Kestrel nodded.
They went quickly, the beaded grass shaking droplets as they cut through it, soaking the knees of their swinging coats.
“Kestrel,” said Orca then, “who is Cricket?”
“Don’t say his name,” said Kestrel. “Say his name again and I will break your leg and leave you here.”
“Will you indeed?” Orca walked along a little, before he added: “And you said you had no stories.”
They picked their way among the boulders and the winter-bronze grass, down the meadow, in the cold rain. A cold rain that was slowly giving out. There were gusts in it now, splattering bursts followed by long gray moments.
If it stopped raining, how long would it take the wash to run dry? How far was the shore?
They didn’t know.
Midway down the meadow, they found themselves among a cluster of hillocks. Where they’d first stumbled in, the hillocks had been scattered: Here they were gathered like eggs in a nest. They were shapeless slumps of earth, nearly woman-tall, grass-grown. They looked like muskrat houses or prairie-dog towns, like something animals might build — but bigger, and older. Otter trailed her fingers over the flank of one mound as they hurried past. Something answered her touch. Made her bracelets shiver and twist. Without stopping, she slipped them loose, holding them looped around the fingers of one hand, ready.
Kestrel said, “Otter?”
Orca slipped his hand into the bag that held his drum.
“I’m not sure.” In the center of the mounds, Otter paused and cast a cradle-star, quick as thinking. She pulled it taut and held it steady. It did not twist.
But something in her heart twisted. Something shivered. “Something and nothing,” she said. “Nothing dead.”
And at that moment, the sun came out.
It was low, not long past its rising, and it threw long spears of light along the ground. In that light, the hillocks each wore a gold mask and a cape of shadow. It made them look bigger — and it showed the pattern of them. They were no random humps, no jumbled eggs, no muskrat buildings. They were arranged: They stood in two rings, one inside the other.
“Lodges,” said Otter.
And at the same time, Kestrel breathed: “Eyrie.”
The two girls looked at each other, and looked around themselves, eyes wide. Earthlodges. Eyrie.
Where all stories began.
Orca had his drum out, his fingers wrapped around the laces that twisted and tied across the back of the frame. “Tveh,” he breathed. “I think this is not good news?”
“We came here to find this,” said Otter. “We came here to see it. The lost city.”
Orca raised his free hand to the sky, as if imploring. “No stories, they said. And here: a lost city.” The wind curled around them and the sun vanished again. “What happened here?”
Otter answered him: “A White Hand killed this city. So goes the story.”
“One?” said Orca, shivering.
“One,” said Kestrel.
It had been Mad Spider herself who destroyed Eyrie. She’d been touched by a White Hand, touched as Willow had been. In madness and despair, with the last piece of her that was human, she’d tried to end herself. She had unbound the poles and unbound the wattle. She had pulled down her own earthlodge on her head.
Otter knew why. She had meant to die, as Willow had, while she was still herself. But it hadn’t worked. The story did not say why, but standing in that place, Otter suddenly understood: The falling earth had not killed Mad Spider. She must have been trapped, pinned, but still alive. Alive and buried while the Hand ate its way out of her.
Three days later, said the story, the White Hand had clawed its way out of the ruin. Which one? thought Otter. Which mound was it? This is what they’d come to see: the spring from which the story welled up. But now that they were there — it was bottomless, dark. A dragging, whirling, drowning darkness. Deep in her mind, Otter heard something howling. She found herself backing away.
“Let’s …” said Kestrel, lifting her staff, keeping pace with Otter as they inched backward. Otter could hear the struggle in her friend’s voice. They’d come here to see this, and they should — should … “Let’s go,” said Kestrel.
Orca backed up too. “Yes. Let’s go.”
A swinging wind slapped them and the rain started again. Rain. Let the streams fill up and run fast. Let there be stream after stream to jump over. They turned their backs on the quiet mounds, and they ran.