But one day they were swimming, and they found something curious. There was a place in the meadow where the ground bumped up as if over a huge tree root. Where it met the lake, the bump made a finger of land, pointing straight out toward the island. Off the tip of it, the girls discovered a line of submerged boulders. Their tops were hidden an arrow’s length under the dark, restless surface of the lake. Stepping stones, if you were a giant. Diving stones, otherwise.
Otter dove like her namesake, twisting and flashing into the dark water. Kestrel sat on the edge of one of the stones, up to her collarbone in the water, her bare shoulders shining like copper. Otter dove deep, pushing against the lifting force of the thick water. She felt the darkness and the heat that rose under her. She felt the power of her kick, the strength of her body, and the smoothness of bare skin slipping through the water. When she surfaced and turned, Kestrel was still sitting, twisting droplets from the dark rope of her hair. She was half-smiling, but a deep and silent sadness was sitting beside her.
Otter, though only one winter past her girlhood, knew sorrow. But she had fought it, run from it, bound it tight with her power. She knew nothing of sitting with it. And she was named, after all, for an otter: a spirit of strong play. She was a girl who could aim a snowball. Sneak a peeled acorn into a stew pot, just to surprise someone with the bitter bite. She dove again, and this time stayed under until she found Kestrel’s foot. She pulled the ranger in.
When they came up, Kestrel was spluttering: “Tsha! Otter! I am going to —”
“You’ll have to catch me first,” said Otter, and dove.
But Kestrel did catch her, and then Otter splashed her, and then Kestrel dove — and before they knew it they had collapsed, laughing, on the shingled fringe of the island’s shore.
They both lay panting, half in the hot water, half in the cool air. It occurred to Otter that she’d nearly lost track of the moon: Sap-Running, she thought, but what phase? Kestrel sat up, fingering the tangles out of her hair. Otter’s eye caught on an old arrowhead lying half in the water. The lap of the lake had dulled the glass-black of its obsidian. But though it was old, it was a human thing, a made thing.
The sight made Otter a little uneasy. She was not sure why. But before she could decide, she heard, very faintly, the throb of a drum.
At first she thought, Oh, a drum, and then a jolt went through her whole body. She held up a hand, making the ranger’s gesture for quiet. Kestrel snapped into silence. She held still as a startled deer.
Yes, there, under the murmur of the trees, was a drumbeat. A small drum, by the sound of it, like Cricket’s fireside drum. It kept making a few heartbeat beats, and then stumbling and lurching. If a dying man was playing a drum, he’d play it like that.
Otter and Kestrel silently climbed to their feet, looking at each other. They did not dare say his name.
His name that was done with the world. His body that they’d left unbound. What if …
Otter looked around. There was water, right there at their feet. Water was safety. The dead could not cross water.
But if that were true, then how had he — how had Cricket — how had the drummer come to the island? She did not think it could be a human drummer, here at the edge of the world. But what manner of dead thing could play a drum?
The breeze shifted, and suddenly the drumbeats came clearer. And under them — did she fool herself or could she really hear it? — under them came a voice. It came weaving through the drumbeats: light, male. They could make out no words at such a distance, but the cadence was a storyteller’s.
Horror bloomed in Otter’s heart. Cricket. They’d doomed him, they’d made him into something. She turned to Kestrel, not knowing what she would say. She turned just in time to see the flash of recognition on Kestrel’s face, the spring of tears. The ranger bolted for the heart of the island, for the shadows, for the voice.
Otter dove after. She caught Kestrel by the arm, and when that didn’t work, she threw herself on top of her friend’s body. They went crashing together into the rushes, loud as bears. “Wait,” hissed Otter, as they rolled apart. Kestrel met her eyes, and stopped moving. “If it’s Cricket,” Otter whispered, “if it’s Cricket, it’s not Cricket. We can’t — go to him like this.”
It seemed to occur to Kestrel, quite suddenly, that she was naked. She folded her arms around herself. They were both naked, of course, and neither of them cared — but the gesture made Kestrel look small. She looked cold. She looked vulnerable. “If it’s Cricket …” she said.
The wind shifted again, and the voice was lost. The drumbeat vanished under the pounding in Otter’s ears. “We could swim to shore,” she said. “They can’t cross the water.”
“We can’t leave him,” said Kestrel.