“This meat won’t do.” Dark slime rises around her as she advances on me; tattered bits of weed fall from her mouth as her angry words shred them. “You brought me the wrong kind, girl.” Her hand, slick and firm as driftwood, grips my jaw. “What sort of mother is this?”

The water around me grows colder, darker, and my thoughts slip back to the warm sand of the playground. “She wept. I saw her. I have her tears, here, on my neck.”

The hole in Genny’s face where a nose would be presses against my collar. The net of her hair wraps my face. Her cold lips clamp against my skin, her slick teeth raking me, scraping at the fine brine of the mother’s tears. The pull of her mouth hurts as ice creeps into my fingers and toes.

She pulls back with a pop; water spins like a drain between us.

“Yes. She wept. But they were the wrong tears, girl.” Genny turns back to the woman. “You never thought to bring him to me—that it might be better for both of you?”

The mother’s brow lowers over her dark eyes, and her lips pull back from her teeth—definitely green, under the water. “What are you saying? I should have drowned my son?”

Genny waves her long fingers, sending small currents off into dark water. “You could have ended his pain. And wouldn’t it have been a relief for you? You destroyed yourself caring for him—and for what?” Genny sucks a strand of algae through her lips and chews.

The mother’s fists release into claws. She moves slowly against the heavy water toward Genny, kicking up clouds of black mud in her wake. “I loved my son. I loved every last moment we had together.”

I can almost feel the heat of her face warming the freezing water around us.

Genny spits out the chewed string of algae. The pieces drift around the mother, landing in her hair.

Genny turns to me. “You see, Laura Leigh? She weeps for her son, not for herself. She weeps for the mother she wanted to be, not the mother she is. She would never have brought me a son—even when she should have. Her meat is old wood. It would pull my teeth straight from my face.”

“I’m sorry, Genny.” I dig my toes into the cool mud. “Send us back. I’ll find another.”

“I’ll send you back, yes. Find us a mother more like your own.”