Sorrow’s Knot (9 page)

“Ch’hhh …” Cricket whispered. Otter turned and saw, beyond the open curtain, many wide eyes catching the light, many small faces.

“The binder will stop it,” said Cricket, his voice pitched strong. “This is so: Willow is the greatest binder in many generations, the greatest among the Shadowed People, the greatest since Mad Spider, who once stood on a rock in the river and made a ward of no more than raspberry canes, and in that place held back the dead for three days. The binder will stop it. Willow will stop it.”

Willow had called it. Willow had made it.

But the sureness and steadiness of Cricket’s words made it hard to doubt him. It was as if he knew the story already. He was holding thirty people together with the barest skein of words.

Otter was amazed that she had ever thought him powerless.

Outside, there came a moaning like the sound of wind across a smokehole, and a distant shuddering sound that might have been a wolf. They both looked at the black stirring curtain. They might lift it, to see if Willow had fallen, to see if Kestrel had fallen. To see if, right outside, the One with White Hands stood reaching.

They did not.

“Master Story,” said Otter, trying to match his certainty, “go back to the fire. Take care of us. I will ward this door.”

He covered his eyes, formal and strong. Then he bent and kissed her, just at the hairline. “Lady Binder,” he whispered, his breath warm and stirring. “Be careful.”

He handed her the light. He went.

The inner curtain shivered closed.

So. Between curtain and curtain, between firelight and fear, between childhood and womanhood, Otter cast her first ward.

She did not know how, not properly. She had no belt, no status. She had learned things from Kestrel, and from Fawn, both in haste, both in secret. She knew nothing well.

But though she didn’t have knowledge, she had power.

Power had grown inside her that year, the year in which she should have become a woman. She had not taken a belt, but it had grown all the same. It had grown restless. Like a stomach with no food, it might have made her sour, made her frightened. It hadn’t — she’d fought that. But it had grown, and it was ready now. It leapt into her hands, into her heart.

The tunnel was low, and the peeling logs had plenty of rough bits where a twine could be attached. She drew the cords through her hands and felt as if she were drawing them from inside her own body, as spiders do. She made the line cross itself one, two, three times: the cradle. She added new strands to bend and transform it, to hold the power of the knots suspended like a wall in the air.

A ward. By fear and by pride, by instinct, in near darkness, between the children of Westmost and the outer door, Otter cast a first ward.

And her power carved its channel into her, straight and deep, from the heart to the hand, like a streambed. Like a scar.

When Otter lifted the inner curtain again she saw the faces of the men watching. She knew they saw her silhouetted against her own ward like a spider on a web, but they said nothing.

What the women would do, when they found someone with no status had cast a ward, Otter did not know. It would not be nothing. She staggered at the thought. She staggered, the power draining out of her. Cricket stood up, wrapping her against his body. One of the children started to cry. “Easy,” said the storyteller. “Rest and easy.”

He settled Otter on the bench by the fire.

She was startled that the others had kept the bench open for her. As if she had status. As if she had power.

She did have power.

Cricket sat beside her.

Some of the smaller children were asleep, all piled on one platform, tangled up like puppies. The older ones were playing string games, in tight and wary silence. “Once,” said Cricket, as if to begin a story — and then broke off as Otter leaned on him. Power was still draining out of her. She wasn’t sure how much she could lose, and live. “Oh,” he whispered to her, his hand slipping around her back as she put her head in the soft hollow under his shoulder. “Oh, Otter.”

What would the pinch do when they saw her ward?

They might kill her, send her walking down the frozen river into the West, under the eyes of all the dead. But she hoped they would see her ward. She wanted them to see it. She wanted them to know her. And she wanted them to live.

Otter would not have thought she could sleep. Not in the thick air of the binder’s lodge, not in the waiting, not in the listening to the sounds from the curtain and the smokehole: distant babble, a single scream.

But she did sleep, leaning onto Cricket’s side. She was, after all, only a child. She had cast, by herself, a powerful ward. She slept.

And meanwhile, the women of Westmost stood through the night, against the thing that was the root of all their fear.

Only one of them fell.

Otter woke. The smokehole showed sky the color of still and shadowed water: earliest dawn. Someone had lifted her onto a sleeping platform and tucked robes around her. It was warm under the soft sheered fur of the buffalo robes, and everything seemed like a dream.

But by the doorway, the other children had gathered, and some of them were weeping. And outside, many voices sounded like bees. Otter got up and stumbled over. The others fell back from her as if in fear.

Both curtains stood open. Down the door tunnel, the dawn air stood like a square of tarnished silver. The cords of her first ward were like strands of darkness against it. And into it, suddenly, a dark shape shifted. Otter went still with fear, her eyes searching out the shadow’s hands. But they were dark like the rest of it, and they held a spear of darkness: a ranger’s staff. A ranger. Otter went into the tunnel, until she could see the face.

It was Kestrel.

“Kestrel,” said Otter. She had an instant’s pure relief, pure joy: Kestrel was still standing. But the young ranger was bleak-faced, drawn in the dim light. Before she knew what she was asking, Otter said: “… My mother?”

Kestrel swallowed, tried to speak.

Cricket came up behind Otter. “
Okishae
—” There was a softness in that voice, a warmth that could melt ice. The storyteller reached past her, as if to put a hand through the cords and touch her face.

“Don’t!” Kestrel brought her staff up fast. “Don’t touch the ward.” Carefully, she touched her staff tip to a central knot, which shifted as fast as a spider springing and wrapped the wood in a snarl.

Otter tilted away. She felt Cricket’s warmth against her back.

Kestrel withdrew her staff, shaken.

“A binder should undo her own work.” The voice was hard and seemed to come from nowhere. Otter turned her head, but pointlessly: She could see only the close walls of the door tunnel. Then Thistle slid sideways into the door frame. So narrow was the view from the tunnel that it was as if the ranger captain had appeared from the sky.

Otter shifted back before she could stop herself — then checked and drew herself up very tall. “Master Thistle,” she said.

Thistle looked over the blue ward with flint-dark eyes. “I think you cast this,” she said to Otter.

Otter was silent a moment. What would they do to her, the binder who was not a binder?

Cricket put a hand on her back, strengthening.

“Speak,” said Thistle.

Otter spoke: “I cast this ward.”

“Can you undo it?”

Otter had not thought about undoing. She had tied her mother’s knots, in fear and in wild power, in dream and instinct. Now that she was not caught in fear, she knew that undoing a ward was a binder’s hardest task. She had not the first idea how to go about it.

Willow had undone cords with a touch. But Willow was becoming something different: an unbinder. That was not a path Otter could follow. Not one she wanted to.

If the ward were a string figure, one would start with that third twist, and lift — She raised her hand toward the place, to try it.

The ward pulsed.

She froze. The ward sniffed toward her and suddenly she was clench-jawed, trembling, ready to topple forward into the ward, into the shadows, as if pulled by a rope of her own power.

But she had to undo it: She had at least to try.

She slipped one hand into place where the strands crossed.

Otter’s fingers were suddenly tangled in yarn. The knots flexed open like tiny mouths and bit. Otter shouted with pain. The knots were like leeches, working their way to the soft places between her fingers, drawing power from her. It went rushing out and left her feeling as if she had stood up too fast. She felt sleepy, she felt stupid.

“Otter!” Kestrel shouted. Cricket wrapped an arm around her waist as if to pull her back.

“Wait —” Otter said, her teeth rattling. If he pulled her now, she might leave her hand behind. She —

If the ward were a string figure, then the finger trapped at that crossing could be freed: tuck, turn, under, pull.

Something was pouring out of her into the ward, something as irreplaceable as blood. The world dimmed. Tuck, turn. Under.

Pull.

Otter sagged backward against Cricket, who caught her, stumbling backward.

“Then you cannot undo it,” said Thistle.

“I cannot,” said Otter thickly.

Her ward, her power. The moon-count of children behind her. Were they trapped?

They were trapped.

“Fetch me Fawn,” said Thistle.

Otter lifted her head.

Fawn. Not Willow. Fawn.

Kestrel looked at Thistle, at Otter and Cricket, back at Thistle. She went.

Kestrel had choked on her words earlier, when Otter had asked for her mother. Words broke out of Otter now: “What happened?”

“It can wait,” said Thistle.

“It can’t,” said Otter. Thistle’s staff was lifted, ready in her hand. What kind of woman did not rest the butt of her staff on the ground in such a moment? Otter was unreasonably irritated by that. “Willow —”

“Master Thistle,” said Cricket, soft and strong, behind her.

“Rangers’ business, Lord Story,” said Thistle, making it sound like a very minor title. “Binders’ business.”

Cricket said: “It is her mother.”

“And it is my daughter! Do you think that means nothing to —” Thistle stopped. Her voice dropped into a frightening softness. “Should I say this to my granddaughter with a wild ward between us, and no one to hold her? Should I send dark news into darkness?”

“I’ll hold her,” said Cricket.

But Thistle stepped sideways and vanished.

Otter could not hear Thistle move. She might be three steps away. She might be gone. The doorway, brighter now behind the dark slashes of the ward, stood empty.

Silence.

“Dead,” Otter whispered. “She’s dead.”

Cricket held her from behind, and didn’t answer.

And Otter realized: “Dead is the best of the things she could be.”

She felt Cricket breathe deep, his chest pushing against her back. “Yes,” he said.

Fawn came.

Otter and Cricket watched her come across snow, the ice of the river shining behind her. She looked so small, as if the weight of the buffalo coat might crush her. She looked, more than she ever had, like a child barely into her sunflower years, a girl not half a moon-count old. But she walked like an old woman. Like someone ready to fall.

She came closer and closer, and stopped almost in reach. Otter’s view of her face was streaked like shattered ice by the dark strands of the ward.

Fawn lifted a hand and spread her fingers.

Otter lifted her hand too, as if they might meet palm to palm, like to like. But an arrow’s length of charged air stood between them, and neither of them touched the wild ward.

“My mother?” said Otter. She braced her whole body against whatever Fawn would say next. She could hardly breathe, waiting to hear.

But Fawn only said: “I am … not sure.”

“Is she dead?” said Otter.

“No.”

“Touched?”

Otter felt Cricket’s body tighten behind her.

“She went out to it,” said Fawn. And for a moment, nothing more.

“To the White Hand,” said Cricket the storyteller, coaxing. “She went out to the White Hand….”

“She walked out down the ice,” said Fawn. “I went behind her, and Master Thistle, and two of the rangers — Kestrel and another. The others were too …”

“They were frightened,” said Cricket. “And you were frightened.”

“It was — it was made of something like ants boiling, ants swarming out of a nest. But it had human hands. White Hands.”

“She went out to it,” said Cricket.

“She called to it,” said Fawn. “She called it Hare — and then Tamarack. And then Mother.”

Hare was from the story; Hare, mother of Mad Spider.

“She had a cradle-star lifted,” said Fawn. “You have never seen such a casting, Otter — the thing, the dead thing, it was pushed back, just by the lifting of the strings. The strings were a staff-length from it, but they made lines in the stuff of it. Lines like a spoon through porridge. It shrank back and I thought — we all thought —”

“You thought you were saved. Saved by the power of Willow, the greatest binder of the age.” Cricket, drawing out the words, making it a story. Cricket the storyteller, who knew the next word was
but
.

Because Cricket was telling it, Otter knew that too. She whispered: “What happened?”

Fawn laughed, then, shrill like a blackbird scolding, an un-funny, hysterical noise. “She slipped!” The little binder swallowed. “She just slipped, Otter. It was icy and she slipped. She fell down and it helped her get up. It took her hand.”

For one drumbeat, Otter was not horrified. It was so normal. So human. It helped her get up. It took her hand.

It took her hand.

The White Hand had touched her mother.

“Where is she now?” said Cricket.

“With the Lady Boneset, and a brace of rangers.” Fawn looked over her shoulder. “She may lose the arm.”

Otter felt Cricket take a jerking breath. The memory of his own pain, she thought. But what he said was: “Would that help?”

Otter felt a jolt of horror and hope: The poison of the White Hand, that went to the mind — did it start in the body? Could its spread be stopped with something as simple as the blow of an axe?

“It is not so, in the stories,” said Cricket. “But perhaps it has never been tried.”

The three of them stood for a moment in silence, with the ward between them.

In the lodge behind her, Otter could hear the shifting of people trying to be quiet, and the small voices — sharp as fox kits — of the ones who were too young to try. There was a fox-ish smell too: The night pots were full, and someone had dug a hole in the floor for a latrine, but there were thirty people in the lodge. No water anymore, little enough food. They would not last long.

Her mother was dying or transforming into one of the dead. Otter kept picturing the rangers holding her arm straight, the axe coming down. But what she said was: “We need to bring down this ward.”

And Fawn said: “Yes.”

One of the babies went
huh-a-huh-a-huh
and then started to cry.

“I don’t know how,” said Otter. She reached toward the ward and again saw its pulse, felt its pull. “I should not have cast it.”

“We came very near to needing it,” whispered Fawn.

And Otter realized she did not know what had happened after the binder fell. Had the White Hand … Had the slip, the gast …

But the pinch was standing. The dead must have been unmade, or at least driven back. She looked again at Fawn, whose face was tight and smudged with fatigue, and decided not to ask for the story.

The little binder lifted her hands again, reaching and stooping as she followed the central lines of the ward with her fingers — not quite touching it. The cords twitched and trembled.

The lodge behind then was breath-warm, breath-damp, and it seemed to breathe out of the open doorway: A little wind came from inside and turned to cold, glittering mist around Fawn’s fur boot tops and careful fingers.

Otter watched the slow tracing. She felt it, almost, as if the sweeping hands were moving through the fine hairs of her skin, not quite touching her, leaving her shivering.

“There is no weak place in this,” said Fawn. “And no navel, either: no knot through which all the power must come.”

She did not say quite what she meant, but Cricket guessed at it: “You mean there is no way to bring it down.”

“We must bring it down.” Fawn met Otter’s eyes. “I mean it will not be easy.”

She lifted her hand to within a tremble of one of the knots. “We will start here,” she said. “Will you help me?”

“I’m not a binder,” said Otter. For once, she felt no bitterness, no loss as she said it. It was a warning.

Fawn took it in that spirit: “I know. But it is your ward, and I will not be able to control it.”

Control it. From nowhere Otter again saw her mother’s arm held down, and the axe swinging. And in another flash she remembered her mother leaning forward at the welcoming fire, entangling Fawn’s fingers in knots, her hiss:
You know that this will kill you.