Sorrow’s Knot by Erin Bow Page B

not offer the secrets of the ward knots, and Otter did not ask for them. But sometimes she watched Fawn’s hands closely as the young binder practiced casting figures, keeping her hands busy as the corn roasted.
    “Willow says something is coming,” said Fawn.
    Cricket looked at Kestrel and Otter. “So the rope is rotted.”
    It was what Mad Spider had called to the bound form of her mother. I’ll see you when the rope rots. Tamarack’s rope was rotted.
    Kestrel’s face grew tight and thoughtful. “The rangers have seen something. Out near the scaffolding grounds, sniffing its way toward us. They track its coming. It will be here when the moon is full.”
    “But that is only three days,” said Otter.
    Three days.

    By the next morning, and who knew how, the tale was all over the pinch.
    They did not panic, the free women of the forest. They prepared.
    The binders were sent out to cast a ward — in so short a time, it could only be a weak one — across the river gap. Fawn did it willingly, spending her power until it pulled the color from her skin: She looked pale and small. Willow did it fitfully, and often fell simply to staring into the forest.
    All the women of the pinch rewound their bracelets. Those who could shoot tied dead-knots around their arrows. Rangers renewed their staffs. Plans were made to send the men and the children into the binder’s lodge. It was one of the largest lodges, and the best warded. Lodges were built of woven wattle overlaid with clay, then sod. On their inner surfaces the women of Westmost tied knots for luck and protection. In the most ancient of the lodges, generations of knots lined the wattle as feathers line the nests of birds. In a binder’s lodge, of course, those knots would have power. Even the most powerful of the dead, surely, could not burrow into a binder’s lodge. They would have to strike at the door. And a door could, in a last effort, be defended.
    Three days was too short, but they did what they could. On the last day, toward sunset, Cricket and Otter and Kestrel shared a roasted pumpkin, stuffed with corn and bits of venison and sage — a feast. “Well,” said Cricket, who was the cook among them, “you’ll need your strength.”
    He looked at Kestrel with fear plain on his storytelling face. Not fear of the White Hand. Fear for her. He stumbled through stories that day as he never did, as Otter wove a few last knots around Kestrel’s staff and Kestrel wound and unwound her bracelets, casting the figures she’d learned: the tree, the scaffold, the sky.
    Outside, a drum sounded three times. Cricket broke his story mid-sentence. He reached out and wrapped his fingers around Kestrel’s wrist, weaving them in and out of her bracelets. She looked up from her careful fingering of the knots.
    “Ward me well,” he said.
    Kestrel caught his wrist in turn, so that they were joined as if to pledge okishae again. “I’ll be careful.”
    She let him go, and he raised a hand to his chest, and then held it out to her. “Do you need two hearts to be so brave? Because you can have mine.”
    Kestrel covered her eyes to them, and she went.

    Cricket was not a child. But he was male, and had no power — could not possibly defend himself. And Otter had no belt, no status. So they went with the children.
    Otter and Cricket went to the binder’s lodge as the light poured out of the sky. They could see the women of Westmost as black figures against the white gleam of the frozen river. They were gathered at the river gate — all of them. The rangers in front, but all of them. The Shadowed People did not hide from danger.
    “I could help them,” said Otter. “If they’d have me.”
    “Oh,” said Cricket, his voice too light. “Come help me, instead.” He lifted the outer curtain of the binder’s lodge. The silver disks on it fluttered red in the setting light.
    Otter had not been in the binder’s lodge since the day her mother had cast her out. It seemed