Cricket gasped, pulling air in deep. He took three hard breaths. Paused. Took three more. It went on. He seemed to be climbing. Resting. Climbing.
His eyes floated open. “I saw a new kind of bird today,” he said.
And then he died.
Kestrel held Cricket’s body through the night, kissing him softly sometimes. Talking to him. Otter tended the small fire, carefully: There had not been that much wood in Cricket’s dropped bundle. The world shrank to the size of the firelight: the little ward, the one robe, the two lovers pressed close. Otter wept and kept watch. Sometimes she drifted into sleep, but when her head jerked back up, the world was still small inside a big darkness, and Cricket was still dead.
Willow. And Cricket.
The fuel was gone when the sun came up, and the fire was sinking into embers. Otter stood and walked, just two steps, to the ward. She stood there, and was still standing when Kestrel came up behind her. “There’s cord enough,” said Otter. “There’s no scaffold, and no way to raise it, but —”
“We won’t bind him,” said Kestrel.
Otter looked at her. The ranger’s face was still and blank. Her eyes were swollen from tears but the rest of her was just … washed away. “I won’t lie to him,” she said.
Otter’s heart seemed to spin between grief and fear. The dead: They must be bound. They must be kept safe. Her fingers still hurt from pulling the knots shut on her mother’s ankles. The binding was all of her history, all of her training, her whole life.
“I won’t,” said Kestrel, snapping like thunder, loud and sudden.
“Ch’hhh,” said Otter. “We — we won’t, then.” She turned and caught Kestrel in her arms. The ranger was rigid, braced against the loss that had already ruined her. She did not melt.
“He died,” Kestrel said. “He died still Cricket. The White Hand didn’t touch him. He’s not coming back.” A shake went through her tight body. “He’s not coming back.”
“We won’t bind him,” said Otter again. It was wildly foolish. But it was the only comfort she could offer.
“He was Cricket,” said Kestrel.
Otter nodded, her face moving against Kestrel’s hair. “Yes. He was.” Cricket had never been more Cricket than in the moment he’d died.
Kestrel folded up then, as if she’d been struck across the back of the knees, went down so completely and so suddenly that she slipped through Otter’s arms. Otter lurched and caught her and lowered her into the pine needles. “What can we do?” sobbed Kestrel. “What can we do for him?”
“Let’s make it softer,” said Otter. “Let’s make it warm.”
So they took off their mittens and gathered pine needles handful by handful: dry ones, drifted in the nooks of rocks, the roots of trees. They were piercing to gather — their hands were quickly all pricked — but soft when piled. They piled them, handful by handful, into a bed. Handful by handful, it took a long time.
They lifted Cricket’s body by knees and armpits, and laid him in the piled needles. He sank a little, as they’d hoped he would: The bed was soft. They helped him curl onto his side, tuck his knees up. Kestrel took his hair from its braids and ran her fingers through it, over and over, long past the point where it was smooth.
Otter nested his carry bag by his feet.
Thinking twice, she opened it. His storyteller’s rattle was there: red and black, and collared in black feathers. She put it in his hand.
The smell of the needles was sharp and sweet.
She sat down beside Kestrel and pulled the ranger’s hands into her hands, away from Cricket’s hair. The death blessing caught in Otter’s throat — may the wind take him, may the rain, may the ravens. She knew they were coming. She did not want to call them.
“Cricket,” she said, “you told wonderful stories. You were braver than you think. You were kind.”
Kestrel said nothing. Her hands shook in Otter’s hands.
“Cricket,” said Otter, “I think you saved me, that day Tamarack died. Did I thank you for that?”
“You didn’t,” said Kestrel.
“Well,” said Otter, “thank you for that.”
Kestrel wiped the cuff of her mitten across her nose.
“Cricket,” said Otter. Her voice caught. “You snored. No one who wanted to be Red Fox should have snored like that. We never had the heart to tell you, but you were very loud. Also, not as good at hoop-and-lance as you thought you were.”
“That was sweet, though,” said Kestrel. “I liked to watch you try.”
“Not me: I was always afraid the lance would go through someone’s foot.”
“Or maybe a wall.” Kestrel laughed, hiccupped, choked on tears. “Belt of the Spider,” she hissed. “I will never forgive this. I will never forget it.”
“I know,” said Otter.
“It is not fair.”
“I know,” said Otter.