The cord. It was made of something coarse — long strands of something, spun into cordage and then plaited: five strands. Intricately plaited. She knew cords and this was no cord she knew. This was a place far away.
She pushed her thumb against the pulsing skin where the cord twitched. It was alive: It pulsed, it struggled. She pushed harder. The boy that wore the cord held his ground, but his breath came raggedly. “Otter …” he said, pleading.
That word again: Otter. She reached after the meaning of it, and as she reached, some power moved in her, and the knot of the cord slipped loose. The necklace came away in her hand, and red beads and silver shells fell into stones at her feet. She held up the thong, empty now, moving slightly in her hand, as if it wished to unplait itself. “What is this made of?” she said again.
“Cedar,” said the boy. “Cedar bark. A kind of tree.”
The world is larger … A voice in her head. A voice that did not belong to something hopeless, something lost.
The world is larger. He comes from the West. There are no White Hands there. The world is larger than we knew, and an end to this is possible.
She took the thong, one end in each hand, and leaned close so that she could give it back, knotting it at the nape of the boy’s neck. His hair was short as an animal’s. Her arms were around him now. He was shaking. The arms he closed around her were shaking.
“Orca,” she said, smelling him, remembering him. “Orca. Help me. Please.”
He pulled a little distance from her, and touched her face. “We do help you. Look —” He pointed across the water, which was shining like a sheet of mica in the early light. “Kestrel makes a fire.”
Otter looked at the bright water. She could not cross it. It was … not repellant, merely impossible, as if she’d been asked to walk on the sky. She had a Hand inside her now. She was trapped on this island, as she had been for so long, years beyond moon-count, beyond almost the count of the stars.
Her voice did not know how to say it. “I can’t —” She gestured at the water, helplessly. At the water, at the whole world. There was a White Hand growing inside her. She would not be able to stay in this shining world.
Orca did not seem to understand that. He answered her very simply, as if it were the smallest thing: “I will help you.”
“No one can help me.”
“I can,” he insisted. “I am an ocean child. I can take a kayak across a riptide. Once I caught a young seal with my bare hands — still I have the scar from its mother! Come: I will take you to your friend.”
Orca took her across the water.
Otter had had no idea what it meant to be an ocean child, but apparently it meant this — that Orca could swim on his back while holding her close to his body, one arm wrapped around her.
In the water, her body felt both limp and stiff. She half-floated, as a corpse would. She did not struggle. Water sloshed and slopped into her ears, around her face. She could feel Orca’s breathing, his body moving under hers. That stirred something in her — something deep and hungry. The Hand inside her wanted something from that moving body: wanted touch, wanted blood-pulse, wanted skin and name. She herself wanted … something. She opened her mouth and water went into it. Still she did not struggle.
Orca pulled her out of the lake and set her on her feet. For a moment she stood dripping, feeling nothing. Then she started to cough. Water went flying from her mouth, she doubled up. Orca caught her, held her while she coughed out the water. And when she was finished coughing, he scooped her up as a mother might a child, and carried her toward the camp.
It was warded, just barely warded. A single binder’s cord ran between sticks that were thrust roughly into the moss. Orca simply stepped over it. Otter felt it, though: a jerk like the jerk that ends a dream about falling. Beyond the ward, Orca stopped and set Otter down.
Kestrel stood there. The fire behind her was almost a bonfire: It leapt up and gave her wings of flame. Her face was full as a full moon, glowing in the dawn light, her eyes bright with tears. There was the barest hesitation — fear — and then Kestrel reached out and touched Otter’s face, tracing the white handprints that crept fingers-first into her hair. Otter shivered under the soft tracing, and then felt Kestrel fit fingers around one ear. “Otter,” she whispered.
A human touch, a strong one. Kestrel’s touch. Otter leaned.
“Oh, Otter,” Kestrel said. “What must we do?”