Mad with grief, Jonah raced back to camp, hardly caring about the branches that scratched his face. By the time he woke two of the men, they gazed into his raving eyes with a small measure of fear. But they were quick to rise and follow him back out, and, being good men, both jumped into the water to see if they could fish out Clementine’s body. They both drew the line at the underwater hole, though. Neither was willing to dive that deep.

They sat together, swamp water mingling with Jonah’s tears, the chirp of wakening birds mingling with his friends’ words of consolation. By and by, the sun came up, and they all knew there was not a chance in the world Clementine was still alive. She had been underwater for hours.

Just as the men were preparing to make their way back to camp, a burst of bubbles broke the surface above the underwater hole, which froze Jonah in his tracks. He stopped and stared, mesmerized, at the cloud of bubbles, signaling movement, a release of air.

Then a hand reached up out of the water and dug its claws into the muddy bank.

The men were so startled that they did not even reach down to help. The hands pulled laboriously and a muddy head emerged, followed by a torso, and then a full body made almost unrecognizable by the mire.

But Jonah recognized her. Of course he did.

He would recognize his wife anywhere.

Later, Jonah would think back on this moment with a sick look on his face and stumble over the telling of it in the Wakefield house. The woman who crawled out of the swamp, smelling like death, was his wife … but at the same time, not his wife. She was changed.

Beneath the mud her eyes were strange—glassy, reflective, like two pools of dark water. Clementine walked heavily, dribbling continually out of every orifice.

When she spoke, her voice warbled as if underwater. “Jonah?”

The two men crossed themselves and called her the devil, but Jonah took her in his arms—feeling her cold, slimy flesh against his and the tangled ropes of her dripping hair—and was filled with a relief so profound it overshadowed even the truth that she had been underwater for hours, that she could not possibly be alive.

“It is a miracle,” he said.

They returned to camp, the other men hurrying ahead. Jonah helped Clementine, who moved rigidly as if her limbs were planks of wood. Much as he tried to warm her, she remained cold to the touch. Her skin was loose and waterlogged.

Back at the camp, the rumors spread quickly. By the time they arrived, the men and women out breakfasting already knew about Clementine’s fall, and their eyes showed fear. While Jonah found Clementine some dry clothes, the two men told the others in hushed tones what had occurred.

In their little house, Meriday saw her mother and was glad. She had heard the rumor that her mother had had an accident, and she had been sitting there hugging her knees to her chest. But her mother brought in with her that awful, rotten smell, and Meriday did not want to go near her. She listened, however, when her father asked her mother how it was possible—how she was alive.