Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales Read online

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  Sieve and Shears

  There must be one called Ashes at the wren's wake, when they bring the sun. At Hallows, she is chosen. All the girls and women go with candles, lating on the hills. And if a man by chance (unchance) should see one, she will say she's catching hares, she's after birds’ nests, though it rattle down with sleet and wind. They both know that she lies. Her covey are not seeking with their candles, but are sought. And one by one, the tapers dwindle, or are daunted by the wind; the last left burning is the chosen. Or they scry her in an O of water from the Ashes spring, at midnight, when the Nine are highest. They will see her tangled in their sleave of light, as naked as a branch of sloethorn, naked as the moon. And though the moon in water's shaken by their riddling hands, its shards come round and round. Then swiftly as the newfound Ashes runs, longlegged as a hare, she'll find the old coat waiting at her bed's head, stiff with soot and sweat and blood. She walks in it at Lightfast, on the longest night, the sun's birth and the dark of moon. She smutches children's faces with her blacknailed hands. And their mothers say, Be good, or she will steal thee. Here's a penny for her bag. Her mother's tree is hung (thou knows) with skins of children, ah, they rattle like the winter leaves, they clap their hands.

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  The Scarecrow

  The starved lad in the cornfield shivers, crying hoarsely as the crows he flights. He claps them from the piercing green, away like cinders into Annis’ ground. Clodded feet, cracked clapper, and his hair like what's o'clock, white dazzle. Piss-a-bed, the sheep-lads cry him. What he fears is that the Ashes child will dance among the furrows, rising to his cry. What he fears is that the crows will eat him. They will pick his pretty eyes. And he dreads his master's belt. Yet he sings at his charing. At nights, he makes the maids laugh, strutting valiant with the kern-stick, up and down. Hunting hares? calls Gill. Aye, under thine apron, he pipes, as the Sun does, guising. And they laugh and give him barley-sugar, curds and ale. Thou's a bold chuck, cries Nanny. Will I show thee a bush for thy bird? And he, flown and shining, with the foam of lambswool on his lip, I's not catched one. But I will, come Lightfast. I'll bring stones, I'll knock it stark. How they crow! And Mall with the jug cries, My cage is too great for thy cock robin, ‘twill fly out at door.

  Now he shakes with cold and clacks his rattle, and the cold mist eats his cry. The Ashes child will rise, unsowing from the corn: a whorl of blood, a waif. Craws Annis will crouch in the hedgerow, waiting; she will pounce and tear him with her iron nails, and hang his tatters from the thorn. Jack Daw will make a fiddle of his bones. He knuckles at his stinging eyes. He wants to cry. He sings. Back and forth, he strides the headland, as the guisers do, and quavers. My mother was burned for a witch, My father was hanged from a tree ... When he sees the hare start from the furrow, he yells, and hurls a stone.

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  The Hare, The Moon

  The moon's love's the hare, his death is dark of moon. He is her last prey, light's body, as the midnight soul, night's Ashes, is her first: All Hallows Eve, May Eve, her A and O. In spring, the waning of her year, she hunts in green: not vivid, but a cold grey green, as pale as lichened stone; afoot, for her hunt is scattered. And she hunts by night. Where her feet have passed is white with dew. Swift and mad, the hare runs, towards hallows, to the thicket's lap, unhallowing in white. He sees the white moon tangled in her thorn. Her lap is sanctuary. He would lie there panting, with his old rough jacket torn, his blood on the branches, red as haws. But at dawn, the hey is down. The white girl rises from the tree; she dances on the hill, unknowing ruth. Yet he runs to her rising, eastward to the sky. Behind him runs his deerlegged death, his pale death. There are some now blind have seen her, all in grey as stone, greygreen in moving. No, another says, as red as a roe deer or the moon in slow eclipse. At dawn, she will be stone.

  They are sisters, stone and thorn tree, dark and light of one moon. Annis, Malykorne. And they are rivals for the hare, his love, his death: each bears him in her lap, as child, as lover and as lyke. They wake his body and he leaps within them, quick and starkening; they bear him light. Turning, they are each the other, childing and devouring: the cauldron and the sickle and the cold bright bow. Each holds, beholds, the other in her glass. And for a space between the night and morning, they are one, the old moon in the new moon's arms, the paling of her breast. The scragged hare slips them as they clasp. He's for Brock's bag, caught kicking.

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  Masks

  Wouldst know thy fortune? her lover says. And laughing, as his bright hair ruffles at her breath, Ah. What's o'clock?

  Not yet, she says, low-voiced. (The stone in his ear, like the blood of its piercing. The bruised root stirring on his thigh.) Not dawning yet. Nor moon nor sun.

  Will not it rise? he says, rounding.

  And go to seed. She smiles, remembering. Not yet. I've plucked it green.

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  The Rattlebag

  The boy kneels, drunken, in the barn. They hold her down for him, the moon's bitch, twisting, cursing in the filthy straw. A vixen in a trap. He holds the felly of the cartwheel, sick and shaken, in the reeling stench. Cold muck and angry flesh. Their seed in snail tracks on her body, snotted in her sootblack hair. Their blood—his own blood—in her nails. She is Ashes and holy. He fumbles, tries to turn his face. He's not thirteen. “Get it into her, mawkin!” calls the bagman, wilting. Ashes and fear. “Thinks it's to piss with.” “Hey, crow-lad! Turn it up a peg.” “Spit in t'hole.” And the man with the daggled ribbons, his fiddle safe in straw, cries, “Flayed it's thy mam?"

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  The Hare, The Moon (Turned Down)

  The black hare's bonny, as they sing: she lies under aprons, she's love under hedges. And she's harried to the huntsman's death, the swift undoing of his gun. But the white hare's death, they say: a maid forsaken or a child unmourned, returning from her narrow grave. A love betrayed. Her false lad will meet her on the moor at dusk, a pale thing fleeting; he will think he gives chase. But she flees him and she follows, haunting like the ghost of love. She draws him to his death. And after he will run, a shadow on the hills, a hare: the moon's prey and her shadow. Love's the black hare, but the white is death. And one's the other one, now white, now black, and he and she, uncanny as the changing moon. They say the hare lays eggs; it bears the sun within a moon. A riddle. Break it and there's nought within.

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  Riddles

  He holds her ring up, glancing through it with his quick blue eye; and laughs, and pockets it. A riddle. What's all the world and nothing?

  O, says she, thine heart. ‘Tis for any hand. Thyself would fill it.

  And he, Nay, it is th’ owl in thine ivy bush. It sulks by day.

  Aye, says she, and hares by night.

  Thy wit, all vanity and teeth.

  Thy grave.

  At midnight, then? I'll bring a spade and we'll dig for it. His white teeth glimmer, ah, he knows how prettily; and daring her, himself (for the thorn's unchancy, and this May night most of all), he says, At the ragtree?

  At moonrise.

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  Waking Wood

  Between the blackthorn and the white is called the moon's weft, as the warp is autumn, Hallows, when her chosen sleeps. He dreams of lying in her lap, within the circle of her flowering thorn; his dreams wake wood. Between the scythe and frost he's earthfast, and his visions light as leaves. He keeps the hallows of the earth. And winterlong he hangs in heaven, naked, in a chain of stars. He rises to her rimes. When Ashes hangs the blackthorn with her hail of flowers, white as sleet, as white as souls, then in that moon the barley's seeded, and the new green pricks the earth. He's scattered and reborn. As in the earth, so in the furrows of the clouds, his Sheaf is scattered, whited from the sky until he rises dawnward, dancing in his coat of sparks. He overcrows the sun; he calls the heavens to the earth to dance. And in their keep, the Nine weave for their sister's bridal, and their threads are quick, their shuttle
s green and airy, black and white and red as blood. They clothe her in her spring and fall. In the dark before May morn, the Flaycraw dances, harping for the Nine to rise, the thorn to flower and the fires to burn, the wakers on the hills to dance. The hey is down, they cry. Craw's hanged! They leap the fires, lightfoot; crown their revelry with green. Not sloe. The blackthorn's death and life-in-death; the white is love. The bride alone is silent, rounding with the sun.

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  Riddles, Turned

  She looks at him though all her rings. There's mischief in her face, a glittering on teeth and under lids. An you will, I may.

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  Quickening

  At quickening, the white girl rises, lighter of herself; she undoes her mother's knots. Alone of all who travel Brock's road backward, out of Annis’ country, out of death, she walks it in her bones, and waking. Neither waif nor wraith nor nimbling hare, but Ashes and alone. The coin she's paid for crossing is of gold, and of her make: her winter's son. Yet she is born unknowing, out of cloud. Brock, who is Death's midwife, sains her, touches eyes, mouth, heart with rain. She haps the naked soul in earth.

  All the dark months of her prisoning, in frost, in stone, her shadow's walked the earth, worn Ashes outward, souling in her tattered coat. She's kept the year alive. But on the eve of Ashes’ rising, the winter changeling is undone. From hedge to hall, the women and the girls give chase, laughing, pelting at the guisers’ Ashes, crying, Thief! Bright with mockery and thaw, they take her, torn and splattered, in the street. What's she filched? Craw's stockings. Cat's pattens. Hey, thy awd man's pipe! And mine. And mine. Gibing, they strip her, scrub her, tweak the tangles from her hair, the rougher for her knowing. All she's got by it—small silver or the gramarye of stars—is forfeit. All her secrets common as the rain. And they scry her, and they whisper—Is it this year? From her Ashes? Is't Sun for Mally's lap? They take her coat, her crown, her silence. Naked and nameless then, she's cauled and comforted, with round cakes and a caudle of the new milk. She is named. Then with candles they wake Ashes, and with carols, waiting for the silent children and the first wet bunch of snowdrops at the door.

  They say that Ashes wears the black fell of an unborn lamb; her feet are bare. She watches over birthing ewes and flights the crows that quarrel, greedy for the young lambs’ eyes. Her green is wordless, though it dances in the wind; it speaks. Her cradle tongue is leaves. And where she walks grow flowers. They are white, and rooted in the darkness; they are frail and flower in the snow. It is death to bring them under a roof; but on the morn of Ashes’ waking, only then, her buds are seely and they must be brought within, to sain the corners of the hearth. The country people call them Drops of Ashes’ Milk. She is the coming out of darkness: light from the tallow, snowdrops from the earth, Bride from the winter hillside; and from Hell, the child returned.

  She is silent, Ashes; but she sings her tale. The guisers strung the fiddle with her hair, the crowd of bone. It sings its one plaint, and the unwed, unchilded, dance:

  My mother bare me in her lap,

  Turn round, the reel doth spin;

  As white the cloth she wove for me,

  As red my blood within.

  As black the heart she bore to me,

  As white the snow did fall;

  As brief the thread she cut for me:

  A swaddling-band, a pall.

  * * * *

  The Ragthorn

  It was lightward and no lover. Whin sat by the ragtree, casting bones. There were rings on her every finger, silver, like a frost. They caught and cast, unheeding, caught and cast. A thief, a journey by water. Sticks and crosses. All false.

  The thorn was on a neb of moorland, at the meeting of two becks: a ragthorn, knotted with desires, spells for binding soul with soul and child in belly. Charms for twisting heartstrings, hemp. They were bright once and had faded, pale as winter skies. Bare twigs as yet. The sloe had flowered leafless, late; the spring was cold. In the moon-blanched heath a magpie hopped and flapped and eyed the hutchbones greedily. He scolded in his squally voice. “Good morrow, your lordship, and how is her ladyship?” called Whin. She knew him by his strut and cock: his Lady's idle huntsman, getting gauds in his beak. The bird took wing. The bare bones fell. “Here's a quarrel,” she said, and swept them up, and cast again. When Ash came, she would rend him, with his yellow hair. Or bind him to her, leave him. Let him dangle, damn his tongue. She'd dance a twelvemonth on his grave. Ah, but she would be his grave, his green was rooted in her earth. And she thought of his white teeth in the greeny darkness and his long and clever hands. His hair like a lapful of flowers.

  Whin was long-eyed, dark and somber, with a broad disdainful mournful mouth and haughty chin. But there was mischief in her face, as there was silver glinting in her hair: nine threads, a spiderwork of frost. Her clothes were patchwork of a hundred shades of black: burnt moorland, moleskin, crows and thunder; but her scarf was gold, torn silk and floating like a rag of sunrise. Looking up, she started—even now—and then she sighed and whistled softly, through her teeth. “Yer early abroad,” she said. “Or late. T'fires are out."

  Down the moor came a woman, slowly, feeling with a stick, and a child before her on a leash, its harness sewn with bells. Its hair was hawkweed. When it stumbled, it rang; she jerked it upright. Whin watched in silence as the two came onward: the beggar groping with her blackshod stick, the white child glittering and jangling. They were barefoot. She was all in whitish tatters, like the hook moon, scarved about her crowblack head, and starveling, with a pipe and tabor at her side. When she felt the rags on the branches brush her face, she called, “Wha's there?"

  "A traveller,” said Whin. “Will you break fast wi’ us?"

  "Oh aye,” said the beggar, with her long hands in the ribbons, harping, harping. “Gi's it here.” The blind woman slung down her heavy creel and sat, her stick across her knees, and held out her palm. Whin put bread on it. “Hallows with ye,” she said. The long hand twitched like a singed spider; it snatched.

  "Since ye'd be casting it at daws afore t'night,” said the beggar.

  "Wha said I's enough for twa?” said Whin.

  The beggar crammed. She wolfed with her white eyes elsewhere, as if it were something else she wanted, that she tore. Her brat hid, grimed and wary, in her skirts, and mumped a crust. “And why else wouldst thou be laiking out ont moor, like a bush wi’ no bird in it?” said the beggar. “Happen he's at meat elsewhere.” She listened for Whin's stiffening. And grinning fiercely through her mouthful, “D'ye think I meant craw's pudding? Lap ale?” The bluenailed hand went out again, for sausage and dried apple, which she chewed and swallowed, chewed and spat into her fledgling's mouth. “Ye'd best be packing."

  Whin drank. Too late to whistle up her dog, off elsewhere. The beggar took a long swig of Whin's aleskin. As she raised her arm to wipe her mouth, her sleeve fell back; the arm was scarry, roped and crossed with long dry welts. “Will you drink of mine?” she said, mocking; and undid her jacket for the clambering child, for anyone. Her breast was white as sloethorn.

  Whin was cutting sausage with her streak of knife, and whistling softly through her teeth, as if her heart were thistledown, this way and that. ” ... if I was black, as I am white as the snaw that falls on yon fell dyke..."

  The child suckled warily; it burrowed. The beggar pirled its hair; she nipped and fondled, scornfully. “It fats on me. D'ye see how I am waning?” She was slender as the moon, and white; and yet no girl, thought Whin: the moon's last crescent, not her first. Her hair was crowblack in a coif of twisted rags, the green of mistletoe, and hoary lichen blues. At her waist hung a pipe of a heron's legbone and a tabor of a white hare's skin. She had been beautiful; had crazed and marred. Her eyes were clouded, white as stones. There was a blue burn on her cheek, like gunpowder, and her wolfish teeth were gapped. Yet her breast was bell heather; her hands moved like moorbirds on her small wrists. They were voices, eyes. Looking elsewhere, she called to Whin, “You there. Se
e all and say nowt. Can ye fiddle? Prig petticoats? I c'd do wi’ a mort."

  Whin said, “I's suited."

  "And what's thou here about?"

  "Gettin birds’ nests,” said Whin, all innocence.

  "What for, to hatch gowks?"

  "Crack eggs to make crowds of."

  "And what for?"

  "Why, to play at craw's wake."

  The beggar wried her mouth. “Thou's a fool."

  "And what's thou after?” said Whin. “Has thy smock blown away?"

  "Hares,” said the beggar.

  "Black or white?"

  "All grey to me.” The beggar set the child down, naked in its cutty shirt. “Gang off, I's empty as a beggar's budget."

  "Wha's brat is thou?” said Whin to the babby.

  "No one's. Cloud's,” said the beggar.

  "Ah,” said Whin.

  The beggar did up her jacket. The child sat by her petticoats with a rattle: a wren tumbled round within a clumsy cage. “Will we do now?"

  "How's that?” said Whin.

  "Ah,” said the beggar. “I give and take. My ware is not for town.” She looked sidelong. Like a snake among heather roots, her hand was in her petticoats. She found something small and breathed on it, spat and rubbed and breathed. “Here,” she said to Whin, holding out a round small mirror. “Is't glass?"

  "It's that.” It was clouded, cold; she held it gingerly. There was earth on it, and in the carving. It was bone. She looked in it and saw another face, not hers: a witch, a woman all in green, grey green. A harewitch. A green girl, gaunt and big with child. The beggar was listening with her crooked face. “No,” said Whin. “My face is me own."