Otter lay on her back and looked at it. The White Hand was with her, but it seemed to simply lie over her, heavy as a buffalo skin, heavy and still. Mad Spider, her mother, mother of them all. Her mother, keeping her warm. Her mind was clear and cold and empty.
High in the tree, the burial frame swayed. She could feel the knots at her wrists and ankles, and beyond them, bare to the cold, her hands and feet pulsed slowly — pain, numb; pain, numb. They were swollen already. Swelling up toward death. She could feel the rough pole against her spine, pressing like a dulled knife. She could feel the cross braces under her shoulders and hips and knees.
The tree swayed.
Pain, numb; pain, numb. It was worse; it would get worse.
The other scaffolds. Willow was tied there. Otter could see the hand, just the hand, in the red wrappings. The skin coming off like a glove. Did it move? Did it twitch?
Did I do this to you, Mother? she asked silently. Were you awake for it? Are you awake? How long did it take? How long did it take you to become a White Hand? How long will it take me to die?
Sudden as falling into freezing water, she was afraid. She was afraid it would take a long time.
She pulled at the knots. Pulled hard. Hurt herself. In the caldera, the cord had come through her hand. It had freed her, given her back to herself.
The ropes cut into her skin.
If only they would go through her.
But they did not. And they did not give way.
There was something bound inside her. The body is knots. The self is knots. They had to be undone, so that she could set the bound thing free.
Otter’s hands spasmed. It was as if they were being crushed with axe stones. Crush, numb; crush, numb — the slow drum of her heart. Ravens were gathering above her.
Mother, she thought.
Fists and fists of sky.
A bad moment: the tree shifting and shaking, the pole sawing at her spine, the axe stones hitting her. Noises. The ravens lifted and whirled.
And Orca’s face came into view, his body: the woven shirt, the bruise of his heart, the drum at his hip.
“What … ?” She couldn’t speak to him.
“Kestrel. She cannot climb: her wrist. But she — neither of us — would see you up here alone.” He tried to come closer to her, onto the platform, but it wobbled and swayed under his weight. She moaned thickly. He froze, drawing back. Even if she had not been tied, he would have been too far away to touch.
She heard his breath shudder. Her vision swam with red and darkness. She could not see his face.
Crush, pain. Crush, pain.
“Storytellers —” he said. “In my country, storytellers — one of our powers is to ease death. To drum down the heart. Do you —” his voice caught. “Do you want me … ?” He reached for her. The branch lurched.
Hold still, she begged him, unable to speak. Hold still, hold still, stay with me, hold still.
He held still. He stayed.
Shivering ran over her body, clawing at her. Muscles spasmed. Her breath grew shallow.
There was drumming.
Sorrow’s knot.
A noose that has nothing inside it will knot itself away.
The pain floating above her, lying on top of her like a heavy hide.
Mother.
“Tell me something,” she said. “Tell me something wonderful.”
The heartbeat of the drum. Distant as the sea.
“… And the fog came up,” said Orca’s voice, “and we lost sight of the land.”
She had not heard this story; the Hand that she half was had not heard this story. It was not even a story, just a voice, a memory, a boy from the sea clinging now to a treetop, far beyond the edge of his world.
The sea made its waves of shuddering in her body.
“… And they came up like sea swells,” he said. “Like the islands when the world was being made, they rose on every side. They were gray whales, among the little fishes. Singing. And I no longer cared that I was going to die.”
The whales blew their spray over her; the taste of tears. Otter took air.
And went under.
In the stories they told later, they said the Unbinder, the girl who remade the world, took a deep breath, and pulled her wrists away from the burial frame.
The cords went right through them.
The knots pulled themselves closed, closed on nothing, and so — opened.
And all around the scaffolding ground, the cords gave way.
Skulls fell from the trees with a patter like a drum. Finger bones fell like rain.
But from the newest scaffold, from Willow’s scaffold, something rose.
That was the story. What the storyteller said was a bit different.
Orca saw Otter shudder and then shiver and then still. He recognized the moment — he had drummed more than one death — and his fingers struck a loud last drumbeat, slid across the drumhead, and then …
And then, something black and sludgy came out of her. It lay over her like a blanket, for just a moment. For just a moment, it had hands that held her hands. And then it rose. Like a curl of smoke. Like a whirl of raven feathers.