There it is again: in the middle of the black river a pale arm sweeps up and then curves down with a splash. Someone is swimming out there, and I know with all my heart who it must be. "Dashiell?" I say, but my voice clings in the nearby air. He doesn't hear me.

I've been here before, I think. Only once or twice, and never for longer than it took to catch the first glimpse of his back, wandering far away from me along the shore. It's always so dark here, the river so viscous and slow, its surface shoving in jellied wrinkles at the stones. But this time nothing happens to pull me away from this place and I see him again and again: the broad line of his shoulders parting the water, his face like a blurry moon.

"Dashiell!" I call. "It's me, it's your Ruby-Ru! Please come back."

And thank God, he must hear me now, because he laughs — I'd know that laugh anywhere — and rolls onto his back. I can see the pale arch of his bare chest, his streaming arms. He's still far away but the sound waves must have shifted somehow, because I can hear every tiny stir of his feet in the water.

"You shouldn't be swimming out there, should you, Dash? That water doesn't look healthy." I know there's something I have to explain to him, that it's urgent, but I can't think of the right way to put it. "Dash, I think you don't understand? This is a really unusual opportunity for you. I mean, people don't just get chances to come back to life? And if you keep taking so many risks, it might seem like you don't appreciate it."

The shape of his body shifts into an arrowhead; he's traveling away from me. My throat thickens at the sight.

"If you want me to get a second chance, Ruby Slippers, then you're going to have to come to me. Swim out here and we'll discuss it."

That water looks so sickening, though: somber and gluey. "No! Dash, please come back here. Please don't do anything crazy. I don't think you understand how much we've missed you. And now — you have this chance, and you won't even listen to me!" How can I find the words for what's happening to him? Dashiell died, that much I'm sure of, and now by some wild, sweet, improbable fluke he can have one more try at being alive — if he'll only care enough to take it. I don't know how I know that, but the truth of it is diamond-hard and sharp inside my chest. Out of all the people in the world who've ever died and been mourned, of course Dashiell would be the one who gets such an incredible opportunity. But how do I make him take it seriously?

"It wasn't fair, Dash. The way you died. It was a mistake and it wasn't fair to anyone, and maybe that's why —" "Oh, pah, Ruby-Ru. You can't still be such a child, can you, that you'd suppose fairness could come crawling into a place like this? Swim out to me, and I can explain things to you without shouting."

No one is shouting. He's so far in the distance that I can barely make out the disturbance of his rising arms, but we can hear each other perfectly. I can feel him smiling at me across the water, and I don't know why I'm so afraid, why my heart tumbles featherlight inside me.

"Why can't you come to me? You don't know what it's been like, Dash. Without you. It's like — everything I thought was solid is hollowed out."

Everyone in our family is afraid of everything; I can feel Dash thinking that. I can feel him thinking that I'm just like our father, a man who was always cowering away from his own son, looking at his brilliant face with hunted eyes. Because the fire that was in Dash could burn anything, everything. But that never frightened me, and I won't let Dash think it scares me now.

"If you really want me back," Dash says, "you're going to have to prove it, Miss Slippers. Come get me."

With Dashiell you always have to prove everything, again and again, and nothing you can do is ever enough. You can't just tell him you love him, because he'll smile and play with your hair and say how absurd you are for thinking that words could be enough to make it true. I look at the black swirls inches from my feet, frilled with light shining from no moon.

"If I swim out there, then do you promise you'll come home with me?"

The water coils with anticipation; it could be the grease exuded from daydreams gone bad. I take a step forward and it sucks at my shoes.

"Oh, Ru-Ru, of course I do. Come for me now, and I'll follow you back like a little lost lamb. If you'd only been paying attention, you'd know that I've always been truthful with you."

I always paid attention to him; how can he not know that? Whenever I saw him I'd concentrate as hard as I could, trying to memorize the exact shapes the sunlight made on his face, every nuance of his voice, because I always knew that someday we might lose him for good. The water is up past my ankles now, and my shadow on its surface looks like a hole. Waiting to take me in.

"You won't believe the view out here, Ru-Ru. It's distance like you've never seen it before! That much black, that much emptiness. Ah, the night sky when I was alive was positively middling by comparison."

Something skids beneath my foot and I stumble in, thigh-deep now. That water will ruin my dress but I'm not about to take it off, not when Dashiell might see me. Besides, I can't imagine what could be hidden under that slick surface: things shimmying and almost alive.

"Ah, and here we go. I knew I could count on you, sweetest Ru. But you should consider how severely our father would forbid you from doing any such thing. He'd say you should leave me where I am, and good riddance. You wouldn't want to do anything he'd disapprove of, would you, Ruby Slippers?"

"Dad misses you, too," I say. "He just pretends not to. Dashiell, we all want you to come home, so much. And I'm —" I'm coming for you, because I have to. Because you won't give me any other choice, but it's cruel of you to make me do this. I can't say that, though. The water is at my throat now and I stumble forward, flailing. I can hear Dashiell's harsh laugh. I know I have to kick — I'm usually an okay swimmer, even if I don't look like I should be — but at first I can't get my feet up to the surface.

"I can see our Earth!" Dashiell calls. "Still very far away, but it...