Kestrel had picked up her staff; she stood silently. Orca pulled his coat from where it was folded on a nearby stone. He made as if to flip it on — then changed his mind and draped it around Otter. She was wet; the air was cold. She should have been cold. She wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing the silky stuff of the strange pelts between her fingers, trying to feel cold so that she could get warm.
Orca sank down in front of her, balancing on the balls of his feet. She saw his eyes flicker, looking at the white handprints that marked her. The prints flared cold under his gaze: the opposite of a blush. She thought he would touch them, but he spoke instead, almost a whisper. “Cu xashi, Otter,” he said. “Thank you for my life.” Feather soft, he put a finger on her lips.
It took them most of the day to walk along the eastern shore of the lake, halfway around the island that had once been Eyrie.
Otter could only go slowly. She felt light as if her feet had been cut off. She felt heavy, as if her shadow were a weight. It fell in front of her and she watched it darken the bright-green moss. It had a human shape. It had hands. Sometimes it seemed to take a grip on a stone and jerk itself forward. Otter stumbled after it.
Orca had his drum out. Kestrel lifted her staff in both hands.
But nothing came at them in that sunny, safe place, the safest place in the world. The sun swung up from the rim of the caldera, and then back down toward the western ridge, and then they came to the holdfast. And Otter thought: Here is the place where I am going to die.
Evening came. In the holdfast, Otter sat by the fire and watched the stars come out beyond the birch poles. One by one. Three times three days. Nine days.
Or, eight days now. One was gone.
Then, suddenly, something touched her face. She jerked around. It was Orca. He was so close she could feel his breath, but he did not pull away. One finger swept up her cheekbone, then traced the white blotches at the corners of her eyes — the places where the Hand had touched her. The skin of the blotch was cold. The skin that bordered it shivered and blushed. Orca pushed softly with the pads of his fingers and said: “Does it hurt?”
She leaned back, out of his reach — his touch made her feel strange, as if something were twisting inside her. “No,” she said. “It is numb. No.”
“Numb …” The firelight made his tattoos swirl: For a moment he looked utterly alien. Then he gave her a little slip of a smile. “I took a sting, coming across the dry hills — a spiny-haired spider, do you have them here?”
Otter shook her head.
“It hurt like a spear going through me. And then it was numb.”
Otter did not know what to say. The fire crackled. Kestrel was tending the stewpot, and the holdfast smelled of leftover goose melting into wild carrot — a rich, yellowy smell. At last Otter offered: “I have never seen a spiny-haired spider.”
“Otter,” he said, choking on it — and then, unexpectedly, he laughed, faint as starlight. “I cannot kill you,” he said. “No more than water can run uphill. We must find another way.”
“There isn’t another way.” Otter was trying to be brave, to look this in the eye. She didn’t dare look in any other direction.
He took hold of both her hands — her white hands. “We must try.”
“What do you know of this?” said Kestrel. Otter heard her stirring stick clunk against the clay pot, hard. “You know nothing.”
“This is your shoreline, not mine.” Orca let go of Otter and extended his forearms toward Kestrel, palms up. The gesture was foreign, but it seemed to read: I am unarmed. “You know its currents and its tides. I respect this. But — surely — to kill a friend: This is wrong on all the beaches. This would be wrong in the open desert.”
“You know nothing, storyteller.” Kestrel spat out the title. “Otter’s mother died of this. Willow. The greatest binder of the age. She was touched by a White Hand. She died.”
Orca looked to Otter. “Is this true?”
“You don’t need to make her speak it,” said Kestrel. “I say it and that will be enough for you.”
And Otter whispered: “It’s true.”
Orca was silent a moment, his head tucked. Then he said: “Did she die, or did you kill her?”
Otter stood up. The movement felt sudden, sharp — as if she were a spider leg unfolding. As if her shadow could shift and harden like the edge of an axe. The White Hand: She was turning into a White — Otter bolted for the open night.
Outside, she took a dozen stumbling steps toward the lake edge. It was better outside. She had not known it, but now that she was released, she could feel how much the knots of the holdfast had been pressing around her. Turning on her. As if she were already one of the dead.
She bent forward with her hands on her knees, breathing hard. Warmth stirred around her: the breath of the lake. She looked up at the dark bulk of Mad Spider’s island. The sliced moon setting behind it.
She did not turn until she heard footsteps behind her. Kestrel, she thought. But when she turned, it was Orca.