Daniel looped the rope around a felled log onshore as Annie stepped into the trees with a trap in each hand. A few meters into the woods, she found an indent in the undergrowth, a small animal trail weaving through the trees, and she left the snares there, about a hundred feet apart, spritzing each generously with skunk oil before heading back to the boat.
Daniel stood on the shore with a swollen moon rising behind him, water lapping at his heels.
“All set.” Annie climbed back into the boat. “Do you think you could check them once a day?”
“I will,” he promised, pushing the boat out into the water and wading in after it. He climbed in and rowed back the way they had come without speaking, and Annie sat with her hands in her lap, trying to embrace the silence that he obviously preferred.
Halfway across, her eyes were drawn to the stars on the mirrored surface of the lake as they danced in the ripples, thousands and thousands of them, reflected in tiny silver flickers, and she watched them, smiling, as they floated by.
And then, without warning, there was quick movement in the water, a brush of bright blue light that glowed for a moment where the oar split the surface. By the time Annie turned to look at it, it was gone, and she blinked at the dark water where it had been.
With the next dip of the oar, more blue light, electric and hazy, lit the black-velvet surface, and her mouth fell open.
She glanced up at Daniel to see if he had noticed, but he was watching her face.
“Did you see that?” she asked, incredulous.
He pulled the oars up out of the water and rested them across his lap. “Just wait.” He tilted his head back toward the water.
Annie turned to look again. Among the reflected stars, blue flashes of light were appearing in multitudes now, sparking faintly, then vanishing, and far across the water, at the very edges of the lake where tiny waves lapped at the shore, thin blue streaks were rising and falling away. Awestruck, Annie turned a slow circle in her seat. The entire lake was rimmed in shimmering, vivid blue, and for a brief moment she wondered if she was hallucinating. Was she so sleep-deprived that her mind was conjuring up the magic before her?
“Annie.”
Annie whipped her head toward him. It was the first time this quiet man had said her name out loud, and the word was a breath. A prayer. It was mist on the mountain, and she could not turn away as she met his gaze in the darkness.
“Watch.” He dipped an oar into the water and dragged it in a slow circle that glowed like blue fire for an instant and was gone.
“What is this?” she breathed.
He stirred the water again, a figure eight of blue trailing the tip of the oar in the silken darkness, around, and around, and around.
“Bioluminescent plankton,” he said quietly. “They exist all over the world in different places. Thailand. The Maldives. Some bays in South America. And here, for some reason, in a little lake in the mountains of Washington State. They show up around the start of summer, when the conditions are just right.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Annie recalled a chapter on bioluminescence in one of her textbooks, but she had skimmed through it without the slightest expectation that she’d someday witness its magic.
Unable to help herself, she leaned over the side of the boat and dipped her hand into the water, swirling her fingers through it as her eyes danced with wonder. She trailed her fingers back and forth across the surface, watching the tiny streaks of blue lightning that followed in their path.
“That’s why it’s called Lake Lumin?”
Daniel nodded.
Annie drew her arm back and flung it forward, slapping the surface of the water and sending forth a shimmering blue splash, the drops rippling outward in cobalt rings.
Pure delight, deep and childlike, welled up within her and Annie laughed, the high, tinkling sound echoing out into the quiet darkness around them.
“This is amazing,” she marveled.
“It is.” He still dragged the oar gently back and forth in the water.
Annie looked up to find him smiling softly down at the blue glow.
There was a strange ache deep in her chest at the sight of that smile. He looked so young. Hewasso young. And with that flicker of joy in his eyes, she could see the boy he had once been in the face of the man he was now. The man who, for some reason she might never know, had chosen a life of isolation out here in the wild.
The oar stilled in the water at last, and he turned, his eyes seeking hers in the dark. Annie met his gaze, transfixed, her chest tightening around a realization that she could not deny.
He was beautiful.
Daniel Barela was beautiful.
