The first thing to do was to reach into her right pocket. She couldn’t do it with her right hand because it was pinned beneath her. She tried to lower her left arm from where it was wedged between her chest and the Liripip’s door. Flexing her elbow pushed her hand backward against the door so hard that for a moment she thought she was going to snap her wrist. But she got it past the crisis point and reached down to her waist.

Her fingers clutched at wet folds of empty cloth before rooting deep into something that felt promisingly like a pocket. The muscles in her forearm corded and strained, and suddenly Amy feared the worst. What if she’d lost it? What if it’d fallen out of her pocket when she was running? She tried to look down, but in doing so she banged her forehead so hard against the door that she bit the end of her tongue. Her fingers burrowed, and then she brushed something hard and sharp and tilted her hips, coaxing the item out of her pocket. She snagged the wet metal handle between her fingertips and dragged out the Magic Tool. Now came the hard part.

Somehow Amy had to twist her arm off her chest and raise it above her head. With her left arm resting across her stomach, she began slithering it like a snake toward her face until the pain became too intense—but she forced herself to continue. She whimpered as she pushed her arm farther and farther. With one last superhuman push and a loud gasp, she forced it all the way up, smashing her fingers against the top of the wardrobe, bruising her knuckles and dropping the tool.

Amy resisted panicking until she reached into the water and couldn’t find the Magic Tool. The sound from outside was quieter now, but she could feel the wardrobe buffeted by the flow as it filled her coffin, rising inexorably toward the lid. The water was up to her chin now, and her whole body was prickling with cold. It reeked of dirty oil and mud. She felt for the tool underwater, careful not to knock it farther away, but it wasn’t there.

It. Wasn’t. There.

Had it slipped out a seam? Or had the water pushed it underneath her body, between her shoulder blades, maddeningly out of reach no matter how hard she tried? Amy was all too aware that if the tool had fallen lower than her neck, it was as good as lost. Her elbows weren’t double jointed. She would drown.