Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales

by Greer Gilman

  "...in Scarristack. They call them soulboats there. They brim them full of oil, and set them burning on the sea, ‘tis said, to bring the dead to the Unleaving. As we walk the Road.” He was all alight with it, imagining. “But see now.” And he held to her a pebble scrawled and flecked. She took it; it weighed nothing in her hand. Not stone but eggshell.

  Now she looked to him. “'Tis light."

  "An owl's. And this a wren's—” He looked at her aslant. “So small a thing to hatch the summer. This now is a raven's; this—ah now, this beauty is a gyrfalcon's. It was taken of a nest atop a scar, ten fathoms fall on rock.” At that, she looked at him, his scholar's bent, his hands. Catching at her disbelief, he said, “There is one climbs for me. He giddies not.” And smiling now, “And this a nightingale's.” To her astonishment, he whistled softly, like a bottle, narrow-necked, of crystal, filling up up up. Jug jug wit wit. “Thou gravity. There's asking in thine eyes. What wouldst thou know?"

  "Wherein the music lies."

  "Ah,” said Master Grevil. “'Tis not in breaking it. That way is only slip and shivering. Here's glair in one hand; in the other, but a shell, as silent as thyself.” She bent her head. “Aye, Mistress Mumchance, thou.” He set the egg down in its nest of wool. “But verily, her music's in the stars. They say the nightingale sings nightlong in the wood above. In the Unleaving."

  "I have read no little of the stars; but I know not this constellation."

  "Ah, it stands not in the heavens, but the heart. Did I not say the sky is written in our souls? In our cosmography?” He traced the inlay of the cabinet, the flowers and the fruit of wood. “I have heard a nightingale in Lune, but long ago. In Gallwood, in the fellows’ grove.” He looked far inward, reminiscent. “Quis quis quis, it sings; and, Cuius? Cuius? cries the owl."

  Then shaking off his melancholy, smiling, he unlocked the inmost door.

  "But here..."

  Bright faces: portraits set in frames of ebony and gold and ivory, as small as coins. More precious still. Hand hovering, he chose.

  Not this, the sad-eyed man: like Grevil in his look but greyer, all in black, a branch of almond in his hand. He sat in shadow in this very study. At his back, beyond the open window, lay his garden, greener than the sea, as fathomless. But he would dive no more.

  Nor this, the young man standing in a field of barley, holding in his open shirt a chain, a something on it—what? a ring, a soul? another picture?—curled within his hand, unseen; nor yet his other self, his sister-twin by moonlight, at her music: sickle to his scythe. A glass unlooked-in at her back gave back the viewer's gaze in little, like the moon; it pupilled.

  None of these, but two girls, side by side, a little elder than herself. He held them at his heart a moment; turned them. “This"—the fair one—"was my dearest mother, she who died when I was young.” He did not look at Margaret. “I think my heart died with her.” I am sorry, she would say; but knew not how. “And this—” As fair a maid but russety. Unsweet. The limner's brush had caught the mischief in her face: a stirring like a little wind that whirls the leaves in autumn, sets them all a-dance. “Her sister Annot, that was lost.” A silence, but for wind in leaves, the birds. “She heard the bridles ring."

  * * * *

  Barbary herself brought up the master's cup, leaving Margaret to poke and puzzle at her square of linen. At her heels, the clack of tongues began. Deft Ellender shook out her master's shirt, laid stitches in the band. “Not silk,” she said. “Like some folk traipse about in.” Margaret bent to her work. “He's nobbut backend gentry. Madam, now, his naunt—well, his mother come o high great folk."

  "Up north,” said Nan, and rummaged in the basket. “Here's tearing o sheets."

  "Broad lands,” said Ellender.

  "And empty,” said Nan.

  "Her towers stand high,” said Cat.

  "Allt better to look down on thee,” said Nan.

  Cat flounced: no quashing her. “She's a ring til every finger, and a hawk til her hand. I see'd."

  "Me and Bess Imberthwaite, we did her chamber,” said Nan. “Orris til her water jug and sugar til her sack. Her fires laid wi’ bark o cynament."

  "I brock her stillery,” said Doll, and sighed. “All glass it were. She had her waiting-women beat me."

  "Two on ‘em,” said Nan. “And but to dress her. We was not to wash her stockings even."

  "Cloyed wi’ gold they were,” saidCat.

  And Ellender: “We was not to meddle wi’ her coffers."

  Sukey looked worried. “Was I there?"

  "In thy cradle, thou goslin."

  "Or she'd have made soap o thee. Suke-fat and violets."

  Nan bit her thread. “Happen three year since she come a progress here.” She glanced up at the door; spoke lower. “She given our master a rare good fretting: would he wed? And would he wed?"

  "Were it a brave young lady?” said Doll. “I would we'd a mistress."

  "Here's a fray,” said Ellender. Folding back the master's shirt, her darns adorning it like snow on snow, she took a needleful. “I'd rather serve his aunt."

  "Put gold til her hair,” said Cat.

  Nan snorted. “Swill her piss-pots, more like."

  Ellender bent closely to her needlework. “I'd study."

  * * * *

  The wind in leaves troubled her. So many, thought Margaret. So many on the Road, still travelling. Untold. She lit her candle, took her cards; but they—her Wood Above—had withered. Tale on tale, they fell from her. Unleaving. Even spelling out the cards, she stopped; she squared them. Like and like. But she would have the naked sky.

  Up she knelt, undid the shutter: but the light seemed bitter as a frost, a wind of snow of stars, sharp-sided at her eyes. Inimical as Imbry's sea. Against the storm, she crooked her arm before her face. This sky now was too great for her: it stopped her breath. She fumbled with the latch to shut it out.

  But Margaret had yet another sky, within her, not without: her toy, her consolation in the dayless dusk of Law. Hands curved about an emptiness, a space of air, she held the sky in thought: a crystalline of air, aethereal. A glass of smoke, in which the embers of imagination swirled and rose, unburned and burning still. Upfalling to the wood above, they leafed, inlaid it with their fire. They flew, swift scattering, as dancers to their set. All there, the bright remembered stars. Did not her mother's mother set them in the sky? A beat of silence; then as one, they turned. Scarce breathing with the poise of light, she held them turning still. She set the errant stars a-dance.

  Within and out, in and out, round as a ball,

  With hither and thither, as straight as a line...

  Whorl within wheel, she turned with them in mind, kept measure. Swift now, with their joyous tumbling; slow and slower, with the cradle of the summer stars. She swung in them. She spun sun and moon like jackstones, all a-jangle; swept and caught the five stars in her hand. Again she tossed her golden ball; and in its falling, all was changed.

  Within was outward. She dove dolphin-backed amid the river of light, her sinews braided with light; and down and downward, into shadow. There was something that she dove for, glimmering: a bright ring blind with darkness, buried at the sill of dark.

  She slept.

  * * * *

  Margaret wakes to a rattle of rain on thack-stones, in a reek of down-driven smoke. Night still? A rushlight dips and dances. No sky. Black thatch above her and a taws of hazel in the rooftree, all a-bloom, that powders her with dust, a sift of sunlight. By the hearth, the witch sits wide-lapped, combing wool; a loom of her in shadows mocks and mows. Margaret hears the soft scritch of her wool combs and the embers hissing. Cards? There, pillowed at her cheek. And tangled in her braid, the ring. All there. She lies, lapped in nothing but a ragged patchwork, rough as a nettlebed, and all holes.

  Rooftree...?

  Before she can speak, the leaf-witch answers. “Unleaving. We's out o't Road."

  "Here?"

  "Now."

  Margaret sits up
in the rough blanket and looks round. No moor. The witch's fire leaps and cowers in a hovel; or a hedge. The roof is plashed and eddered of the living thorn; the walls are tumbled stones. She lies in leaves on leaves, and lightwebs, downy as a cuckoo's nest, and vexed with twigs. O wonderful, most strange! A branch has flowered in the smoke. Of blackthorn, though she has no name for it: wood flowering in stars, whitenaked as the Nine.

  And yet the starry sky is thack, the hedge a hovel, hung and flung about with crazy oddments. A tipsy cauldron, canted over in the leaves. A riddle and a rusty shears. A crook. A rattlebag. A garland, withered on a nail. But why? A ladle. Broken eggshells. Keys. What locks? A cratch full of wizened apples. A cage with no bird. A sheaf, unthreshed and sprouting, and a wormy wooden cup. On a shelf at her bedhead sits a green cheese by a whorl and spindle, wound with flax; a sickle, bound in straw. A cracked and unstrung fiddle, with a blindfold head. And up in the rafters hangs her own draggled petticoat, flimsy as frost, with a spider measuring the rents.

  "Her coat,” says Margaret, remembering the dark witch. Had she lost it?

  "Off ranting,” says the leaf-witch. “She'll have doffed her, breeks and all.” She bends to her rovings.

  And the witch. Not ancient as she'd seemed on moorland: ageless, fierce. A green girl in the husks of autumn. Gnarled hands and moon brow, shining cheek and chin; owl nose and peaked red cap. Straggles of her hair hang loose about her shoulders, mingling with the webs, now grey, now dark; her spectacles cast imps of light about the ceiling, glint and flitter.

  "Nine,” says the witch. “And one.” She lays down her combs. “Not risen yet?"

  Margaret makes her dishevelled courtesy. “Could I help?"

  "Thou?” The witch is dishing up a cold green mass from the cauldron; she raps the ladle on the bowl. “Thou'rt as much use as a cat i’ pattens. Here. Get it etten."

  No small task. Struggling with her bowl of nettles and a broad horn spoon, Margaret chokes and swallows. “My thanks."

  "Muggarts,” says the witch. “For thy blood.” She draws herself a horn of ale. Sleet falls hissing on the hearth. The witch drinks. “Dost knaw where thou's bound, lass?"

  "Away."

  "And wha's thou, when thou comes to it?"

  No one. “A daughter?"

  The witch looks shrewdly at her. Not my lady's gaze, avid and contemptuous; yet Margaret flinches, tallying her self: a coffer cracked on vanity, a windegg. A mole. Bruised privities and rifled heart. Green ignorance. “I can learn."

  "Aye,” says the witch, and passes the horn. “Thou's yet undone."

  The drink is bitter, heartening. “Could I not stay here?"

  "What's here? Now and nowhere. Thou's for t'Sun's road."

  "The world?” O the dread of it, the great unknowing. “An I must."

  "And how will thou keep thee, goslin? Knit nettles? Shear owls?"

  "I know not."

  "What canst thou?"

  "Cipher. Read and spell,” says Margaret. “Cast figures of the stars."

  "Aye, canst thou? Riddle me: what's i’ this house?"

  Round she looks, and up and down. And round: she's giddy suddenly with ale. No sky in here. And come to that, no in nor out, no window nor a door. There's nothing but a clutter here of ... Oh! “Houses.” And she laughs for sheer wonder. Oh, I see. The houses of the Sun: the Keys, the Coffer, the Riddle and the Shears. And yes, the stations of the soul's long Road: the Lantern and the Scythe. And there, the place of her begetting, in her mother's secrets, in the Crowd of Bone. Unleaving. “Stars. All the heavens."

  "At thy birth,” says the witch. “When thou comes to it. I s'll have stood thee as gossip.” Dizzy with Cloud ale, her godchild only gawks. “We's kindred, sitha. Thou's daughter to my sister's daughter that's herself, that's one wi’ me. So thou's me.” She beckons back the horn, and drinks to Margaret's puzzlement. “A souling!"

  A courtesy.

  Down with the horn. The witch bustles. “There's an ashing for thee that I's kept."

  "I thank you, but—"

  "That's to be seen. T'ashing's what thou will; and what it wills, thou is to be.” She huffs the dust from a great kist; opens it on mice and fragments. “There was books.” She turns a smirched face on Margaret. “And which is thine?

  Is it the ale? For there's a mischief in her now, an imp of curiosity. “If I were you, I'd have your spectacles,” she says; and waits her death by owls.

  The witch laughs until the leaves upwhirl around her and the spiders fold and fall. She turns her owlglass eyes on Margaret; tsks and rubs them in her cap. “Here's joy o them,” she says; and sets them on her sister's daughter's nose.

  And there is nowhere. Round the scryer turns and round: but there is nothing anywhere. No ground, no sky, no feel nor footing. Not a sound. All white in whiteness: a Cloud of unknowing.

  "See? Thou can't see but I has my spectacles.” The leaf-witch takes and folds them, bow on bow; she tucks them in her petticoats. “I's keep them for thee while thou learns."

  It is raining fiercely now, the hall unhousing into mud and thicket, the branch lost in branches, glassy with sleet. The cauldron sunk in mud. The witch bends and smoors the fire. Ashes now. Half light: a cold and clashy dawn. “There now. We's half-moon late.” And answering no spoken word. “For t'Nine. They keep back stairs.” She flings a sack on her shoulders, sets a basket on her hip.

  "Coming?"

  Margaret follows.

  * * * *

  Small rain. Margaret waked from stalking dreams, toward dawn. So brief these summer nights: the house would be astir by four. Still dusk within, though, in her westward room. Even held aslant above her head, to catch the tide of light, her pages blurred. Even to her night-tuned eyes. She rose and lit her stub of candle at her tinderbox. Ah, that was brighter. Kneeling up, she slipped her hand between the wainscot and the wall, drew out an old tin candle box with all her hoard in it. A pack of cards, some lost; a tarnished ring; a pair of broken spectacles, the glazes fallen from their twisted frame.

  She wondered at that last; remembered nothing but a fragment of a dream: a glint and flittering of light, expectancy. A journey. But she'd found them in her pocket, tied about her waist, that morning of her Cloudfall. Hers? But how? A puzzle in perplexity. She sat on her counterpane and turned the bits of glass like mooncoins in her hand, unspent. She held one to her eye, and saw her candle swerve and loom. Further and further out, until the flame dispersed. Mere fog. The other glass? Dwindled it: a spark. Would two at once be clear? A chord of glass? She made owleyes of thumb and finger, with a glass in each. Hand before hand, as if she sighted at a needle's eye. Not that way. This? She moved them in and out, as if she slid a sackbut, peering at the candle.

  It leapt at her. A furl of flame. Astonished, she flinched. But the candle was still there on the sill, unmoved. Her hand unburnt. ‘Twas but its seeming came to her. A fetch. She laughed in wonderment. O my.

  Again. “Come, fire.” And it flew at her bidding, like a hawk to her hand. A tassel. She held it, warped and haloed, in the glass. Let go.

  Again.

  Of its own, it guttered and went out.

  Stalking and wheeling about her little room, she scried things. Her book, like a great moth to a candle. Her jug, like the moon.

  She turned her gaze beyond her window, at the green fields of the sky below. Come, fold. It lighted. Here, to hand. And when she loosed it, far away. No stone within its puzzle lost. And not a blade of grass left bent. Come, fell. Who'd seen a hillside curtsey like a wave? It moved, removed. Come, thorn. Who'd seen a tree in leaf unroot and fly? Alight, without a ruffled leaf? Who'd seen a walking wood? And if a thorn, why not the Thorn? Why not the Sun and Moon?

  * * * *

  Long since he'd dreamed of Annot; yet Noll saw her, stitching at a cloth he knew was heaven. Black on white, for it's the back side of the sky. She's taught him that, to read the the grammar of the stars. Strange constellations, yet he knows them all and their ascensions—see, the
Owlet and the Urchin, garbed with fruit, the Bear with its bright honeycomb. They two have made them all, the stories of the sky on earth. They've made Unleaving. Now she unfolds another breadth of heaven, saying, Here's room to fill. What wilt thou?

  A mermaid with a glass. A tyger.

  Her bright needle flies. Yet all the while he fears the hinderside of heaven, where the ravens are. The Wood is white on black; white leaves that fall from soulwhite branches. Ah, they've stayed too late—Annot?

  Grevil woke, half smiling, half in tears: for Annot, for the child she left. For the child she was. And puzzled: when did she wear spectacles?

  * * * *

  Later Margaret sat with Grevil at his book. Rain as ever, and the soft scratch of their quills. Dip and scribble, pounce and tap. Her thought was elsewhere. She'd need a sort of conduit for light, a pipe. A roll of parchment? No. Heavier. Stiffer. She would need to fix the glasses: so. And so. Covertly, she looked about the room. A flute-case, a map-case. But he'd find them gone.

  Outside the window, the gardener weeded and sang. “Hey, we to the other world, boys..."

  In the widow's loft by her closet, there were older woodwinds: a reedless bombard, a shawm. An hautboy in a leathern case. ‘Twould do.

  "Sir?"

  "Eh?” Deep in time. Down the long pleached alley of his pear trees—long since winter-felled—his father walked, abstracted. White bloom falling on his bent head, his black doublet. A green thought in a green shade.... But the lass was speaking.

  "In your lady's bower, might I handle the instruments?"

  "That old virginals? ‘Tis lumber. What, to play upon?"

  "...there, the Man i’ th’ Moon drinks claret...” sang the gardener.

  "To study."

  "As you will."

  And the glasses fixed with sealing-wax?

  Thou creeping mouse, she thought. Thou wainscot. Nibble at thy master's substance? Lumber. Trash. Curled within her nutshell mind, she smiled. Translation.

  * * * *