Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales Read Free

She rocks the cradle in the midnight kitchen, where no coal nor candle is, in houses where a child has died. And some have heard her lulling in the dying embers; seen her shadow in the moonspill, in the leaf's hand at the pane.
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    Poppyheads
    The woman in the stubble field moves slowly, searching. Her palms are creased with blood. Her tangled hair is grey. There is something that she's lost: a knife among the weeds, a stone from off her ring. Her child, she says. If you suckle at her dry breast, drink her darkness, she must speak your fortune, love and death. She once told other fates, with other lips. And still she squats among the furrows, lifting up her ragged skirts for anyone or none. She holds herself open, like an old sack in a barn. No seed within, all threshed to chaff and silence. She was Ashes. She is no one. By the sticks of the scarecrow, she crouches, scrabbling at the clodded earth and crying, “Mam. Mam, let me in!"
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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,