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.