Dawn

At five o’clock sharp, though there was no clock in the cabin, Recen Skantranovic opened his eyes.

He did not need to check the position of the stars or listen for the first stirrings of birds beneath the eaves. Nor did he wait for the cold to ease or a strip of light to appear behind the mountains. His body knew the hour. It had learned it long before he had, and repeated it each morning with a precision Recen had never stopped to question.

He lay still for a few seconds, his hands crossed over his chest, recognizing the sounds of the cabin. Wood contracted by the night. A drop falling into the sink. Wind brushing the shingled roof. Farther away, beyond the east-facing wall, the lake breathed against the stones.

Everything was where it should be.

He sat up and pushed the blanket aside. A clean cold rose from the floor through the soles of his feet. He lit the kerosene lamp, lowered the wick to a short flame, and walked to the table. His tackle waited there, laid out the night before: the box of sinkers, the floats, the hooks wrapped in an oiled cloth, and the disassembled reel on a sheet of newspaper with no date.

Recen worked without haste. He turned the gear between his fingers, removed a strand of dirt, and applied two drops of oil. Then he unwound several yards of nylon line, examining it against the light. The line was sound, but he cut off the last handspan and tied the knot again. He always cut off the last handspan. Sometimes he thought he remembered someone teaching him to do it: a hand larger than his guiding his fingers, a voice behind his shoulder. When he tried to hold the image steady, he found only the log wall and his own shadow shifting in the lamplight.

He let it go.

Memories were like fish on the bottom: the more you stirred the water, the less likely you were to see them.

He set a frying pan on the iron stove and dropped in two chunks of catfish saved from the day before. The oil spat. He cracked a couple of eggs over them and added salt with his fingers. As he ate, he drank cistern water from a tin cup. It was so cold it made his teeth ache.

He smiled.

That small pain belonged to the morning too.

By the time he finished washing his plate, the darkness had thinned. Recen pulled on his boots, put on his wool coat, and chose the straw hat, though patches of snow still lay beneath the trees. He liked the feel of it on his head. It was a spring habit, and this was a spring morning. Of that he was certain.

He opened the door.

The air smelled of wet earth, bark, and deep water. Beyond the muddy ground, the lake filled the valley like a sheet of dark metal. Pine-covered hills sloped down to its shores, and behind them the mountains rose, blue beneath the last shadow of night. Snow still lay on the peaks. Recen looked out at the landscape as he adjusted the tackle over one shoulder.

He had lived there for seventeen years.

He did not know how he had arrived. He could not remember buying the cabin or building it. He could not say which had been his first morning beside the lake. Yet he knew every board, every stone, every tree on the property. He knew which step creaked in damp weather, where mud would form after two days of rain, and which branch of the old birch would fall in the next storm. Seventeen winters, seventeen thaws, and seventeen springs had made the place an extension of his body.

Nothing before that mattered.

The dinghy waited, tied to the dock. It was a small wooden boat, tended with a devotion Recen never lavished on himself. He set the tackle inside, checked the drain plug, and untied the mooring rope. Before climbing in, he stopped.

There were footprints in the mud.

They were small and narrow, like those of a barefoot girl. They began beside the cabin and ended at the water’s edge.

Recen studied them for a long time. The night’s rain had blurred the toes, but not enough to mistake them for an animal’s tracks. He crouched and laid his hand beside one. It was barely half the size of his palm.

“Celeste,” he said.

The name escaped his mouth before he could stop it.

He raised his head. There was no one on the lake. No one among the trees or around the house either. Only the wind moved through the reeds with a low murmur.

Recen looked down at the footprint again. He did not know who Celeste was. The name brought no face, no age, no voice—only a pressure beneath his breastbone, as though something were trying to force its way out from inside his chest.

He pressed his boot into the print until it was gone. Then he did the same to the others.

He climbed into the dinghy and began to row.

He knew the exact spot where the bottom dropped away. There the water turned almost black, and catfish sheltered among submerged rocks. No buoys or markers showed the spot, but Recen could find it even in fog. He took thirty-seven strokes from the dock, adjusted his course northward, and took twelve more.

Thirty-seven and twelve.

Always the same number.

He set down the oars, prepared the bait, and cast his line. The sinker entered the water without a splash. Recen tucked the rod under his arm, rolled a cigarette, and lit a match, sheltering it with both hands. When he looked up, a reddish band was beginning to form behind the mountains.

Dawn did not break all at once. First it separated sky from earth. Then it stained the edges of the clouds and opened copper paths across the lake. Last of all it reached the cabin, the pines, and Recen’s face. He waited for that moment every day. Not for the fish or the warmth, but because for a few minutes he had the impression that the world had just been made, and no human being had yet had time to spoil it.

The line jerked.

Recen laid his cigarette on the gunwale and took the rod in both hands. He did not reel in at once. He let the fish bite, swim away, and believe it had escaped. When he felt the second movement, he set the hook with a short jerk. The reel protested. The tip of the rod bent over the water.

“Come on,” he murmured. “Show me what you’ve got.”

The fish fought hard. Recen gave it line, reeled in, gave it line again. For several minutes there were no footprints, no name spoken by the shore, no seventeen empty years behind his memory. There was only the tension in the nylon and that unseen life struggling beneath the surface.

When he finally brought his catch alongside the boat, he saw a large catfish with a pale belly and dark fins. He slid the net underneath and lifted it aboard. The fish thrashed against the planks, searching for water that was no longer there.

Recen removed the hook. Before putting the fish in the box, he noticed a circular mark behind one of its gills. It did not look like an injury or a disease. The shape was too regular: a gray ring the size of a coin, divided by three perfect lines.

He brushed it with his thumb.

The fish stopped moving.

There was no death throe. No shudder. It became instantly, utterly still, its mouth open, its eyes dull.

Recen took his hand away.

A hum passed through the lake.

It was so deep it did not seem to travel through the air. It vibrated in the wood of the dinghy, in the reel, in his jawbone. The birds fell silent at the same time. Even the wind seemed to pause.

Then the sun stopped.

Recen watched it above the mountain ridge. He could not have said how long it lasted: perhaps a blink, perhaps several minutes. The light remained fixed, neither growing nor moving, and its copper reflection on the water became rigid as a sheet of glass.

A man’s voice said something behind him.

Recen turned so violently he almost capsized the boat.

There was no one there.

The surface remained smooth. Far away, the cabin stood small and solitary. On the shore, no trace remained of the footprints he had erased.

The voice returned, fainter now. This time he thought he made out two words.

“…aggressive response…”

Recen stood up. The boat rocked beneath his boots.

“Who’s there?”

The hum stopped. The birds resumed their songs, all in the same fraction of a second. The sun began to rise again, and light spilled across the lake.

The catfish began thrashing inside the box.

Recen looked at it. The gray ring was gone.

He sat down slowly, the rod between his knees. He waited for his breathing to settle. He thought of going back, closing the door, and drinking until the morning was over. But it was not yet noon, and the day’s work had barely begun. Breaking his routine over a voice that did not exist seemed more dangerous than staying on the water.

He baited the hook again.

Thirty-seven strokes. Twelve to the north. Dawn. The line. The fish.

As long as everything stayed in its place, he would stay in his.

He cast again.