Sorrow’s Knot (11 page)

For years, Otter had dreamed of the first day her mother would let her tie a binding knot.

She had thought of the summer in which her mother would make a woman’s belt for her. She had thought of the fall fires, where her mother would rub red ocher into the part of her hair and say to the folk of Westmost: “My daughter is a daughter of my cord. Otter, a binder for Westmost.”

She had dreamed of the winter that would follow: They would sit together in the amber-rich silence of the binder’s lodge, Otter and Willow and Tamarack, binders all three. The resinous smell of the glims would wrap them. Otter would learn the knots, and Tamarack would cook a string of dried squashes spiced with meadow garlic and the berries of red cedar. Otter would wear the silver herself someday; she would have a child, a daughter….

“We must dye you a shirt,” said Willow, sudden and stark. “Bloodroot for the dye and saxifrage to fix the red. If someone has the fine leather — brain-tanned — I do not — nine days, it’s too short to make a shirt.”

“Red,” said Otter. Red was used only for the binders’ funeral wear, and for the shrouds of corpses, and the cords that bound them. Otter suddenly wanted nothing to do with the color. “I don’t need a red shirt.”

“True enough,” said Willow softly. “When the time comes, you can wear mine.”

They were alone together in Otter’s lodge, just sitting. Fawn, Westmost’s little binder, was dead. Kestrel and Cricket had gone to carry messages to Thistle, to arrange the bier and the shroud, the escort and the drum.

It surprised Otter: the bustle that followed the great stillness of death.

So Otter and Willow were alone: Otter could see the heartbeat moving under her mother’s skin — it made the white handprint stir and pulse. A White Hand.

Otter just wanted someone to cook them squash.

Nine days, by the story.

Otter had killed someone. And her mother was going to die. “I don’t want your shirt,” she said.

“Oh, Otter,” said Willow, and dropped her head against her hand. “So hard, I tried to keep you from this. But I think we are bound to it. I am going to be bound in a tree and you are going to do it. My daughter, daughter of my cord.”

Otter tipped her head down and was silent.

Willow touched her then, cupped both hands around her face and thumbed the tears off her cheekbones. Ran her bone-white hand through the black shine of her daughter’s hair. “Otter,” she said. “A binder for Westmost.”

Fawn had been a binder. There should have been greater honor for her — all the women of the pinch, gathered in quiet, walking in silence, as they had for Tamarack. But somewhere in the dark woods that hemmed the pinch, the White Hand that had touched Willow was still waiting. No one would pass the ward who did not need to pass it. So Fawn’s procession was just six: Otter and Willow, a drummer, and three rangers — two to bear the bier, and one to stand against the dead.

Flea, the storyteller, had turned her ankle on the day of Tamarack’s binding, so it was Cricket who drummed. Because it was Cricket who drummed, it was Kestrel who came to stand against the dead. The other two rangers were Mink and Apple — twins, three years older than Otter. She did not know them well, and couldn’t easily tell them apart. Their faces were painted in the bearers’ black — their eyes looked very white against that. The long birch poles came out over their shoulders like extra limbs. They hardly looked human.

Cricket bowed his head, took a breath, and bounced his hand against the heart of the big drum. Then softer, with a fist.
Lum, dum
: a low sound. The heartbeat of the world.

They went out.

It was the height of the day. A clear sunlight made a yellow ribbon out of the river. Everything else was shadow, and stirring: Tall pines tossed and the aspens shivered. Otter’s eye was snagged again and again by something in those shadows. When she looked, it was nothing: a blue jay, a boulder, a fallen branch. She could see it better when she didn’t look at it: something big and watching, something gray and waiting.

The White Hand. Somewhere, the White Hand. Otter stumbled on the ice, and her breath came faster. By the time they reached the granite slope up to the scaffolding grounds, she was shaking. It seemed to her that even the drum had sped up. Glancing back, she saw Cricket with his face stiff with fear. He played the drum without faltering.

They climbed the shadowy, rocky slope to the scaffolds. They saw nothing. Everywhere Otter looked was nothing. It seemed to fill up her eyes.

Finally they came to the scaffolds, inside the ward. A red ward: a ward of the dead.

Otter had cast a ward herself, since last she had stood here. She had felt the binding power carve through her, making new paths from heart to hand. Those paths stirred and tightened inside her, as if the cords of the red ward pulled on cords inside her body. Plucking her. Tightening in her, like leather drying.

Beside her, she heard her mother make a sound, an outgoing breath that vibrated like a drum, a huff of pain. She glanced.

Willow’s hair was floating as if the binder were underwater — as if the strands of her hair were cords boiling in a dye pot: restless, roiling. One of the young rangers bearing Fawn’s bier stepped back from her. Otter saw the whole frame lurch, the red bundle on it lurch and roll. It was a very living sort of movement, like a child hiding in a rug.

Cricket played the
pat-pat-pat
of a song ending. A heart stopping.

There was a sudden, thick silence. Otter was almost brought to her knees: the hunger of the ward, the strangeness of her mother’s hair. The two bearers staggered to find their balance. For a tight stretch of heartbeats, no one said anything. There was a gust of wind, wrapping Otter’s hair around her face. Overhead, the scaffolds rubbed against the stirring trees with high moans and a squealing scream.

“Fawn,” said Willow. A sound like a slap in the face. “Fawn!”

It sounded like a summons.

No,
thought Otter,
please no.

But no one moved to touch Willow. The binder’s hair was churning, and her face stark. The V at the neck of her red shirt framed the print of the White Hand. Otter could swear she saw those white-print fingers flutter and clench. No one was going to save Willow.

“Mother,” she said softly. She touched Willow’s elbow.

Willow’s head whipped around like a snake’s.

Otter jerked back — then swallowed her fear. “Mother,” she said, and tried to be gentle, “don’t call her.”

Willow looked at her for a moment, her eyes flat and hard and wide.

“Don’t call her,” said Otter. “We have to let her go.”

“You killed her,” said Willow. “You let her go.”

Otter flinched, swallowed, and said: “Show me how.”

Willow’s eyes, locked on hers, showed white all the way around. But Otter could see her mother in there somewhere. A softness, surfacing. “It’s the ward,” said Willow. “The knots are clawing at me.”

“Show me,” said Otter. “Show me how to bind her.”

“You didn’t want my shirt,” said Willow, her voice soft.

“I do not. But there’s no one else.”

“I did not want this for you,” said Willow. Her fingers tugged at the neckline of her shirt — there was something childish about it, like a child hanging on to the hem of her mother’s garment. “But I will show you. The binder’s secret. Sorrow’s knot.” She reached for Otter’s hands. “Do you have a cord? Here.”

Otter had a cord, of course: the yarn bracelets on her wrist, long sinew cords wrapped up her other arm. She unwound one of those, held it out in two hands.

Her mother’s hands closed over hers a moment, and then she took the cord. “This should be the last thing you learn. But … Watch.”

Otter watched. Willow folded a place in the cord double, making a bight in it, and then the intricate, quick one-two-three of a wrap, a tuck. Her white hand seemed to flash. There was a knot there for a moment, a three-fold thing like a strange kind of heart, and then Willow tugged on both ends of the cord and the loop slipped through the turnings, and the turnings unspun themselves, and the knot was gone.

“Did you see it?” said Willow.

Otter said: “Show me again.”

And Willow did, slowly. One of the rangers holding Fawn’s bier, three steps away, had her eyes closed. The others were turned away, guarding the forest, watching beyond the ward. It was clear that the knot was a deep secret. They would not look. Otter watched the knot, letting her world narrow until it was only the cords crossing. A bend, a wrap that went fast, a tuck …

When she looked up again, she met Cricket’s eyes. They were open and bright. Willow gave him a smile, as if slipping him a sweet.

“Once more,” said Otter.

And Willow did. “Three times,” she said. “That’s right, because there are three wrappings. But this is the real secret, Otter. Sorrow’s knot is not a knot at all. It is a noose. Use it to hold a dead wrist.” She held up hers, white as birch bark. “Or to fix the first cord of the ward to the tree. But, by itself …” She pulled the ends of the cords, and once more the loop ducked into itself, the wraps turned against themselves, the knot flashed and vanished. “A noose with nothing in it pulls open. It is meant to be a release. And yet we use it to bind. Now that I am going mad, I wonder about that.”

Otter looked up at her, startled. Her mother’s smile was sweet, her eyes wide and terrified.

“And now for little Fawn,” said Willow. “A chance to practice.” She turned so fast her coat spun out, whirling. Otter could see the ranger with the poles trying not to flinch away. Willow dropped her coat on the ground and stood there, red as a shroud. She lifted her hands and the red cords wound off her arms. She caught one of them as if catching a snake, holding it by its head and tail. “Come here, Otter.”

Otter’s heart made a little triple beat, like a song’s ending. She breathed in for courage, and went to her mother’s side. Willow started with an ankle. “You may have the wrist,” she murmured, as if offering a pheasant’s drumstick. Otter looked at the little bare foot. Its high arch. Blood pooled purple in the heel. Otter watched her mother make the wrap, the cords biting into the slack flesh. Her ward pressing into Fawn’s throat flashed before her. Willow did the wrap, the pull. The ankle moved, stiff against the one of the poles.

The other ankle. Otter was glad of the shroud, glad that she couldn’t see the form of the legs, which must have been spread. To tie a young woman so, a small woman, to tie her up … It was a terrible thing they were doing. Otter felt that terror run in the new cords inside her body; she felt that terror wrap around her heart.

Willow bared a wrist, pulled it out, held it fixed against the corner of the frame. Willow’s back was against the back of one of the rangers holding the frame. The woman was shaking.
How can she do this?
thought Otter.
How can anyone do this?
“Otter,” said Willow. She sounded impatient, as if calling Otter in for dinner.

I’m dead,
thought Otter.
I must be dead, because no one living could be this frightened.
She looked up and saw her mother’s arm stretched out toward her, the hand white, the bracelets twisting and digging into the skin. She stepped forward and took her mother’s hand.

And then she bound Fawn’s wrist. A loop, three wraps, the twist …

“Yes,” said Willow.

Otter did not want to throw up on the body of her friend. So she walked around the little binder’s body and made the knot again. Then she leapt away, stumbling. Willow stepped back. “Now the words.”

“Fa —” Otter stammered, then made her voice ring. “Fawn. You are done with your name.”

Her mother’s hand was soft on her shoulder. “Your name is done …” she corrected, whispering.

“Fawn, your name is done with this world,” said Otter, looking down at the red bundle, so small. “Hold fast to your name. Follow it from here and do not return.”

I’m a murderer,
she thought.

“Raise her,” barked Willow. And the rangers began the hard work of casting ropes into the trees, raising the new dead to rest among the old. Fawn’s red shroud shone harsh against the black trees, the bare winter sky.