Page 61 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

Lou turns her head to the right, her gaze shooting up the gray, cascading rock face from which the water falls in a narrow path.

“Like a weathered staircase for giants,” I say aloud.

Ignoring me, Lou balances on some moss-covered rocks before clambering over the trunk of a fallen spruce tree. She looks around again and finally stops with her feet in the water.

“It’s a quiet place,” I say, stepping over the trunk of the tree. A forest lizard disappears between two stones, allowing only the sun to shine on its tail. “Can’t hear anything here but the bubbling of the water and a couple of cheeky birds. If you spend a little time here, it’s like your spirit dissolves into the ether. You become one with the air and the water.”

Lou glances from right to left as if trying to take in the panorama as a whole.

I don’t know if she perceives the atmosphere of this place as much as I do. “This lake has always felt like my safe place, like I was protected here,” I explain. Perhaps that sums it up best: Refuge. Protection. Solace.

Barely audible, Lou snorts, but maybe I imagined it and it was a sound from the woods. “What could you possibly need protection from?” She turns left and walks along the edge of the bank. The water splashes around her feet and the small waves she stirs up rock the reflection of sky and forest.

She slows at a group of boulders, slips between them, and takes a closer look.

“You can swim here if you want,” I suggest, simply to say something. I even have a bikini for her—a pink one, of course, and with little ruffles.

“I can’t swim.”

“You can’t swim?” I repeat, stunned. Somehow that shocks me.

Lou looks at the gray rock and goes a little deeper into the water. The waves slosh into her lace-up boots and goose bumps cover her calves. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know that already?” she asks cynically.

I shake my head but she doesn’t see it. Lou can’t swim. Unbelievable. Even I can swim. I taught myself three years ago in a lake near Faro. And there are hot springs near Ash Springs. They’re the first thing you see when you google the place.

“The water isn’t deep. Three feet, maybe. You’ll be fine, plus I’ll be here.” I wade around a smaller boulder that juts out of the water like a turtle shell. “Or I could teach you.” Not being able to swim is not good in the land of two million lakes.

She stays silent, doesn’t even look at me. Her refusal to speak suddenly angers me again. “Look at me, Louisa!” My voice is laced with impatience and the usual hardness.

When she looks up, her teeth are clenched. Disgust flickers in her eyes, but so does fear. More fear than disgust.

Stop treating me like crap! I want to snap at her, but I choke back the words that are stuck in my throat. They belong to another time. Lou can’t help my past and she can feel whatever she wants—I promised her that. Again, I have to remember that she must have been talking to me the night I had the blackout. Words of comfort for many hours. She is a strange creature.

What am I supposed to do with her?

I put my hand in front of my eyes and absentmindedly notice Lou staggering back. Maybe she thought I was going to hit her.

I wanted to cheer her up today, distract her from her homesickness, but apparently, she’s not ready yet.

“You don’t have to fight me all the time,” I say anyway, wiping my mouth and nose and letting my arm drop. “You’re only making it harder on yourself. Your situation is not going to change, so you might as well try to get along with me.”

She turns away again like she can’t bear to look at me. Instead, she studies the rock face as if imagining herself climbing it to escape me. I follow her gaze. The stone wall must be sixty feet high. The summer before last, I climbed the first cascades for fun, but even I had to give up halfway through. The trees on the right and left offer no possible support at that height. It would be impossible for Lou to get up there. Totally impossible!

I glance at her and catch her looking from the rock face to her wrist and then straight into my eyes. A mixture of excitement and being caught is reflected in her features. I bet she saw herself climbing up there!

“Forget it!” I snap at her angrily. “The water makes the rock smooth and slippery. You’ll fall and break your neck.”

“I can think of worse fates,” she murmurs more to herself.

“Then I guess I’d better not tempt you!” With a grim face, I hold my wrist with the steel ring right in front of her. “But if you ever want to come here without me, I can always chain you to a tree.” I pull her along harder than necessary, not knowing which upsets me more: Lou’s rejection or my inability to take it in stride.

“By the way,” I add after a while when we come to the rocky creek through which the lake water drains. “If you get lost here, you probably won’t last two days.”

Lou stops abruptly, the jolt digging the ring on my wrist deep into the injured area. The skin underneath starts to burn. “Why?”

This time I don’t turn to her, but tug on the chain to prompt her to keep walking. She’s probably thinking about the grizzly bears, wood bison, and moose I told her about this morning. For a moment, I consider letting her think that, but it doesn’t seem fair. “You’d freeze to death,” I say curtly. “The weather has already taken the lives of a number of tourists.”

“Freeze to death? It’s summer!” Lou catches up with me in a few quick steps, nearly tripping over a particularly large root.

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