Read Online Marrow Island by Alexis M. Smith - Free Book Online

long since it thawed. It’s ice-clear; I see all the pebbles in the bottom, stretched several feet in front of me, where the bottom dips into a darker blue. There are layers of color, in the lake, just like in the sea, when the water is still. The water is denser where it’s coldest near the bottom, so the colors become murky and shaded, and the fish and rocks down there distorted.
    The second beer goes down while I’m up to my ankles, kicking one foot then the other to acclimate them. The sun is directly overhead now, shining hard on me, shining straight into the water. I look out across the whole of the lake as a breeze stirs it up and the smallest whitecaps I’ve ever seen wave at me from the deep, dark center. I drink the rest of the beer, feeling the blood thump in my feet.
    I look out several feet in front of me and catch a strange glimmer in the water, threads of light, dancing like weeds from the lake floor, at first just one, then I count three, four, six. I blink, let my pupils adjust. Still there, a trick of the light. Burning on the back of my eye. Like the filaments of incandescent light bulbs. Like old-fashioned tinsel from a Christmas tree. I look away, but when I look back, they are still there. When I move my foot, they move with the ripples but stay more or less in the same place. They are farther out than I planned to go, but I want to get closer to them.
    I back out of the water, watching them, letting the angle of light through the trees change my view, but I still see them there. I try not to take my eyes off them as I drop the beer can, take off my jeans and unbutton my plaid shirt. I pull my tank over my head as quickly as I can, and they are still there, glowing elements, shocks of lightning, though they seem slightly farther out than before. I consider leaving my bra and underwear on, but it seems weirder, somehow, to wear them, so I take them off, too, and drop them on the pile of clothes.
    Naked on the shore, I watch the filaments underwater. The lake surface quakes in a breeze. It beckons me, with its crisp little waves, so I walk into the lake. When the water reaches my navel, I take a breath and dive under. My eyes close on their own, and when I force them open, they burn and everything blurs. Then ribbons of light streak through the water, and for a moment I think I can see the filaments again, but then they are gone.
    I surface panting, water dripping over my face, off my eyelashes, scanning for the filaments, eyes skimming the water all around me, raking my arms to stay afloat. I swim back toward the shore, and that’s when I notice the larvae, skirting the warmer, weedy, silted edges of the lake: thousands of them, translucent, writhing, their mosquito mothers hovering over them. I think it’s another trick of the light, but I can almost feel their hunger; I am sure they can smell me. I find the rocky floor and stand hip deep, swaying. When the air hits me, I feel the tug of cold water on my numb limbs and scramble ashore.

Five
    THE ISLANDS

     
ORWELL ISLAND, WASHINGTON
OCTOBER 10, 2014
     
    I CALLED THE sheriff from the cottage. My voice shook a little as I explained to the dispatcher that I thought my neighbor was missing. She told me to file a report at the station in the morning.
    “I can do that, but there are signs of—a struggle, I guess, at his house.”
    “What do you mean, ma’am?”
    “Overturned lamps, a half-packed suitcase with medication left in it. His eyeglasses. I haven’t seen him all day.”
    “Do you see him every day, ma’am?” She sounded young but jaded—a world-weary eighteen-year-old.
    “No—” I decide not to tell her that I’ve never met the man. “But this seems unusual, for him.”
    “Do you have any reason to believe he’s in danger?”
    “Not really, no. But I’m alone on this side of the island, and he’s my only neighbor. I won’t be able to sleep.”
    She sighed.
    I hated how frightened I sounded. She was right; it could wait