Free The Drowned Forest by Kristopher Reisz

the fever?” I ask. “Or, like, the frog gave you germs?”
    He shakes his head. “That was the fever. In disguise. Mr. Buckley killed it with a shovel, and I started getting better that night.”
    Any other day, I would have laughed. Today I ask, “How’d Mr. Buckley know what to look for?”
    Your pa-paw shakes his head again, drops the milfoil in the water and watches it bob away. “He learned it growing up down in the holler. Lots of my friends’ folks had come up from there after they flooded it. They’d tell stories about witches throwing curses and root-workers breaking them. Carry a lucky charm made from a buckeye or a stone with a hole in it, but thought you were crazy to walk around with two silver dollars in your pocket. That was tempting death, since when you died they put silver dollars on your eyes. They said you could heal bleeding by reading chapter sixteen of Ezekiel. And that you should never transplant a cedar tree from where it was growing. It was a different way of living down there, a whole different world.”
    “What about something like this? Somebody’s soul getting trapped in the river?”
    “No, I don’t think so … they talked about plenty of spooks, sure, but never anything like this. This river’s so old, though. It’s got so many secrets. Even someone like Mr. Buckley probably didn’t know half of them.”
    “It has something to do with music,” Tyler says. He rolls your tarnished ring between his fingers. “The catfish came right after I played, too.”
    “Rivercall! You’re right!” I gasp as it hits me. “You played, then Holly sent the catfish to us. She can still hear the music somehow. She knows it’s us somehow.”
    “But why can’t she do more?” your pa-paw asks. “The first time I noticed the weeds doing that was days ago. I ain’t budged from this spot since.” He plucks another stalk of milfoil and tears it to bits. You musicians can’t think without fiddling with something. Your brains are directly connected to your hands.
    “Well … what if we’re too far away?” I say. “Maybe we need to go to Swallow’s Nest Bluff and play there.”
    Tyler’s mouth goes slack. His eyes beg for mercy. “Jane, I—”
    “It’s where she drowned. Maybe she can’t send us a clear message because she’s too far away. We have to get as close to her as possible and pray she can tell us what’s happening.”
    Tyler stares at his quivering reflection in the water. He wipes his eyes quickly. “I don’t know if I can.”
    “You can. We have to.”
    “Jane, I—”
    “What did that ring mean? Why did you give it to Holly?”
    Tyler runs the tip of his pinky along the inside of the ring—silver, tarnished bruise-brown—but he stays mute. He moves it back and forth, letting sunlight shaped by the cut-out cross play across his fingertips.
    “It was more than just some pretty little present, wasn’t it?” I ask. “You wanted her to wear it and think of you, to remember you were always going to be there for her, always stand by her. Well, she remembers, Tyler. You think it was chance she used it to send her message? She remembers, and she needs you to remember.”
    Tyler nods. “You’re right. You’re right.” All his goofiness is gone. The words fall heavy and certain like a lead weight in the palm.
    Show me a sunbeam that can do that, Holly.
    Your pa-paw gets the engine running while me and Tyler chop the houseboat loose from the milfoil. Tyler unwinds the docking ropes, then jumps back onboard as the boat eases out of its slip. The green and gray land passes in a shimmering heat-haze like a daydream. As the marina drifts away, Tyler takes the wheel from your pa-paw. Grown-ups can’t find Swallow’s Nest Bluff.
    This river is so old. When the Nephilim walked the land and men were like grasshoppers at their feet, it was flashing as thin and quick as a minnow. The Mississippians came and built cities along its banks. They raised earthwork pyramids into