Then, thinking he has floated farther out to the center of the river, I trace my eyes along the surface, and I remember now the story of the Swamp Witch.

For I see her there, reflected in the water—her true, unfathomable form, beset by those blazing orange eyes that are not eyes, that stare out from an impossible face, from a face that is not a face.

Mercifully, that reflected figure begins to ripple, distorting the terrors that have been burned into my own eyes, and then the ripples grow larger and more insistent still, and at the center the water bubbles up like a fountain. Somewhere below, a shape is rising to the surface.

When it breaks the surface, Julian is there, rising from the water. He seems to float there, dripping little plinks of water back to the river, but I know, when I manage to chance a fleeting glance below, that he is not really hovering there, no, not really, but that she is holding him as if he is her own.

It is all so terrible, I think, my nephew’s corpse floating there in the arms of the witch, Clementine standing beside me, watching eagerly, and I think this is it, I cannot bear any more of this, I will leave him to these creatures and wander deeper into the swamp to die. My brain has just reached this conclusion, filling my heart with cold despair, with sick resolution, with the unthinkable, when the unthinkable has its way with me again.

Julian begins to cry.

EPILOGUE

Many years have flown by since that day, yet it feels as if no time at all has passed.

I would like to tell you this story ends with Elizabeth’s joyful reunion with her son, whom she raises into a fine young man while becoming the extraordinary mother she was always destined to be. I would like to tell you this story ends with those visions of the faceless boy dissolving, replaced now by a happy, smiling child.

I would like to tell you those things, but I am afraid to do so would be to tell another lie. If that is the way you want this story to end, then I will not stop you from pretending. Sometimes pretending is all we have.

It took me another hour to find my way back home that night. By then I was nearly catatonic, but Julian was safe and warm in my arms. When I made my triumphant return at dawn, I went all through the house searching for my mother and Elizabeth, calling out to them, expecting them to be tucked away in bed or huddling before the fire.

But I found them in the very room where I had left them. My mother sat at Elizabeth’s bedside, incoherently drunk, an empty bottle at her feet and tearstains on her cheeks.

Elizabeth lay, cold, pale, and still, an enormous amount of blood drying around her.

That is how my mother and I came to raise Julian.