Sorrow’s Knot by Erin Bow

felt Cricket’s warmth against her back.
    Kestrel withdrew her staff, shaken.
    “A binder should undo her own work.” The voice was hard and seemed to come from nowhere. Otter turned her head, but pointlessly: She could see only the close walls of the door tunnel. Then Thistle slid sideways into the door frame. So narrow was the view from the tunnel that it was as if the ranger captain had appeared from the sky.
    Otter shifted back before she could stop herself — then checked and drew herself up very tall. “Master Thistle,” she said.
    Thistle looked over the blue ward with flint-dark eyes. “I think you cast this,” she said to Otter.
    Otter was silent a moment. What would they do to her, the binder who was not a binder?
    Cricket put a hand on her back, strengthening.
    “Speak,” said Thistle.
    Otter spoke: “I cast this ward.”
    “Can you undo it?”
    Otter had not thought about undoing. She had tied her mother’s knots, in fear and in wild power, in dream and instinct. Now that she was not caught in fear, she knew that undoing a ward was a binder’s hardest task. She had not the first idea how to go about it.
    Willow had undone cords with a touch. But Willow was becoming something different: an unbinder. That was not a path Otter could follow. Not one she wanted to.
    If the ward were a string figure, one would start with that third twist, and lift — She raised her hand toward the place, to try it.
    The ward pulsed.
    She froze. The ward sniffed toward her and suddenly she was clench-jawed, trembling, ready to topple forward into the ward, into the shadows, as if pulled by a rope of her own power.
    But she had to undo it: She had at least to try.
    She slipped one hand into place where the strands crossed.
    Otter’s fingers were suddenly tangled in yarn. The knots flexed open like tiny mouths and bit. Otter shouted with pain. The knots were like leeches, working their way to the soft places between her fingers, drawing power from her. It went rushing out and left her feeling as if she had stood up too fast. She felt sleepy, she felt stupid.
    “Otter!” Kestrel shouted. Cricket wrapped an arm around her waist as if to pull her back.
    “Wait —” Otter said, her teeth rattling. If he pulled her now, she might leave her hand behind. She —
    If the ward were a string figure, then the finger trapped at that crossing could be freed: tuck, turn, under, pull.
    Something was pouring out of her into the ward, something as irreplaceable as blood. The world dimmed. Tuck, turn. Under.
    Pull.
    Otter sagged backward against Cricket, who caught her, stumbling backward.
    “Then you cannot undo it,” said Thistle.
    “I cannot,” said Otter thickly.
    Her ward, her power. The moon-count of children behind her. Were they trapped?
    They were trapped.
    “Fetch me Fawn,” said Thistle.
    Otter lifted her head.
    Fawn. Not Willow. Fawn.
    Kestrel looked at Thistle, at Otter and Cricket, back at Thistle. She went.
    Kestrel had choked on her words earlier, when Otter had asked for her mother. Words broke out of Otter now: “What happened?”
    “It can wait,” said Thistle.
    “It can’t,” said Otter. Thistle’s staff was lifted, ready in her hand. What kind of woman did not rest the butt of her staff on the ground in such a moment? Otter was unreasonably irritated by that. “Willow —”
    “Master Thistle,” said Cricket, soft and strong, behind her.
    “Rangers’ business, Lord Story,” said Thistle, making it sound like a very minor title. “Binders’ business.”
    Cricket said: “It is her mother.”
    “And it is my daughter! Do you think that means nothing to —” Thistle stopped. Her voice dropped into a frightening softness. “Should I say this to my granddaughter with a wild ward between us, and no one to hold her? Should I send dark news into darkness?”
    “I’ll hold her,” said Cricket.
    But Thistle stepped sideways and vanished.
    Otter could not hear Thistle move. She might be three steps