Otter felt as if something heavy had struck her without warning. All her life — she’d wanted nothing else, and she’d always assumed … Here is a binder born, they said of her. At her mother’s words, the very fact of her birth seemed to spin away. She was not who she had thought she was: She had not been born. She was no one.
“You will not be a binder,” said Willow. “You are my daughter and I will save you: You will not be a binder. Now. Get out.”
Otter turned and ran.
She went blindly through the ring of earthlodges, dashed across the palm without meeting any of the eyes that turned to her. She went past the gardens, back into the meadow. She almost wanted to scream, but a scream would bring people running — she would have to explain — have to tell, to say the words and make them real and give up everything she’d ever wanted: You will not be a binder. Not a binder.
The grass grew thick before her, and grasshoppers whirled up on all sides, on hissing wings of yellow and brown. The thickness of the grass slowed her headlong bolt. She stumbled, she stopped. Without thinking, she’d come back toward the last place she’d been: the hidden nest Cricket had made in the grass. She did not see Kestrel and Cricket now — did not want to see them. Did not want to have to speak. She didn’t think she could stop herself from sobbing if she had to speak.
She went to the nest in the grass, and she sat down.
She huddled there, hidden. She was so still that a yellow-throat flew in, perched sideways on a grass stem, and twittered around her. She watched the gnats, fine as dust, rise in spirals over the river as the sun went slant.
The shadows had thickened and swung to the east by the time Willow came rustling through the meadow. The aster and goldenrod parted and closed behind her. She was dressed plainly again, her hair braided down her back, her face soft, as if she’d been weeping. “Otter,” she said.
Otter said nothing.
The birds were beginning to stake their evening territories — My tree, my tree, I’m a blue jay! The thk thk thk of a woodpecker rang out of the forest.
“Otter,” said Willow, and sat down. There was a bundle in her arms, tied with an extravagance of yarn: blue-dyed, binder-blessed yarn, the most valuable thing in the world. Willow set the bundle down and put her finger on the knot. It snaked itself open.
The outer wrapping was a buffalo robe, new, the leather side soft. Willow lifted it aside. Inside the bundle was everything Otter owned.
“You cannot come back,” said Willow. “I am so sorry.”
Otter gaped at her.
“I love you,” said Willow softly. She had been weeping. She was beginning to weep again, slowly, as slowly as evening was falling. “Oh, my daughter.”
“Where will I go?” whispered Otter.
“You should go down the river,” said Willow. She tried to catch Otter’s hands. Otter yanked them away. “You should go with the Water Walkers: Go into sunlight; go as far as you can….”
To leave the free women of the forest and become one of the Sunlit People. To leave her mother and her friends and everyone she knew. To leave the work her heart still claimed. To leave Westmost, as if she were no one, as if she were a boy …
No.
Unbidden, Cricket’s words came back to her: There are not enough of us. We must hold on. He’d looked toward the earthlodges from which no smoke rose.
Well, then. Let one of them have smoke again.
Otter picked up the awkward, opened bundle with both hands and walked away, leaving her mother bent double in the grass. Overhead, the swallows swerved from shadow to shadow as the evening rose. Their pipping cries went over them all.
The earthlodge Otter claimed was a small one, left abandoned in an outbreak of blistering fever, four years before. It was near empty: Every basket and blanket, everything that could burn, had been burned. The sleeping platforms looked as bare as scaffolds. The stones around the fire pit were smoke-black and cold. Dust and silence had been sitting together on the fire bench. Together they rose and watched her come in.
Home.
The earthlodge was so empty. The wattle of the walls was almost bare of blessing knots. The ones that were left had become like the egg cases of spiders: shapeless, dry, brown. Otter had nothing beautiful to hang on those sad walls. She had three shirts, one of which — the fine one, made from the skin of a white deer — no longer fit. She had a small box of feathers and beaded thongs for her hair. A corncob that had once been a doll that she was far too old for. A rattle made of a turtle shell that had been hers since she was a baby. Why had her mother not kept that? Surely she must want something of her daughter’s? Had she thrown everything away?
Willow had sent three baskets. They were the best of the baskets Tamarack had made. Tamarack had been good at baskets, had had a deep patience for plaiting them, a sharp mind for seeing what patterns could be made from the tuck and weave of the light and dark rushes. The baskets — one little, one big as a pumpkin, and one bigger even than that — were each different, each beautiful, each tight enough to carry water.
Tamarack, thought Otter. Don’t go.