Sorrow’s Knot (13 page)

Thistle came.

Otter did not wonder at it at the time. Willow’s voice was like a hook in the heart. It pulled at her. She would have come. What wonder that Thistle came? Only later did she ask herself how long the ranger captain had waited, standing in the snow, slipping through the darkness, waiting for her daughter to scream her name.

“They never came back,” screamed Willow.

Thistle dropped the curtain and smoothed it before she turned: “Who?”

“My brothers,” said Willow. Her voice was softer, suddenly. “Oh, Mother: Moon and Owl. They never came back.”

“I know,” said Thistle.

“They went with the Walkers, and those Walkers —”

“I know,” said Thistle.

“What happened?” asked Cricket.

“When we send our boys away, they do not come back,” said Thistle. She did not look at Cricket. She did not look at Otter. She was looking at Willow. The wild hair. The white streaks reaching like little hands up the neck. “But we have news of them, stories — sometimes our granddaughters come. But those Walkers — they did not return to the prairies. They did not return to Westmost. They never came back.”

Willow reached with her white hand and smoothed her snaking hair. “Did you ever wonder why?”

“They died,” said Thistle sharply. “The dead had them.”

“But why did they not come back? I know you wished for them. You called their names.”

Thistle’s staff was in her hand, its butt off the ground, held light, held ready — but her voice was stiff: “Any mother would, Willow. You should know that, now.”

“But I called Tamarack and she came back,” said Willow, mad and reasonable. “She was bound and she came back. But the unbound dead — is that better then, not to bind them?”

“If we did not bind them, we’d be buried in them,” said Thistle.

“Do you think so?” said Willow. “But it feels … it feels …” Her hair was stirring by itself, and Otter could see the white fingers growing thinner, longer. “The ones I bound
are
buried, Mother. They are buried in snow. They are dried like meat — stretched out — drying —”

“Willow.” Thistle’s voice was soft. “Is it time?”

She tipped the staff toward Willow — and Otter leapt forward.

It was not a staff. It was a spear.

That was why. That was why Thistle had been near, near enough to scream for. She was waiting for the moment in which she had to kill her daughter. Standing in the darkness. Slipping through the snow. She must have trailed Willow like a wolf trailing a wounded dear.

Willow was bent up with shaking, her arms wrapped around herself. Against the ordinary suede of her shirt, the white hand looked strange — white as birch twigs, talon-tipped. “Not yet,” she said, her teeth clattering. “Not yet …”

Thistle, very slowly, lowered the spear until it was pointing at Willow’s heart.

“No!” Otter pushed herself between her mother and the spear.

“Otter …” Willow’s voice was not quite her own. It slipped into Otter’s ear like a drop of water.

“I said
no
,” Otter snapped. At her back she could feel something cold — radiating, bone-deep cold. A hand put itself on her arm — a white and twiggy hand. Otter whipped around and caught her mother in her arms. “Come back, Mother. Please come back.” She felt the hands on her back, one warm and one cold.

“Otter. I …” Willow leaned her forehead into Otter’s forehead. “I only wanted to protect you. Do not follow me. Do not be a binder.”

Thistle said: “She does not have a choice.”

“Of course she has a choice,” said Cricket. Otter had almost forgotten about him — his quiet manner and face that looked foolish whether in delight or surprise. But he was still there, of course, his voice hoarse and his eyes tired, standing with a storyteller’s rattle in his hand. “We are the free people of the forest. We do not take slaves. She has a choice.”

Thistle ignored him. “We must have a binder.”

Willow glared. “When I wanted to take up the cords you would not have it. You said you would never again call me daughter.” She stepped forward — and there was something alien in the movement, something snake-like and fluid. “And now you would give Otter to the knots.”

“I was wrong then,” said Thistle. “It is so dangerous, to be a binder. I loved you, and you were all I had left.”

“You should kill me,” said Willow, her voice fierce. “You should kill me while I am willing.” On her shoulder, the sinew that stitched closed her shirt was coming out of the holes, one by one, making a small slithering noise. “You’re going to kill me, so kill me.”

Thistle paused. A long moment.

Then the ranger knelt down and laid her spear at Willow’s feet. “Not yet,” she said.

Willow closed her eyes, her face for a moment sane and aged with fear. “Mother,” she whispered. “Don’t make Otter do it. Promise me. Promise me it will be you.”

Thistle stood, paused. Then she leaned forward, tangling her hands in Willow’s hair and kissed the closed eyes. “Daughter. I promise.”

From that day Thistle stayed with them, with the spear in her hand.

Down and down went Willow.

Her tongue thickened and sometimes she could not speak, or spoke nonsense. Her hand turned white all over. It changed from moment to moment — sometimes withered and woody, sometimes pure human in its shape, fat as a baby’s hand, with clear fingernails.

“Otter,” she said, “you will need a red shirt.”

“I don’t want your shirt,” said Otter.

And Willow answered: “I’m cold. I’m so cold. Tell me a story.”

On the other sleeping platform, Cricket drew breath and coughed. He’d been telling tales every waking hour for four days. His voice was rough, the power stripped from it. “I can’t,” he said.

“Mad Spider,” said Willow. She was curling her fingernails down her neck as if trying to get them under a noose. Long red scratches joined the white streaks. “Mad Spider — what happened to her? What’s happening?”

Slowly, Thistle stood up. Slowly she walked to her daughter. Knelt at her feet, the spear in her hand.

“What’s happening?” said Willow, again. A child’s voice, a child’s question.

Thistle reached out with her free hand and took Willow’s wrist — the one that still looked human. “Daughter. Don’t hurt yourself.”

“Mad Spider,” said Willow. “Mad Spider. What happened to her?”

Otter saw Thistle shift, her hand tightening on the spear. The lodge grew breathlessly still.

But Thistle did not strike. She knelt with Willow’s wrist jerking in her grip. “Long she lived,” said the ranger captain. “Mad Spider: She lived a long time, and she kept her people safe. She unmade many of the White Hands. She was a great binder, and we will always remember her.”

Willow lifted her chin. Her face was all white now. Her eyes were a strange white-blue, like blindness, like frozen water.

There was nothing in that face that Otter knew.

“We remember her,” said Thistle, again. “We — I — I hope she was happy.”

“But the story.” The words came out of Willow’s mouth, but not in her voice. The words were as hollow as if Willow were nothing more than a hole the wind moved across. “Tell the story.”

“Daughter,” said Thistle.

But Willow was gone. She had become a door through which something was entering.

“Tell it,” said the thing.

“It helps her,” said Otter. It was a whisper — almost she was begging.
Not yet. More time.
Her eyes were on the spear-point. It was obsidian, glossy as hair. It caught a flash of Willow’s white reflection. “It brings her back. She listens.”

“Long she lived,” said Thistle, again. She had a ranger’s endless woodcraft, endless dead craft. But she spoke awkwardly, as if she’d never told a story. Perhaps she hadn’t. “Long she lived. She grew strong in a strong place. In Eyrie, the high city, before the moons were named. She was binder until her hair was fully gray, a woman of power.

“And then one day — three children went straying. As children do. And a sudden flood swept them out of the pinch and into the forest. Into the hands of the forest. Mad Spider went out to find them, and she found them on a stone in the middle of a stream.

“And there were three Hands that had found them too.

“So Mad Spider, all alone, called to the Hands. She was the first binder to face the White Hands, and she was the best. She was not afraid. She called to them.”

It was a famous story, and Thistle had the rhythm of it now, had the words. “Like frostbite they came,” she said. “Like snow they came. Mad Spider was quick; she danced like a rabbit; she sprang like a deer. She caught them in her cord. But she was touched.”

“She came too close,” said Willow. Her voice was softer, a thing of breath and blood again. “And she was touched. Eye and eye and cheek and hand, she was touched. And this she did to save the children.”

“Daughter,” said Thistle.

“Tell the end,” said Willow.

“Willow …” said Thistle.

“Tell it,” said the thing.

“She died,” said Thistle, no longer like a storyteller, but like a woman who had heard brutal news, and had no way to soften it. “Mad Spider died. She stayed six days, but then she could stay no longer. She pulled her lodge down on her own head, and buried herself alive. And three days later, the Hand hatched from her. And that is the end of it. That is the fall of Eyrie.”

“To save the children,” said Willow, in her human voice, and then —

And then the white hand struck out, fast as a branch whipping, snatching Thistle’s spear-hand.

Thistle screamed and staggered back, clutching her wrist. In Willow’s white hand, the spear bent like a sapling. It creaked. The knots all around it came raveling loose, fast as if they were caught in fire.

“To save the children,” said the thing.

“Mother!” shouted Otter.

The thing twisted its head like an owl. It stared at her.

Otter froze.

“Lady Binder,” wheezed Cricket. “Willow.”

Kestrel had caught the staggering Thistle, dragged her out of the thing’s range. If it had a range. Cricket was standing alone. “Willow,” he said in his raspy voice. “Would you like to hear a story?”

He lifted one hand. The thing mirrored him, lifting its human hand, the last human part of it. Cricket swallowed, loud enough to hear. Then he took one step forward and wove his fingers through Willow’s fingers.

“Where does it start?” said Willow, humanity drifting back into her voice. “Where does it start?”

“A long time ago,” said Cricket, his voice ruined, shaking. “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 that is as far as the memory goes.”

Willow sank down, sitting on a sleeping platform. Her movement was too smooth, as if her legs had joints like a spider’s. Cricket, his hand entangled, sat with her.

“So,” he said. “So. Mad Spider was not much more than a sunflower when her mother died in the blistering fever. She was too young. She was too frightened. She did not want to let her mother go.”

Otter swallowed. Across the lodge, Thistle was folded up on the other platform, the hand Willow had touched pushed hard against her chest. Otter could hear her breathing.

“Mad Spider was strong,” said Cricket. “It is said she could tie a knot in living bone: She had that much power. What she bound stayed bound. And so she bound 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.”

“Storyteller,” hissed Thistle, around a mouthful of pain, “what are you doing?”

Cricket lifted his chin, met Thistle’s eyes.

His chin was proud, defiant. His eyes were wide with fear. This story: This was a secret story. Otter had grown so used to sharing the secrets of other cords that it seemed like nothing. But it wasn’t nothing.

Cricket turned back to Willow.

“Mad Spider felt the pull on her knots,” he said. Willow leaned her head against his shoulder like a sleepy child. Their joined hands rested on her knee. “The knots tugged her and the knots troubled her. One night she went out to the scaffolds. And when the moon rose she saw it: hands that opened and closed. That begged and beckoned.”

Softly, Cricket shifted, slid a hand around Willow’s shoulders, lowered her onto the bed. His voice shifted, singing a lullaby. “Mad Spider bound her mother too tightly. She was caught there, neither living nor dead.” He freed his hand, carefully. “And that was the beginning of them,” he said, beckoning to Otter. “The Ones with White Hands.”

Otter went to the bed. The thing lying there was white as birch bark, strange-eyed. But it looked at her as a mother looks at a child. “I have to show you,” said the thing, “how to let them go. The Ones with White Hands.”

“Show me,” said Otter, her voice shaking.

She knew it was the last thing she had to learn.

She put a cord into her mother’s hands.

“This,” said Willow. She lifted the cord. Doubled it back on itself, wrapped it. Her mismatched hands fumbled over the knot-making. Twiggy fingers snagged the yarn. But as Otter watched, the knot took shape. It was a knot she’d seen before: It was sorrow’s knot, which began the wards and bound the dead. It was a noose.