Trampoline: Stories

A Crowd of Bone
Greer Gilman

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Thea looked toward the barley-white boy, still crying. Further on, the ashes fell. "What then?"

"A woman caught them in her apron."

"And then?"

"I woke," said Kit. "And seeing thee, forgot." There was straw still in her hair: a garland. They were wed each day. Remembering, he plucked it out and gave it, lightly, to the wind. Then turning with her gaze, he saw the boy. "Poor lad, it's weary work, alone wi' crows."

Thea said, "Shall we play, and let him play?"

"I'll not hang ranting from a pole, even to please thee." He grimaced fiercely, knotting up his brows. "But I'll play thee a tyrant rarely, or a crone or what thou wilt."

"'Tis a strange play: we clap and they go."

"But an ancient play," said Kit. "The first true gallant of the part was Tom o' Cloud, who claps the shadows from the sky." He'd taught her all of that: the names which country folk did give -- Awd Flaycraw, Jack Orion -- to the sprawl of stars she'd called the Gallows Tree. A bookish name. "Wilt play it naked, then?" said Thea.

"With a sword," said Kit. He sang the old tune from the masque, the woodwo's brag:

Orion wears a coat of sparks
And starry galligaskins
But men may see what man I be
Without my first dismasking...

*

They were walking toward the crow lad's coign. The earth by the headland was scratched with mazes, glittering with shards of hoarded glass. The crow lad blew his hands and stared. His coat was rags of sacking and his shoes were mud. His hempwhite head was bare, in a ravel of rope-ends.

"Hey, lad, would thy master hear a play?"

"Has dogs. And sets 'em on."

And a stick, thought Kit. And lays it on. He saw the wary face and wincing shoulders. The bruises. The boy stared back unblinking. He had eyes as green as hail. Kit found the last of what they'd begged, a sadcake and a scrape of fat. "Here's for thy piece," he said. The crow lad snatched it fiercely and he bit, he crammed. Kit waited. "What's thy name?"

"Called Ashlin."

"And thy kin? Who keeps thee?"

"No one," said the boy. "I's lightborn."

"So am I," said Kit. "We two are Mally's bairns." He saw a bright child made of azure falling, rolling naked in the dust. They come to dust. The woman in his dream turned elsewhere, as her lap was full. And still the lightborn fell: so many for the world to waste. Not all of them, he thought to say. Not ours to come.

But Thea said, "And I am darkborn."

"See'd," the crow lad said.

"But he and I go longways, out of Law." She looked about. "Her eyes?"

"Stoneblind. Off elsewhere, anyway."

"But if they follow -- "

"I's a sling o' stones. What I do."

Thea looked long at him. "Wouldst do it?"

"Owt I can."

Kit caught his breath, leapt in with, "Who's thy master, lad? I'd have a word with him. Wouldst come with us? Art fast?" He turned to Thea, bright with indignation, mischief, pleading. "He could play the boy."

"Got work. Hers," the crow lad said, and becked at Thea. He glanced at Kit's coat. "I see yer ta'en already. Go yer ways."

Thea said to the boy. "Is it fast, then?"

"Clap and done." He spat his hand; they shook.

Kit stood bewildered, like the child in the basket, whirled round in their play. Thea touched his arm. "Soft, love, 'tis a game we play." To the boy, she said, "What then?"

"Seek hallows."

"What way?"

"Gang wi' t' sun."

"How far?"

"While it's hallows."

Thea stretched her hand out, with its tawny ring. A turn and flick, and it was bare: she held a scrawny orange. "For thy noon."

The crow lad caught it and he tossed it in the air. He laughed, looking up at it, his bright hair scattering day. "What's ta'en is anyone's." Kit saw it fall.

*

"I'd an Ashes bairn," said Whin. Her turn, gazing through the fire, chin on close-hugged knee. "And left him. Naked as he came, for owt as found him. Craws or kin." And in a raw voice, small and wretchedly, she cried, "They would've cut his throat." Still raw. As if a horny hand, a sailor's or a drystone waller's, cracked and bled. "Me mam and her gran would. For t' harvest. Starving earth, I is."

Kit said softly, "Was he yours, the crow lad? D'ye think?"

"I knaw not. Like enough, I doubt." Whin rocked the small ring on her fingertip. "I cannot tell my blood."

"Ah," said Kit. The fire shifted, sighed.

"Thowt it were guising, being Ashes. When I ta'en her coat. And I laughed that I were chosen out of all, that I could take owt I willed. Whatever lad. So long as I did play her part, walk earth until she waked. So long as I kept nowt."

Kit looked for the child in her, as black as he was white. Broad cheekbones and a mournful lip, her long Ūgyptian eyes. "And you would still be Ashes. If you'd kept the boy. Still hunted." Coverless as hares.

"What I is, is Ashes. Same as earth is earth. Her coat that she put on. And when I's doffed, I's done with, breath and bone. No giving back." Whin leaned from shadow into shying light. "I could ha' kept him, see."

The rain fell, water into water. After a time, Whin stirred the embers. "Blood or no. For his sake, for thy kindness, thanks."

"All mine, a hundredfold," said Kit. "He saved us. For a time."

*

Margaret, see. Bright Hesperus, the moon's epitome, hangs at thy window. Perseis her lamp. When I was Thea, I did love that star, her winding journey through the maze, the quickset stars. 'Tis lucent, there: a brilliant toy, a plaything from a mage's baby house. Burnt Eldin's bauble. Canst thou catch? Let my lady set her hedge as thick as gramarye, as high as ravens cry, the light will in at it.

In April of that wandering year, I spied a comet. In the Crowd of Bone it hung, toward Ninerise, in a thaw of fleeting snow. I waked and saw it, like a pearl dissolving in black wine; I drank that cup, light full of thee. And thou didst leap to it.

I knew then that I went with child.

*

Thea turned at the waystone, calling. What she said was blown away. And still she turned on the hillside, at the twelve winds' nave; the fellies of the wheel were hills. "What's that?" said Kit, coming breathless behind.

"Those folk. Here's all their petticoats away."

It rained, a hill beyond them and a hill behind: a cold fine windy rain. From the ragwell, where they stood in light, they saw the stormdark clouds onsailing. They were tall and tattery, their skirts of ragged silver draggling heedless through the hills. Then the thorn tree shivered in its rags; the spring winced light, it puckered with a sudden doubt. The sky darkened and a hail came on: small hail, but sharp and green. Kit cowered from it. Thea ran to it and whirled about, catching hailstones in her hands. They filled them, greener as they massed, bluegreen.

"Come back," called Kit. "Hey, Thea?" And he came a few steps, blindly, in the shattering of the hail. How it danced and it daunted, how it hissed and rattled on the ground. It beat him blind, it stung. "Hey!"

"Catching souls," she called.

As sudden, it was past. The hill was white: a spring made glass, the sky made soul and shattered. Slateblue to the eastward, slashed with rain, the heels of storm rolled onward. All above, the lift was blue. He shook himself. Thea's head was haily crowned; it glittered when she turned. Her neck was bare. She flung her hoard of stones away. They scattered on the earth like seed. Cold seed, he thought. No crows would take. A cloud away, a rainbow sprang. It spanned the storm. She clapped her wizened hands and laughed. "Do you turn and I'll dance to it."

*

Somewhere up Owlerdale they sheltered from a passing rain with tinkers in a hedge. Two women, old and young, with baskets of fairings: cowslip tossy-balls and bunches of bright ribands; toys and tawdry. Kit spread them his coat. The blackthorn was tarnishing, the white in bud. The younger of their chance-met company was breaking buds of it, to whet her bacon; the elder thumbed her cards and smoked. Rain and blackthorn fell.

"That comet," said Kit to Thea. "Ah, but it grows bright and bonny. Like a dandelion gone to seed and drifting."

"Whose clock?" said Thea. "And whose breath?"

Still wandering. It preyed on him, that wan and random look.

"Craws!" said the younger, counting wares. "Dropped whirlywhorl i't road."

The elder pointed with her pipestem. "Pick it up, then." There it lay in a puddle, gaudy and forlorn.

"I'll get it," said Kit, leaping up. Gallantry, perhaps; or smoke of shag. It mingled with the tinker's hair, smoke and spiralling like old man's beard.

The younger bit her bread, then turned and offered it to Thea, all but her thumbpiece. Cold fat bacon and wild garlic.

Pinched mouth and shake of head.

"I cry you mercy," Thea said. "A toothache."

A shrewd eye, like a stormcock's. "What did yer bite, then?"

But her aunt held out her pipe. "Here. Have a pull at me bacca. 'Twill dill thy pugging tooth."

Thea twisted, spewed and spat. Lay weeping.

"Ah," said Baccapipe. "Can read thy fortune wi'out cards."

And Bread-and-Bacon kicked her heels and sang, ". . . when me apron were low, Ye'd follow me after through frost and through snow..."

"Whisht." The old one wiped Thea's mouth, felt her brow and wrist and belly with rough concern. "Not far gone, I'd say." She quirked her chin at Kit coming. "Does he -- ?"

No.

"And do yer -- ?"

No again.

"Knowst mouse-ear?"

"Where?" said Thea.

"Ninewood. Up Ask ways, a two three mile." She pointed over the hills. "Grows in among thorn."

And the younger sang again, blithe as a cuckoo that calls, Not I! at the nesting wren: ". . . but now that my apron is up to my knee..."

"Sneck," said the elder.

Too late. Kit had tumbled. On his face, like wind in whitebeam, danced and paled his feelings: joy, awe, terror, tenderness, despair.

"Thea?" He knelt and wreathed her in his arms. "Canst walk? Can I get thee aught?" he said foolishly. "From anywhere, the moon." He could not see her face. He thought he could feel the child; he saw it in his mind's eye, like a little comet, still travelling and trailing light: a seed-moon tumbling over and over through the air.

*

Now, Margaret, thou begin'st to wind. Slipping from thy bower, soft and warily, thou try'st the latch: my lady and her crow keep watch. Not always, thou hast found. The gore-crow hunts; my lady sleeps, but as the sun in Thule, riding on the rim of darkness. She but wets her lip in Lethe cup. Yet she sleeps. Locks and spells she's set on thee, and cage on cage: thou walk'st within a tower, in a maze, within a wall hedged round with thorn, encompassed in a bitter sea. Her lean hounds prowl the courts and coverts, and her huntsman wards the gates.

And further, they do keep thee innocent, they blanch thee, as a gardener doth a white root under stones. Thou art bedazed and physicked, purged, pinched, bled, stayed, examined, spied on. Whipped.

Yet they do not lock thy door, within so many locks. Nor mew thy seeking thoughts.

They slight thee, for thou canst not be dead Thea, thou unwanted wast her death; disdain thee for thy meddled blood. In their contempt is all thy hope. Thou art a dish that likes them not; they have no stomach for thy soul. Unconsidered, thou art half unseen, a sparrow in a wintry hedge. Whatever thou art let to find is all inconsequent, is haws.

Thou turn'st the key and slip'st.

Doors and doors. An arras and a winding stair.

Ah, these rooms I never saw. Thy journey, Margaret. Not mine.

Only to the next room, and the next.

Locked.

Nothing but a box of nutmegs.

Spectacles, in this, that make thy candle swerve and loom. Old iron. Rats.

A lock made like a witch, that bares her secrets to the key. That watches, mute and venomous. Not there.

In this, a heap of books, sea-ruined. Mooncalf'd bindings, white and swollen as a drowned face. Warp and white-rot, skin on skin. Down thou sit'st and try'st to pry the boards, to turn the bleared and cockled pages. Here, a drawing of a hand, anatomized. A riddle in geometry. A fugue of spiders.

And behind a faded arras -- ghost of roses, greensick blue -- a bright dark closet full of wonders and of dust. A mute virginals. Thy fingers press the slack and clatter of its keys, unclose its fretty soundboard, gnawed and rustling with mice. The lid within is painted with brief garlands -- violets and wood anemones -- as if the music dreamed them in the dark. Spring flowers thou hast never seen: thy fingers, wond'ring, trace. They pleach the silk of scarves, as sheer as iris; trace the windings of a table carpet, blood of nightingales and cry-at-midnight blue. Thou strok'st a jar, round-bellied -- blear with dust; yet lucent underneath -- of china, blue and white as clouded May.

*

"So y'd not've been at leap fires, then," said Whin. "Being heavy."

"And light." Kit had seen them, other years, in Lune. Had begged the wood for them, from door to door:

Sticks to burn vixens,
Stones for the crow,
Clips for us green lads
And girls, as we go.

*

He'd danced with the highest: brave lads and bold heroes, and the lang tangly girls. Whirled higher, still higher, for the claps and cries, the eyes admiring or awed or scornful. Afterward, for clips and kisses. For the darker thing. By one and one, they'd pinched the embers -- ah, another in thine hair. Thy shirt. By twos, had slipped away. He had lain on the dark hills; had made of charred petticoats, green gowns.

"No," he said. "No, we went to the greenwood. To get leaves."

*

"O," said Kit. "I drown." He stood in heaven, in the place where all doors lead. That wood was deep in flowers of the inmost curve of blue, the blue of iris her embrace. Her eye within her rainbow, as the moon within the old moon's clasp. And Thea walked in that unearthly floating haze of flowers, amid the leafing trees, knee-deep in Paradise. It was the heart; and yet at every further step, 'twas this. And this beyond. Each blue, the inwardest embrace, the bluest eye. An O annihilating all that's made.

The blue became his element, his air: he dove.

He saw a falling star beyond him. Thea.

Then 'twas past. He scuffled through old beech leaves, brushed by nettles. Stung himself and swore. Close by, he whiffed the green stench of a fox. He turned. A bluebell wood, the bonniest he'd ever seen. Young slender beeches. Holly, celandines, and wood anemones. And Thea gathering leaves, green branches.

Where she walked was heaven still.

He lay in sky, and watched her, errant in the sky below. She'd slipped from her tumbled smock, stood clad in sky. He saw the crescent of her, white and glimmering: in the dark of moon, the moon. That other sky she walked was on the verge of green, bluegreen, and turning deeper into blue. Beyond the new leaves, it was dusk. The trees were pointlace yet, or bare or budding out: an airy seine. A star hung trembling in the air, like water on a leaf, about to fall, unfallen. And the moon within his orbit, gilding as she set.

By a thorn tree, at his side, she sat and wove a garland in her lap. A knot of May.

Drowsily, he said, "We munnot sleep."

"Why not?"

"The morn will be the Nine. Wouldst see them rising?"

"Ah," said Thea, "but I am no maid."

He touched her small round belly. "Yet thou bringest may. A branch." The rank sweet scent of thorn hung faintly on the air; the petals fell, as if the moon unleaved. "Shall we set a hedge of them, a hey of girls?"

"And call it Lightwood?" Thea said.

Kit said,

Let no man break
A branch of it, for leavy Tom doth wake.
And keep his lash of girls ungarlanded.
That wood is hallows.

*

In another, rustic voice, he answered, "'Aye, 'tis where the bushes harry birds. I dare not for the owls go in."

Thea said:

But thou art mazed, sweet fool. The wood is dark,
And I --

*

"Go on," said Kit.

And I th' moon's daughter in these rags of cloud
Shall bear thee light.

*

"Oh," said Thea, "but I've left the book in Lune."

"Thou hast the way of it."

"By heart."

"And by thy heart." He wreathed his hands about their child, and spoke the woman's part:

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

*

And darting kisses in her neck, he said, "What think'st thou, for our lass, of Perseis?"

*

"Not Eldins?"

"Ah." Kit laughed softly for delight. "Will there be nine?"

"Less one," said Thea, bending to her wreath.

*

Whin said, "Did yer not guess what she twined?"

"No," said Kit. "I was a fool."

Why d'ye pull that bitter little herb, that herb that grows so grey... ? Ah, she'd pulled those leaves alone. "A man."

*

A silence. Somewhere in the wood, a bird poured silver from a narrow neck. Thea stirred. "Kit?"

"Hmm?"

"Does it end so?"

"Which?"

"The tale. With Annis turned to stone."

"At sunrise? Aye, and it begins."

"There was another tale," she said. "About the moon in a thorn bush."

"Malykorne."

"What's she?"

"The Cloud witch. Annis' sister, some do say. Her bed's where the sun is waked. He sleeps the winter there."

"And now?"

"Wakes wood."

"Ah."

Darkness and the moonspill of the may. Green is nowhere, it unselves the wood. As lovers are unselved: not tree embracing tree, but one. But wood. A riddle, he thought drowsily. Within a wood, another wood, a grove where grows no green; within a moon, another moon, and nowhere to be seen. A bird in the dark leaves answered, but he never heard. Two, two eyes, the owl cried out. Of tree, of tree, of tree. Kit slept.

*

I will tell this in the dark. That crown I wove for thee. And on May Eve, of all unseely nights: that nadir of the wake of Souls, and darkness' dark of moon. Unhallows.

Ah, love, I had despaired of thee.

I was unwitched. Thou knitting reeled up all my powers, left us naked to my lady's malice. Soul and body, I went heavy with thy death. My great kite belly would undo us all. And so I did, undid. I would not have thee bloodfast, earthbound, for my dam to take. Nor turn thee Annis, stone within my stone.

*

Toward midnight, turning, Kit awoke and saw a fireflash amid the low woods, heard a brash of leaves: and there in the glade he saw a kitlin fox, a vixen dancing like a flake of fire in the wind.

He turned to Thea, shook her softly. "Hush, love. Look."

She woke and saw. He felt her at his side turned cold as hailstones. "Kill it," Thea said.

A stillness. "What?"

"I am heavy, I can do no spell. Now. Quick."

And still he watched. The patter of the paws was quick, like rain on leaves. A clickety vixen. April in its veins. It danced like a burning leaf, the aftercolor of the greenblue sky.

"What harm in it?" he said. "The pretty kitlin."

"Eyes," she said.

They turned and flashed, a deepsunk dazzling green. The fire was green.

She said, "It wears the fox's fell."

He'd heard no bark. No fox was ever so still, so fiery. None scented of green thorn. He rose, unsure. A stone?

But it was gone.

He turned back and saw Thea, huddled naked on the ground. He bent and wrapped her in her scattered clothes, for fear of eyes, of lairing eyes. Cold in his arms, she cried, "No witch. I am no witch. I cannot meet her in the air."

Kit said, "Who'd harm thee? I would keep thee. I would try." A hopeless tenderness consumed him, like a candle swaling in his bones. "It's what I'm for."

She twisted from him. To the child in her, she cried, "My blood is thy undoing."

"'Tis my blood as well," said Kit. "I do not use thee."

Thea said, "But I use thee. Poor fool, have you not seen? Thou wert my cock-horse, that I rid away."

No ship, no ship beneath him, and the cold wave's shock. Salt-blind, he flailed at her. "Then find thyself a jade to bear thee, and another when he's flagged. Any stick will do to ride on."

Silence. Her cheek went paler still. His hands unclenched. At last, softly, she said, "And to burn, at need. The slower, being green. I would not watch thee burn." She turned her face from him; he saw the white neck, the tumbled quenchless hair. "I am thy death."

And rising, naked in her smock, she ran. He followed blindly, pushing on at hazard through bushes and briars. Heedless of their lash, he scrambled onward, deeper in the wood. The wood was endless. Thea? Further on, he saw her glimmering; then white in whiteness, she was gone.

His heart turned snow.

*

When I got thee, I had not yet bled. Nor will now, being air. That bower and that bed of state, my lady dressed for Annis, all in hangings of deep crimson velvet, rich as for the progress of a queen, though in her exile. Not that blue and meagre hag, that bugbear Annis, that doth stalk the fells of Cloud; not she, that winter's tale, that dwindled bloodfast crone: but Annis, air and dark made crystalline, before her fall.

I was born thirteen, as thou art now; I saw the Nine rise and the Gallows wheel and set an hundred enneads of times; and at thirteen, I lived a year, and died.

My lady did conceive, create me green and virgin for her sorcery; but kept me for herself. Her study and her moving jewel, her toy, her book. The pupil of her eye, that she did dote upon, so year by year put off the consummation of her art, for lessoning.

For play.

In her conjurations -- often in her storms -- my lady witch would gaze in me, the glass that Morag held: bare April, but for winter's chain. Herself was January, all in black and branching velvet, flakes of frost at neck and wrist. Come, Madam, she would say. Undo. And then undo my coil of hair, unbraid it through and through her hands. Lie there, my art. And still would gaze, devouring my stillness, as the eye drinks light. I shivered in her admiration. Then, only then, her wintry hand would touch, her cold mouth kiss; and quickening, the witch would toy and pinch and fondle, aye, and tongue her silent glass, till she, not I, cried out and shuddered. Cracked.

Cried out: her jewel, her epiphany, her nonpareil; her book of gramarye, her limbeck and her light. Her A and O.

And yet not hers.

Know you that the stone my lady wears is Annis, shattered in her fall and vanished, all but that cold shard of night. Her self that was.

That moment of her breaking, time began. Light wakened from its grave in her. Unbound, the moon did bind her to that sickled and disdained hag thou see'st, that ashes of herself: the witch. Time chained her to this rock. And for a thousand thousand changes of the moon did Annis brood on her disparagement, the lightwrack of her Law. She sought to gather up her flaws of night, anneal them in her glass: that glass from which she drew me, naked and unsouled. Her self.

With me, my lady did enact her fall: the cry and shattering. And with each reiterated crack, her glass would round itself, quicksilver to its wound. But not her soul. My brooch of nakedness did pierce her, bind her bloodfast to her baser self: that hag who eats children.

That was not what she designed.

She had made me for the stone. The seed of Law. And on the morrow of the night I fled her would have wound the stair, unlocked the bloodred chamber, set the stone within my womb. Bred crystal of my blood. That stone would turn me stone from inward, Gorgon to itself, until --

*

And then he saw her. Moonlight. 'Twas the moon had dazzled him. No more. Light fell, leaves shifted. Thea stood agaze. Stone still and breathing silence. Hush. Look, there.

He turned. A clearing, silver as a coin with dew, and tarnished as the moon's broad face. And in that O of light, like Mally-in-the-moon, a-bristle with her bush of thorn, he saw an elfish figure, to and fro. A child? (A tree afoot?) Not ancient, though as small and sickle as the old moon's bones: a barelegged child. A branching girl. They do get flowers of a hallows eve. Alone?

A lash of thorn whipped back and welted him. He sleeved the salt blood from his eyes. He blinked and saw her, not in leaves but rags: the ruins of a stolen coat, perhaps, a soldier's or a scarecrow's, or a lover's run a-wood. Mad Maudlin's, that was Tom's old coat. It fell from her in shards, as stiff as any bark with years. There were twigs of thorn in wilting flower in her hair, down, eggshells, feathers. Cross and cross the O she went, not getting branches: walking patterns to herself, as furious fantastic as a poet in her bower, her labyrinth her language. Then a start, and back she skitted, ticklish as a spider on her web, to tweak some nebulous chiasmus. A hussif of trees.

Daft as a besom, he thought. Poor lass.

But Thea said to her, "Is't hallows?"

"While it is. Thy time's to come." The green girl scrabbled in her rags, howked out a pair of crooked spectacles and rubbed them in the tatters of a leafred cap. She perched them on her nose. A grubby girl, with greenstained knees, scabbed knees and elbows. As she turned, Kit saw her crescent body shining through the rags. A downy girl. He stirred and her seeing mocked him: a fierce howlet's face. All beak and eyes. "Shift," she said. "I's thrang."

But Thea said, "I am what you do."

"Ah," said the girl. "What's that?"

"Undo."

The girl glanced at Kit. "I see thou's done already what thou can't undo." He felt her elfshot eyes. Her breasts were April, but the eyes were January, haily, and the tongue a cold and clashy March. Scathed, he felt himself, dishevelled in his raffish coat, with moss and toadstools in his hair. Leaves everywhere. And ramping after Thea, like a woodwose in a mumming. Mad for love.

There was nothing for it but to play the part. Her glazy eyes decreed. "Poor leavy Tom," he said. "Remember Tom his cup. He sees the craws at bones; they rouse the kittle wren, cock robin, and the tumbling owl."

Then he cared not for the hoyden; Thea touched his lips. "Softly. 'Tis her wood."

Kit looked about. There was no moon. The light was may. He saw the whiteness, heaped and hung about the branches, like all the petticoats of some untidy dreaming girl, a tangly lass who kept her bower. What she knew and drew had thorns.

"Come in," said the green girl, loftily. "Mind souls, I's flitting."

In was out. He saw the whitethorn petals fall and flitter as he passed: no wall or window else. Within was dark and waste. Thea, bending, took up a clumsy garland lying half-made on the ground. Kit saw the ashes of a fire, cold out; a crackpot, tipsy on its one leg, canted over. It was full of dry leaves.

Beyond her hedge -- scant sticks, blown papers -- lay the cold bare hills. The wind was smoke-edged.

"Fires on the hills," said Thea, shivering.

Sticks to burn vixens. Kit saw the whirling bodies, higher, leaping higher. Heard the cries. They would dance on every hill by dawning, round from Law to Law again, to close round Annis in her stone. The kindling was the hey.

The girl snecked air behind them. "Aye, they wake, and then I wake."

Thea said, "Are you their mistress, then?"

"They's no one's minions," said the girl. "Here's spring." It welled up through the leaves, a little constant twirl of silver, spilling secretly away. She cleared it with her heel, and crouched and filled her gnarly hands. "Thou's dry," she said to Kit. He drank of them, her hands within his hands. He tasted earth. "Cloud ale," she said. "Dost like of it?" He nodded, mute. She took him by the shoulders, light, as if she shook him out, her cloak of leaves. "Lie there. Wake wood."

And he was leaves. Brown leaves of oak, the lightfall of a thousand hallows. He was galls and tassels, traceries of veining; he was shards of acorns, shales of light. His lady's cups. He was turning earth, and through him sprang the starry flowers of the Nine. His earth had made them green. No tongue, all eyes! the witch commanded, and the eyes were myriad, were stars of earth.

As giddy as a god, he laughed.

"S'all we do?" said the witch to Thea.

"As you will."

They worked together, plaiting thorn and blackthorn in a garland. Round they turned and bound it, plashing branches in and inwards, as an O, a lightlashed eye. It made a crown too sharp to wear. For which? There was a glory in their laps, of quince and almonds, nettles, violets and goat-haunched catkins, all a-didder and a-dance.

"It turns," said the witch. "Turns O."

"O's naught," said Thea, with the garland in her lap.

"Or ay and anywhere, as swift as moon; or what thou will. O's tenfold."

Thea bent to her braiding. "If it were?"

"It quickens," said the witch. "Comes round. What's past is nowt til it, and all's to come."

Odd and even went the witch's fingers, in and out. Wood anemone and rue. She wove them in the nodding garland: eyebright and nightshade, cranesbill, crowsbane, and the honeyed primrose, ladysmocks, long purples. Turning, it was turning autumn: now the leaves they wove were red and yellow, fruited: haws and hazelnuts and trailing brambles, rowans, hips, and hazy sloes.

"That untwines," said Thea, of a mouse-eared herb. "I plucked it."

"Aye," said the witch, weaving in. "Wilta taste of it?"

"And wane?"

"And bear thysel, burd alone. Walk or wake, as thou wist."

Thea bent. "I am bound to them. My lady and this child. If I do bear it, I am hers; if I do not, I am herself."

"Allt same. Thou's moonfast."

Thea said, "I am uncastled. Will you keep me?"

"Where? I's nowhere."

"Here."

"Is nowhere. Hey is down, and there's no hallows i't green world. I't morning, I mun walk and Annis wake."

"Then I am lost," said Thea. "For my art is lost."

"Thou's bound as she is, rounding winter in thy lap. It will be born, I tell thee, and i't sickle o't moon." The witch tossed the tussymussy in her lap. "So mowt it be."

Kit watched them whispering secrets, close as moon and dark of moon, in one another's arms. They wove one burr of light. He saw the clew of stars in Thea's lap. He saw the witch's spectacles were frost; they faded as he looked, they trickled down and down her cheeks. He heard an owl's cry echoing, her windy laugh. He saw the green hills leap with vixens, blown like flames from hill to hill. When the wheel comes round, 'tis sun, he thought. He saw the blackened moon, the cavey moon, as slender as a share of bannock. Riddle cake. He thought the green witch bade him eat. It tasted sweet and bitter, of his dreams. His share was burnt. He saw a stone and a thorn tree, deep in green embrace. The moon was tangled in the leavy thorn, its roots its rimy crown. The stone was straked with lichens, of a bloodrust red; a crazy garland at its crown, aslant.

Split the stick, and I am in it, sang the wren. I rise.

I crack the stone, said the starry flower. I will crack where I take root.

He slept.

*

And so I waked that night, and whispered secrets with my sister moon. With Malykorne, that is my lady Annis' other face and elder: light and dark of one moon. Her cradling and my crescent self, still turning from my mother into light. And thou within me, braiding blood. A clasp of witches.

I had no heart for thy undoing.

I am stone, said I. My lady's eidolon. How came I by this flaw?

Thy soul? The green witch laughed.

Her glass were clouded.

Did you -- ?

Stir fire up? Not I.

I thought on thy begetting. Brock? Did she meddle?

Bloodroot i' thy lady's cauldron. Ashes i' thy cup. The green witch drank. What's done is done. Yet being kindled, thou might leave thy spill.

Kit slept beside us. Why did I not leave him sleeping, let him grieve and live?

I tell thee, I could not, remembering how coldly I had culled him, out of all the bloodborn kenneled in my lady's dark. All in silver, I'd come down to view my prey, I'd held the candle to his dazzled face. Yes. He would do, I'd thought; yet stilled the triumph in my glance. My lady and her crow did watch. They'd uses for his soul and seed, designs of thrift and sorcery for bone, blood, fell and eyes. Ah, make no paragon of me -- myself had marked him for my own false ends. His fiddle for a ship to bear me from that nighted isle; his cock to crow away her spell. 'Twould do, I judged. So one might heft a stick, a sling of stones, at need: to use, to cast away. He bowed; and as my lady bade, I offered drowsy wine to him, a draught amazing to the mortal sense. We'd toy with him before we slew.

Is this the moon? said he, and gazed about the hall. Awe and mischief in his face. I've seen her owl and her ivy bush, but never tasted of her cup.

I bit my lip, so not to laugh. All solemn then, alight with love, he drank to me. I saw him: tousled, sleepless, downy. He had brushed his twice-turned coat, as if he went not to his death but to a dance. Poor fool, thought I. And all unknowing, I was changed by him. His innocence his spell.

And so that green Unhallows eve, I waked by Malykorne and chose: to stay with Kit, to bear thee, for what end might come.

O Margaret, I was stark afraid. Of travailing, of birth. Of dying -- ah, most bitterly; but more than death, I dreaded Annis in myself. Her stone I had averted; but the dark witch was in grain. I'd seen her in my lady's glass: bloodnailed and insatiate, the blind hag on the road. I was afraid of being her, of slaying what was not myself. Of whoring. Not the act -- for I was schooled to that -- but the devouring. Cold fire, turning sticks to Ashes, Ashes into Annis, endlessly: herself herself engendering.

Yet where thou wast, there Annis could not be. That secret did the green witch tell me, softly in mine ear: thou wouldst keep hallows in that place of blood, that O thine everywhere, thy keep; though I went naked to my lady's sky. And so I brooded thee, as doth a child its candle, lighting her the way to bed. Yet all about there lay the shadows of thine inward fire, the fears that winced and flickered in my brain. Of need and frailty and lumpishness. Of losing Kit, the fear of losing him. Of love.

*

"Craw's hanged!" cried the grey cock.

Kit woke. Gone? A something slipped from him, a ghost returning at the pale of night. It will not stay, that tide. The pale boat rides the mirk and shiver of that burning flood; it slips the moorings. Gone. Yet curled against him, Thea slept. Cap and acorn. They were lying by a scanty thicket, on the open hills. Not day yet, neither moon nor sun.

He heard a thump and twitter in the wood, a wild free scuffling and calling. Out from the greenwood burst a rout of guisers, clad in tattercoats and leaves.

"Hey is down!" they cried.

Children.

Thea hid her face, but she was laughing; Kit caught up their scattered clothes to lap her.

They'd a girl to play small music -- hop and twitter, like a small bird on a briar -- all but lost amid their charm. She'd a wheedling pipe and dowly drum. Another, a long lad, bore a garland of whitethorn with a dead crow swung from it, wryneck and agape. It dangled, claws upward, wings clapped wide and stark. Round it, in and out, there ran a thrang of boys and girls. One, crowned in oakleaves, clashed horns with another clad in holly. Lagman and tangling, walking in his sleep, a small boy gaped and swayed and staggered under all their jackets.

"Brant!" they cried. "Come in, here's game."

Not last but alone went a dark and clustering girl in torn russet and green crown; she bore a staff, and wore a fox tail jauncing behind.

"Craw's hanged!" she cried. "Get up!"

A stripling in petticoats swept round the lovers, whirling light and away. His skirts were singed with leaping fires. His broom was budded out, as if he'd swept stars with it. "Here's nest on 'em," he said. He poked at them and kittled them, left smears of pollen and of ashes.

"Hey!" cried Kit, sneezing, laughing all at once.

The others thronged. "We's late. They's been and done."

Undone.

The girl with the music played Cuckoo! on her little pipe

"My bout at broom? Yer said I could."

"Sneck up, thou mardy, or I's leave thee here for bears."

"Clartarse."

"Neshcock. Tell our dad of thee."

"Gi's a box," said another. "And we'll gang away."

Kit fumbled in his pockets, found a halfpenny. "Here's to your fires."

Brant bit, she pursed it. "And to yers. Where's riddle?"

"Here," said another. "In my apron."

They'd a round loaf of barley bread, with a face baked into it: a leafy glazy green man, scored and bossed on it, with clove-nailed eyes. Brant broke and shared it out with all. Kit took, and Thea. All tore it from within, the soft warm crumb; they left the crust of the green man, his face, for the last. At his end, a small boy took the heel, he pinched the raisins from the eyes. Round he went, guising in his mask of crust. Now crouching, now on tiptoe, peering round. A solemn mischief.

"I see you," he said to Kit. "You don't see me."

Then that, too, was devoured.

*

Whin tugged at Kit's long cotted hair; she eyed his salt-rimed straggling beard. "Time you was clipped."

*

"Day," said the woman. The sheep leapt, yellow-eyed and glaring, from between her knees. The fleece fell, the light sheep staggered giddily away. "Where yer bound?"

Kit said, "Thwaite. Is this the road?"

"We's all up here," said the woman with the shears, broad-backed, rosy, swathed in sacking. In the fold, the penned sheep blared and jostled.

"Oh," said Kit, looking round at the row of clippers kneeling or bending to their work, at the lappers and catchers, and the boy at the gate. Beyond them, it was cloudy, the hills hooded in morning.

"Way!" Behind him, a gangling lad brought on another ewe to clip, half-riding her. He threw her in the woman's lap. Her shears bit deep in the heathery wool; they scrunched and sang. "Walking on?"

Kit said, "Anywhere."

"If's a bite and a sup yer after, there's work. Can yer catch 'em? Can yer whet?"

"I'd think so. But..."

The woman peered at Thea. A dishevelled girl, and silent. Like a tinker out sleepwalking. Hair like flakes of fire. The gown had been good, was tattered as lichen. It was undone at the waist. "Not so lish as yer were, is't? Can yer lap?"

"She's lapped," said a clipper.

Another sheep sprang away, a vengeful crone. Kit shielded Thea. "'S all right, she's been down afore," called a man. "Rigged ower."

"Pay 'em no mind," said the woman. "Fourpence and all found?"

"Done." Kit laid by his pack and jacket, and plunged into the throng of clamorous sheep.

"Hey up! Gi's a slipped 'un."

"Hey! Mind awd Sukey. She's gone on yer, like."

"Lovesick."

"Hod on, lad."

An old ewe cannoned into Kit. Down he went, embracing her for dear life, slathered, laughing. He got her somehow to a shepherd's lap. The man knelt on her head, grinning.

Kit felt his bones. "By, she's a brave 'un." He grinned at Thea, but she stood, looking out at the hills.

"Come on, then," said a lapper.

Thea gathered wool. There were loose locks everywhere. Two women stood at a board and hurdles, lapping fleeces. They plucked away the clarty bits -- odds, bobs, and daggles by the tail -- and threw them in a sack. They spread each fleece out, dark side up. Then they folded in the legs and rolled it up, dark outward inward, with a twist of the neck-wool drawn out and wrapped round. As they worked, they gossiped; but at every fleece, they said, "A soul, a sark. Out light, in dark."

Thea packed the fleeces in creels. Kit wrestled with the crones. The shears crunched on, inexorable; the light sheep skipped away. The lappers set riddles. "What rive at one another allt day, and lie in one another's arms all night?"

"I give up," said Thea. "Moon and her dark?"

"Wool combs."

From below, a long way off, came a girl, knitting beside a laden pony. A shepherd and a brisk black dog brought new sheep, down from the summer moors. They shone, brightdark and heavy as the thunderbreeding clouds.

The girl tied her pony, unlading hoggins, frails, and creels. She brought round a tray of cheesecakes, round and golden. "Noon."

Gooseberries and news. "Grey mare's foaled. A lad, and he's piebald. Mistress? Yer Bet's been and thrawn one o' yer good siller spoons i't beck, and me and Doll has fished it up. Young termagant." She sleeved her rosy face. "Oh, and a stranger come, asking at one Lightwood. Said he were an Outlune fellow, brown and beggarly, and ganging with a whey-faced breeding wench. A vixen." She stared at Thea. "There now! And that clotpoll of a crow lad sent him on up Houlsyke way. Will I fetch him back?"

"No," said Kit. "I thank you."

A blue-eyed shepherd looked to westward. Thunder. "Doubt he'll have tumbled i't hag by now."

Thea bit her seedcake. "Well done, my little page."

*

Whin's duckstone skipped and slapped across the waves. "Eight." She turned grinning. "That caps."

"You've nimmed all the smooth stones whilst I lay and slept." Kit's flicked once and sank. Still clumsy.

Whin turned out her pockets with a clattering flourish. "Halves." Stoop and flick. Three. "Yer still won't beat. I's worked at it." Still with her back to him, looking out at the bare green sea, she said, "Bairn's father."

"Ah?" Kit sorted through the stones.

"It were guising. I never see'd his face." Five. "So I see'd him a'where."

"A stranger." One with a leaf in it, too fair to cast away. And this ill-shapen. Ah, this would do. Four. "Yellow hair?"

"As chimneysweepers." A lad at leap fires. A thief at the gallows. Had he smiled, remembering her cries? A false love. A fiddler. A stranger with a scythe.

*

Sweetness of green hay. Midsummer. Endless dusk. And still the mowers, mothpale in their shirts, strode on. Kit watched the coil, recoiling of their backs, the long sweep of their scythes, in unison, and so enlaced that not a blade of grass between them stood. They struck and strode, advancing like the white edge of a wave: whish and tumble and the intricating arcs of edge. A long wave, standing with the sun. It stood; the flowers fell and withered with the grass. No sea, but slow green fire, kindled by the sun his kiss.

And after came the bending girls, to strow the grass. They'd not take rake to it, still green in bride-bed, bleeding from the scythe. Rakes to the lapcocks; but straw girls to the swath, to shake and strew the hay in handfuls, east and west. Lay lighter that way.

The hay's the dance.

In Kit's long row, they raked and turned the fading flowers: matrons of a day, and sunburnt. Tossed and tumbled, all their brightness turned to breath of summer. Sweets compacted. He'd made hay since he could walk. He knew the dance. Scythe it and strow it, then to rakes. And turn and turn. Lapcocks to the hobs to windrows; windrows to the sledges. Crisp and blue.

And in among the cocks of hay, the lovers courted, striplings and hoydens, clip and cuff, like hares. Boys battled, whirling hay. And one to another, the straw girls sang: the grey-eyed girl behind him, tall and soldierly and brown; the elfin brat before.

Kit turned and gazed at Thea, in among the girls. Ah, lovelier than ever, fading. Inward turned, to sweet. His lass was growing thin and heavy. Bending to the grass, she strowed it, sun and moon. Skirts dovetailed, and her bare legs scratched. Her bright hair tumbled on her neck. Still white as thorn, her throat, her brow; no sun could burn them. Thea tossed her wraiths of flowers in the air, looked up and round within their falling. Whorl within whirlwind, slow and fast. Move still, still so. O my heart. Let it be now ever, at the solstice of my love. The blade but newly struck; my heart still standing. Yet will fall. Her blade's herself.

The long wave slowed, against the steepening shingle of the dark. And now the grass was ocean; slow and slower lagged their wading steps, their oars, against that tide. The lads cried challenges, lashed on their fellows, flagging, flagging with the sun; the lasses raked and sang:

You must kiss her and embrace her,
Till she causes your heart to yield --

*

One voice above the rest rang out, triumphant, hoarse:

For there's never a faint-hearted soldier
Can win on a battlefield.

*

The scythes struck on, against that tide of dark. Against the quenchless lap of earth, the grass that stood and shivered. Stood.

*

Up from Imber Beck came Kit, not spilling what he held. Deep pools and dappling, the rush and plunge of bright quick water on the stones. He'd washed him clean as dawn, walked naked in his old clean shirt. Grass at his ankles, wind stirring in his wet-combed hair, already lifting from its douse. A sparkling dancing day, a drying day. A day for playing hob. Wild thyme and trout, he thought: he'd lie and tickle.

He came to Thea, sitting in a circle of great stones, on one had fallen, at the green hub of the wheel of Cloud. Its nave, whence it breathed. Old stones, they were, and worn fantastical: wind-gnawed and water-cavey, flawed and rippled with the frosts. White stones, whorled with mosses. They'd not mown here. Would not: had left them whitelands to the wandering sheep.

Thea swung her heel and sang, like any shepherd's lass.

"A lovegift," said Kit, and held it out.

A cup of rushes, lined with cool green leaves of hazel, wet with dew. And brimmed with raspberries, most perfect ripe: as soft as foxes' paws, and with their prick. Their flowers wreathing round. A dowry for a queen of Elfin.

"Ah," said Thea. All her face alight with joy, as he'd not seen her. Taking them, she kissed him lightly on the wrist, just where his pulse beat blue. Where it was scratched with gathering, had beaded with bright blood. Love's bracelet. "Bravely won."

For that he'd pick them naked, from the inward of the thicket out. By Cockridden and by Childerditch, he would, were the brambles backside of the moon.

"Does it like thee, love?" he said. "That cup of imbers?"

"I shall give them to my eldest daughter," said Thea. And she ate.

*

Ah, Margaret, that was firstborn of my spells, my new-created magic. I will tell it in thy blood, in time. Nine drops. No more.

*

The field was called Crawcrooks. High and aslant the fell it lay, a stony piece, the last to harvest. They had reaped them all: Burnt Ridding, where the oats were lodged, the Light End and the Long Dark, and round by Mawkins Hey, by Brockholes, Beggary and Witchy Slang, the Whirl Ing and the Wren Graves, and out by Owler Hag. A nine day's stint.

Kit bent to the sheaving. The barley stood white. When he closed his eyes, he saw it glittering still, but awned with violet black. It scarred his eyes with light. Another sheaf, a knot of straw. He swam in it. Straw bristled up his shirt-tail, down his neck. His arms and legs were torn and welted, scarified with straw. Weeds nettled; stubble pierced. Sweat sidled and stung. He ached with stooping, beaten down, astounded by the clangor of the sun. He thought it screamed at him, defiant; looking up, he knew it for a hawk. A stunning and a brazen noon.

Before him went brown Annot, Ailie Whinlaw, Kat and Bartlemy and Noll Ned Hewlin, with laggard Ciss to trail the rake. They moved breasthigh against the barley, all arrayed in its armor of light. Crouching, they cut it, striking off with their sickles: moon against sun. In their wake lay the barley, shorn and withering. Kit gathered it in armfuls, tying them with bands of straw that Thea twisted of the greenest corn. Beside him and behind worked Gib and Nick Scarrow, sheaving and stooking. No one spoke. The sun quelled them. Still he heard the rasp and rustle of the knives in corn.

The barley was one element, of sun, earth, wind, and rain. A hoary world. Time stilled. Before him rose a whirring and a clack of wings: a covey clattering away. He saw a scutter and a lop of coneys, and at his feet the fumblings of a dawstruck mole. A-sway on the nodding corn, the gressops leapt and chirred. He saw the plash of poppies falling, and the blue-eyed blink of cornflowers, clean petticoats of bindweed. He saw the scurry of the denizens laid bare to light: whitespinners, jinny-long-legs, harvestmen. He felt the sooty velvet of the smutched ears of slain corn, black as my lady's mask. In the sundered corn, he found a mouse's nest, two short ears bound together in a daddle of straw, as deftly plaited as any kirn witch on a stack. There were ratlins within, rosebald, but willowing out with a fuzz. They blindly wormed and squeaked. No dam. No help for it. He stuck it like a bauble in his sunburnt hat, and bent to work.

Then Ailie cried, "Whet!"

The bottle went round, hand to hand. Kit stood and eased his back. Looked first to Thea. He stared out beyond the barley at the whiteleached sky, the moorland bruised with sun. He turned. All below him and behind lay fields, a piecework stitched with drystone walls. He saw the hardwon ploughlands, pale and stooked, all glittering as a card of pins. Beyond lay fold and fallow, and the tilting meadows, green with aftermath, called fog. Above, stood only sheepwalk, cropped and stony, and tumbling becks. He thought of throwing down his glove and lying naked in the rush of water.

"Noon," said Ailie.

They'd an hour's halt. By ones and twos, they turned down the field, past the morning's thraves, sheaf leaning on sheaf, with another as henge. The men went flapping their shirts, their breeches with the knee strings undone. The women swung their sickles, in their broad hats and kerchiefs, their kilted petticoats, all urchined out with straw. Kit waited. Last of all came Thea, roundbellied in a borrowed apron, walking slow. Her hat was wreathed with poppyheads, how quickly bare: a few bright curving petals clung. He saw with a pang how sore her hands were, torn with spinning bands; how white her face. He said, "Thou wert to rest."

"Where's the penny, then?" she said.

He bent and stuck the mouse nest in a stook, carefully. It would not stand, being toppling heavy. "There's time. Shall we lie by the water?"

She looked up at the fellside. "I'd need wings."

"Rest then. Will I fetch thee water?"

"Kat's gone."

There was ale in the hedge. The reapers passed it round and drank; they sprawled and panted in the grass. Beneath an apron thrown over a hazelbush lay Annot's baby, naked in a little shirt, beside his sleeping childish nurse. The cloth had been dabbled, for the cool; had long since dried taut, tented out on sticks. The shadows of the leaves moved lightly, dappled on the bairns. The baby waked and watched them, purse-mouthed, puzzling at air. "Ah," said Kit, crouching, all alight. The pretty poppet. Annot wiped her mouth, undid her freckled breast. The little quaily brat set to with jugging. Ciss's Jacky played at the field edge, making pisspies in the dust.

They ate their baggin: curds and onions and the odd green bite; oatcake, cheese and ale. Kit had got brambles from a hedge for Thea. They were green and seedy, like eating broideries of beads; a few, as red as beaded blood: the needle's prick. Nothing else yet ripe. But there were crowcrooks on the moor; the sleeping girl had picked her apronful. Her mouth was stained with them. They had them for their afters: mistblue and midnight berries, tart, and bursting winy on the tongue.

Off by the beck, Kat and Bartlemy were wading, splashing. They leapt and clashed like kids. He snatched at what she flaunted, held high out of reach; Kat lashed him with a bunch of whins. Whoop! cried the boy, and under he went. They saw her ranting on the stone, as gleeful as a goblin. Up he came behind her, and he caught her by the petticoats. A splash like young dolphins.

"By dark," said Ailie, squinting at the glinty stubble and the dwindling standing corn. "Later n'r last year, by a farthing moon."

"It's coming on storm, I doubt," said Gib.

"We's have it done by then. Kirn and all."

Ciss said, "Is't witch or wench this year?"

Ailie looked crows at her, but thumbed her sickle. "As it falls."

The sickles lay about the grass, a halfyear's moons. A reiving wasp came on, and darted at the fruit. Ciss shrieked and cowered in her apron. Sibb in the hedgerow woke, saying, "Is't won yet? Mam?" Kit fanned Thea with his rushy hat. She was whitefaced, and her burning hair was flat with sweat. The red hair rode her like a demon.

Ailie said, "Yer want to be lying down."

Annot put her baby to the other breast. "Are yer lighter by Gossamer? When is't?"

At Hallows. They would never speak so in the harvest field; Kit knew that much. "Toward Lightfall," he said.

"When's that i' Cloud?"

"The Nine stars' setting, that we call the Clew," said Kit. "Nine Weaving?"

"Cob's Web," said Ailie, nodding.

Nick Scarrow said, "I' Slaith, we call 'em Jack Daw's Seed." His teeth showed whitely in his sunburnt face. He was a hireling stranger; he walked the harvest north. A marish man. He'd said they reaped with scythes there: not creeping women, but a sweep of men.

"Aye, they's a queer lot, out Law," said Gib.

"Cunning wi' tools." Nick fleered at Thea's belly, with a sly and sidelong glance at Kit. "Will I thresh her for thee? Got a flail."

Hewlin sniggered.

"Aye, brock i't middle," said Ailie. "It hangs."

Kit said nothing, twisting straws. Nick shrugged. "Then hang her from a pole for t' crows. I seen yer crowland mawkins, out i't rain. A waste o' seed." He sauntered off upfield, to sleep under the hedge. Kit threw away the knot of straw. Toward Whinside, the sky had turned; it shook like foil in the heat. The corn was yellower: not glinting now, but glowering. The sun was in it, brighter as it shrank.

Thea slept, and Annot. Gib snored and Hewlin whistled; Ailie span hemp. The bluemouthed child made towns of pebbles. Ciss held Jacky in her lap and sighed. "At kirn feast, at Lowerstell, last year, they'd a fiddler til't dance."

Kit felt a whitecold sickle at his heart. The fear had grown in him that all the cunning of his hands was lost with Thea's art. He never spoke of it; he dreamed of ships. "Will he be coming?"

"Not up here, he won't. Up Annis' arse."

Ailie said, "Not for thy sake, Mistress Lightheels."

"Never mind," Kit said. "Do you rant, and I'll keep measure."

"Wi' yer tongue?" said Ailie. "Or have yer browt a pipe?"

"Packed away," he said soberly. "And the drum is broken."

Ciss went on, "A new tune? I do love a new tune."

"One I've made," he said. "The oldest in the world."

Ailie let her spindle fall, the coarse grey thread spin out. "There's Daw's awd crowd wants nobbut catgut. If y'd turn a penny. Hanged on a nail these ten years since."

Kit's heart leapt up.

Ciss poked at the stubble. "There's not," she said. "There was a beggar come, asking would I cross his palm. He telled my cards."

"No art i' that," said Ailie. "Thy fortune's i' thy fork." Down fell the spindle. "Wha tellt thee it were thine to give?"

"Caggy awd thing, wha'd want it?" Ciss pouted. "And I never turned me back, but when pot boiled ower. Asides, there's nowt else missed, I counted spoons and all. And I's to journey til a far country, and wed a stranger on a dapple horse." She turned to Kit. "Happen if yer see him ont road, yer could ask for it back. A tinker fellow like a white craw."

Before he'd framed an answer, Kat came running down the fellside, with her long legs twinkling, bare and scratched. There was gorse in her hair. She'd forgotten the water jugs; but grinned, holding out a great bunch of white heather, haws, crawcrooks. "For t' kirn."

Ailie took and laid it by her sickle, in its curve. "'Twill a' to do."

"So it better. Pains I taken wi't. Is there owt i' yon poke?" Kat rifled for her share of bread and bit it, grinning. "Bat's sulking. He's soused."

Kit watching thought he guessed the riddle. In Lune, in Askrigg, he had seen the images of bristling corn in kitchens down the dale, tied up with rags, with flowers dried to dust. The last sheaf was the Witch, they said; they gave her to the wrens to peck, at Lightfast: so the old year ate of her, to make it new. He said, "In my country, they do bind the Witch with rowans."

"Does they?" Ailie said.

Kat wrung her skirts. "I'd not wonder. For it's red and all."

The Witch was eaten, and in turn she ate. Long since, the old wives said, they'd slain a child for her, an Ashes child: each spring a fall. They said the Old Witch lulled him in her lap. Kit knew her cradle songs. And still in Lune the countryfolk kept law: they stoned the wren and burned his crown, sowed blood and ashes with their hoarded seed, to slake the Witch. Kit saw her, squatting in the corn, with her tangled shock of hair, her scrawny shanks and long toes; her cheeks were of the reddest grain.

"O' course," said Ailie. "Them outland folk is strange. I's heard they shear owls."

Kit looked at Thea sleeping. He said, "There is a tale in Lune. They say the barley is the black earth's daughter, shut all winter in her dark. She rises. So they say."

Ciss said, "They's witches all i' Lune, Gib says."

The spindle fell.

Kit closed his eyes. He saw the Maiden rising, running from her mother's ancient dark. A green girl, dancing in the wind; but long strings tethered her, white-wiry, to her mother's womb. They held her, ripening to stillness, caught and cut. Three servingmen with knives of stone, her mother's minions, struck her down; they beat her with their flails. Her lover looked for her among the sheaves. He took each Perseis in his arms, and she was Annis, hoar and silent. On her face, the shrouding spiders scurried at their work. They told her death in inches. So he laid her out amid the lykes of straw. His eyes were dry. But she was lighter of the sun, their child. He saw it, in its swaddling bands of straw, unslain. Kit saw it, even through his lidded eyes: a glory and a dazzlement. He slept.

Ailie glanced at him, scraw-boned as a rabbit, in his hempen shirt. "'Twill a' to do," she said.

To Luneward did they reap the Witch. Here in Cloud, his elsewhere, they did say the corn was lying in the Witch's lap; she combed his silver hair and he did sleep. And then her cronies crept on him, they cut him off at knee. Not one before another: all at once, they slashed. Not I, said each crone to her other. Nor not I. 'Twas she, my sister slew him. They were each and all the moon, his end: her sickle shearing and her millstone trundling round, her old black cauldron gaping for his bones.

They shared him out as riddlecake, as round as the wheeling sun. They drank him and he made them giddy: for the turning of the sun is in his cup. As they drank, they played old bone games on their knuckles: moon reaps sun; sun mazes moon; and moon again wakes sun. They waked him through the winter and they scattered him: the earth his grave, his lap. His last sheaf was the Flaycraw. They hanged him on the Gallantry, to blacken in the wind and rain, to cry the crows. And so his green seed sprang.

Crows called in the harvest field. The bluemouthed child looked up. White crows. They dazzled in the sun; then fell like cinders, black. She watched. She looked around her, squinting. They were all asleep, her mam and all. She bent to her play again, moved pebble in their maze. The black crows quarrelled in the corn.

Kit woke hard. He saw crows rising in the field. His cheek was creased with straws; his arm, asleep where Thea lay on it. Drowsy and heavy, drenched with sleep, he rubbed his eyes and roused her. Ailie called them to the field. It shivered in the little wind; the dazed corn shook, it dazzled. To the east, the sky was sultry dark. They drank and hastened.

As Kit went to field, he met Nick Scarrow loitering by a stook: a burnt man, blue-eyed. He held a reaping-hook and smiled. "Word's out ont road," he said. "Thy Lunish piece. Wilt keep her when she's dropped yon brat? I's a mind to chaffer."

"Crows eat thee," said Kit.

"Crows gat me," said Nick, and slouched off.

Kit slashed with a fury at the rankest corn. A neck, he thought. A neck. "Come up," called Ailie, so he fell to binding, furthest out. He saw that Thea went among the women, safe enough. The work unknotted him, it combed. The women called and answered at their reaping, keeping measure.

Wha knocks at stone?

Poor Peg alone.

What's poor Peg lack?

A rag t' her back.

For salt and bread to lay her dead.

And candlelight to gan by night.

And what's she beg?

A shroud to lap poor Tom.

Poor Peg.

They were cutting in a long slow spiral now, coiled inward on the standing corn. They went sunwise.

Here, said the green witch. I am here.

And gone. She ran with a rustling, greenfoot. Slower now. She was heavy with the sun, he'd catch her. Then he took her in his arms. She turned, and she was hoary, spidery with years. A blue-eyed, bearded hag, ca'd Crawcrooks.

Now you can lay me down and love me, said the Witch. If you will.

So he did and he was rooted in her. He was Cloud. His name was Nightless and Bare Bones, Dearbought, Come by Chance. To the east, they called him Babylon, he bowed before the wind as Wiselack, Slobeard, Urchins Hey. To the south, his names were Long Nap, Little Knowe, Leap Hedges; to the west, Sheer Ash, Jack Nackerty, and Nine Tree Crowd; to the north, they reaped Cold Hallows, Hanging Crows, Hobs Graves. The cold wind played on him, the old tune always.

Then the slight moon and the dark of moon, the whitefaced breeding moon, came round him, bound him with their wreaths of straw. Their sickles ringed him like a running wheel. Then all at once, they slashed.

A clip! they cried. A kiss, a clip! He toppled in their arms.

*

"And so they ate thee," said Whin. "All but bit t' wren had, and there's an end."

"No," said Kit, smiling. "They did but taste." Kisses and a crown of poppies. Hurts and cream. A sweet mouth, blue with berrying; a shrewd mouth, taking sweets. And Ailie's warmest of them all and fierce, the brooding of a merlin's breast. Then he clouded. "No, 'twas Thea that the moon ate."

*

Autumn. Moving on. No work. The purple of the moors had gone from froth of jam to fleasblood, then from bruise to black; the trees, from blaze to ruin. Rimefrost on the swiddened heath took place of gossamers. The bracken and the bents were smithwork, smoldering in mist, and glinting, brazen in the strike of sun. And barren. While Kit could, he'd gathered haws, hips, brambles, sloes and rowans. Bags of nuts, his pockets full and Thea's apron. And one October afternoon, he'd found a milky way of mushrumps, penny buns, spilled out amid the leaves. They'd had a bit of mutton fat, just then. A feast. Their meal was long since giving out, their poke thin-flanked and dusty. It was poaching now. Hares, moorhens. Snared and spatchcocked. Aye, he'd looked at sheep, dared not. Not yet. He dared not hang and leave her.

Then it came to thieving. Which he did repent; yet cared not. Scant enough scourings up here on Ask Moor. Back of beyond. A wary and a sken-eyed folk, who cracked doors on long noses, clapped shut. High barred windows, hurtling dogs on chains. He'd eyed geese, but got none. Filched trifles. Neeps and kindling and blue milk. Odd stockings. A smock for Thea, that he'd had to crack, left cat-iced in a drying yard. Handfuls of oatmeal. Eggs left for hobs.

Thin beggary and thinner shoes. More eyes, more spies, more calling crows. More canting fellows on the road who turned and stared and mocked. Their bold-eyed trulls, who called at Thea, crying out, Brave rags with us. And hiring for thy hobby-horse. And then a broadside flapping at a crossroads: Lunish runagates, it said. A kitfox and her cull. So they'd left the high road for the hags and thickets, laying up on the moors, in folds rough-thatched with heather, ruined barns. And moving on.

Thea had changed: all bones and belly, swollen fingers. Swollen buds, yet flagging, fretted and embrowned. A side tooth lost with knitting bones. Younger and older both, she seemed: a crone who danced her poppet on her knee and lulled it, and a wizened imp. Great belly and her scabby knees, her cracked and bluenailed hands. Nor mortal, neither, but a changeling, with that pinched white face, that goblin's shock of hair. Yet her bonefast beauty stayed.

She was -- not happy, no. Ecstatic. Danced like chestnuts on a shovel. Slept scarce at all. Since harvest, so he'd thought her sunstruck. Moonsick then. Now still, now restless as a cat in pattens, to and fro. Thrang as Throp's wife, and at nothing, all hours of the sun and moon. Waking and working. So she called it, her work. Poor lass. As good brew ale in eggshells.

"Is't witchcraft?" he had asked.

"Riddles," Thea said.

He saw her, crouching in her ragged smock, intent on patterning. Ah, hallows on us, but she'd made some wondrous things. All fleeting, left behind to wind, rain, earth, as soon as made. Unharvested, unheld. She scattered.

Sticks, stalks, leaves and stones. A living hazel branch, lapped all in poppy petals, blood and branching. Leaves picked and shaded in a long streak on the earth: from green through fire to dead black; from ashes to greenwhite. Twigs in a round rattle. Labyrinths of leaves, bark, foxfire punk; or drawn in rime. Spirals of cracked pebbles, scratched white with another. Cubbies of sticks. Snailings and green horns of leaves, or burnished brown as copper: stitched with thorns and plaited in one endless coil and spiral, nestled in the earth. Leaves laid round nothing, bright and brighter toward the O. The same, with pebbles, white and whiter round abyss or origin.

One day he'd found her wading in a beck for more smooth stones, her apron full. In frost. Wet through and blue and shivering. And would not come with him until he'd waded in.

A night and day spent weaving stalks, an airy web of them, infilling all the crook and curving of a great low bough.

And in brief snow, a ball of it, built round and pierced by sharp small living wood. A ball that rolled its own maze, green laid bare; that rounded on its journeying.

O ever and alas, my Thea. O my dearest girl, my love.

Stark mad.

*

Ah, Margaret, I did make new heavens of the earth. Cast out of that cold sky in which my lucid soul was stringed, I did undo myself, redo: not Thea of the braided hair, but tangly Thea, tattery Thea, Thea of the grubby knees who crouched and plaited in a tinker's petticoats. I was inventing a new magic, for the old was lost with my virginity, with my immortal maidenhead. Oh, I was changing, changing fearfully; yet rounding with thy whiteheart self was Thea: we were sisters, twinned like cherries on a stalk.

O that was ragged bliss, that autumn. What I put my hand to, twisted of itself. Beyond astonishment, I did and did. Would lie but barely in the white of dawn. Wake new-inspired. Rise and work, outdoing what outdid the last, and of that latest making least again, transcending old with new. O Margaret, had I but lived, I would have lived so still: that whirling joy, that weaving steady hand.

Carriwitchets, Kit would say.

He'd come and go and bring his hard-won sticks of firing, his stock of provender, prigged rags; would sit and watch. Would coax me, bid me eat or sleep. I felt him sometimes at my shoulder: awed, exasperated, fearful. Dawning with delight. He kept the horn of leaves until it crumbled into dust.

I worked in what I had to hand, could gather. Sticks, stalks, leaves and stones. All found, unbound and scattering after. I was profligate as frost, as fern. As autumn, lavish, that does set a tree, a wood of trees, ablaze: a thousand thousand tongues to speak one word. As curious as nature's self, whose rarest work is secretest, embow'ring stars within bright clouds of stars, and seed in seed.

It was the raspberries began it.

In that cup of imbers did I spell thy blood: nine drops that would unbind my lady's will of thee. Set time going in her very stronghold. Yet I made no breach for thee in her shrewd hedge, but set a riddle for thyself alone. I would not have thee ride another's soul away. Walk barefoot, bloodfoot, if needs must: not use another creature, no, not Morag's dog, as I did Kit.

For the rest, 'twas winding spells, thyself thy clew. End and journeying and end, all rounded in a ball. Thine A and O.

Yet was I naked to the sky. I had no studied craft, no witchery, against my mother's furies, that would fall and rend. No roof.

In weaving of the garland, I had whispered secrets with that seely witch, that green unhallowed Malykorne. No hallows until hallows, she had said. As she, so I would be unhoused until her sister waked and hunted. Annis. If I could but win to Hallows --

So it came to stones. I strove, as Kit did, only to go on, to live and keep us until then. I had a garnet ring to stand for thee, that was a child's. I wish thou couldst have had it. Eight stones clustering about a ninth, a knot of seeds of blood. Much like the pomegranate I once found, that split and spilt within my hand. The riddle ring for Kit. And for myself, a ring like rain on gossamer, like cobwebs bright with dew. Nine Weaving. With my absence in't, the stone of Perseis I'd lost. Not wandering, but a falling star: astonishing and gone.

*

Her rings were woven in her fantasies. Her trash. One slid along a blade of grass, a smal