Anyanwu! she screamed in her mind. No response.

Pain burst in her chest as she was pulled deeper. Bubbles escaped her lips. The light retreated from the surface. Water entered her mouth, her eyes, her ears. Something yanked her by the neck. Pulling her backward. Plash! She landed in living grass, flopping onto her back like a fish out of water. She opened her mouth wide. She had a mouth, but she still felt herself fading. And then she felt Anyanwu jump into her. She breathed; death had not found her yet.

“Where?” She quickly sat up, her body aching. She touched her face; instead of flesh, she felt wood. Her spirit face. But her voice was not the low voice of Anyanwu. She heard a flute play a haunted tune, and she moaned.

Ekwensu spoke with the low voice of an earthquake, gravelly like tumbling stone. It made all the hairs on Sunny’s arms stand up, for she’d somehow carried her body into the wilderness. “When crocodiles walk on waters, the ripples are obvious,” Ekwensu rumbled. “I am deep in the water, so you cannot see my open mouth.

“Meet Death, my close friend and ally,” Ekwensu said. “It is good that I’ve brought you fully here. He would like to acquaint himself with all of you.”

He appeared behind Sunny. She could smell him, like decaying carrion. She could feel him, cool and damp. She could sense him, for his presence absorbed all the sound around him—it was as if a black hole stood behind her.

“Face me, child,” he said in the voice of her father. “I’ve been waiting to meet you properly. The wilderness is not a place I normally come to, for there is no life here. But you are a special occasion. Face me.”

“Why?” she asked. She didn’t dare turn around. “What do you want?”

“You make me feel powerless,” he said with a chuckle. “You die and return, and your body is still alive. You come and go, come and go. You are unbound, but you still live. Why does your body not die here after so many seconds? Who are you?”

Have to get out of here, she thought. “I don’t know,” she said, gritting her teeth.

“Turn around,” Death commanded.

Don’t turn around, Anyanwu said in her mind. Sunny took several deep breaths. She hummed as she exhaled.

“It won’t be painful,” he said soothingly, sounding like her father. She missed him so much. “Turn around. Both of you.”

She shut her eyes, touching her wooden face and picturing the ocean, vast and full. Just beneath the water, schools of fish and larger beasts swam, the water protecting them from the sun’s harsher rays. The waves rippled, never still, never at rest because water was life. Sunny would break the surface and Anyanwu would cause more waves, more ripples—because she was alive.

“Surface,” she whispered. Death was at her back, but she had to focus her mind to a needle-sharp point, just as Sugar Cream had taught her. Never had she brought her physical body to the wilderness. Who would purposely do that? Even when she glided, Sugar Cream said that the essence that was her physical body became light and invisible and stayed in the physical world. Now, the lake beast had pulled her completely through, or maybe Ekwensu had used the creature to do it.