Child, there had been no chance.
Child, you were doomed from the start.

He knows this in the way his mother had turned from him, how he had trembled, how easy it had been for his father to coax him away from the water’s edge. How he had stumbled, tripped over his own feet as he had turned his head to watch his mother and his sister disappear in the distance. How his father had said nothing to him at all as they’d walked except to say, ‘it’s not far now’. Deeper and deeper into the forest they’d gone until, finally, they had come to a pond, deep black where the sun could not reach the water.

And his father had gone quietly into the water and the boy had understood that he should follow, that he should not ever question his father.

And then?
He had slipped soundlessly beneath the surface of the water, tugged under by some force he could not see, hungry tendrils of something curling around his limbs, his belly. And he had tried to scream, call to his father for help, but he’d opened his mouth and the water had flowed in. Into his belly, into his lungs.

And then?
He had awoken on the pond’s loamy bank, his father gone.
Something had changed, that much was obvious. Because, try as he might, he could not shake the algae from his hair. Because, no matter how far he walked from the edge of the pond, still he dripped water. Because, though he drew breath, he could tell it made no difference.

He returns to the river where he had last seen his mother, his sister. But they are gone. In their place, there stands something vaguely reptilian.

He has no way of knowing how much time has passed since his father led him to the water. He cannot know that his father had left him there beneath the surface for nearly a year before he’d finally dredged him up. “Hey,” he calls, “have you seen my mother?”

Soggy boy, she says, and he glances down at himself, at the puddles gathering around his feet. Where is the water coming from? Is it leeching out of his skin? He thinks of the sinking, not knowing that what it had truly been was drowning. He cannot see the algae in his mane, he cannot see the milky white eyes, he cannot smell the stench of death that follows him.

All he knows is that there are puddles growing at his feet. He frowns.

Soggy boy, she says, but she offers him her name all the same. Starboard. The name calls to mind the sky, the stars, but she looks a thing made for the water. He takes a step toward her. Only one at first and then another and another, growing bolder as the space between them shrinks. He has no reason to be bold, the boy. He is a frightful sight.

What should she call him? Soggy boy is as good a name as any, he thinks. It’s certainly fitting. He remembers, vaguely, what his father had said to his mother before he’d spirited him away to the pond in the forest. ‘I’ll take the son,’ he’d said. So the boy opens his mouth and tells her the first thing anyone had ever called him, “Son.”

It’s not a name, but he is either too young or too stupid to know that. He had not been worthy of a name, not the way his sister had been. He’d lived long enough to hear their mother press a name into his sister’s temple, but she had not offered him the same kindness. Neither had their father. Their father had merely taken him into the forest and let him drown.

“Am I dead?” he asks, tilting his head, because she looks a heavenly thing, even if her calling him ‘Soggy boy’ seemed almost cruel.