Samuel knew that he was drowning. His leg was trapped no matter how he tugged. He moved his arms, still trying to swim, not yet giving up, but it was happening whether he fought against it or not. He had seen other men drown, they had fallen from the riggings of ships, or leapt into the currents while drunk, and he had wondered how it felt to be taken by the water, if it was a struggle or if it was more like a dream. He hadn’t had a breath for so long his heart was stopping. He thought of Maria on the dock in Curaçao and how he had fallen in love with her then, even though he was bent over with pain.

Samuel now felt an even sharper pain across his chest from the pressure of the water; it began in his heart and seared through his arm, then his throat, and finally his head. He had a single thought and it was she, and then he gave that up as well though it burned inside him. The way he was dying felt like a dark bonfire in a lake that had no end.

Faith was spitting water, alive, and so Maria didn’t wait another instant. She quickly filled her boots with stones, then shoved them back on. She repeated the incantation for protection, calling to Hecate, offering her devotion if only she could be granted this one thing. One time underwater, that was all she wanted. Maria ran into the lake, past her shoulders, past her neck. She dove and went under, the stones in her boots weighing her down. She saw through the darkness and there was Samuel Dias, floating in the mucky water, already a dead man. She dragged him out of the tangle of waterweeds that had held him down. The threaded roots were green and slimy and black, even though they opened into flowers on the surface. To float once more, Maria kicked off her boots, and as the stones fell into the bottomless darkness, she arose.

She pulled Samuel toward the marshy shore, a sob escaping from her mouth as she shivered; water streamed down her back and into her eyes. Maria had always been able to hear Samuel’s heartbeat when he was near and now she heard nothing at all. She tore open his shirt and pounded on his chest, her own breathing ragged.

Faith crawled over, drenched and in despair. “Goat,” she wailed. “Wake up.” There was no answer and Faith began to cry. She was on her knees beside her grieving mother, both coated with mud, weeds in the folds of their clothes, lake water dripping from their hair. Dias’s skin was pale and he was so very quiet. It was clear that he was gone. “You have to stop,” Faith told her mother. She knew death when she saw it. She’d seen it before. “Mother, he’s no longer with us.”