By Nora Webster

You could smell the lake from the cabin as long as dad wasn’t smoking. Even though you had to go down two creaky staircases to get there, even though the brush was thick with fragrant pine trees, you could still smell the fish, the algae. It smelled green.

He didn’t notice me slip out, not while the radio was cranked up and he leaned on the back porch, squashing cigarette butts like so many smoldering bugs. I couldn’t stand the music, the way it wormed itself into my ears and pounded its rhythms into my chest, emptying me of being to fill me with sound. I was in such a rush I didn’t even put my shoes on. I pretended not to care about the pine needles prickling my feet, the dirt between my toes.

The lake calmed and terrified me. I’d sit at the end of the pier, legs crisscrossed, and stare at the dark water. In the daytime, the lake would shimmer with sunlight, its tiny waves rolling in a familiar, satisfied comfort. In the day the lake had offerings; minnows and ducks, swimmers and boats and turtles. At night it mirrored the inky sky, tricking the eyes. It was too big and too dark. At night it only had secrets, and I didn’t dare dangle my feet in the water.

I could still hear the music. I tried to focus on the gentle lapping of waves, on the tapping of the rowboat against the side of the pier. With each new, distant song came an uncomfortable squirming in my chest, like my heart had been replaced by a fish, snatched from the water and desperately flopping for air.

I wanted to wade in, to let water flood my ears and drown me in silence. But the sight of the lake made me freeze. I imagined seaweed wrapping tight around my legs, musky brushing up against me with their long, scaly bodies. In my mind I saw total darkness and felt shapes bobbing around me, unknown and threatening.

I tentatively uncurled my legs and moved my foot slowly toward the lake’s surface. I was inches from it when something splashed beneath me, speckling my foot with cold water. I jerked my leg back, falling against the pier, leaning on my elbows as I caught my breath.

I was safe. I was above the water. But the music still pounded in my ears, and if I had to listen for another second I didn’t know what I’d do. So I hastily untied the rowboat. The wet rope shackling it to the dock slipped through my frantic hands. When I finally freed it, I jumped inside. A jarring disturbance of waves assaulted the shore. I took the oar from the back seat, brushed cobwebs off its handle, and rowed with all my strength toward that black nothingness, that mix of lake and sky, until I was surrounded only by the gentle whispers of nature.

I found an old battery powered lantern on the floor and clicked it on. Its warm yellow light made it look like a piece of the moon had been bottled up inside. I could see the water now, a deep cerulean pool that held me completely in its mercy. The lantern’s glow illuminated what I knew was my reflection, but what looked like something otherworldly, like someone else was staring at me expectantly, invitingly. As I stared back, the sounds of the night seemed to embrace and become a singular voice, steadily droning in my ears.

The darkness of the lake still felt overwhelming, but a strange curiosity was growing in me. I had gotten away from the music, from the smell of smoke, but I was still desperate to go further. I reached down toward the black abyss of water, and the feeling that greeted my fingertips was so enchanting, so enticing, that just a moment later I threw myself overboard.

I sank like a stone. Water wrapped around me and held me until I was suspended, peaceful in a limnological heaven. I felt weightless, unable to differentiate between my limbs and the water. And in that moment, the lake didn’t drown me in silence; it bathed me in a feeling of belonging. In a knowledge that my body floated in its waters as naturally as a piece of driftwood, as a flock of loons.

Soon I was gasping for air, my chest heaving with an animal intensity. That singular voice of nature was louder. It was a symphony of crickets and birds, a percussion of squirrels skittering around trees and leaves dancing in the wind. I folded my arms over the edge of the boat and rested my cheek against them. As I breathed in that green aroma of the lake that dripped down my skin, I listened to that voice that seemed to encapsulate everything around and within it, like how the water encapsulated both the night sky and the lakebed. I realized that it smelled alive and sounded like a promise. The lantern on the boat flickered out. I was left in the dark water, in the company of a thousand unknown things.