What happened next happened very fast—or so I’ve been told, because it sure didn’t seem fast at the time. Indeed, it felt like the longest dozen seconds of my life. All I know is that the girl-thing sank rapidly, briefly, dragging me along with her, before just as suddenly releasing me—discarding me, as it were—and disappearing.
Except she didn’t disappear, not really, which I found out as soon as I burst back to the surface. Rather, she had leapt from the water and tried to beach herself on the raft—but had overshot it—so that she now hung off its opposite side: flopping and struggling, fighting and twisting, like a fish out of water, or an animal against its leash.
For she was connected, you see, to a kind of umbilical cord, which began at her back, stretched taught across the boat, an
