My throat is tight. I loosen the strip of linen around my neck. I reach out for the woman, and she hisses over her shoulder. Her teeth are green—greener than when I last saw them.

I draw my hand back. “But you said—”

“I promised nothing.” She sets Andrew down in the mud, and stands in front of him.

“But I brought him to you. I brought you a son, like you asked.”

She smiles. “You did. He’s beautiful.”

Andrew’s head hangs, chin to his chest, hair drifting over his eyes.

“But you love kids.” I want to take Andrew’s hand. I want to lead him to the playground, let him get warm again on the hot sand.

“I do.”

“And you took a child. You’re a Genny now. You should be my Genny. I helped you!”

“I didn’t take him.”

“You did! You pulled him under!”

“He was a gift.”

The cold of the water hits me all at once. I shake, and the floating silt trembles away from me.

My Genny steps through the curtain of reed and silt. Long ribbons of algae twist around her face. She laughs, and small fish startle from the bramble of her mouth.

“Cherish him, Shannon. They grow so quickly,” Genny says.

The woman nods and wraps her arm around Andrew’s shoulders.

“But do it elsewhere,” Genny says. “This drain is clogged.”

Shannon lifts Andrew and walks away, out of sight past the tumbling detritus in the currents.

I’m frozen everywhere but my eyes, which burn as though the sand were salt. “She loved her son so much. I thought she’d love me, too, if I were hers.”

“I loved my daughter, too,” Genny said. “But you are not she.” Genny’s face is hidden by the mass of weeds, but her voice sounds choked with sorrow.

“My mother didn’t want me. Kyle’s mother didn’t want me. Why wouldn’t she take me?”

“Because she can’t.”

“Because I’m yours?”

“You aren’t mine anymore.”

The dark mud of the fen bottom slides between my fingers as I drop to the ground. The floating silt scrapes my throat as I howl—a twisting cyclone of bubbles reaching for the sky.

Genny’s barbed fingers press against the underside of my chin and raise my face to hers. Somewhere, through all that green, I sense her coal eyes.

“Laura Leigh, you are your own now. You have grown. You are a Genny.”

The current strips the words from my trembling lips. Genny pulls me to my feet.

“You took a child. You drove him into the water to calm the rage of your own loss. You are a Genny now.”

“But it didn’t work. The rage is still there. The loss. It didn’t work.”

“It never does. But you’ll never give up.”