Floating in the water was a wolf, its fur clogged and tufted with mud. It wasn’t whimpering now, just drifting in the water. Not even kicking its legs. Its coat was too filthy for me to identify.
“Are you alive?” I whispered.
At my voice, the wolf kicked convulsively and lifted its head to look at me.
Grace.
I was a radio tuned to all stations at the same time, so many thoughts inside me that none of them counted.
Now I could see the evidence of her struggles: claw marks in the soft clay at the water line, chunks of dirt pried from the side of the pit, a track worn smooth by a body sliding back down into the water. She had been here a while, and when she looked at me, I could see that she was tired of fighting. I saw, too, that her eyes were knowing, pensive, full of understanding. If not for the cold water around her, holding her body in wolf form, she’d probably be human.
That made it so much worse.
Beside me, Cole sucked in a breath before saying anything. “Something for it to climb on? Something to at least —”
He didn’t finish, because I was already scouting around the mouth of the sinkhole, looking for something that would be of help. But with Grace in wolf form, what could I do? The water was at least six feet below me, and even if I managed to find something long enough to lower into the pit — maybe there was something in the shed — it would have to be something she could walk on, since she couldn’t climb. Could I even convince her to walk on something? If she had her hands, her fingers, this still wouldn’t be easy, but at least it wouldn’t be impossible.
“This is all useless,” Cole said, nudging a branch with his foot. The only wood near the pit was a couple of crumbling, rotten pine trees downed by storms and age, nothing useful. “Is there anything back at the house?”
“A ladder,” I said. But it would take me at least thirty minutes to get there and back. I didn’t think she had thirty more minutes. It was cold up here in the shade of the trees, and I thought that it must be colder down in the water. How cold did it have to be for hypothermia? I crouched back at the edge of the pit, feeling helpless. That same dread I’d felt when I saw Cole seizing was slowly poisoning me.
Grace had made her way to the side of the pit nearest me, and I watched her attempt a foothold, her legs trembling with fatigue. She didn’t even manage to leverage herself an inch out of the water before her paws smeared back down the wall. Her head was only just above water, her trembling ears tipped at half-mast. Everything about her was exhausted, cold, beaten.
“It won’t last until we get the ladder,” Cole said. “It hasn’t got that much stamina left.”
I felt sick with the plausibility of her death. I said miserably, “Cole, it’s Grace.”
He looked at me then, instead of at her, his expression complicated.
Below us, the wolf flicked her eyes up toward me, holding my gaze for a moment, her brown eyes on my yellow ones.
“Grace,” I said. “Don’t give up.”
It seemed to steel her: She began to swim again, this time toward another part of the wall. It was painful to recognize Grace in this grim determination. Again she tried to climb, one shoulder forced into the muck, the other paw scrabbling above the water at the steep wall. Her hind paws were braced on something below the surface of the water. Straining upward, muscles twitching, she pressed against the clay wall, shutting one eye to keep the mud out. Shivering, she looked at me with her one open eye. It was so easy to look past the mud, past the wolf, past everything else, and into that eye, right into Grace.
And then the wall gave way. In a cascade of mud and grit, she splashed into the water. Her head vanished beneath the sludge.
There was an infinite moment where the brown water was perfectly still.
In those seconds that it took for her to fight her way back to the surface, I made up my mind.
I stripped off my jacket, stood at the edge of the sinkhole, and, before I could think of the countless horrific consequences, I went in.
I heard Cole say my name, too late.
I half slid, half fell into the water. My foot touched something slick, and before I had a chance to determine whether it was the bottom of the pit or merely a submerged root, I was swallowed.
The grit of the water stung my eyes for a second before I closed them. In the moment of that blackness, time disappeared, became an arbitrary concept, and then I found my footing and lifted my head above the surface.
“Sam Roth, you bastard,” Cole said. There was admiration in his voice, which probably meant I’d made a poor decision.
The water came just to my collarbone. It was slimy as mucus and bitterly, bitterly cold. I felt like I had no skin, standing in this pit. It was just my bones and this frigid water passing around them.
Grace pressed against the opposite wall, her head against the mud, her expression torn between wariness and something her lupine face couldn’t convey. Now that I knew the depth of the sinkhole, I realized that she must be on her back legs, leaning against the wall to save her strength.
“Grace,” I said, and, at the sound of my voice, her eyes hardened into fear. I tried not to take it personally; wolf instincts took precedence, no matter what humanity I thought I’d seen in them earlier. Still, I had to rethink my plan of trying to lift her toward the edge of the hole. It was hard to concentrate; I was so cold that my goose bumps hurt. Every old instinct I had was telling me to get out of the cold before I shifted.
It was so cold.
Above me, Cole was crouched at the edge of the pit. I could feel his restlessness, hear the unasked question, but I didn’t know how to answer him.
I moved toward her, just to see how she reacted. She jerked back, defensively, and lost her footing. She vanished into the water, and this time, she was gone for the space of several breaths. When she emerged, she tried unsuccessfully to find her previous resting place, but the wall wouldn’t hold her. She paddled feebly, nostrils huffing above the water. We didn’t have much time.
“Should I come down there?” Cole asked.
I shook my head. I was so cold that my words were more breath than voice. “Too — cold. You’ll — shift.”
Near me, the wolf whistled, very quietly, anxious.
Grace, I thought, closing my eyes. Please remember who I am. I opened my eyes.
She was gone. There was just a slow, thick ripple moving toward me from where she’d sank.
I lunged forward, my shoes sinking into the soft floor of the pit, and scooped my arms through the water. Agonizing seconds went by where all I felt was silt on arms, roots on my fingertips. The pool that had seemed small from above now felt vast and depthless.
All I could think was: She’s going to die before I can find her. She’s going to die inches from my fingertips, sucking water into her nose and breathing mud. I will live this moment again and again every day of my life.
Then, finally, my fingers touched something more substantial. I felt the solidness of her wet fur. I wrapped my arms underneath to lift her up and get her head above water.
I needn’t have worried about her snapping. In my arms, she was a limp thing, lightweight with the water buoying her up, pathetic and broken. She was a golem of twigs and mud, cold as a corpse already from her hours in the water. Brown water bubbled from her nostrils.
My arms wouldn’t stop shaking. I leaned my forehead against her muddy cheek; she didn’t flinch. I felt her ribs pressing against my skin. She breathed another sticky, dirty-water breath.