Sorrow’s Knot (23 page)

“What?” Kestrel and Orca spoke together, a voice in each of her ears. Otter fought down the dizziness.

“It’s lonely; it’s trapped,” she said. “We have to let it go.”

“It speaks to you,” Orca whispered. That a Hand should speak was impossible. But there was no doubt at all in Orca’s voice.

“Let it go,” said Kestrel. “You mean unmake it?”

Did she? Otter shook her head to clear it and tried to keep her hands steady. A tremor was beginning, running in shudders from her shoulders to her wrists. “Unmake it,” she said.

Otter could hear Orca struggle with his drum, his fingerpads striking here and there, looking for a spot that would still sing. “How do we do this thing, this unmaking?”

“We must wrap a cord around the Hand,” said Kestrel. “There is a knot that Otter can tie — and then, pull the noose closed.”

“There is cord at my left hip,” said Otter.

“
Tveh
,” swore Orca. “Sooner I would rope a grizzly.” But she heard the shuffling behind her, and then felt the tug as the pouch at her hip was opened. There was binder’s cord in there: four or five pole-lengths, coiled tight and well, ready to unwind. It must have been Orca who took out the cord: The world seemed very silent without his drum. She could feel all three of them breathing, harsh as deer blowing.

“There is no room for such work,” said Orca.

This was true. In their panic, they had backed the way they’d come, into the mouth of the wash. They stood now in a little bowl of stones, with cliff faces all around them — the cut of the wash behind, the slot of the way to the beach in front. It had been long since the rain stopped, and the water was only trickling now, running in little channels that looped together like the veins in a wrist. It was clearly not enough water to stop the White Hand. It had followed them as far as the slot. It was a small slot, narrow as a door. The White Hand filled it, like the buffalo trying to enter the earthlodge in the Red Fox story. Like a wolf scrabbling at the entrance of a rabbit burrow.

There was no way to get a loop around it. No gap between it and the rock wall.

Otter could feel Orca at her back, tall and strange. Kestrel at her side, like the sun.

“Let it in,” she whispered, and stepped backward, as if in welcome.

Like mud between the toes, the dark stuff of the White Hand squeezed through the gap, and into the pool of stones.

For no longer than it would take one leaf to burn, they all stood frozen. The three living people made an arrowhead, with Otter and her cords at its point. The dark thing had seeped in feetfirst, and then bent itself three times, like the leg of a spider, and twitched its way through the gap. It put its hand above its head and grasped an outcropping, as anyone might do when ducking under a doorway. That gesture was the only human thing about it. The gesture, and the hand, white as birch bark, but human. A White Hand.

“Mad Spider.” Otter said the name without meaning to, without thinking. She said it breath-soft. But behind her the name came back as a larger, warmer sound: one drumbeat.

In that drumbeat, the White Hand paused.

“Spider.” Orca’s voice. He added to it a long hiss, rubbing his hand over the drumhead. And then he started to play, very slow and very soft, a two-beat of edge sound and center sound: a heartbeat. The White Hand seemed to breathe in time to it, to pause there, caught in its human gesture, listening. Orca turned the drumbeat into a name: “Spider, Spider,” he murmured.

Little echoes fluttered back from the stone walls like butterflies.

Otter’s breath was slowing toward the drum. The star spread across her fingers pulsed to the beat. She folded it away. Still the Hand stood, listening. Moving slowly, as if trying not to startle a rabbit, Otter turned to take the cord from Orca.

The cord was looped around the hand that was holding the drum. It was delicate work, freeing the cord from Orca’s hand without disturbing his grip. They had to do it finger by finger, without speaking, because Orca was still murmuring the single word of his song.

Spider, Spider.

Little Spider, before she was Mad.

Otter found herself looking into Orca’s eyes. She had not noticed before — it had been hidden by the more obvious strangeness of his tattoos — but his eyes were a different shape than any eyes she had ever seen before. They were wide and tight with fear, but there was something deep in them — something for her. A softness. A smile.

She pulled the cord free from his pinkie, and turned.

The spider leg that was the White Hand unfolded. The joints straightened until it was standing narrow as a lodgepole, tall as the cliff. Its white, perfect hands were at eye level, a spear’s length away. The edge that faced Otter was sharp, like a flint knife. It did not have eyes, but she could feel the tightness of its watching as Kestrel took one end of the cord from her hand. It leaned toward them, over them. Otter remembered the other Hand, in the place where Cricket had died. It had reared up like a scorpion’s sting. Orca did not step back; he struck the drum faster, deeper.

The drum seemed to pull words out of Otter. “Little Spider,” she said, “what are you weaving?”

Kestrel, the cord end in one hand, edged forward — and like a snake the White Hand snapped around, turning its blade edge toward her. Kestrel froze. The drum faltered.

Orca struck the drum harder: a hard, sure sound, and caught again the heartbeat rhythm, faster than before. It swung up through Otter. A story. A story.

Orca’s drum. The pattern of his voice, that was like Cricket’s voice. All at once the words came back to her, the secret story that Cricket had told her. The story Cricket had died to tell her.

She told it.

“The first Hand was made in Eyrie, in the days before the moons were named,” said Otter, and her cadence was pure Cricket. “Always there have been the dead, and always the shadows have been hungry, but this was new. Little Spider knew the little dead. She had knotted them away from her home; she had knotted them out of the world. But never before had one beckoned to her. Never before had she seen One with White Hands. One that once had a name, though the name was done with the world. One that had once been her mother.”

The impossibly tall, impossibly thin form of the White Hand seemed to shrink, gather itself into something smaller and rounder. It was caught between the twin pulses of Otter’s voice and Orca’s drum. It was held and poured into a shape that was almost human: a human shadow with no human to cast it. When Otter stopped telling, the edges of that shadow wavered, spreading toward them like a puddle. Kestrel turned side-on to the thing, the cord ready in her hand, her weight coming onto her back foot. She was ready to spring, to rush past the Hand and around it and wrap it in the cord, though surely she would never do it without being touched. She was ready. As Kestrel shifted her weight, Orca lifted his drum. He struck the heart of it with stiffened fingers, and the many voices of the drum rang out at once. He tapped loose the edge voice, and started the heartbeat rhythm, coaxing something dark and fast from the moon-bright skin.

They were ready, Otter realized. Kestrel and Orca. She had asked them to unmake the thing and they would. But the space was too small. The White Hand was going to touch them. They were going to die.

She’d been silent too long. The Hand was stirring, tightening, oozing upward. Otter could hear Orca’s ragged breathing grow harsher as he tried to find his own voice, tried to speak. But he did not know this story. Cricket’s story. The secret story.

The story of where the White Hands come from. “And she called to it,” said Otter. “She said: ‘Mother.’” At that word, Otter’s own voice cracked. “She said, ‘Mother! Why are you up a tree in the moonlight? Why are you in the living world?’”

The Hand was reaching for her. It looked — lost. Like a child who wanted someone to hold her hand.

“She was there because you bound her,” said Otter. “You did this.
I did this.
I bound my mother.”

Orca’s drum swelled up under her. Kestrel’s heat was steady at her side. They made her strong. Strong enough to make a plan. A way to save Kestrel and Orca. A way to find the truth.

“There was once a binder,” she said, not stopping to think what she was saying, “the greatest of the age. The greatest since Mad Spider. There was once a binder named Willow. She made a ward, as Mad Spider taught us. And like Mad Spider, she was touched —” And suddenly the story came apart around her. “But even before that. Even before that, she knew:
There is something wrong with the knots.
”

The last sentence broke out of her, fast and strange. Like a lightning crack that makes the rain pour, it broke her open, and suddenly she was crying and words were pouring out of her. She held up the cord end in her hand. The knot of undoing was there, half-made. “You started this,” she said to the Hand. “I started this. We bound them too tightly. Too tightly! How do we let them go?” She dropped the cord and stepped forward, her hands outstretched.

“Otter!” Kestrel shouted.

Otter gave her one glance, and Kestrel’s eyes widened, shocked as if she’d been struck by an arrow.

“Both of you,” said Otter. “Run.”

And she stepped forward into the embrace of the White Hand.

Otter sat huddled up on the stone beach. She sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, her coat tucked up. She sat all night. The moon came up late, a half moon, looking as if someone had sliced it in two. The air — except where it blew now and then off the steaming lake — was cold. But it had lost the power to make her cold. She was as cold as she could ever be.

Touched. The White Hand had touched her. She had let it. She had taken both its hands. It had embraced her; its hands on her back. It had run its hands through her hair.

And then — Otter had wrapped the Hand in the noose of sorrow’s knot like a mother giving a daughter her first belt. She had pulled it to her, and for a moment they had been one thing, and it had been — grateful. It had left the world. Grateful.

Left Otter behind.

And now she sat, a stone among the round stones. Across the lake a fire burned, like a piece of sunrise. But on and on the night went, and sunrise didn’t come.

That fire. Her friends.

They would never have left her. She understood, dimly, that she had thought that. Together, the three of them might have been able to wrap the White Hand in the cord of its unmaking, but the space had been so small … they would all have had to be in reach of it. It would have touched them all.

They would not have left her. Not unless they had no hope for her. In taking the hand of White Hand, she had closed their hope — and opened a door, so that they could run.

And they did run. Kestrel. Orca. One of them had dragged the other, shouting, screaming her name — which? Otter could not remember. One seemed as unlikely as the other. Kestrel would not have run. Orca would not have screamed.

She had saved them.

She was turning white. She was very cold.

But it did not hurt. She had expected it to hurt. She’d seen Cricket collapse into the corn hills as if ripped open. She’d seen Fawn die unable even to scream. But it hadn’t hurt. It was just — nothing. It was like breathing in nothing instead of air. Like getting nothing instead of love. That wasn’t pain. Not exactly.

Fawn — she hadn’t been touched by the dead, she’d been caught in a ward. But that was the same, thought Otter. The White Hands, the cords. Two strings in one knot. The same.

And it didn’t hurt. Not exactly.

She sat so still that a pair of ravens wandered over to discuss her. She thought they were slip, that she would die like Cricket. But she didn’t move.

After a while, one of the ravens hopped up onto her lap and tilted its dark head sideways. Its bright eye met her eye. It made a disgruntled
caw
, then lifted on heavy wings. The other paused, followed.

The night went on.

“Otter?” It was dawn; pink and gold light flooded over her. “Otter? Can you hear me?” The voice that came to her was ragged and rich, like a pocket-shell rubbed so long that a hole had formed in it.

“
Tveh
,” said the voice. “Stand up, can you?” Hands lifted her. Standing, her feet were so numb that it was as if she floated away from the world.

“Are you hurt? Otter?” The boy was holding her up. She did not know his voice. She did not even know the word he spoke:
Otter.
What she knew was the smell. The salt smell that clung to his gear. The oil he rubbed into his boots that was scented with unfamiliar herbs. The thong that held the beads and shells around his neck was made of something fragrant, something buffalo-calf brown, a cord of —

“What is this?” she asked. She reached for the cord.

She saw his throat tense: the muscles bunching, the chin tilting up as he reared away from her.

Then he schooled himself still. His chin stayed lifted. His neck was tight. She could see the life in it, the pulse. The cord lay over that soft pulse, quivering. She reached. Her hands were still brown on their backs, but her palms were dead white. The throat beneath the cord was trembling and still, allowing the touch.

The cord. It was made of something coarse — long strands of something, spun into cordage and then plaited: five strands. Intricately plaited. She knew cords and this was no cord she knew. This was a place far away.

She pushed her thumb against the pulsing skin where the cord twitched. It was alive: It pulsed, it struggled. She pushed harder. The boy that wore the cord held his ground, but his breath came raggedly. “Otter …” he said, pleading.

That word again: Otter. She reached after the meaning of it, and as she reached, some power moved in her, and the knot of the cord slipped loose. The necklace came away in her hand, and red beads and silver shells fell into stones at her feet. She held up the thong, empty now, moving slightly in her hand, as if it wished to unplait itself. “What is this made of?” she said again.

“Cedar,” said the boy. “Cedar bark. A kind of tree.”

The world is larger …
A voice in her head. A voice that did not belong to something hopeless, something lost.

The world is larger. He comes from the West. There are no White Hands there. The world is larger than we knew, and an end to this is possible.

She took the thong, one end in each hand, and leaned close so that she could give it back, knotting it at the nape of the boy’s neck. His hair was short as an animal’s. Her arms were around him now. He was shaking. The arms he closed around her were shaking.

“Orca,” she said, smelling him, remembering him. “Orca. Help me. Please.”

He pulled a little distance from her, and touched her face. “We do help you. Look —” He pointed across the water, which was shining like a sheet of mica in the early light. “Kestrel makes a fire.”

Otter looked at the bright water. She could not cross it. It was … not repellant, merely impossible, as if she’d been asked to walk on the sky. She had a Hand inside her now. She was trapped on this island, as she had been for so long, years beyond moon-count, beyond almost the count of the stars.

Her voice did not know how to say it. “I can’t —” She gestured at the water, helplessly. At the water, at the whole world. There was a White Hand growing inside her. She would not be able to stay in this shining world.

Orca did not seem to understand that. He answered her very simply, as if it were the smallest thing: “I will help you.”

“No one can help me.”

“I can,” he insisted. “I am an ocean child. I can take a kayak across a riptide. Once I caught a young seal with my bare hands — still I have the scar from its mother! Come: I will take you to your friend.”

Orca took her across the water.

Otter had had no idea what it meant to be an ocean child, but apparently it meant this — that Orca could swim on his back while holding her close to his body, one arm wrapped around her.

In the water, her body felt both limp and stiff. She half-floated, as a corpse would. She did not struggle. Water sloshed and slopped into her ears, around her face. She could feel Orca’s breathing, his body moving under hers. That stirred something in her — something deep and hungry. The Hand inside her wanted something from that moving body: wanted touch, wanted blood-pulse, wanted skin and name. She herself wanted … something. She opened her mouth and water went into it. Still she did not struggle.

Orca pulled her out of the lake and set her on her feet. For a moment she stood dripping, feeling nothing. Then she started to cough. Water went flying from her mouth, she doubled up. Orca caught her, held her while she coughed out the water. And when she was finished coughing, he scooped her up as a mother might a child, and carried her toward the camp.

It was warded, just barely warded. A single binder’s cord ran between sticks that were thrust roughly into the moss. Orca simply stepped over it. Otter felt it, though: a jerk like the jerk that ends a dream about falling. Beyond the ward, Orca stopped and set Otter down.

Kestrel stood there. The fire behind her was almost a bonfire: It leapt up and gave her wings of flame. Her face was full as a full moon, glowing in the dawn light, her eyes bright with tears. There was the barest hesitation — fear — and then Kestrel reached out and touched Otter’s face, tracing the white handprints that crept fingers-first into her hair. Otter shivered under the soft tracing, and then felt Kestrel fit fingers around one ear. “Otter,” she whispered.

A human touch, a strong one. Kestrel’s touch. Otter leaned.

“Oh, Otter,” Kestrel said. “What must we do?”

They sat Otter on a boulder beside the fire, and she let them do it. The stone under her was cold. The fire in her face was scorching. The sun was up now, but the light was still soft, and the great bowl of the caldera was full of shadows. Otter’s shadow jittered around her in the leaping light. It was as if her shadow were a second skin, mostly numb but catching here and there on a sharp stone, with a little prickle of awareness that was like pain. It was as if her whole body had fallen asleep: Her skin felt larger than it should have, and farther away.

She understood, though it was hard to understand, that the fire was a defense: a light against the ones who feared light, the ones whose skins were shadows. It was not the usual ranger kind of defense; nothing quiet and competent here. It was fear, pure fear. Kestrel’s fingers were tight around her staff. Orca stood with his drum in both hands.

And Otter sat. She wanted to put her face into her hands and weep. But her hands were white and not quite her own. She did not want them to touch her eyes.

She was dying. Worse than dying. The Hand would eat her from the inside out. It would take her mind and self. It would make her into a horror. It was better, it would be better, to die on the end of a knife than to face what was waiting for her.

“We do not need to do it today,” said Kestrel, watching her.

Otter felt her eyes fill with tears. She had three times three days.

“Not today,” said Kestrel, crouching in front of her. She made as if to take Otter’s hand, but hesitated over the fish-white palms. She lifted one finger instead, and brushed the beads of tears from Otter’s eyelashes. She whispered again: “We won’t do it today.”

Watching them, Orca’s eyes crinkled in puzzlement. “Do what?”

Kill me,
Otter thought — even tried to say. But she was so frightened that her throat felt stiff and narrow as a bone flute. Air whistled when she breathed and words would not come out.