Seven nights now, and the wife had not come. Dryadha stood under the old stone arch at the edge of the black water, her lantern raised, her long hair damp against her neck. The arch was half-swallowed by vines and slick with algae, but it was the last place the husband had seen his wife alive. He had come to Dryadha's door in the rain a week ago, asking her to bring the woman back. His children were watching him talk to an empty chair. He still set a plate at the table. Dryadha had promised nothing, only that she would look. She set the clay jar down at the base of the arch. Seven layers of dark water and moss filled it now, one poured in for each failed night. She had stopped counting after five because counting felt like losing. She counted anyway. The lantern was her own work. No one had taught her. She had burned her hand twice before she understood what the light did, which was to show the things still holding on. When a spirit was near, the water went still, even in wind. Tonight the water went still. Dryadha lifted the lantern higher. A pale shape gathered above the reeds across the channel, thin as breath, shaped like a woman with her arms at her sides. Dryadha stepped forward slowly. She did not speak. She had learned that speaking too soon sent them under. Then the reeds behind the shape bent, and something else came into the lantern's reach. It was tall and hunched, wrapped in black rags that hung wet from its arms. Its fingers were stained green to the second knuckle. One eye caught the lantern light and threw it back red. It had been following her light for three nights now, drawn to the lantern the way moths were, and each time it came, the spirit fled. The pale shape thinned and was gone before Dryadha could take another step. She swore under her breath and swung the lantern down toward the mud. A small winged shape lifted from the reeds where the spirit had stood, a scaled thing no longer than her hand, its wings soft and yellow, its back marked with a slow pulse of light. It hovered once, then drifted past her ear toward the deeper bayou. Dryadha watched it go. The hunched figure watched it too, and turned its head to follow. It moved after the winged thing, dragging its rags through the shallow water, and the red eye left her. Dryadha stood alone under the arch with the still water at her feet. She picked up the jar. She would not pour tonight's layer in yet. Tomorrow she would follow the small light instead of raising her own, and see if the wife came back to a bayou that had gone dark.