Sorrow’s Knot (4 page)

The procession left the river and went up, climbing beside a splashing rivulet, through wet ferns. On either hand was a rough fence of knotted cords, just a strand or two, strung from trunk to trunk. The path grew steep, and the fern and pine needles gave way underfoot to scoured slopes of rock. Finally the procession came into a stand of lodgepole pine that clung to a cliff edge, high above a black lake. Across the lake rose great gray spires of granite, round-topped and steep-sided as fingers. It was as if something huge had been buried there, and was digging its way out.

Willow stopped. The people bunched and gathered behind her. They were surrounded now with a warding: not a few token strands but a constricting snare of knots. Unlike the ward of Westmost, this ward pushed inward. The scaffolding ground was tight with that power, airless and almost hot. Otter shivered. The drums beat.

And Otter saw that she was standing in bones.

There were pebbly finger bones. There were femurs like fallen branches. There were skulls. Otter looked up. High in the trees were loose-woven platforms, some piled with squirrel nests and lost in leaves, others showing still the shapes: the red lumps of the bodies.

The drums stopped.

And Willow turned around.

To Otter, it seemed her mother was wearing a mask: Her face was stark. Her hair stood out around her like the hackles of a wolf. The women of the pinch edged backward, away from Willow, away from the body of Tamarack. Only the body bearers stood still, silent.

Willow stalked up to the red bundle that was Tamarack and peeled back a wrapping. A bare hand flopped free. It had gone gray and loose.

Otter swallowed. The hand was so … She had known Tamarack. She did not know this hand. But Willow did not hesitate. She opened the palm and slipped her fingers among the dead fingers.

“Tamarack,” she said.

It was the first word in the grove; it startled like a slap. Otter shook back at the ringing voice. She could see the bearers trembling with their effort to stand still, and the body trembling too. “Tamarack, your name is done with the world.” She dropped the dead hand and it swung from the frame. From around Willow’s arm, a single cord unwound itself, slinking through the air under its own power. There was a muttering of fear.

Willow did not seem to notice. “Hold fast to your name,” she said. “Follow it from this world and do not return.” She touched the wrist once as if in blessing, then bound it to its platform with a harsh jerk of rope. Otter could feel the power of the knot as if it were around her own neck. The bearers shook, and sweat sprang through the black paint of their faces.

Willow fell silent. She lashed Tamarack wrist and wrist, ankle and ankle. She stepped back. “Raise her.” And the rangers began the hard work of casting ropes into the trees, raising the new dead one to rest among the old. The red looked harsh against the black trees, the soft summer sky.

“May the wind take her into the wind,” said Willow when they were done. “May the rain take her into the water. May the wood hold her away from this world. May the ravens fly her far.”

The drums began.

“And when she comes back,” said Willow, under the drumbeat but not quietly enough. “When she comes back, may she tell me why.”

The binder is mad.

The whisper had started even before they got back to the pinch.

The old binder is dead; the new binder is mad. She called back the dead. The one whom the dead obey, she called one of them back.

For Otter, it was as if her mother’s whisper had stolen her voice. Under the scaffolds, her throat closed. Her body shook. With Kestrel holding her elbow as if to hold her up, she walked back to the pinch like a woman struck blind. She was that lost. That frightened.

And even inside the safety of the ward — but was it safe? — the cords pulled at her. She felt them twang against some sense she didn’t know she had, something deep in her body, signaling her as a web signals a spider. Even inside the safety of the ward she felt as if dead eyes were on her, as if something hungry were watching.

In truth, there were indeed eyes on her. Willow had stalked off to her lodge, silent, majestic, unconcerned. The women of Westmost had watched her go. They stood around in threes and fours and whispered. Often they looked at the binder’s lodge. Often they looked at Otter.

Otter just kept walking. She wanted to get away from the ward, its strange and stirring power. But where to go? Not into the darkness of the binder’s lodge. Not into the whispering knots of women standing on the packed clay of the palm, the open space at the center of the earthlodges where dances were held and gossips traded. The corn was thick enough to hide in, but she had a cold thrill at the thought of what could be hidden in corn. Kestrel walked beside her and was silent even as she slowed and stumbled — and finally stopped, leaning on a pile of rocks by the edge of the sunflower patch.

Otter tried to breathe deep, but each breath made her shudder and shudder. Kestrel put her hand between Otter’s shoulders: steady. The summer stones were rough and warm to the touch. They were not alive, but if they were dead, it was a simple kind of dead: They were only themselves. They needed nothing.

Otter was thinking this and not watching the world, and so when someone moved just behind her, her heart leapt like a startled grasshopper. She spun and had her bracelets thrust up before she saw who it was.

“What happened?” said Cricket.

“Once our dogs were wolves,” said Cricket, when no one answered him, “and though we loved them, we watched them carefully.”

Kestrel half laughed. “They’re watching Willow.”

“No, they’re sure she’s rabid.” He turned to Otter. “They’re watching you.”

Otter trailed along the edge of the sunflower row, away from the lodges and the open space of the palm. She could feel the eyes of the pinch on her back. “I didn’t do anything,” she said. “It’s only that I’m — I’m —”
This girl is a binder born.
“— her daughter.”

Slowly they walked away from the lodges of Westmost, as if they were deer browsing. As if they were not afraid. Kestrel put out her hand and skimmed it along the top of the grass as the meadow became wilder.

“What happened?” said Cricket again. “Have mercy on a storyteller: Tell me a story.”

“It’s not just a story,” said Otter. Something broke out of her that sounded like anger.

“They never are,” said Cricket softly.

“My mother …” said Otter — and she could say nothing more. It was Kestrel, then, who spun the tale: Kestrel, foursquare as flint, plain as that, unornamented. She told the story of how the binder had turned around wearing the face of a wolf. Of how her cords had moved by themselves to make the knots. Of how she had bound the old binder to rest. Of how she had closed her eyes and called the old binder back.

Silence fell in the meadow.

“Oh,” said Cricket.

“What does it mean?” said Otter. “Cricket — you said you knew a story like this.” The night Tamarack had died, he’d said that. “A … an unhappy story.”

“No, I don’t know this story,” said Cricket. “But —” He touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip, as if he suddenly was unsure. They watched him, silently, and when he spoke again he sounded tense. “Otter, think a moment before you ask me. It is a serious thing. Do you want to hear a story?”

“Tell me a story,” said Otter.

In answer, Cricket turned around three times, like a wolf seeking rest, then sank into the grass. His turning had made the grass into a little nest around him. He sat cupped in it, cradled like a fawn.

Otter sat with him, not so neatly. Kestrel sat too.

The grass here on the ward-side edge of the meadow was tall, full in that season of drifts of purple aster and goldenrod just opening, sweet smelling in the sun, loud with bees. Sitting in it they were tucked away, hidden. Hiding was not a thing people did much in Westmost: It was better to stay in sight. Better to be able, at any instant, to see the shadows on all sides, to be able to summon help.

Kestrel had pulled off her bracelets and was casting patterns between her fingers. Even children in Westmost might cast patterns to amuse themselves, to practice — but Otter knew that Kestrel was not practicing. She was keeping watch for the dead. Otter herself kept her face toward the palm, to watch for the living. And Cricket’s eyes turned inward.

“Now,” he said, softly — and there was a strange tremble in his voice, as if he was afraid. “A long time ago, before the moons were named, there was a binder named Birch. And she had a daughter, a binder named Silver. And she had a daughter, a binder named Hare. And she had a daughter, a binder named Spider, who later was Mad Spider, and a hero, and that is as far as the memory goes.

“Now, Mad Spider was not a hero born. As an infant, she did not sing instead of crying. As a child, she did not run and make the wind jealous. As a sunflower, she did not cook for the queen of the bees. She was a living woman, and she had power and she worked it well, but she was human and sometimes she was a fool.”

There was a prickly cluster of narrow-leaf yucca growing beside him: this year’s spires green- and yellow-blossomed, last year’s black as wet flint. Cricket snapped off one of the dark ones.

“So.” Cricket rolled the black stem between his hands and the seedpods rattled. Hissed and rattled. “So. Little Spider, who was not yet Mad, was not much more than a sunflower when her mother died, and her mother’s second too, in the winter fevers, a fever of blisters. And so she became first binder of a great pinch while her hair was still wholly black. Oh, young. So young. She was frightened. She did not want to let her mother go.”

Otter swallowed.

“She was frightened, but she went out anyway,” said Cricket. “She went out to bind the dead.” The yucca pod, spinning like a drop spindle, made a hiss. “Now, it was said of Little Spider that she could tie a knot in living bone. She had that much power. What she bound stayed bound.

“But what does a spider do when it catches a rabbit?

“Little Spider bound Hare, who was her mother, high in the scaffolds, under the pale sky. But the wind did not take Hare. The rain did not take Hare. The ravens did not fly her far. She was bound there, with her bones knotted, and she stayed bound.

“Little Spider’s knots were troubled. She felt the pull on them. She began to be afraid. And then, in the moon where the sap rises, she realized why. One night she went out to the scaffold grounds, alone. And when the moon rose, she saw it: bound high above, neither living nor dead, a thing with white hands.”

Cricket fell silent. The three of them sat there a moment, knee to knee. Kestrel lowered her bracelets slowly and said: “I have never heard this story.”

Cricket looked away. “It is a secret of the storytellers,” he murmured. “A great secret.”

“Cricket,” whispered Kestrel, shocked.

“Flea has been teaching me,” he said, with his face still turned aside. “She has — she will not live much longer, and she has no successor.”

But to teach in secret, to teach a
boy
—

“You think the pinch can survive without its stories? That because there are no knots in them, they are not important? If you think that, you are wrong.” He looked over at the earthlodges, at the handful from which no cook smoke rose. “There are not enough of us. We must hold on.”

“But a secret of your cord —”

“Yes,” said Cricket. “I know. They could take my status — such as it is — and keep me forever a child. They could tear out my tongue. They could send me to walk into the West alone, under the eyes of all the dead. I know.”

“Cricket,” breathed Otter. This was nearly as shocking as what Willow had done, though Cricket’s soft voice, and the flush that was creeping up his neck, made it less so. Willow hadn’t been fearful, embarrassed, shy. She had snapped normality in half like a twig, and dropped it like a ripped shirt. She’d been past any shame. Otter was afraid for Cricket. But she was not afraid of him.

“They won’t, though,” said Cricket. “Flea would have to … Flea wouldn’t. And this is the story, Otter. This is the story you need, I think. You are my friend and I am a storyteller. I will tell you the story you need.”

Kestrel leaned forward and put her hand on Cricket’s knee. Cricket flinched, flushed, turned. “We will keep your trust,” Kestrel said.

“For you …” He looked up into her eyes. There was a cupped, still moment — and then Cricket gathered Otter in too, with a touch of hand on hand. “For you — for the two of you — I would break any rule in the world.”

“Tell us — tell me,” said Otter. “Tell me the rest.”

Cricket turned his head in the direction of the ward. The grass blew in billows around them while the storyteller gathered his strength. “In the moonlight Little Spider saw it: the One with White Hands.” He swallowed, and the story broke. “In truth I need a drum for this, a rattle — some stories are too big for one voice. And mine isn’t much.” He turned the yucca pod. “I can only try.”

He began again, and this time his voice was faint, like someone barely brushing a drum. It was soft, but there was no doubting its power. Otter leaned forward to hear him above the whispering grass, the buzz of the cicadas. “In the moonlight Little Spider saw the white hands, and she thought: ‘It is only bone; my mother’s hands have gone to bone, and that is as it should be. That is the way of things.’ And then in the moonlight she saw the white hands move. Bound high above, they opened and closed. They begged and they beckoned.”

The summer world around Otter seemed to fall away. She could feel only the points of warmth on her knees, one against Kestrel’s knee, one against Cricket’s, and the shivery brush of the story over her whole body. Her hair was rising on end.

“Now, this was long ago, in the great pinch of Eyrie, before the moons were named. Always there have been the dead, always the shadows have been hungry.” Cricket touched his own heart, where the gast had scarred him. “The little dead are the crack in the pot, the tear in the curtain. They are here because the world is not perfect, and they mean nothing more than that. Little Spider had seen many little dead. She had knotted them away from her home; she had knotted them out of the world. But never before had one beckoned to her. One that once had a name, though the name was done with the world. One that had once been her mother.

“Never before had she seen One with White Hands. No one had seen a Hand — because that was the moment in which they entered the world.”

“What?” said Otter, even as Kestrel said: “Cricket!”

It was impossible. It was like hearing that yesterday there had been no such thing as the sun. They both stared at Cricket — who closed his eyes, a fine shiver running over his whole body. But he said nothing to their shock, and kept speaking.

“Little Spider called to it,” he said. “She sent her voice up into the trees. She said: ‘Mother.’ The thing had no voice — or at least, it did not answer. She saw the hand still and cup itself into an ear to listen to her. ‘Mother,’ said Little Spider, ‘come down from there. Why are you up a tree in the moonlight? Why are you in the living world?’

“Still the thing did not answer. Little Spider stood in the moonlight. She moved her toes through the snow and the bones. A long time she waited, and still nothing answered.

“She could have climbed into the tree, but she did not. She could have summoned her rangers, but she did not. She called up to the scaffold: ‘I will see you when the rope rots.’ And she went back to the pinch, and she began to cast a ward.