to with a leg, a foot, a toe.
Because there’s nothing to hang on to. Nothing but water and sky and something you haven’t quite managed to identify yet.
There it was, right in front of me.
It was indeed sticky. It was indeed a stick thing.
For a second I stopped, imagining the hand holding it up, the arm reaching all the way from the bottom of the lake.
Then I shook my head.
Because I was an idiot.
It was a stick thing in its natural habitat. In the middle of a lake, yes. But also at the top of a tree.
And a tree was something to hold on to for a little while. A tree might have a branch where you could perch and wait for a bit, gathering yourself for the much-longer-than-expected swim back.
My toe brushed something, and I jumped. Then I sent my toe back down again for another feel, because this was what I was after, wasn’t it — a branch, something I could stand on?
A wide, flat branch, even. A branch wider and flatter, in fact, than any branch ever before found in nature.
Which was weird until I realized:
Not a branch, but a platform.
A platform at the top of the tallest tree in Old Lower Grange, in the whole county. A platform with a peg ladder spiraling below it all the way down to the silty mud.
The fire tree!
I felt around with my toes. It was definitely a platform, going right around the trunk. The wood was rotting and falling away, but the metal frame was still there, and it was enough for me to rest my feet on so I could lean back against the tree and close my eyes, just for a second, and rest and breathe.
I was here. I was somewhere.
When my breathing had slowed, I took a long look around me. I inched around the metal frame with my toes, felt the slippery bark around the trunk with my fingers.
The fire tree! How did it get here? I mean, not how did it
get
here. That was quite possibly the world’s dumbest question. Obviously, it had been here all along, for hundreds of years, in fact, growing and growing and slowly leaving behind everything around it while it reached for the sky.
But still, how did it get
here
?
Up into the actual sky above the water? And how had I never noticed it before?
I looked back the way I had come, across to the shoreline, where my orange towel sat flapping on a low-hanging tree branch.
And I saw something. A dark stain around the lake, a line along the water’s edge like you see at the ocean when the tide has gone out.
Except that there were no tides at the lake.
My eyes flicked from the water to my towel and back again, from the water to the tree line and back again.
And then I realized.
Something that should have been obvious days ago, maybe even weeks ago.
The water level was going down. It had been a dry winter, a dry few years, and now summer was sinking its teeth in, and the lake was, well, sinking.
It was lower than I’d ever seen it.
That meant water restrictions over the summer. It meant watering one day a week and Mom sticking an egg timer in the shower.
But it meant something else, too.
It meant this tree, the old fire tree — the stuff of photos and stories and a hundred crayon drawings — was suddenly reaching up from the deep with its spindly fingers.
I stared down through the water at my feet, at the platform, at the pegs that spiraled down and down into the dark.
Old Lower Grange was down there. It had always been there, but now it was right below me. Now I was standing on something that was actually connected to it, something I had seen in photos and heard about in stories, and there was a road, right here, leading down, saying,
Come on
.
How deep could it be?
How far could it be?
How far?
A thought lodged in my throat like a stone.
I looked out across the water, all the way to the shoreline, and my heart sank.
It was so far. It seemed obvious now. Maybe it was because I’d already swum it once. Maybe it was because the shore was bigger and wider and made it easier to get a sense of things.
It didn’t matter why. It was a
Because there’s nothing to hang on to. Nothing but water and sky and something you haven’t quite managed to identify yet.
There it was, right in front of me.
It was indeed sticky. It was indeed a stick thing.
For a second I stopped, imagining the hand holding it up, the arm reaching all the way from the bottom of the lake.
Then I shook my head.
Because I was an idiot.
It was a stick thing in its natural habitat. In the middle of a lake, yes. But also at the top of a tree.
And a tree was something to hold on to for a little while. A tree might have a branch where you could perch and wait for a bit, gathering yourself for the much-longer-than-expected swim back.
My toe brushed something, and I jumped. Then I sent my toe back down again for another feel, because this was what I was after, wasn’t it — a branch, something I could stand on?
A wide, flat branch, even. A branch wider and flatter, in fact, than any branch ever before found in nature.
Which was weird until I realized:
Not a branch, but a platform.
A platform at the top of the tallest tree in Old Lower Grange, in the whole county. A platform with a peg ladder spiraling below it all the way down to the silty mud.
The fire tree!
I felt around with my toes. It was definitely a platform, going right around the trunk. The wood was rotting and falling away, but the metal frame was still there, and it was enough for me to rest my feet on so I could lean back against the tree and close my eyes, just for a second, and rest and breathe.
I was here. I was somewhere.
When my breathing had slowed, I took a long look around me. I inched around the metal frame with my toes, felt the slippery bark around the trunk with my fingers.
The fire tree! How did it get here? I mean, not how did it
get
here. That was quite possibly the world’s dumbest question. Obviously, it had been here all along, for hundreds of years, in fact, growing and growing and slowly leaving behind everything around it while it reached for the sky.
But still, how did it get
here
?
Up into the actual sky above the water? And how had I never noticed it before?
I looked back the way I had come, across to the shoreline, where my orange towel sat flapping on a low-hanging tree branch.
And I saw something. A dark stain around the lake, a line along the water’s edge like you see at the ocean when the tide has gone out.
Except that there were no tides at the lake.
My eyes flicked from the water to my towel and back again, from the water to the tree line and back again.
And then I realized.
Something that should have been obvious days ago, maybe even weeks ago.
The water level was going down. It had been a dry winter, a dry few years, and now summer was sinking its teeth in, and the lake was, well, sinking.
It was lower than I’d ever seen it.
That meant water restrictions over the summer. It meant watering one day a week and Mom sticking an egg timer in the shower.
But it meant something else, too.
It meant this tree, the old fire tree — the stuff of photos and stories and a hundred crayon drawings — was suddenly reaching up from the deep with its spindly fingers.
I stared down through the water at my feet, at the platform, at the pegs that spiraled down and down into the dark.
Old Lower Grange was down there. It had always been there, but now it was right below me. Now I was standing on something that was actually connected to it, something I had seen in photos and heard about in stories, and there was a road, right here, leading down, saying,
Come on
.
How deep could it be?
How far could it be?
How far?
A thought lodged in my throat like a stone.
I looked out across the water, all the way to the shoreline, and my heart sank.
It was so far. It seemed obvious now. Maybe it was because I’d already swum it once. Maybe it was because the shore was bigger and wider and made it easier to get a sense of things.
It didn’t matter why. It was a
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