands. “You let me go."
"You let us in,” they chanted. “Let us in your house of bone."
And a man like a staghead oak, a blasted tree, cried, “Room!"
A tall witch with a great black fleece of hair flung back came striding through. It was a man, pale and sneering in a woman's robe, his strong arms naked to the shoulders, dark with blood. Death's midwife. Or a blasphemous Ashes?
"Annis!” they cried. “Annis wakes."
He prodded Kit with his staff. “What's this? A blindworm?"
"For your breakfast, my lady."
"For your bed."
"'Tis Ashes’ bawd."
The stick against his throat had silenced him, half strangled him. He saw a black wood rising; it was leaved with faces. Thronged with crows.
"Bags I,” said a voice.
The crowd parted. Kit saw a figure in a leathern cap, a coat of matted fleece. Ashes of juniper, a cloud of ashes at his eyes and lips. It whispered in his ear. “Thou's not to die for her,” said Brock. “Thy lass did say."
"No,” he tried to say. His mouth was full of ashes, he was blind with snow.
"Now,” said Brock. “An thou will.” And kissed his mouth.
He felt a tremor, a wind in his bones. She covered him like snow. Beneath the sway of stars, he felt the green blades pierce his side, the awned heads bow and brindle in the reaping wind. A sickle gathered him, a sheaf. Time threshed. His chaff was stars, his bones were blackness, strung and shining. A sword, a belt of stars. A crow called.
Then he knew no more.
* * * *
Hallows morning.
Kit awoke on the hillside in the falling snow, all white and shades of white, but for the black unkindly stones. After a time, he could stand, could hobble. Halt and dazzled with the snow, and inch by crippled inch, he made his way back to their shieling. Knowing what he'd find. Dread knowing.
Gone.
And more than gone. Pulled stone from stone, and torched and trampled in a great wide circle, salt with snow. Cold out. All her toys.
"Go,” she'd said. And so he'd gone.
He would have died for her.
He fell to his knees where their hearth had been, the ashes at the heart of ashes. Nothing left: all taken, lost, betrayed. But there, a something like a wren's dulled eye, its dead claw, in the snow. A ring. Not hoarded, so not lost. He scratched for it, and found the other; turned them in his fingers. Blood and tears.
* * * *
Margaret knelt amid cold ashes, drawing mazes on the hearth. They'd left no book to her, no ink, no candle: whips of juniper to gaze on, and the drowsy wine. My lady's glass, which was black adamant: she could not break.
And so she did what she had left to her: undid. Ate nothing they had given her, but dwindled out an orange she had kept, a heel of bread; drank snow from her window sill. She worked by scant starlight at the puzzle of her cage. Scrawled figures with a stick of charcoal; rubbed them out, redrew them, all in black upon the hearthstone, what was white with snow without: the labyrinth of yew and stone. If she did journey, she could not rub out.
So then: for her door, she had the jackdaw's key; then came the maze she would unriddle and the hedge of thorn, the wintry sea. The world. Beyond that, she could see no way. A ship? But only to have touched the sea, washed Morag from her skin; to glimpse a world unbounded by my lady's walls. She set herself to reach the sea. The garden was configured as the starry sky; that much she knew, had read her book beside the white girl crowned with leaves, with leaves and flowers in her stony lap. And water running down and down her face: it wept for her, who could not weep. Bound Ashes, in a box of yew.
She knew now what she was; what she was for. A hole to fill, said Morag truffling. Naught else. Yet had my lady smiled and pinched. A limbeck. See, how sweetly she distills. Had kissed: how scornfully, and yet had lingered. It was almost a caress. The bracelet burned against her skin. I have sent to fetch thee a rare dowry. Dishes for thy maiden banket; jewels for thy chain. Thy first shall be thy father's soul.
For a long time afterward, Margaret had sat, and turned and turned the hidden cards.
O the Nine, ah yes, the Nine would come and carry her away. She heard the clatter of their wings; she saw them, children of the rising light, like swans. Her heart rose up. Being mute, she could not cry to them; they lighted, children as they touched the earth, but a glory of their wings about them, like a snow. Sister, come with us, they said. I will, said Margaret's heart, but have no wings. No ship. And turned it up: that Ship whose mast is green and rooted, flowering as stars. And then bright Journeyman, the thief.
A rattle in the keyhole. A black stick on the floor. She'd risen to it, curtsied, with the cards behind her: all in haste. But three had fallen from her lap like leaves; their tales had withered at my lady's glance. See, thou hast overlooked the Tower. That takes all. The witch had stooped for it, mock-courteous, and held it to her branching candle; dropped it burning to the floor. And which next shall I take? Thy cockboat? Or thy nest of geese? Her gaze schooled Margaret
's; they would bind her if she flinched. Thy choosing, Madam. It will make a game.
The Hare. My lady's wrist was bare, no braid.
Aha, the Master Lightcock. Thou'rt seed of his, didst know? Shall watch him burn. And my sweet crow shall have his stones, to bait her dogs withal. Then she had signed to Morag with the box. Undo.
And after they had gone.
It seemed that someone else took over, swift and secret, while the old lost Margaret sat, dreaming in a drift of cards. Thou timorous, thou creeping hodmandod, she thought: thou snail that tangles in her trail of dreams. Draw in thy tender horns? Thou liest between the thrush and stone. That other self, herself, had thought of riding, light a horseman as the moon; her mantle of the flying silver, fleeting on the wind. But now her new shrewd voice said, Shoes and stockings, stout ones. In that room with the sea-chests. Thou needs must walk. Will need the way.
And so she sat, and drew what she remembered of the labyrinth, the doors.
* * * *
"No ship,” said Kit. “When thou didst come on me, and take me up from drowning, there had been no ship. No storm. I'd gone in after her."
"I know,” said Whin. “But thou was not to follow her. Thy lass did spell for thee."
"Not drown,” said Kit. “I know. I am for hanging in yon braid. That I did twist myself."
"What for?” said Whin. “Thou's never telled."
"To hold fast.” Kit clasped his hands, unclasped. “Ah, not to Thea—what I loved in her I held like moonlight in a sieve, I riddled rainbow. ‘Twas a falling star, that nowhere is and yet is light. No, what I braided was a face she turned to me, a mask: that lady who did run away with me, did overturn her fortune for my sake. Mine own. The moon that turned and turned from me, yet bent within mine orb. Thought I. So kept that vanity, that she did shear. At first.” A silence. “And after, I would keep myself, as I had thought I was. Would be. That Kit who called down witches with his airs. Not Thea's bow-stick, but a one who played.” He bit his lip; looked up. “And she owed me a fiddle, I did tell myself. No matter; yet it rubbed. And at the last—moon blind me—I could not endure to tell her of my folly."
Whin passed the cup. “What now?"
"If not for Thea's sake, yet I will die, as all must die. And I would live ere then.” A something lightened in his face. “And see our lass."