Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales Read Free Page B

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.
    * * * *
    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 shuttles 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.
    * * * *
    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.
    * * * *
    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