In a panic, Coralie reached for the knife in her pocket and set to work frantically chopping at the dark, slimy tendrils that had wound around them, freeing herself first. She continued to hack through the weeds, managing to tug the other girl from the grip of the twisted greenery. The two slipped underwater for one terrifying moment. Coralie could see her companion’s pale hair drifting out. When she realized that she was being pulled down by the weight of the unconscious girl, she began to kick furiously, releasing them from the whirlpool, swimming against the currents, hauling the other woman along. Once she reached the shore, Coralie couldn’t catch her breath, which rasped inside her. She forced herself to crawl over the grass and the stalks of milkweed, the roots of which the Lenape Indians used to cure fever but which now tore at her hands as she pulled the other woman through the weeds. When she could go no farther, she let go of the stranger she’d rescued and lay beside her on the ground, exhausted. Her lungs hurt from the effort. She shivered uncontrollably, and yet, she had never felt as alive. Above them the sky was endless, flecked with bright stars.
“We’re safe,” she said.
The young woman beside Coralie was unresponsive. It was possible that she had hit her head or swallowed too much water. The enormity of Coralie’s responsibility burst upon her.
“Hello!” she shouted into the woods. “Can anyone hear me?”
She prayed the young man would be nearby and hear, but her own voice echoed back and no response came, aside from the fluttering of birds in the thornbushes, awakened from sleep by her frightened cries. The birds rose like a plume of smoke, disappearing into the blue-black sky.
The rescued woman was the same age as Coralie, or a little younger. Peering through the dark, Coralie saw that she was quite beautiful. She also noticed a widening splash of blood upon the stranger’s chest. She gasped, thinking her charge had been seriously wounded, then realized it was she herself who bled. She had caught her wrist on something sharp, perhaps a rock, or her own knife as she hacked through the weeds.
Coralie drew herself up to kneel beside the other girl. All she could hear was her own ragged breathing. There was a fluttering inside her, a wild emotion she couldn’t temper. She leaned over the girl, placing her ear to the sopping coat. The fabric had once been sky blue, but soaking wet it had turned the color of ink. Coralie had no idea how a heart was supposed to sound; all she could hear was the deafening thrum of her own heart in her ears. But she knew that flesh should not be blue and arms and legs should not be rigid. The girl’s head had fallen to the side, as if she were a doll. Coralie reached to take the drowned girl’s hand, but it was tightly clenched. She held a finger to the girl’s mouth to test for breath. There was none; the girl’s lips were blue, her mouth clamped shut.
At last, Coralie wrenched to her feet, knees shaking. She felt the other girl’s death inside her own body, a stone of grief in her throat. Acting on instinct, she ran. She blindly went toward the river. In the woods there were flashes of what appeared to be bright globes of light: migrating yellow warblers flinging themselves through the gloom. Coralie raced on, past some fishermen in a skiff, who spied her and called out. She continued through the brambles. She was too removed from the world of the living to communicate with human beings. Yet she could feel her heart banging against her ribs as she ran, letting her know that she was still alive.
She came upon the carriage in the dark. The wound on her hand was deep enough so that blood continued to rush forth, staining her white blouse. Perhaps she appeared to be a monster when she approached her father, for he backed away and did not take her in his arms. Coralie stood there, wringing wet, shivering, her complexion starkly white beneath the streaks of green paint that had washed onto her cheeks.
The liveryman came to her with a blanket. “Miss, this was a bad night for the river. I told you that.”
Coralie’s father now approached, concerned for their plan. “Have you been found out?”
She shook her head. When she tried to speak, no words were heard, only a croak, as if she had lost her voice in the river. Her face smarted with the cold. The silence of the girl in the blue coat had affected her, chilled her to the core.
The Professor took her arm, demanding to know what had caused her such distress. “This is not a game.” He saw her silence as disobedience. “You’ll tell me directly, or you’ll regret it.”
Coralie’s pale face flushed. “I found a body in the river.” Her voice sounded strangely flat. “I left her in the woods. She drowned.”
Coralie expected her father to berate her, for the dead were not their concern any more than the living were. She presumed he would contend that a corpse in the grass was no different than a child offered for a good price. And yet a strange look began to play upon the Professor’s face, his interest piqued. He asked Coralie to lead them to the place where she’d left the body. The liveryman took them along the road by carriage. Coralie continued to shiver. “The road ends nearby,” she warned. “It’s best we avoid this situation and let the authorities find her.” Once, at the funeral of a living wonder, an old man with warts like a bullfrog’s who had died in his own bed of old age, Maureen had cautioned her that if she should look upon a dead man twice, she would carry him forever. They’d hurried away from the funeral home, but Maureen’s warning had stayed with her. “We should turn back,” Coralie recommended now.
“We’ll go when I say,” her father told her. “Have faith in me.”
At the road’s end, the liveryman tied his horse to the branch of a chestnut tree and they continued on by foot. A few birds sang in the dark, but the quiet was so deep that each branch breaking under the men’s boots echoed as if a rifle had been shot. A thicker mist began to rise off the water, turning the distant shore silver. The air was warmer than the cold, hard ground. The trees were pewter, the ferns black as coal. Confused, Coralie led them in the wrong direction, and then had to backtrack. The Professor grumbled, annoyed to realize she’d taken them in a circle. But Coralie wondered anew whether it might be best if they failed to reach their destination. Possibly she had been wrong and had mistaken exhaustion for death. There might well be nothing for her father to see. Surely it was within the realm of reason to think that the girl had slept for a while in the tall grass after Coralie had run off, then had awoken refreshed. She may have smoothed down her hair, buttoned her blue coat, and arisen from the meadow to walk barefoot through the woods. You will never believe my dream, she may have told her parents, waiting at the door, relieved beyond words by her return. I dreamed I drowned and a girl who was half fish discovered me and brought me to the shore, intent on rescuing me so that I might live and walk on land like any other young woman and be your daughter once again.