“I can hear it,” she told them. “Like the wind talking. It’s saying something.”
“That’s impossible,” said Kestrel. She did not sound sure.
“How close can it come to the water?” said Orca.
“I don’t know,” said Kestrel.
They would be waist-deep in water and penned in the narrow channel. If the White Hand could come into the gully, to the water’s edge — they would be in easy reach.
They stood looking at the White Hand, all of them breathing tight.
“While the water runs …” said Kestrel. “The day goes. We cannot wait here.”
There was no time to find another option.
Orca answered with a Red Fox drawl: “Oh, delight.”
Otter was still looking at the White Hand. Her bracelets were crawling round and round her wrists. Those yarn loops had long ago polished a numbness into her skin — but even so, she could feel their small movements, like holding ants. “I cannot both cast and climb,” she said. She could not protect them in the water. The water itself would need to protect them — or not.
Orca’s hand was on the lip of his drum bag. He tore his eyes away from the White Hand and said to Kestrel: “Will you keep front with that stick of yours?”
“Staff,” said Kestrel. “Yes. I can guard you.”
“Let’s go,” said Otter.
Kestrel nodded sharply, then slipped into the gully. She leaned backward, picking her way down the steep slope. Stones tumbled under her feet and fell into the water. She put one hand — her good hand — behind her and braced herself, keeping her staff out with her other hand.
Otter stepped forward to follow. And the White Hand stepped forward too. It let go of the branch, and peeled away from the edge of the forest. The light there was dappled: leaves of sunlight, leaves of shadows, rippling.
The White Hand eased and oozed into that light — and stopped. It drew itself smaller, tighter. Otter could see it bubble where the light hit it. She could feel —
“It’s burning,” she whispered.
Orca had his hand on her back. He was steadying her, not pushing — and yet she could feel him want to, feel him shake. “We go,” he said fiercely. And they went, sliding down the gully, into the shock and push of cold, bright water.
The water was waist-deep, fast, cold. It swirled around them, tugging at their legs as they hurried through the cut it had made in the rock wall.
“Does it follow?” gasped Kestrel.
Otter looked inside herself for an answer. Her bracelets were wet and still as if they’d shrunk. The hollow feeling that was the Hand nearby — she’d lost it. Was it gone, or could she simply not feel it? “I do not know,” she said.
They went fast and tried to keep breathing. Orca was holding his drum up above the water. Kestrel had her staff lifted in both hands. Above them, the stones gave way to higher ground: first birch and sunlight, then dark pine. It was far above them — a tree’s height up.
“Out?” said Orca.
Kestrel measured the climb with her eyes. “On.”
So they went on — running, stumbling, shaking with wet chill — cutting deeper and deeper into the stones below the forest. The strength of the stream began to give out, the dry wash becoming dry once more. They lost the light: the sky became a ribbon overhead. It came to Otter that they were trapped again, without the water — trapped in a narrow, helpless place. But then, quite suddenly, the gully opened into a pool of stone, with a gap of bright light on the far side. They bolted across the bowl, squeezed through the stony doorway, and found themselves on the shingle of the island’s eastern shore.
There on the beach, the White Hand was waiting for them.
The beach was strewn with boulders, big as earthlodges, some so big they were topped with trees. They cast paths and pools of deep shadows, and in one of them, the Hand stood, a dullness against the obsidian gleam of the stone. Its white hands were reaching for them.
“Mother Cedar,” breathed Orca. “It waits — it thinks.”
The Hand came drifting toward them.
“Get behind me,” gasped Otter. The wet bracelets were caught on her wrists. Her hands shook as she tried to peel them free. Light: They needed light. But the beach faced east, and the lowering sun cast the shadow of the forest across it. Two pole-lengths out into the water, the light fell, gleaming blackly off the stirring surface of the lake. The beach itself was three pole-lengths wide. The very best light on it was mere dapple and streak.
It was too dark.
It was too far.
Otter’s fingers felt both numb and blazing as she lifted her star. Behind her she heard Orca trying to raise a beat from his drum. It must have been damp: It made a flat, lost sound.
The Hand came forward, swelling wider. Otter’s cords pulsed.
They backed up against the little cliff.
“I can’t do this again,” said Orca. He did not sound frightened, but merely as if he were giving them a part of a tale that they needed to know. “We must reach the water.”
“Too far,” said Kestrel.