When Samir had been nine, he had almost drowned.

It had been late spring, the first family trip up the mountain. It was a hike he loved, the herald of warm outdoor months of running and swimming and playing before the snow returned and life quieted back down.

Bursting with excitement, he had run ahead, reaching the lake well ahead of his parents. He stripped off his shirt and shoes and socks on the run, pounding out onto the dock that reached like a finger towards the center of the water.

No one else was around. It was still early in the year, and there were simply fewer people around. Samir knew people had been leaving—families with children who were his friends, or adults he had known because their town was small and he knew most of the people. Had known most of the people.

His childish mind had yet to connect the people going away with the late-night, hushed conversations around the heart, as neighbors and friends spoke in low, urgent voices, against his parents’ measured tones. Words he had picked out. Demons. Magic. Danger. Knights.

Those thoughts flitted through Samir’s head as he ran, but they didn’t stick, didn’t take hold. He was only a child, and the knights in the castle up the mountain occupied the same fantastical groove in his mind as dragons and princesses and wishes. What was real was the water ahead of him, the approaching days of summer, this simple joy of this day on the mountain with his parents. The joy, in particular, was foremost in his mind as he sailed off the end of the dock, his knees pulling up into a cannonball.

Everything was driven out the moment he hit the water. The joy, all thoughts—even his breath. It was like falling into liquid ice. Colder than he had expected or imagined.

His lungs flattened and froze. The water closed in over his head, dark and freezing. His body was locked tight in shock.

Fear had settled in, gripping him in a vice more solid than the chill. He was alone in the dark, in the cold. It was possible no one had even seen him jump in.

Which meant no one would be coming to pull him out.

That unlocked his body, and his arms and legs flailed, acting out, beyond his control. It was dark, so dark, and he needed to breathe but he couldn’t tell which way to go.

His hand broke the surface and more of reflex than conscious thought he jerked his head up, gasping, taking in as much water as air before falling beneath the water again. Now he was coughing, struggling. He knew the surface—escape—was close, so close, but he’d lost his place again and his hands and feet found only the frigid resistance of water.

He pushed in the direction he thought was up. Desperate to break free again, to grab the next breath.

No light. No air. No escape.

Sudden sound and pressure, a wave knocking him back, then hands at his wrists. He struggled, unable to help himself, desperate for air, but the hands were stronger. They hauled him, dragged him, and he burst into the light.

His mother had jumped in with him. She’d found him. She’d saved him.

Drowning. That was what Samir thought about—when he could manage to think. It was that same struggle against the cold, against the darkness. He swam, desperately, for the surface. Except it wasn’t the lake he was fighting now—not water still cold from spring thaws. This time, it was the weight of his own mind he was trying to escape.

Flailing, gasping, fighting. The surface was there, just above him. Sometimes he knew what direction to go. Other times, he only dragged himself deeper down.

The few times he managed to find his way up, to lift his face above the dark pool and gasp for air, it had been the same. The strange house. The other wizards, eyes glazed, wandering around like automata. And that sense of…draining. Of being pulled, from within and without. Something from the outside, but nothing he could find before the pressure inside became too great again and he was falling, falling, falling back down into that black pool of cold emptiness.

Just like drowning.

And just as before, the certainty: no one was coming to pull him out.