Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales

by Greer Gilman

  "None of you have cocks? Then I'll unsain her.” Lightly, Daw struck down the ring of swords, and stepped within their circle. Knife at throat, he stripped her of her coat of skin, upheld it. Brandished.

  Still they waited on her voice to ban them all, cry out, bring down a fiery whirlwind on their heads. But she was mute.

  She had another adversary. In her mind she saw black flakes of ashes of a burning card—the Tower—drifting down. But almost at the ground, they wheeled and winged, arising as a pack of crows. They hunted.

  "Hah!” He shook her godhead, as a terrier a rat, and tossed to it to his men. How they gnarred at it and worried it, like dogs about a wounded bear; but could not rend it.

  Bolder now, he slashed her other garb—her jacket, breeches, shirt—to ribands on her back.

  Still mute. For this was not the nakedness she dreaded most. Now even open-eyed, she saw the ravens seeking for a way, a windeye, into here and now. They must not spy her out. She feared him, soul and body; but she feared her grandam more.

  "I see my lady paints,” he said. “Yet Ashes will to ashes go, for all thy pranking in thy glass. It ill beseems thy bridal bed. Come, Madam. I will have thee naked.” And stooping he took up a handful of the sharp-edged sleet that puddled at their boots and scoured her, face and body, to the fork. Between. Cold filth ran trickling down her naked breasts, that stiffened with the chill and loathing of his touch.

  Still mute.

  Arms wried behind her back, he turned her to his men. “Look. Look. She swelts for it."

  Lust, awe, horror, and contempt. A goblin glee. And yet—

  "T'other bitch were blind,” called out a man.

  "We'll come to that,” said Daw, still smiling. And her soul was cracked. O my stars. “But first I'd have her see our play. And last of all."

  He cut the soulbag from her neck. Undrew the string and rummaged in it, brisk as a midwife in a brothel. Even his gang were silent, appalled by the blasphemy. That hoard of souls might be their kindred, lovers, friends. Their fathers and their mothers, bent with laboring; a brother in a far-off war; a green girl, much beloved, who had died unwed; a child newborn whose only tale was Ashes'. Hinds and shepherds, maids and tinkers, artisans and lords. He spilled them on his palm. All dust, the golden lads and girls. The tawny ring? Not there. He picked among the trinkets, toyed with them; he tried a child's ring on his fingers, longman, lickpot and his horny thumb: far too small for him. But here's a pretty coin of gold. He licked his fingertip to pick it up, no bigger than an elm seed: Arkenbold's. The Sun's. He glanced at Ashes, mocking openly. “I rolled the orange on the rotten ice. Thy Fool was in the way."

  At that she tried to curse him, break her vow: and she could not. What she could utter was a speechless shapeless noise, a tongue-slit twittering. Tu-whit. Tereu. And at her gibberish a great fear lifted, and they mocked.

  "She'll not tell tales of us."

  "Aye, there's better uses for her tongue."

  "Think you my lady will have gloves of her?"

  "He'll take her arsy-varsy then. Your kidskin's dressed with dung."

  Bloodnails laughed for admiration. “Here's a fiddle fit to play our mystery on her bones. An she be set in tune, the crowd he makes of her will wake the dead."

  Daw let them triumph for a space; then stilled them, held her open like a sack.

  And she was powerless. Her struggle was with Annis. She was holding back the storm of her, as if she held a nightmare by its mane of lightning, in the ramp and plunging of its madness, thundershod. She choked the bear deer vixen burning child within her that would out, the black hare and the crow's outcropping. In the cold flesh of her body she could feel the raven quilling out: a monster, barbed and taloned, brutal. It would own a raven's apprehension, knowing only flesh and gaudery; but a woman's body, cold and perfect to the nethermouth, the bloody and abhorred fork.

  He spoke now as a priest, a hierophant of hell.

  "Earth gapes for you.” Black silence. “See ye not this narrow road in her, so thick beset with thorns and briars? That way did you come of Law, and that way will descend, no more returning, to the underworld. That road is death."

  His rantsmen groaned like branches in a storm.

  "But this ae night, this Lightfast at the dark of moon, when Slae doth lie in Ashes, joying in her lap, the lord ascendant: on this very night, the way lies open, and the passage back from death. Who takes that narrow road with me this night, will live immortal."

  She was holding back the earthquake now: a wood of lightning, thunderstroke on stroke, that all at once would outburst through the very stones—through her—and shatter them.

  The rantsmen stamped and chanted now: one word, one word, one word.

  Daw undid his cock. For all his cold and finical contempt, his mincing malice, he was stirred: his rage was at his fork. It stood to blunt and batter at her privities.

  But first he'd pry her soul.

  He seized her by the hair to pull her down, and howled. She felt the runes in it uprising in a whelm of power, like the white-hot embers from a forge. Unwilled. The hammer falls, the sparks fly up.

  He fell back in a fury, cradling his hand.

  Everything had stopped: light, time, space. Here. Now.

  Then Bloodnails spoke. “Unwitch her."

  Annis dreams. Her knowing is untellable; but in her sleep—unmoving, open-eyed—is fire. Whin feels it, braiding upward endlessly. It seeks her vengeance for her daughter's treachery; it seeks a vent. The earth will crack of her, calcine; the sea like molten glass will slump and shatter, falling endlessly within and in her void. Not ocean but a snow of salt. She would consume it all, to swallow up her faithless child. Her sleep is fathomless: the grave, unbirth, abyss. Her waking will annihilate.

  * * * *

  It was braided in her hair, the witchery. It crackled like a fire of thorn, it spat and rang. It must be cut.

  There was a sickle on a nail. Turning back for it, Daw spied a glitter, like a bit of ice, amid the rag and ruin of her Ashes coat. Unthawed? He picked it up: another witchery, of glass. No power in it he could feel but in her pain. So he held it up to her, and mocked her through its O of ice. Then cast it down. He cracked it underfoot. Again that wordless cry. It joyed him almost to the frenzy. Down he thrust her, naked, in the slather and the shards of glass. He set his knee upon her, pulling back a great bunch of her hair, as if he would cut her throat. But no: he sheared her godhead. Hacked it off like straw. He rived it in great handfuls, roughly, with his sickled knife, and cast it to the winds.

  And at a whirl each handful that he strewed was fire, scattering bright, uprising on the air; each strand of it unbraiding into light, and fiercer light, as if the wind were bellows: red to golder red to sun at noon. And brighter still, bluewhite. Ablaze. A storm of light, like starfall but arising. Fire flaughts. The rafters of the great barn were a sudden sky, a fret of fire.

  And down upon his witches fell a riddling rain of fire, a hail of elfshot. Cinders of the runes. The men shrieked and cowered, cursed and howled. Some stayed to beat the smouldering harvest out with snow, and kick it cold; most fled at once: not now his standing gang of heroes, but a rout of running men.

  Shadows in the barn. Plock. Plick. The last few clinkers of the magic fell and scarred the earth.

  And there was nothing in his hand.

  Undone.

  * * * *

  Ashes leaps up laughing, in a flare of ecstasy. She catches up her coat. Daw's done it. Thinking to unwitch her, he's unbound her with his sickle, set her free of Law. Undone. And all to do.

  She calls upon her sisters, Ashes! Ashes! And they all rise up.

  * * * *

  The wood was overgrown, thought Grevil, since his father's time. By day he could have walked it endlong in a dozen verses; but the new-called journeymen had staggered round and round it for a candle's length, hallowing and brashing to affright the urchins. Puck-led and perplexed. There was a good path up Owlriggs: but no. They must gang
by Unleaving, so Brock had said. By candlelight.

  When yer come to't door, y'll have found it.

  What door?

  There's nobbut one. Thou ask at Mag Moonwise.

  He bore the lantern. And perhaps his eyes were dazzled: for beyond its burr of light, he thought he saw a drift of leaves, the shadow of an endless fall. He thought the snow was moonlight. When he lowered his candle, he saw a slushy little copsewood, ending but a stone's throw from his hand. Perhaps the lantern made the wood.

  Kit Crowd came scuffling up to him. “But thou art mazed, sweet fool ... ” he quoted; and then ruefully: “This wood is dark."

  "And I th’ moon's daughter in these rags of cloud shall bear thee light." Grevil finished it. “Why a lantern, then, if not to see?"

  "If we be stars, we bear it to be seen: so lantered men may gaze on us and say, By t'witches, I's drunk."

  "Go we blind, then? Do we company their rouse?"

  "Being stars, we stray not, for the Road is broad.” Kit looked about. “Have we tried yon marish path?"

  "Twice or thrice. It ends here."

  Kit rimed, reminiscently:

  My tower's where thou'lt never find.

  They's left me a thread, and I walk and I wind.

  "If stars,” said Grevil casting back, “then the Silly Sisters: fools by heavenly compulsion. And the girl, by her despised petticoats, twice Ashes.” He looked about for her: a scowling silent little impet, black as thorn. There, in among the scrogs.

  "And the lad must be Leapfire, so he says—yon sword's a great argument—and being light of heels, then Tom o Cloud. I hope that he be quick of study."

  They looked where crow lad practiced with the sword, in his private ecstasy. “The rogue will have the edge off that,” said Grevil; but his heart leapt with the lad. A painful joy. Alive. That he unwillingly had sentenced: yet had done. So was lost to him. “And I the Fool."

  "And by this kit of catlings, I the Fiddler. So our play is fitted. Like the tinker's ass, three legs and one eye blind. For it halts with no villainy to whip it on."

  The crow lad swashed.

  Stand forth, awd winter, fell and black

  And fight, or thou is flayed.

  He danced beyond the candle's limen, in among the wafting leaves.

  "How does he that, that tumble?” said Kit marvelling. “In a wood, no less.” With an updragged branch he tried the swing askew of it—I will dance the light of leaves—and tripped himself up. “But how would he know the play? It is the gallantry's sworn mystery."

  "And in books,” said Grevil. “I have read three or four of it; from Lune even.” He looked at the crow lad. “I wager he has not."

  They called the stripling and the girl to them. “D'ye know the masque of the Silly Sisters?” What gentry stuff is this? said their stares. “The Witches?"

  "Cracked t'sky,” Will said warily. “Them?"

  "Know'st thou the guising of it?"

  Now he was shocked. “There's nobbut one guising, time out o mind and evermore. It's t'guising."

  They asked silent Imbry.

  "They stown away her Comb and taken Ship wi't."

  "Ashes?” Imbry shrugged. “Her Comb?"

  "Stars.” She pointed up at cloud through branches. None the wiser. So she took a twig and scratched the pattern in the snow. The Crowd of Bone. “Called storms wi’ it. For soulwrack for her shore. But I's not heard on a guising of it.” She scuffed it out. “There's carols for't Ship."

  "The sail's o th’ siller, the mast's o th’ tree," sang Kit to her startlement. And aside to Grevil, he said: “Elding play from Arrish. That won't be in books."

  "It could be,” said Grevil. “There's that fallen oak again."

  "Comes round like a burden.” Kit pondered. “So: will it do in halves, this play? Or must we put it back together? ‘Tis like an egg in flinders: it will hatch no cockerel to crow the sun."

  "Patch it?"

  On they travelled, in a hey of plays

  I will dance the light of leaves.

  Stand forth, awd winter, fell and black...?

  ...The lady goes with me. For that her star is wandering, I name her...?

  ...Leapfire bold. Walk in.

  But thou art mazed, sweet fool. The wood is dark...?

  ...in a vixen's belly...?

  His dreams do prick him...?

  ...and they's woe to snatch, worse than honey.

  Let him in....

  ...in a bear's maw...?

  ...and he flowers.

  By that I made his buttons fly.

  O rare Cosmography.

  ...wi’ an urchin in its mouth!

  I will dance the dayspring.

  What, no mustard?

  Still I dance the ay and O.

  "Enough,” said Kit. “'Tis not a play but a gallimaufry. It wants a frame.” He thought a pace. “Tom's the hinge—no, Tom's the heart of it; Ashes is the hinge, it turns on her. Like so—” With steepled fingers and his thumbs he made a three-cornered figure. “Here's Witch and Witch and Ashes at the point—"

  Grevil did likewise. “—and Ashes and Fiddler and Fool.” Point to point they met and twisted over, gimmaling like guisers that would make a lock of swords, a star. It encircled an imagined sacrifice. They drew.

  "And so he tumbles down,” said Kit, “and rises up. Both of him."

  "Yes,” said Grevil. “Yes. Could we do that?"

  "Not as we are. Still only three of us.” Kit looked at the lantern. “That candle's near out. Have we another?"

  "No."

  "Our play is like to be brief, then. With a bergamask of bones.” Kit hunched for cold and jigged a little, dolefully.

  But on a sudden, Grevil stamped. He would have struck his hands together, but for the lantern. “But look you: down he tumbles, Tom o Cloud, and off with his coat then, and rises up Leapfire. Guising underneath."

  "Yes," said Kit. “'Twould play in dumbshow rarely well.” Then he clapped and kicked the leaves up. “And when he lies in Ashes’ lap, she doffs her coat, and rises up in green. She springs."

  For a moment Noll looked inward. “And happen green Ashes and the Sun may wed?"

  "'Tis then a comedy,” said Kit. “And so a jig and done."

  "So may it fall."

  The lantern snuffed. But they were standing in a kitchen garth, within a hedge of thorn. Imbry was putting snow down the crow lad's jacket. And a moon was setting.

  "By trod,” said Kit, “how came we here?"

  "From elsewhere,” Grevil said. Noll spoke with Tom's remembered voice. “Here is Law. I would be elsewhere, were it on a sinking ship, atwixt a bear and honey."

  "Is the sorceress not here?"

  "And happen at her book. I would not for the moon disturb her."

  * * * *

  And she is running through a cloud of Ashes. Before her, white in white, they rise, as if she's breathed them on the air: a hey of girls, whitesilver as a wood in April, frost and flowering. A blackthorn winter. She is woven in their dance. Like thorn amid their blossoming, her ashen black and bloodstreaked self enwreathes itself in whiteness, in the mingling of the may. A garland, all of Ashes.

  Turning back, she sees the steep of heaven, like a hill of air, of crystalline: sheer nightfell. It's the way she's come. She sees the endless snow of stars beneath her, giddying. Far far below her in the fathomless, she sees—O marvellous—a toy, a plaything from a mage's baby house, a bluegreen bauble like a seeing-stone. Or like her own eye looking up at her, an iris. Cloud in cloud inlapped. She laughs for wonder.

  Where I stand is why.

  She's on the Lyke Road, in among Nine Weaving. In her glass. What she has seen with it, now is: a myriad of Nine. As if her seeing of it made this where, this now. A wood upwelling through a map. O rare Cosmography.

  And still inchoate. From an Ashes, all invisible as air but in her edges, silvery black, there rises up another Ashes; from her nakedness, another still, unbraiding from her body in a silver frost, subliming.
Sky of sky. In each of them, in knee or shoulderblade, in brow or cleft, there is another silvery wood at dance, another flowering of light. In their becoming is their perfectness, their everlasting in their birth. Here is time's nursery.

  Will be its ashes? But she puts that thought aside.

  For now and ever now, she dances with her sisters to a silent music, to the Crowd of Bone. Itself and all alone it sings, at Lightfast: when the Ninestones hear, they carol. In their myriad is grace, enwheeling her: a power not of regiment but commonality.

  Turning in the dance, she sees one who is otherwise, who dances like a flame of fire in the mist. But she is elsewhere always, here and gone. Or she is any of them, lighting as she will on any, as she does in Cloud. As ever, she's the last still burning, who was Ashes first of all. Their ember. Last of all of them, her daughter sees the crescent of her, turning always from her sight; she sees the quenchless fire of her hair.

  She runs after.

  * * * *

  Black-thacked and skew of timber, this cot has a louring look. The journeymen stamp and trample to a halt in the up-churned yard. "Cold by the door and my candle burns low ... “ says Grevil, trailing off. Bold Leapfire hawks and swaggers; green Ashes sleeves her nose.

  "Seemly, seemly, Master Drum,” says the fiddler; then something changes in his face, a light and shadow. Softly, ruefully, he says, “If thou's a lad, thou doff thy hat, see."

  "What now?” says Grevil.

  "'Tis the Fool his office to knock; and the Second Witch to conjure."

  "Am I that?"

  "Turn and turn. We'll cast for it."

  "Talk then. Yer t'grammary,” says the crow lad. Not fondly: but he speaks. Grevil looks backward at the scuffled snow, that is crossed and overcrossed with footmarks, like the writing on a page. What's said can never be unsaid. Unsentenced. He begins, "By the elding of the moon..."

  The door opens, and a fierce small person in the Awd Moon's petticoats peers round it, like an owl in an ivy bush. Leaves of tatters and a leaf-red cap. Owl's beak and elfshot eyes, redoubled in her glazy spectacles. One glass is cracked. It gives a scornful and a mocking twist to that eyebrow.

  "If it's guising, yer a bit few."