Lady Cordelia Whitmore drowned in this swamp, and she had not left it since. She drifted above the reeds where her lover had pushed her under and run. Now she searched for the path he took that night. She circled the same flooded reeds again and again. The water hid every footprint. It hid every broken stalk. She had counted the circles until numbers meant nothing. Her velvet glove still clung to one hand, frayed and torn. She had worn a matching pair the night she died. The other glove was gone, lost in the mud somewhere below. She pressed the ruined glove to her chest. The locket hung there, cracked down its face. She opened it. Two small portraits stared back, warped and faded. One was hers. One was his. She could barely make out his eyes now. "Which way," she whispered to the reeds. They gave her nothing. A moth landed on the open locket. Its wings were ink-black, edged with a faint blue shine. It sat on the portrait of the man. Then it lifted and flew low across the water. Cordelia stopped drifting. The moth did not circle. It flew straight, away from the reeds she had haunted for so long. She followed. The moth led her past the reeds into deeper water. Bone-white pitcher plants rose from the shallows, pale as dead fingers. The moth crossed above them without pause. Cordelia trailed it, faster now, her torn glove trailing through the muck. The water opened onto a low mound thick with blooms and bones. Half-sunken relics broke the surface. Fossils and rusted fragments lay tangled in reeds and mud. The moth settled on the mound and folded its wings. Cordelia looked down where it rested. A single glove lay half-buried in the mud. Faded velvet. Torn at the fingers. The match to her own. She reached for it with her gloved hand. Her fingers passed through it, cold and useless. But she knew it. He had torn it from her wrist as she went under. He had carried it this far. The path did not end at the reeds. It ended here, at the bog, where he had come after. The moth had shown her the trail she could not find alone. She raised her head. Beyond the mound, the swamp stretched toward dry land she had never crossed. For years she had clung to the place she died. Now she saw where he had gone. The reeds no longer held her. She left the drowning-place behind and moved toward the far shore, the moth rising ahead of her like a guide.

Cordelia followed the moth past the mound of half-sunken relics. Bones and rusted fragments broke the dark water. Flowers glowed pale on the old bog. The moth flew ahead, low and steady, marking the trail her lover had left. She trailed her torn glove through the muck and kept close. Then the moth lifted higher. It crossed a stretch of black open water and vanished into the night. She stopped at the water's edge. The dark closed around her. She looked for the moth and found nothing. She looked for the next marker her lover had left and saw only black. Without the moth's faint blue glow, the trail disappeared. She drifted forward, then back. She had lost the path again. "No," she whispered. "Not again." She would not circle for years more. She looked down at the locket on her chest. She opened its cracked face. His warped portrait stared up. The moth had come to that same portrait once and led her here. She pressed the locket open in her cold hand and held it toward the water. Nothing moved. She waited. She thought of his face, his eyes, the night he pushed her under. She held the memory hard and would not let it fade. A shape stirred beneath the surface. A long fish rose, heavy and slow. Its body caught the little light with a smooth, waxy sheen. An alligator gar, lurching upward, its snout scarred and its teeth pale. It did not snap. It turned its blunt head toward her, then swung toward the far shore. Cordelia understood. The moth had guided her by air. Now the water would guide her. She followed the gar's slow wake across the black stretch. It swam in a straight line, the same as the moth had flown. She kept the locket open and the gar in sight. The fish slowed near a low bank. There, wedged in the mud, something small and dark stood upright. She drifted closer. It was a marker, a carved stub of wood driven into the bank. Beside it lay a second thing, half-buried. She reached down. Her fingers passed through cold cloth. Velvet. Frayed. A scrap torn from a cuff, not a glove. His cuff. He had stopped here too. He had left another piece of himself in the mud. The gar sank away beneath the water and was gone. Cordelia lifted her head. The bank climbed toward dry ground she had never touched. The moth was lost, but the trail was not. She had found the next marker without it. She would not need a guide again. She followed the torn cuff's direction and moved toward the far shore, closer now to the man who had drowned her.

Cordelia climbed the far bank and lost the trail again. The torn cuff had pointed her here, to dry ground she had never touched. But the ground gave her nothing. No footprint. No marker. No moth to lead her. She turned in a slow circle and saw only the black swamp behind and a wall of dead cane ahead. The trail ended at the water's edge, and she could not tell where he had fled next. She pressed her hands to her face. Years of circling had taught her one thing: standing still was defeat. So she opened the locket at her chest. His warped portrait stared up through the cracked glass. Twice now his face had summoned a guide. She held the locket toward the mud and thought of him hard. Nothing rose from the water. She waited, cold and afraid. Then a small shape stirred at the bank's edge. A salamander crawled from the mud, pale as a gutted fish. Its damp body lurched over a root. It did not flee her. It lifted its blunt head and looked at her, the way the moth once had, the way the gar once had. She understood. The water had guided her. Now the land would. But the salamander did not move toward the cane. It turned back to the mud and began to dig. Its small feet scraped the wet earth beside a rotted stalk. Cordelia knelt. She pushed her fingers into the muck where the salamander scratched. Cold cloth met her hand. She pulled. A strip of dark fabric came loose, frayed and heavy with mud. Another piece of his cuff. He had not fled into the cane. He had turned along the bank, and the salamander marked the way. She followed it. The pale creature crawled along the water's edge, past the wall of broken sugarcane. The stalks stood rotted and bent, spotted with mold, thick with crawling beetles. She kept the locket open and the salamander in sight. It stopped where the bank rose into firmer land. There, half-sunk in the mud, lay a boot. A man's boot, split at the seam, the leather cracked and old. Cordelia lifted it in both hands. It was his. She knew the shape of his stride, the weight he had carried the night he drowned her. He had come this far and lost his boot in the mud. He had gone on, wounded, slower now. The salamander sank into the water and was gone. She did not need it anymore. The boot told her more than a marker could. He had left the swamp here. The trail climbed toward high ground, toward a house or a road she had never seen. She stood and faced the rise. The water no longer held her. For the first time she walked away from the swamp entirely, the boot clutched to her chest, following a man who could no longer run fast enough to escape her.