Mirabile Read Online Free Page B

but the otter follies, which brought us to laughter over and over again. We trusted nothing would interrupt that by tugging at our lines.
    Shadow was beginning to lengthen across us. I knew we had another half hour before it would be too dark for us to make our way easily back up to the lodge.
    “Leo,” I said, “want me to head in? Your way will be in shadows long before mine.”
    “Staying the night at the lodge. I promised Elly I’d do some handiwork for her.
    Besides, I could do with another of Chris’s meals.”
    There was a stir and a series of splashes to our right, deep in the cove. That large otter, back with friends. There were two troops of them in the loch now. I made a mental note to make sure they weren’t overfishing the shrimp or the trout, then I made a second note to see if we couldn’t spread the otters to another lake as well.
    The otters were pretty firmly established on Mirabile but it never hurt to start up another colony elsewhere.
    I turned to get a better look, maybe count noses to get a rough estimate of numbers. I counted six, eight, nine separate ripples in the water. Something seemed a little off about them. I got a firm clamp on my suspicious mind and on the stories I’d heard all day and tried to take an unbiased look. They weren’t about to hold still long enough for me to get a fix on them through the branches and the shadows that were deepening by the moment.
    One twined around an overhang. I could see the characteristic tail but its head was lost in a stand of water lilies. Good fishing there, I knew. The trout always thought they could hide in the water lilies and the otters always knew just where to find them.
    Then I realized with a start that the water lilies were disappearing.

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    I frowned. I untied the boat and gestured for Leo to help me get closer. We grabbed at branches to pull the boat along as silently as possible. To no avail: with a sudden flurry of splashes all around, the otters were gone.
    “Hell,” I said. I unshipped the oars and we continued on over. I was losing too much of the light. I thrust down into the icy water and felt around the stand of lilies, then I grabbed and yanked, splattering water all over Leo. He made not a word of complaint. Instead, he stuck a damp match into his shirt pocket and tried a second one. This one lit.
    It told my eyes what my fingers had already learned: the water lily had been neatly chewed.
    Several other leaves had been nipped off the stems as well—but at an earlier time, to judge from the way the stem had sealed itself. I dropped the plant back in the water and wiped my hands dry on my slacks.
    Leo drowned the match and stuck it in his pocket with the first. It got suddenly very dark and very quiet on the loch.
    I decided I didn’t want either of us out here without some kind of protective gear.
    I reached for the overhang and shoved us back toward the sunlit side of the loch. It wasn’t until I’d unshipped my oar again that I got my second shock of the day.
    That branch was the one I’d seen the otter twined around. That gave me a belated sense of scale.
    The “otter” had been a good eight feet long!
    I chewed on the thought all the way back to the lodge. Would have forgotten the violets altogether but for Leo’s refusal to let that happen. I put my pole back in its place and took the scarlet violet and its clump of earth from him. Spotted Susan and said, “Leo wants to see a gene-read. Can you have Chris send rock lobster for two up to my room?”
    “It’s on its way.” She paused to glance at the violets. “Pretty,” she said, “I hope—”
    “Yeah, me too.”
    “Hey!” she said suddenly. “I thought you were here for a break?”
    “How else can I lure Leo up to my room?”
    “You could just invite him, Mama Jason. That’s what you’re always telling us: Keep it simple and straightforward…”
    “I should keep my mouth shut.”
    “Then you wouldn’t be able to eat your lobster.”