Marietta was seven when she first understood that drowning was genetic. Not the act itself—though the Crowned-Deep's hunger had threaded through three generations of women who'd stood at water's edge and contemplated surrender. But the impulse. The way her lungs would seize when she passed the community pool, how bathwater felt less like comfort and more like invitation. How her mother's hand would tighten on hers whenever they crossed bridges, as if Maryanne could feel the abyss reaching upward through concrete and steel, patient as grace.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Anne whispered one night, pressed against Marietta's back in their shared bed. Her younger sister's breath was warm against her neck, but her words carried the hope of the hopeless. "Theres that pull, like something's calling our names from the betweens."
Marietta didn't answer. Couldn't. Because admitting it would make it real, and she'd spent seven years pretending the black-and-gold flicker in her left-eye was just a trick of light, not evidence of corruption that had tried to claim her innocence.
Their bedroom window faced the river. Three blocks away, but Marietta swore she could hear it through the wind, teeth gnashing on dry bones weeping with sorrow unheard... The Covenant of The Drowned had scattered after Jesse and Vow's deaths, after the basement at St. Mary's had collapsed into itself like a prayer folding inward. But scattered isn't gone. Minnie and Roman were gone, yes vanished into whatever depths forgave the unforgivable. Yet their legacy clung to the Jones family like old rust on a nail, heavy with the weight of devotional-sacrifice—to the unknown god.
Maryanne tried. JESUS, how she tried. Sunday services at Pastor Thompson's church, where the congregation sang "Amazing Grace" like armor warring against the dark. Holy water sprinkled on doorframes. Crosses in every room, blessed by priests who didn't quite meet Maryanne's eyes because they'd heard the stories, seen the scars on her palms where she'd gripped her own cross hard enough to draw blood.
But faith couldn't unmake what Marietta and Anne Faith carried now. The doctors called it heterochromia when the gold rim appeared around her left pupil at age four. Heterochromia is a condition where a person has different colored eyes."Genetic mutation," they said, scribbling notes while Maryanne's hands shook in her lap. "Nothing to worry about. Quite fascinating, actually."
Docs hadn't seen how the gold moved. How it pulsed when Marietta passed churches, like a heartbeat trying to sync with something that predated the sound of silence. How her eye would ache during communion, forcing her to look away from the cross because the light there felt too bright, too accusing.
Anne Faith was different. Softer. The older daughter had inherited their grandmother Margaret's quiet strength—the kind that didn't announce itself but simply endured. Where Marietta felt The Crowned-Deep's corruption like a brand beneath her skin, Anne Faith seemed wrapped in something gentler. Protection, maybe. Or mercy, or maybe something more entirely.
"Mom says we're supposed to protect each other," Anne murmured, her small hand finding Marietta's beneath the covers. "That's what sisters do. But what if you need protecting from yourself?"
The question hung between them like smoke. Outside, the river's pulse quickened, While The-Crowned-Deep lurked beneath sounds.
Marietta had begun noticing things. Small things. The way water in her glass would ripple when she was angry, though no one had touched the table. How fish in the pet store tanks would press against the glass when she passed, mouths opening and closing, in silent pleas she couldn't quite hear but felt in the hollow of her chest. How the pendant—the one Elijah had carried before Clara locked it away in their attic—sometimes appeared in Marietta's dreams, humming with frequencies that made her teeth ache.
She hadn't told Maryanne about the dreams. She couldn't bear to see that look—the one that said I sacrificed everything to save you, and it wasn't enough.
Because that was the cruelest truth: Jesse and Vow had died. Guy There beloved Father had died. The Covenant had been broken. Or so they thought, Maryanne had chosen love over the abyss.
And still, the corruption remained. Not in Minnie's sadistic glee or Roman's hollow desperation, but in a seven-year-old girl who sometimes thought what it would feel like to stop fighting, to slip beneath the surface and let the Crowned-Deep's promise of peace—That's a lie she thought, better not go down that road... The war in her skull faded. Marietta sighed "Finally silence... Anne reassured her sister she isn't crazy, nor hallucinating.
"I won't let you drown," Anne said fiercely, squeezing Marietta's hand hard enough to hurt. "Even if I have to hold you up forever."
The gold in Marietta's eye flickered. Just once. Like a candle flame testing which direction the wind would blow.
From downstairs, Maryanne was praying. Her voice drifted up through floorboards that remembered generations of blood, sacrifice, and torment. Through the mind of Maryanne that had witnessed possession. The air was still thick with the residue of battles fought in the betweens.
"Deliver us from evil," Maryanne whispered, her rosary clicking like small bones. "For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."
But Marietta heard something else beneath the prayer. A counter-melody, sung in a voice that tasted of blood and old milk with a crushing depth and the terrible patience of things that had learned to wait beyond the silence.
"The water remembers," it whispered. "And so do you, I can take that all away if you let me."
Anne's breathing had evened out—she'd fallen asleep still holding Marietta's hand, hoping... praying to calm her sister enough for her to sleep. Marietta stared at the ceiling where shadows moved in patterns no lamplight could explain, her eyes darting across the constellations of lights, and stars through the skylight. She had made a choice that was really just another form of surrender:
She would carry this alone. For as long as she could. Until the gold consumed her eye completely. Or worst-case scenario, Anne Faith has to save me from myself. "So be it, she whispered to herself."
Whichever came first didn't matter.