by Greer Gilman
* * * *
She will sleep this while, the witchcomb said of Annis. Go. Whin took to owl-wise; she rose in spirit, circling to the north, to Scarristack of the unleaving stars. Bring me my arts. I hid them ere I left.
* * * *
At hallows eve, the windwife saw the owl and greeted her: swift, softer than a fall of snow, and sharp as frost to kill. It came from the north, from the eye of the witch, at dusk as the fires leapt. She felt a pang, as if the beak and claws had torn her, and she knew her time. By moonset, hallows day, beside the bare loom in the straw, she bore her daughter. Imbry, she named her, whispering; and saw the cloudblue on her sealdark eyes, her father's eyes, like sky on rockrent water.
Towards lightfast, Siorvar dreamed of fire. A woman, wreathed in fire, riven like a stone. Waking, she saw the moon through the wind-eye, waning; heard the breathing of her bairn, happed soft in eiders, lying at her breast. She touched the dark head, sleeping. New and wise, she thought: the old moon in the new moon's arms, that bore it and was born of it, the lighter of its dreams.
She rose, and going to the kist of tree, took out her eldmother's comb. It was carved of sealbone, spiny like a hake's back, toothed on either side, called rime and rune. She unbound her hair. It fell about her, long as winternight, unstarred; and with the runeside of the comb, she combed it, and began to rime. Far north, she woke the stonewitch, sleeping in a coil of cloud and wind. She combed the cloud and skeined it, rimed a ring about the owling moon: a burr of frost, a broch of ice, a storm against the fire-bringing ship.
But softly as she sang, the wind rose in the roof, the loomstones clacked. At that, the baby woke and cried; the milk came starting to her breasts. “Hush, ba,” she said, and took her up. “Ah, hush thee, by thy father's fell.” She nursed. The cloud spell slid away, it spilled and spilled away in mist.
* * * *
Whin saw the pale ship, rudderless, unmasted, make its landfall on the witch's isle. She saw a fire in the mist, the lantern at the soulship's prow: it shrank as it came onward, seemed a man. The huntsman, with his straw-white hair, the color of a bladesmith's forge at full, and he the knife. He bore a round thing in his hand: a wren's cage, but of iron, hung with strips of mortal skin. Still bloody, some of them, and others ghostly dry. All knowing, whispering. Lightfast and alone, he stood before the witch's sill. He stamped.
* * * *
Now, said her heart's tide, running seaward. It ravelled on the Teeth, it broke: a perturbation and a cloud of sand. Siorvar woke aghast. Still Imbry slept within her skincoat, brooded by her heart. The stone of milk within each breast thawed, wept. The bead of fire in the nightlamp welled. She drew the windeye's fell aside. Grey shadowless. The dream had been otherwise, ablaze. She saw it still within her eyelids: a skin boat, dip and dazzle on the sun's road, winking into dawn. But it was Lightfast: there would be no day. A paling in the dark, no more, the shoulder of a sleeper waked and turning in his earthy bed. The sun lay long in Ashes, in his winter grave. The Lyke Road is his dream, she said, remembering old Pirri's telling, with a pang. She held the babe so fiercely that she woke and squalled. For the last time, she suckled her and cleansed her and bound her to her breast. Then rising, the windwife roped her burden to her back.
She made her way by rake and foothold to the windward shore; set down the kist of tree. It was an heirloom of her lineage: of Cloudwood, waifcast on her treeless island shore. Cloud of the branches, Cloud of the slanted stars: she willed it to its home. Imbry stirred and mewed. Her mother kissed and sained her, touching eyes, mouth, heart with snow; she laid her naked in a furl of skins. No thread to find her, bind her to her mother's fate. Then wading thighdeep in the bonecold restless sea, she set the ark adrift.
Go, she willed her. At the moon's will. Live.
A wave. Withdrawing on the rake of it, the small ship faltered, but her spell still bore it upright and the tide was strong: it rode. Another and another wave. It slipped and journeyed, rocking on its eldmother's icy lap. She stood and watched the sea long after it had vanished in the mist.
* * * *
Ashes that was Siorvar's nursling knelt beside an empty cradle, by a hearth, in a stranger's house. A bare room, stoned and sanded. Cold, for all the high-made fire. It was earth ingrained: a taint of mould in it that would not scrub away. The old man's telling had been ceremonious: a form of words, a feat of memory, a mask. This was otherwise.
A stonefaced woman; a bewildered man. The woman held a silver ring out in a workworn hand. It trembled. “Will you tell a death?"
"Tild,” said the man. “Her name were Tild. My lady."
Silence.
"She were—she would ha’ been nine, come barley.” There was something in his great scarred fist. “I thowt as ... well, you'd not ‘a knowed her ... it would help."
A wooden doll.
She could not. Not speak, not move, not breathe. Not bear it. If she had her will, she would have torn away the coat and run: anywhere, away. She could feel the shock of beck-brown water as she plunged: she'd wash away her godhead, send the soulbag tumbling to the sea. Throw off this earthish weight of grief, of gold, of deference: their terrible belief.
But at her back she felt the tiding of magpies: those canting gloating gossiping old crones with their hoard of tears. Here's a pretty thing. They were waiting to speak for her, interpret. Overcrow. Sheepnose and puddocky, she thought. Magpiety old dames.
Lifting her chin at them, she took the doll and laid it in the cradle; took the ashing in her hand. A tawdry little silver ring, rubbed bright for her. She turned it on her fingertip.
Could she say, I am of that place you would send her? Where is neither sun nor moon. And there is no way back of Law.
In memory, she knelt on stone, her head in Morag's lap. The comb the old hag wielded was of Norni, bone and spirit, made to part them; made to search her charge's head for dreams and secrecies, that vermin of her mortal kind: pick out those maggots of communion. It is tales that make us human. Tales that live.
What story could she tell of death?
My mother fed me to her crows—
No.
Swayed beneath that storm of wings, with its talons in her heart, she bent and held the cradle's clumsy edge. Unsteady, it upheld her. Creak and thump.
She thought of both the Imbrys. Of her doll in ashes. Of her sister, not in blood but milk. That was Norni's telling by the fire: of that child who would not cross the sill of death, but slipped it, sailed the Lyke Road in her keel of stars. Her child: not cast away but set at large. Unleaving.
Kneeling by the cradle, rocking, Ashes told the Ship.
Whin lighted on the snow. The witch's house and all around it for a stone's cast—garth and fold—was burnt to black glass. But in the rafters of the sky for all to see, safe-hidden, hung the windwife's Comb, her Bearskin, and her Shears: her daughter's heirlooms from her mother's mothers, to the sill of time. Far eastward on the fracted sea, as black as fireglass but moving still, Whin scried a spark. No sunrise in the deep of winter but a ship.
* * * *
Bent beneath a heavy creel, a woman walked the shore. It was storm-changed, like a man's face back from war: scoured of old thought and restless, while behind his empty eyes death raged. A raw new beach, an old sea. Eyes to the bonewhite shingle, heedless of the crash and sting, she gathered sticks of rimy driftwood, clots of weed. Fire. Enough to char a fish, to seethe a pot. To dry the rags she'd sodden getting fire. Stooping she found a broken wooden comb, half-buried in the sand, and prised it out with cracked blue nails. A shrunk and swollen carving, of a sow? a mermaid? Could be.
Standing up to ease her back, she saw a black thing riding on the waves. A seal? A cormorant? A kist. And riding toward the Teeth. Loosing her creel, she stripped herself, and naked upward to the waist, she waded in: shin-deep, thigh-deep, stunned with cold. A wave drenched her. She caught the kist and lost it, lunged and held it, though it battered, bruised her. Stayed her, as the next wave took her feet. She hauled it
on the shingle, with a pant of triumph like a hawk. Waif and stray. Her plunder, wrested from the sea. With bloodless hands and shuddering, she caught up a stone, to smash the lock, to crack the prize.
No prize.
The woman stared in awe and fury at her bitter gift. There lying on a heap of pelts was a naked child. Unswaddled. And alive. A smudge of black hair on its round brown head, a cleft between its kicking legs. A girl. She opened eyes still blue as milk on slate, still gazing on the Lyke Road, on her journey: like a foam of water drawing from a sunk black rock.
* * * *
Ashes dreamed. On the hearth beside her, Norni held a tangle of bright silks between her hands; she wove it in an endless knot. A game. Her face was like itself, like earth, rain bright amid her dusky hair. Like this, she said, and held out the sun.
* * * *
Lightfast
Crouched in the ashes in the shadow of the kist, the crow lad waits. It is Lightfast, long ago: they've let him crowdle by the fire, up at Craw Trees. They must. He is the Ashes child. Still young enough to coy, a cub with all his milk teeth yet. The maids have crammed him, cuffed and whispered and caressed. His head swings with huffcap; he shivers with tales. She'll come for thee. Thou windfall, thou's her whelp. Her vixen will eat thee, pillicock and all. The black dog's hackles rise. The wind wauls; yet he hears the slow drum and the wheedling pipe, in tatters like the waifs of leaves; then the stamping and the cry. The guisers. They are at the door. You must let them in. At the master's beck, Mall slips the lock and they stagger in with their light burden. The wind of their coming makes the fire crouch, it stirs the smoke; their shadows loom and swale. They are black and ragged in the flare of torches; they are bright with gauds. They bring the sun.
Before them stalks t'Awd Moon, sweeping with her besom of thorn. Her face, grey as hoarfrost, is bearded; she is breeched beneath her petticoats. And lagman, still as shadow, walks a figure in a coat of skin.
She is Ashes and holy.
* * * *
In the great barn at Grevil's, in the flare and shadow of the torches, Ashes that was Margaret bid the guisers in. The Moon, slow-sweeping, danced before them; and the bustling Fool, a-bristle with his cap of barleystraw, cried out to make them room. He wore his coat of tatters, bore his pipe of bone and goatskin tabor at his knee. Jauncing on a staff, he bore a cage of thorn and withies, twisted in a ball; at every cross were knotted ribands, red and green, and draggled white, black rags and ravellings of gold and silver thread. Mere trumpery: but with her wakened eyes she saw the heavens and the earth in little. Green the holly in the winter wood; the white snow falling on the thorn; the drops of reddest blood. This world: a cage, a crown, a travelling. She saw the rags of heaven floating out behind, the waifs of gold and silver, sun and moon, as if the poor stark wren within were shining. Like a comet in its curve returning. Light foretold.
When the guiser shook the staff, it dazzled—lightning!—and he stamped it thrice to shake the ground. At the threshold he paused; then at Ashes’ nod, he crossed it with the circling Moon. All round about the twelve winds, east, north, west, and south, he sained the threshing-floor, she swept, made room to rhyme.
"Walk in,” he said.
She knew them all by part. That broad-faced shepherd with the crown of horn. The small man with the bundled swords, the stripling with his pipe and drum. Those ranting lads. The Fool. The Awd Moon, with his petticoats and broom. Herself, with the box of coins, the bag of ashes. And the lad with bright unravelled hair.
Not Ashes’ Will. Another boy, hawknosed and sinewy, lithe and light, a-gawk at her. His hair not scattering silver like a bygone weed, but yellow as the broom.
Leapfire.
She would lull him dying in her lap; and he would rise.
Aside and smiling, then she saw the white-haired fiddler, in his broad hat with the draggled feathers, and his moonwhite mask. Old Lightfast who would slay his son. And her heart turned over in its cage; but the white was barley-flour, and the kit a poor cock-headed scrawny thing. He raised his vizard on a snub-nosed puzzled face.
And after him by two and three, some awed, some swaggering, with all their torches burning bright, the guisers gathered on the threshing-floor of Grevil's barn. By one and one, they louted low to Ashes, bending with the knee. She sat upon the sacks of barley in the flare and shadow of their brands, breathed in their scent of smoke and ale and eager sweat.
"Now then,” said Hob Hawtrey. “Is all our company here? Mag Moonwise?"
Ashes startled at that name; slipped into self.
But, “Aye,” called the bearded man in petticoats, great-shouldered like a smith. Red cap and rags on tatters, like a slattern cabbage; a besom of thorn. He made his voice small and shrewd.
"Up with your petticoat, have at your plum-tree,” cried one of yon ranting lads, and flourished with his sword of lath.
Mag peered reprovingly through empty spectacles, and set them crooked with a charry hand. “Here's prigging of orchards. An thou bites't at me codlins, thou's find a great worm."
"Plays well,” said Hob, considering. “We s'll play it so t'night.” Squinting at his plat, he pricked it. “Kin Kempery, aye. Nick Knapperty?"
"I's here.” The other ranting lad. “And bold as a cockentrice."
"To't wenches,” said his mate. “He'll up to them and flisk it, as crank as a cock sparrow. On and off."
"Fil Fadget? And mind thou—see our swords be sharp."
"All fettled,” said the small man. “Trim and tackle."
"Wick Billy?"
"What, I? Is't my part?"
"Thou slow worm. I's call thee when ‘tis. Kit Catgut?"
"So I is,” said the fiddler.
"Crowd on, crowd on.” Hob frowned at his paper: which she could see now was a maze of marks. All sigils. Not a word. “So then. Leapfire?"
The yellow boy jumped up. “Take that, thou villainy!"
Easily, the old man knocked the lath from him. “Lightfast here, and I's been him since thy father were t'Fool, Hob Houchin."
"Which I is. And that's our tale.” He folded up his paper. “Now Grevil's folk is first night as they ever was; then Lightbeck, and t'Rendels up at Nine Thorn How. Second night, we's bound out Aikenmoor, for t'Woodfalls, and langways back through Littledale. And third night, round by Askwith to Owlriggs, and we finish off at Imberthwaite, where Deb has brewed."
A cheer.
He turned to Ashes, bowing for her blessing. “Soft now, my lady. Steal it so—” He showed her, creeping like a cat on ashes. “—when yer stalking bairns. And smutch ‘em, an they will or no, and leave none out for Ashes sake. And when we's danced—well, then ye'll do as you's ever done. You knaws yer part."
And then to the guisers: “Lastways: yon Madam up at t'Hall has getten in a pack o gallantry to play to Grevils. Outlune arrygants as dance for gold. Crawsetten conjury they does, to seem t'braver. But they's warlocks all, and swaggerers. And they's cried us for a herd o hinds. Let's show ‘em Cloudish honor. Dance ‘em down."
A tempest and a hammering.
"Cheerly, my stormcocks, cheerly. Once through and away."
* * * *
Old Grevil's hall is elsewhere now. It guises all in green, in Woodwo's coat of ivy and his holly crown, his beard of wintry boughs. A green age, hale and hoar with ice. For now is Winter's reign. They burn the Summer-Lyke, a great oak felled; they've stripped and dragged it, all in chains of iron, to the hearth. It guises too, in ashes, with its bright hair blazing from its blackened stump. It sings, devouring; it dances, all the long years of its tale of sovereignty unleaving from the log. For it is knitted up of light, all compact of the Sun. Lord Leapfire. And it would eat the holly, if it could: devour hearth and house and all. Its fire glints and glances in the shining leaves.
Hush, says Annot, softly in Noll's ear. Now comes the masque of witches. She can feel the stillness in him, and the shiver. Soft now. They'll not spy thee, thou'rt cowered safe. See, Hobbinoll, I've iron. And she snips her scisso
rs at the air.
Do I now? he asks.
Not yet. I'll tell thee when.
Once twice thrice the master of the revels stamps. It is a stranger company; the play's unworn. The rumour dies.
No tongue! All eyes!
The play is of the elder mysteries: for Madam Covener is pious, and she keeps old Law. She's taught them. Know you this: ere ever there was Ashes, there was endless night. This world is embers of another world, of wood unleaving.
Here's the haunting hirpling of the little pipe, and now the heeling of the drum.
In comes Tom o Cloud, awd Flaycraw, in his leaves of tatters, leaning on his staff. He turns like a wind whorl in a drift of leaves, and what he's compassed is Cloudwood.
Once afore t'moon were round, and on a winter night...?
"Here's all to do,” cried Hob. And roundabout he flustered, like a cat in pattens. Wried his Fool's cap, that looked like a guttered candle. Wrung his hands. “Wae's me."
"Why, what's to do?” said a guiser.
"Here's my lady keeps lightfeast, and she's bid of me a great dish of a wren."
They staggered back, appalled.
"What, beard him in's den?"
"He's rended twenty score o kempions. All bones about his lair."
"He'll reckon thee."
"Crack bones and craunch marrow."
"And wha's to gather up thine atomy?"
Mag Moonwise called out briskly, “Ashes! Here's a telling. Hob Houchin's to die, and he's willed me his bagpipe."
Weeping, the elder shepherd clipped him round the neck. “I ever loved thee"—they clung and blubbered—"and thou ow'st me three farthings and that bacca as thou burnt last Kindle Wake. Here's a bag for't smoke."
"O what's to become o me wife and babbies?” cried the Fool. Down he fell, and took Lightfast by the knees. “Would thou keep them?"
"As me own,” said Lightfast. “As they are."
"But for mine and a passing tinker's,” Leapfire said. “Her kettle had a hole."
Fil Fadget went about him with a string, taking measures for a coffin.
"By dawcock, what's a wren?” cried a ranting lad. “I's slay yer nine on them—have at yer! Aye, t'awd cock and his whelps. Fit ‘em blindfold and bare arse. Wi’ a windlestraw, one hand.” He slashed at shadows with his lath. “Hah!"