Free Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales by Greer Gilman

had.
    Five sets and six pints later, there was that other lass, at his elbow as he tuned. A brown girl, filching pears and russets; a green chit, all unripe. She'd a brow like a bird's egg, flecked and flawed, and mocking, shrewd grey eyes. “Why d'ye pull those faces, playing?” she'd said. “Toothache?” So he'd had to eat his hunch of Wake-bread, to show her he cared not, and had won a tiny leaden pair of shears, amid the crumbs. A mayfly toy. “They'll serve you for the wars,” she'd said. “With a needle for spear.” Afterward, he'd found a lady apple in his pocket, flawless, with a leaf.
    He'd idled when they'd paid him, talking random, looking sidelong at the door until the girl in green went by. She'd turned at the threshhold, going, with a glance, half mockery and half challenge. Then he'd packed his fiddle up and walked on alone.
    Not drunk. Unbounded, that was it: with darkness after fire, sky for rafters, silence for the stamp of boots, the clatter, and the clack of tongues. Light with love. As light as the Hanged Lad, Jack Orion, setting sidelong in his belt of sparks. Toward dawn, it was. As late as that? Well he defied his master's clock. Kit bowed to the skyclad fiddler, and doffed his hat, calling out, “Measure for measure, lad. Will I outplay thee?"
    He walked on over Hare Law, his head a muddle of tunes, bright lasses, bowls of lambswool. Cross my river to Babylon. His nose sunk in froth. A bright and a dark head glancing up at him, then ducking low to laugh. His russet coat, Tom's old one turned, scarce worn. New buttons to it. ("Here's a flaycrow in a field goes bare,” the brown girl said.) Ginger and marchpane. A leaden shears. The green girl whirling at his bow's end. Out of sight. Ah, still he played her over in his head.
    Had passed the branching in the road long since. By Crowcrag, then, the gainest way. That striding bass. Mall's Maggot. Syllabub and damson cheese. Dull wool bales in the morning—ah, his head. Sand. Goosequills. Figures on a page, untallied. In and out the hey, and couples for another dance. Nine eight and longways. Silver in his pocket, ninepence, that made seven and a bit, near enough for Askwith's Atomie of Starres. For ribands—No, a carven glass. With verses round. A comb. New strings, though, call it six and coppers. All the broken cakes. And at the end of Nine Weaving, how the green girl raised her candle to him, like a sword, and blew it out. An apple with a leaf. And again, the tumbled braid, the coiling hands. But they undid; the long skein fell for him alone, unbraiding like a fugue about her moonwhite body.
    He was on the high ground now, a puzzle of white stones.
    "Lightwood?"
    Whirling round in a blaze of stars, Kit saw no one. His coat-skirts settled; he felt the soft bump of his pocket, crammed with cakes, against his thigh.
    Stars still dancing.
    He'd heard no rider; saw no horse. Yet on the road stood a horseman, spurred and booted: a stranger. Soberclad but richly, like a servant in a great house; yet outlandish. “Master Lightwood. Of Askrigg?"
    "Sir?” When he stood the room spun, candlelight and dancers, whin and stars.
    "I heard you fiddle at yon hobnailed rout."
    "Ah.” Had he seen that back amid the dancers? With the brown girl? With the lightfoot grizzled farmwife? Or with the lass in green?
    "Small recompense among such folk."
    Broken cakes. Lead trinkets. “They've ears."
    "And so my lady has. And jewels to hang in them. She sends to bid you play for her. A wedding."
    "Have you no fiddlers in far Cloud?” This was not going well.
    "None of note."
    Kit stood. Some wind, toward the morning, twangled in his fiddle strings.
    "Nor time to further send. ‘Tis by this next moon. I will bring you.” A glint of silver. “Come, a handfast. To wet the child's head."
    "Thought you said it was a wedding?"
    "All the same."
    "Ah,” said Kit wisely. “'Twas ever thus. Brought to bed, either way.” The stars were fading, paling to the east; he