“Am I a dog?” muttered Orca. “Stop kicking: I wake.”
Otter could feel them move; hear Orca getting to his feet behind her, but she didn’t turn. The Hand was taut in front of her, twisting, reaching. She saw its white hands splay into claws and flex. Her breath coming faster, her fingers fumbling with the wet yarn of her bracelets, Otter kept talking: “So. Mad Spider was not much more than a sunflower when a blistering fever came, and her mother died. And her mother’s second died. And she was left the binder and she was very frightened. She did not want to let her mother go.”
The Hand was all knot now, drawn back like a wolf’s snarl. Otter kept talking as she lifted her yarns, trying to keep the thread of the story and the dance of her casting moving at the same time, even though she was beginning to shake. “She was frightened, but she had to do it anyway. She had to bind her mother in a tree….”
The White Hand wasn’t moving and it wasn’t making a sound, but it was howling at them. The howl made Otter’s teeth chatter, her hands shake. “Tell it something else,” said Kestrel.
But Otter was as caught in the story as she was in her casting. Neither of them could be dropped without consequence, without a beat of silence in which the Hand would surely strike. “So she went out to the scaffolds, under the gray winter sky,” Otter said. She made the last turn and twist to finish the cradle-star, and lifted it against the Hand.
The Hand did not fall back. Slowly, slowly, its own hands — grown longer than any human’s, grown thin past even the thinness of bone — its hands lifted. Its claw tips were just a sparrow-hop away from Otter’s fingertips. It spread its fingers as if it too were holding a star.
“And —” said Otter, her voice trembling. “And —” It was no time for silence. “And she bound her mother there. She put knots in her bones.”
The Hand struck.
Otter screamed and sprang backward. She came down on the round stones and stumbled, her hands still lifted in front of her, the casting taut between them. Orca and Kestrel caught her and dragged her backward to the edge of the fern.
Otter stood panting. The cords between her fingers seemed to be made of living fire. They blazed into her. She could not hold them, not long, she could not hold them. Kestrel and Orca were holding her up, each with a hand on her.
Then Orca, in her ear, said: “I hear water.”
Water.
They had their backs to the forest, and the Hand was writhing and snarling right in front of them and Otter could not hold it long. They had to do something and it could not be run — not in the murky twilight, not into the entangling forest, not with the Hand that was faster than any of them.
But water. The dead could not cross water.
“I hear it too,” said Kestrel. She had her staff lifted in both hands, lowering it at the Hand like a spear. With a jerk of her chin she pointed diagonally across the bowl of stones. “That way. Not far.”
Otter tried to think. She had had this thought, drifting into sleep: river. These stones were round. River stones. Or, not a river, but a dry wash — a river that ran only when it rained.
It was raining.
Her hands were on fire. Her voice came out in a rush of air and pain: “Hurry.”
“There,” said Orca, pointing across the stone bowl with two fingers.
“I don’t see it,” said Kestrel. The light was still poor.
“Trust,” said Orca. “My eyes are sharp.”
“Hurry,” gasped Otter, again. The shaking of her body was beginning to lock, making her once again as rigid as someone freshly dead. She was not sure she could run.
“Get ready, then,” said Kestrel, hefting her staff.
And before Otter could ask For what? Kestrel had struck past her with her staff.
The staff, with its wrapping of rangers’ knots, went into the heart of the White Hand. A gap opened in its stuff, and for a moment Otter could see right through the middle of it, like seeing blue sky through clouds. Then it twisted itself closed and grew arms and things that reached and slashed. Kestrel’s hip pushed against Otter’s as she leaned out and struck the Hand’s side — neck — shoulder — it had none of those things. Cords were springing free from Kestrel’s staff. A little silver charm came loose and flew across the stones like a tooth flying.
Kestrel struck again, her side pressing against Otter’s side.
She was pivoting, Otter realized: pivoting the whole battle. Knocking the White Hand to one side and turning sideways to face it. She struck and struck and struck. They hadn’t moved; the Hand hadn’t let them go. It hadn’t given them so much as a step. But, where, before, their backs had been to the dark forest, now they were side-on to the forest, and at their backs was a clear space of stones.
“Ready?” said Kestrel.
“Yes,” gasped Otter and, “Uneh,” said Orca —
They turned and ran.