Poor thing, she thinks, abstractly; she's wondering what was done to his gills and she has some unpleasantly familiar theories. The anger registers but she doesn't flinch from it, doesn't think it's for her - she'd be angry, too, and even if she's unfamiliar with what drowning actually feels like she's seen it often enough to have gathered it's not nice.

(She still feels a little bad about what she did to Ivan, even if she didn't mean to. At least he wasn't using his lungs for anything important.)

She can do this, though. It's just the reverse of what she did once before, and she pulls herself up out of the water to do it, pushing at him enough to move him back so she can get at his chest and pressing her hands there, cool and unnaturally smooth, like fine pearl in texture and the way she gleams in the light.

All she has to do is decide. She decides she wants the river water back--

--and it comes to her.