She put her other hand into the ward, trying to spread the cords.
Otter put her hand in too — and jerked it back. She hadn’t thought about pulling away, she’d just done it, her body snatching itself back as if it had touched fire. For the cords were fire now — they were raw power and raw pain and raw hunger. Their hunger was like the hunger of fire, which cannot be satisfied. Their hunger was like the hunger of the dead.
Fawn had both hands caught. She tottered.
Otter felt Cricket tense behind her, as if to reach into the ward, but he didn’t, couldn’t.
Otter braced herself and put her hand in. It caught fire. She yanked it back, gasped in air, put it in again.
Fawn fell.
She went forward, into the ward.
The weight of her body brought the last few cords down. The jerk of power through Otter’s hand brought her down too, and suddenly she was kneeling, Cricket’s arms wrapping her and pulling her back, and Fawn was in the dirt at her feet.
The little binder was tangled up. It was impossible that the ward, that handful of cords, should hold her. It was like a spider catching a rabbit. Impossible. Grotesque. It should not hold.
It held.
The cords — as Cricket dragged Otter back, the cords pressed into Fawn. Made lines in her like a spoon through soup.
“Let me go,” Otter spat, reaching. “Let me —”
“Don’t touch her,” said Cricket.
“Why?” cried Otter. “It’s my ward, it’s my fault, why —” Why shouldn’t she touch Fawn? Why shouldn’t she throw herself into that fire?
There was one cord across Fawn’s throat, the skin bulging around it. There was another slashing slantwise across her face. It had closed one eye and was snarling itself in her hair, pulling the braids.
The other eye was open.
As Otter struggled in Cricket’s arms, that eye finished widening. It grew blank as the sky.
“Why?” said Otter, pulling desperately at the hands that wrapped her. “Why didn’t you let me go?”
“Because,” said Cricket, softly, in her ear, “you are the only binder we have.”
For a while, Cricket and Otter sat there with Fawn’s body. They didn’t dare to touch it. They had not the heart to move. The children cried behind them, and no one came.
And then: Willow.
She came walking without a coat over the snow. She was wearing her fine blue shirt, her hair was undone, and she walked tall and easy, the white fringe swaying. To Otter, for just a moment, she was only Mother: only love and strength and safety, come to save them.
She was more than that, of course. And they did not know what.
Wordless, Willow knelt in the bright snow, her body a dark shape against the harsh light behind her. She looked at Otter and Cricket. She looked at the body of Fawn.
“Mother,” said Otter. Even in her own ears, her voice sounded broken.
Willow looked up, her face sane and sad. “There is no bottom to sorrow, is there?” she said. “No knot can hold it.”
She touched the cords around Fawn and they first stirred, and then lifted, curling away from the body like sprouts curling away from the used-up seed. Willow gathered them in one hand like flowers. They wrapped up her arm.
The buffalo robe Otter had clutched around herself when she stumbled to the door that morning was still on the ground behind them. Cricket passed it forward, and Willow lifted the little body onto it and tucked it in, as if tucking a child to sleep. “May her name forgive me. I did warn her. I did.”
“She was very brave,” said Cricket.
“A fine young woman,” said Willow, stroking down the sheared fur of the robe that had become Fawn’s shroud. “I was proud to call her daughter.” She looked up. “Come here, Otter.”
“Mother,” said Otter, and shuffled forward on her knees, into Willow’s arms, into the light.
Willow hugged Otter against her body, and Otter tucked her head under her mother’s chin as if she were an infant. “Mother,” she said, “I thought … We heard …” Against her ear, she could feel her mother’s heart, going fast. Her own body grew slowly stiff as the knowledge came to her — what she’d thought, what she’d heard: They might yet be true.
Coldness came to her.
She pulled away, hugging her arms around herself.
“Fawn thought they might take your arm,” said Cricket.
Willow lifted her arm. Now that Otter was in the light, she could see more than just the shape of it. She could see that the inside of Willow’s hand was white as if dipped in paint. White as bone.
“Thistle wanted to,” she said. “Almost I let her. To give her that hope.”
“But, not?” said Cricket.
“Little point.” And with her white hand, Willow pulled open the deep V of her shirt.
There was a white handprint over her heart.
Otter thought for a moment her own heart would stop.
Then she thought it would deafen her, pounding in her ears. Her throat grew tight.