Who knew what the slip had been in life, or even the gast, with their blunt cunning. But the Ones with White Hands had once been human. And alone among all creatures, humans could be cruel.
Even slip could kill, of course. The touch of one made a numbness and a weakness, and many a ranger had a little limp, a lost finger, a gray place hidden beneath their green leggings. The touch of many slip was a mud to drown in. The touch of a gast could blast open all the knots in a limb. They could weaken a lung, chill a heart. It was rare to take such a touch and live.
But better to be touched by the gast than the Ones with White Hands. The slip and the gast — their touch went to the body. The touch of a White Hand went to the mind.
There are wasps in this world whose sting paralyzes but leaves alive. Inside the bodies of their caterpillar prey they lay their eggs, and later, while the inchworm lies — paralyzed, alive — the young wasps eat their way out. And so the White Hands were also called Wasp Kind.
Their touch did not kill. It weakened, it dazzled, but it did not kill. It was said indeed that Mad Spider herself had been touched and touched and touched again as she fought the White Hands away from her last ward. Touched and touched and touched and still she drove them back, and with a knot made from her own belt she caught and unmade them. Then she went back to her pinch — not Westmost but a different and greater place: Eyrie, the city of dreams. She went back to her home, back to her lodge, undid its lashings, with her power pulled the poles down, and buried herself alive.
The touch of the White Hands does not kill. It transforms. Those touched by a White Hand become Hands themselves.
In the beginning it looks like madness. Probably one of the Sunlit People — a buffalo hunter from the prairies, say, or a Water Walker with his travois and feathered spear, would take it as madness. But the Shadowed People, the free women of the forest, know that it is not madness. It is the White Hand, eating its way out from the inside.
Newt the bonesetter kept Cricket confined and waited for him to go mad.
“She’s looking for a chance to kill me,” said Cricket, when Otter and Kestrel came to visit him inside the bonesetter’s lodge. “One of these mornings I’ll choke on my porridge and she’ll see the foam on my lips and pull out a knife.”
“Try a rising block,” said Kestrel with an arrow-straight face. “I am sure you can best her.”
“Oh!” Cricket gasped. “Don’t make me laugh!” He twisted sideways where he lay on a sleeping platform, propped up on a pile of buffalo robes. He pushed a hand over the white mark on his breastbone, as if pushing the air back into himself.
“All right,” said Otter. “Possibly you can’t best her. But we would avenge your death.”
“We would,” said Kestrel. “It would be epic. A tale for our granddaughters. There would be stars for you, Cricket.”
“On the dark side of that,” said Otter, “you would still be dead.”
“That does seem dark.” Cricket, grinning, sprawled backward onto the robes. The gast in the cornfield had unwoven things inside him, and Newt had wrapped him in red-dyed cords, carefully knotted. He still had his hand pressed among them, and for a moment he panted helplessly.
“How are you, Cricket?” said Kestrel softly, when the boy had his breath back.
Cricket’s smile faded and he shook his head.
Otter touched the cords around him and felt their power stir softly, as if she’d touched something sleeping.
Where Otter saw power, Kestrel saw pain. She turned to the heavy clay pot that was nestled in the embers of the fire pit. “Is this willow bark?” When Cricket nodded, she dipped a gourdful and handed it to him. “You’re hurting,” she said.
Cricket took the gourd, slipping his fingers among hers, smiling. “Ch’hhh, I’ll be all right,” he said. “So long as I don’t talk in my sleep, like Red Fox in the story, and wake up with my throat opened.”
Otter stuck her finger in the brew pot, and then into her mouth. The bitterness made her suck in her cheeks. “Is there no honey for this?”
“Oh, the home of Newt needs no honey,” said Cricket. “She’s that sweet.”
“Well” — Kestrel smiled, taking the gourd back from him — “don’t go mad.”
“Keep visiting me,” said Cricket.
Kestrel hooked the curve of the gourd stem over its stick by the fire, and when she turned around her expression was fierce. “Cricket: It had no hands.” She glanced at Otter.
“We held it,” said Otter. “Two children held it. It was no stronger than that. It had no hands.”
Cricket’s face softened, and he reached and took one of each of their hands. “If such a large seed were planted in me,” he said, “I would know it.”
Would he?
“Always in the stories,” said Cricket, “they know it.”
And indeed, as spring spilled into summer, Cricket did not go mad.