The Lake of Dead Languages Read Online Free Page B

free. It will be perfect for you and your daughter. You remember it, the one above the swimming beach.” I remembered it all too well.
    And although the idea of living here was at first disturbing, I’ve come to treasure my view of the lake. It’s only a few yards from my front door to the Point, the stone cliff that bisects the lake, giving it its heartlike shape. From where I stand now I can see the curve of the swimming beach, white in the moonlight, and the stones we called the three sisters rising out of the still, moonlit water.
    I go inside and look at Olivia sleeping. The moonlight comes through her window and falls on her tangled hair. I smooth back her hair from her forehead and rearrange the twisted sheets so she’ll be cooler. She stirs and moans softly in her sleep, but doesn’t call my name as she would if she were anywhere near waking. I know she might wake up later, at two or four perhaps, but I’m almost positive she’ll sleep undisturbed for the next few hours.
    I go back outside and down the steep stone steps that lead from our house to the lake. Every night I do this and every night I’m amazed at myself for taking the chance. Of course I know I shouldn’t be leaving Olivia alone for even these few minutes—fifteen, twenty minutes, at most, I tell myself, what could happen? Well, I know what could happen. Fire, burglars, Olivia waking up and getting frightened when I don’t come to her call, wandering out into the woods … my heart pounds at the images of disasters my mind so easily conjures up. But still I walk down the steps barefoot, feelingthrough the soles of my feet when the stone steps become damp from the mist off the lake and then slimy with the moss that grows over the stones.
    At the foot of the steps the ground is hardpacked mud. I can hear the restless slap of water on the rocks. I wade through the cold water until I am standing, calf deep, next to the first of the three sister stones. I lean my shoulder against the tall rock and it feels warm. Like a person, I think, although I know it’s only giving off the heat collected through the unseasonably warm day. The three stones are made of a hard, glittery basalt, different from the soft surrounding limestone. Lucy said they’re like the tors in England, foreign stones carried from afar and erected in the lake, but Miss Buehl said they were probably deposited by a retreating glacier and then eroded into their present shapes. Each one has been molded differently by water and time, and the freezing and unfreezing of the lake. The first stone, which I am standing by, is a column rising six feet high above the water, the second is also a column, but it leans in the direction of the southern shore. The third stone is a rounded dome, curving gently out of the deep water.
    If you look at the rocks in succession—in the right light or through a faint mist like the one that rises from the lake tonight—you can imagine that the first stone is a girl wading at the edge of the lake, the second is the same girl diving into the water, and the third is the girl’s behind rising above the water as she dolphin dives into the lake.
    The lake feels deliciously cold. The weather has been unseasonably warm for early October, but I know this Indian summer can’t last much longer. Any day now a cold front will move down from Canada and it will be too cold to swim. Suddenly I notice how sweaty and sticky I feel, how sore my neck and back are from standing at a blackboard all day and leaning over stacks of papers. I remember that I won’t be able to take my swim in the morning and the thought is like a physical pain. I could leave my clothes on the rock and swimfor just a few moments. The cold water would wash away all thought of that lost journal and what is in it.
    I am about to take off my shirt when I hear a rustle in the trees behind me. Instinctively, I move into the shadow of the second stone as if I were the errant schoolgirl caught out of her