Glitonea gestures to one of the boulders that line the edge of the pool, but I don’t move, unable to pull my gaze from the strange hovering light and the alien world around us. She wades out from the water and points again at the rock. ‘Sit,’ she says.

I do as I’m told and she sits next to me, angling her body so we’re holding one another’s gaze. The light flickers and dims and her image changes: one moment she looks like the woman I saw on the beach and the next old and decaying. I glance away, feeling uneasy, and she turns my chin to face her.

She takes a deep breath and gestures for me to do the same. I inhale slowly, my chest rising and falling in time with hers, and then she starts to chant – noises that aren’t quite words, yet are somehow familiar. She nods for me to join her and we sing for the longest time, until my eyes lose focus so that I no longer see the details of her face. There is only a patchwork of light and shade, tiny dots swirling thickly in the air.

Tapping her forehead, she stands up and says, ‘Make a picture.’

She clambers onto the boulder, her ragged dress dripping with water, and in the course of a single step her fleshy calves transform into the thin legs of a bird. When I raise my gaze, there is a cormorant standing on the rock. It beats its mighty wings and I shield my face as the bird becomes a woman once more.

Glitonea grabs my hands and pulls me to my feet. ‘Make a picture,’ she says again, this time pointing at the centre of my forehead.

I close my eyes and imagine myself as a cormorant: muscular wings on my back, my body covered with feathers. I think about looking down and seeing thin legs and webbed feet. I visualise it so clearly, I almost believe it could happen. I open an eye and squint, but unless I’m a bird wearing thick black tights and shoes, nothing has changed. Frowning in concentration, I try again, but all I give myself is a headache.

She sighs as if it should be easy for me, and my shoulders sag. Part of me wants to know how it feels to do the impossible, but what if I get stuck and can’t turn back? What if it hurts? The more I keep trying, the more ridiculous I feel. I can’t simply think my way into being a cormorant. I decide to tell her this, when she leans forward and searches my eyes.

‘Wake the witch inside.’

I don’t want to ask whoever I was before for help. I’m already becoming aware of her memories. What if she takes control of me completely? Maybe Glitonea and the others want that to happen so they can have their sister back.