“There was once a binder,” she said, not stopping to think what she was saying, “the greatest of the age. The greatest since Mad Spider. There was once a binder named Willow. She made a ward, as Mad Spider taught us. And like Mad Spider, she was touched —” And suddenly the story came apart around her. “But even before that. Even before that, she knew: There is something wrong with the knots.”
The last sentence broke out of her, fast and strange. Like a lightning crack that makes the rain pour, it broke her open, and suddenly she was crying and words were pouring out of her. She held up the cord end in her hand. The knot of undoing was there, half-made. “You started this,” she said to the Hand. “I started this. We bound them too tightly. Too tightly! How do we let them go?” She dropped the cord and stepped forward, her hands outstretched.
“Otter!” Kestrel shouted.
Otter gave her one glance, and Kestrel’s eyes widened, shocked as if she’d been struck by an arrow.
“Both of you,” said Otter. “Run.”
And she stepped forward into the embrace of the White Hand.
Otter sat huddled up on the stone beach. She sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, her coat tucked up. She sat all night. The moon came up late, a half moon, looking as if someone had sliced it in two. The air — except where it blew now and then off the steaming lake — was cold. But it had lost the power to make her cold. She was as cold as she could ever be.
Touched. The White Hand had touched her. She had let it. She had taken both its hands. It had embraced her; its hands on her back. It had run its hands through her hair.
And then — Otter had wrapped the Hand in the noose of sorrow’s knot like a mother giving a daughter her first belt. She had pulled it to her, and for a moment they had been one thing, and it had been — grateful. It had left the world. Grateful.
Left Otter behind.
And now she sat, a stone among the round stones. Across the lake a fire burned, like a piece of sunrise. But on and on the night went, and sunrise didn’t come.
That fire. Her friends.
They would never have left her. She understood, dimly, that she had thought that. Together, the three of them might have been able to wrap the White Hand in the cord of its unmaking, but the space had been so small … they would all have had to be in reach of it. It would have touched them all.
They would not have left her. Not unless they had no hope for her. In taking the hand of White Hand, she had closed their hope — and opened a door, so that they could run.
And they did run. Kestrel. Orca. One of them had dragged the other, shouting, screaming her name — which? Otter could not remember. One seemed as unlikely as the other. Kestrel would not have run. Orca would not have screamed.
She had saved them.
She was turning white. She was very cold.
But it did not hurt. She had expected it to hurt. She’d seen Cricket collapse into the corn hills as if ripped open. She’d seen Fawn die unable even to scream. But it hadn’t hurt. It was just — nothing. It was like breathing in nothing instead of air. Like getting nothing instead of love. That wasn’t pain. Not exactly.
Fawn — she hadn’t been touched by the dead, she’d been caught in a ward. But that was the same, thought Otter. The White Hands, the cords. Two strings in one knot. The same.
And it didn’t hurt. Not exactly.
She sat so still that a pair of ravens wandered over to discuss her. She thought they were slip, that she would die like Cricket. But she didn’t move.
After a while, one of the ravens hopped up onto her lap and tilted its dark head sideways. Its bright eye met her eye. It made a disgruntled caw, then lifted on heavy wings. The other paused, followed.
The night went on.
“Otter?” It was dawn; pink and gold light flooded over her. “Otter? Can you hear me?” The voice that came to her was ragged and rich, like a pocket-shell rubbed so long that a hole had formed in it.
“Tveh,” said the voice. “Stand up, can you?” Hands lifted her. Standing, her feet were so numb that it was as if she floated away from the world.
“Are you hurt? Otter?” The boy was holding her up. She did not know his voice. She did not even know the word he spoke: Otter. What she knew was the smell. The salt smell that clung to his gear. The oil he rubbed into his boots that was scented with unfamiliar herbs. The thong that held the beads and shells around his neck was made of something fragrant, something buffalo-calf brown, a cord of —
“What is this?” she asked. She reached for the cord.
She saw his throat tense: the muscles bunching, the chin tilting up as he reared away from her.
Then he schooled himself still. His chin stayed lifted. His neck was tight. She could see the life in it, the pulse. The cord lay over that soft pulse, quivering. She reached. Her hands were still brown on their backs, but her palms were dead white. The throat beneath the cord was trembling and still, allowing the touch.