And then, a small hope broke her heart. Any story can have more than one ending. Any story, and she was caught in a story. Her voice came out like a small child’s: “… Any story … ?”
“Any story,” said Orca. He lifted his shaking hand and drew a blessing circle in the air between them. And then he leaned forward and kissed her.
It was Otter’s first kiss, and Orca was no craftsman. There were things they didn’t know, such as what to do with noses. And yet they kissed each other, both of them frightened and broken — but their brokenness seemed to fit together to make a whole. Their noses found their tilts. The soft brush of lips just missing lips became something dead center, something sure and hungry. Otter felt it rise up from the deep places of her body, like the binding power finding the perfect balance in a knot. Orca made a grief noise in his throat and knotted his fingers in her hair. His thumb went under her cheekbone, pressing as hard as if he were sculpting her. She felt her tears pool against his thumb joint. She was crying. They were both crying.
The binder’s yarns tangled and snared her wrists and hands.
When Orca and Otter pulled apart, they were both wide-eyed and gasping for breath — and both entirely human.
“Well,” said Kestrel. There was a nudge of Cricket’s laughter in her serious voice. “Well. It seems a shame to kill you now.”
“What?” gasped Orca. “I —” Beneath his tattoos, his swirling strangeness, he suddenly seemed about twelve years old. His voice squeaked. “What?”
Kestrel laughed at him, though not unkindly. “What do you think, Otter? Would he be any good at hoop-and-lance?”
“Oh …” Otter felt a ridiculous smile split her face. A blush began at her heart and moved both down and up. “He might be.”
“Well,” said Kestrel again, and Otter was startled to see tears welling and dripping in the corners of her eyes. She was not sobbing, though: Her face was aglow. “I suppose there is a night — maybe night and a day — I suppose you could find out.”
“What?” squeaked Orca again. But Otter understood. Kestrel had held Cricket as he died. She had kissed him hard. If Otter had only a day or two left, then Kestrel would wish it to be spent in kisses.
Otter looked down again, at her entangled hands. There was a binder’s knot tied around one wrist. It was, she saw, sorrow’s knot: The noose that bound the dead.
Looking at that noose, she said: “No.”
“Why not?” said Kestrel softly. She could hardly be heard over the snap and chat of the big fire. “There’s little enough I can give you, Otter — a little time, that’s all I can give you. Why not?”
“Because I need to hear a story,” said Otter. “Tell me ‘Mad Spider Bound Her Mother,’ Kestrel. Tell it quickly. Tell it now.”
Kestrel’s smile swallowed itself. The secret story. The story for which Cricket had died.
“But …” said Orca. He tugged at the hem of his shirt, smoothed back his rumpled hair. “But, on the island. The White Hand …”
Yes. On the island, Otter had started to tell the story and the Hand had tightened; had reared and struck. Even now she could feel the thing she was becoming coil itself up like a rattlesnake. Mad Spider….
She jerked on one end of the knot and the noose bit into her wrist, bringing her back into herself with a bite of pain. “Tell it now.”
And Kestrel did.
Orca stood very still, listening. A line formed between his eyebrows, and grew deeper. Otter pulled and pulled on that string, using the pain of it to keep herself listening. Keep herself human.
Give herself hope.
Kestrel told Mad Spider’s story as goose feathers eddied around them and the roasting fire chuckled and snapped. A dark story on a beautiful day.
Mad Spider was afraid, and she did not want to let her mother go. She bound her too tightly. She left her up a tree in the moonlight. She left her in the living world.
When the story was finished, it was still a beautiful day. The three of them stood in silence and the caldera held them like a cupped hand.
It was Orca — at last, and of course — who spoke: “Then it is the tying of the dead that makes these things. Mad Spider bound too tightly. Her dead became things that could not leave the living world.” It took a stranger to see it. A traveler, in a land to which no travelers came. A storyteller, in a land where stories could be deadly secrets. “Why do you bind the dead at all?”
“Since before the moons were named,” said Kestrel, “always and always, we’ve done this.”
Otter pulled on the cord that caught her wrist. The white skin was bulging around it now. Her fingers throbbed with each heartbeat, a frostbite pain. My heartbeat, she thought. Human. Living. Mine. Stay here.
But the heartbeat was slow. Loud as a drum. Pounding against the knots. Too strong, the knots. And quite suddenly, came the voice: Since I was a child, they have been too strong. Willow had said it: There is something wrong with the knots.