“But you’re a boy,” said Otter.
Cricket faked a startle and reached up, fumbling for the telltale knob in his throat. “I am?” He widened his eyes and dropped his hands to his private parts, checking there too. “You’re right!”
Otter spluttered and threw the arrowhead at him.
He caught it, one handed, easy, and tossed it back to her.
“Some stay,” said Kestrel, quietly.
And that was true. Most boys left the Shadowed People when they came of age, going with Water Walkers, the traders who plied the narrow safety of the river, or joining the Sunlit People, following the buffalo herds on the prairies. Binding power ran in the female line, and few people untouched by that power cared to live in a place so dead-shadowed.
But some stayed. Even among the boys, a few stayed.
Otter looked at Kestrel looking at Cricket, and saw a reason he might want to be one of the boys who risked Westmost.
Cricket looked back toward the corn and sighed. “Oh, look: Here comes the joy of my life.” It was Newt, with red cords wrapped around her shoulders and a look as sour as willow bark on her face. “Tsha! If ever again I am blasted open, don’t save me.” Then he put on a smile like Red Fox’s smile and said: “Hail, Lady Boneset.”
“There you are,” said Newt. “You know I need to tighten your bindings.”
“Ah,” said Cricket. “I thought I could breathe.” But he stood up, shrugged off stiffness, and then shrugged off his shirt.
“Have you no modesty, boy? You’re not a child anymore.”
And he wasn’t. Otter found herself staring at the narrow chest crisscrossed with red cords. They were startling as wounds against his bare skin. He didn’t look like someone who had been hurt. His skin was the dark sweet color of old honey; his hair was glossy. And while the pain had cost him some weight, it seemed as if it had merely polished away his boyish softness. He looked lean and strong and not at all like a child. The white mark of the gast looked like a star above his heart.
“These are my friends,” said Cricket. “And I don’t want to go back into your lodge, today or tomorrow or in the next moon, Lady Boneset. I think I am well healed, and I’m tired of darkness.”
Newt harrumphed but didn’t press the point. And, after all, she’d brought new cords with her. She hadn’t, though, brought her second. She looked Kestrel and Otter up and down as if selecting a cut of meat. “Binder’s daughter,” she said, “I imagine you can hold the end of a bit of rope?”
Otter nodded. She was not keen to help Newt, but she was ready to help Cricket.
“Then take —”
And something burst from the ripe corn behind them.
Everyone whirled around. The corn in that season was thick, almost pine-black where the shadows hit it. It rustled and thrashed, and then opened, and something came out of it. A living person: a woman. Otter’s mother, the binder, Willow. She was running.
She was wild-eyed, almost stumbling as she ran. For a moment the three friends could only stare. Then Kestrel swung around, pressing her back to Otter’s and pulling her bracelets off. She cast a cradle — a bit lopsided — and held it up, into the dark face of the woods beyond the ward. Otter lifted her own cradle between herself and the running form of her mother. Cricket — though he was so powerless that he did not even bother with his bracelets — took the third point, making the three of them into an arrowhead. Now nothing would come on them unaware.
“Newt!” Willow shouted. “Newt!” Her breath was ragged, her voice wild: It raised the hairs on Otter’s scalp. But she hadn’t said what they’d dreaded she would. She hadn’t said ware the dead.
“It’s Tamarack,” said Willow, stumbling up to them. Behind them, the ward itself seemed to shiver to her voice, and a sudden wind moaned through it. “Newt: Her breath is failing.”
Newt paused, and then slowly lifted a hand to cover her eyes. She bowed to Willow before she spoke. “Tamarack our binder has long been halfway out of the world. A blessing if she should go the rest of the way, and peacefully.”
“I am not ready,” said Willow. “Newt, I am not ready.”
Otter felt Cricket shift beside her. She glanced and met the boy’s dark eyes: Not ready? The greatest binder since Mad Spider, not ready? Not ready for what?
Newt had a similar bewildered look. Her mouth narrowed, then she gathered herself: “I must finish with Cricket. Then I’ll bring my medicines.”
“Quickly,” demanded Willow.
“Most likely she cannot be saved.” Newt nudged Cricket forward, beginning the long and fiddly work of undoing the healing knots. “If it’s her time, she’ll go, whether you’re ready or not.”