She hurried on, through mucky streets that clung to her dressing gown, framing it with mud. My dressing gown, she thought with a silent laugh. I’m walking about in my dressing gown like a common whore. She didn’t notice that one of her breasts had slipped out, nor did she make any attempt to restore her modesty. Stares and murmurs and pointing fingers followed her, but they might’ve been in another kingdom entirely as far as Lana’s awareness of them went.

She left town, crossing a narrow bridge that forded a stream. The stream would eventually make its way to the ocean, but she wasn’t heading that way. Instead, she turned upstream, following its winding course to a small, freshwater pond where she’d occasionally hunted for crayfish to add to her stew. Now, the banks were empty, the weather too hot and dry for anyone in their right mind to be basking under the sun’s fiery glare.

“Almost there,” she murmured, not noticing that at some point during the brief journey Ludo had fallen asleep, perhaps lulled by the gentle rocking of her strides. “I will make this right. No more screaming. No more anger. I won’t leave you. I won’t ever leave you.”

She waded into the water, which instantly soaked her gown until it stuck to every part of her like a second skin that would soon be shed. It reached her knees, then her hips, then her chest.

It reached her neck, cooling her skin and washing away the sweat that had beaded under her arms and in the hollow of her throat. Cleansing her.

I’m fixin’ what shoulda never been, she thought. She wanted it to be true. She needed it to be true.

Ludo, still nestled in the crook of her elbow, was already beneath the pond’s surface. He awoke as the cool water hit him, though he instinctively held his breath in his tiny lungs. Lana did as well, just before she sank all the way under, watching bubbles the size of a pinhead escape from her nostrils and rise to the surface.

She, on the other hand, went the opposite direction, sinking deeper.

All at once, her mind cleared. Ludo! she tried to scream, but all that emerged was a garbled scream that was immediately silenced by the water rushing into her mouth and down her throat. While still clutching Ludo in one arm, she tried to pump the other hand at one side as she’d seen Kernan do. Instead of rising gracefully, as buoyant as a wooden plank as he always did, the motion seemed to make things worse, the speed of her descent quickening.

Until her feet hit the bottom.

What have I done?