"I thought I heard —" Gansey broke off. His eyes dropped to where Adam held Blue’s hand. Again, his face was somehow puzzled by the fact of their hand-holding. Adam’s grip tightened, although she didn’t think he meant for it to.
This was a wordless discussion, too, though she didn’t think either of the boys knew what they were trying to say.
Gansey turned to the pool of water. In his hand, the EMF reader had gone dark. Crouching, he hovered his free hand over the water. His fingers were spread wide, millimeters from the surface. Beneath his hand, the water shifted and darkened, and Blue realized that there were a thousand tiny fish just underneath. They flashed silver and then black as they moved, clinging to the faint shadow he cast.
Adam asked, "How are there fish here?"
The stream they’d followed into the woods was far too shallow for fish, and above them, the pool seemed to be fed by rainfall from higher up the mountain. Fish didn’t come from the sky.
Gansey replied, "I don’t know."
The fish tumbled and coursed over one another, ceaselessly moving, tiny enigmas. Again, Blue thought she heard music, but when she looked at Adam, she thought perhaps it had just been the sound of his breathing.
Gansey looked up to them, and she saw in his face that he loved this place. His bald expression held something new: not the raw delight of finding the ley line or the sly pleasure of teasing Blue. She recognized the strange happiness that came from loving something without knowing why you did, that strange happiness that was sometimes so big that it felt like sadness. It was the way she felt when she looked at the stars.
Just like that, he was a little bit closer to the Gansey that Blue had seen in the churchyard, and she found she couldn’t bear to look at him.
Instead, she pulled her hand free from Adam to go to the beech tree Gansey stood beside. Carefully, she stepped over the exposed knots of the beech’s roots, and then she laid her palm on its smooth, gray bark. Like the tree behind her house, this beech’s bark was as cold as winter and oddly comforting.
"Adam." This was Ronan’s voice, and she heard Adam’s footsteps moving cautiously and slowly around the edge of the pool toward it. The sound of snapping branches became softer as he moved farther away.
"I don’t think these fish are real," Gansey said softly.
It was such a ridiculous thing to say that Blue turned to look at him again. He was tipping his hand back and forth as he watched the water.
"I think they’re here because I thought they ought to be here," Gansey said.
Blue replied sarcastically, "Okay, God."
He twisted his hand again; she saw the fish’s forms flash in the water once more. Hesitant, he went on: "At the reading, what was it that the one woman said? With the hair? She said it was about — perception — no, intention."
"Persephone. Intention is for cards," Blue said. "That’s for a reading, for letting someone into your head, to see patterns in the future and the past. Not for fish. How could intention work on a fish? Life isn’t negotiable."
He asked, "What color were the fish when we arrived?"
They’d been black and silver, or at least they had looked it in the reflection. Gansey, she was certain, was reaching for signs of inexplicable magic, but she wasn’t going to be swayed so easily. Blue and brown could look black or silver, depending on the light. Nonetheless, she joined him, crouching in the moist dirt beside the pool. The fish were all dark and indistinct in the shadow of his hand.
"I was watching them and wondering how they’d gotten here and then I remembered that there was a kind of trout that often live in smaller creeks," Gansey said. "Wild brook trout, I think they’re called. I thought, that would make a little more sense. Maybe they were introduced by man, somehow, in this pool, or a pool farther up the stream. That’s what I was thinking. Brook trout are silver on top and red on the bottom."
"Okay," she said.
Gansey’s outstretched hand was very still. "Tell me there were no red fish in this pool when we arrived."
When she didn’t answer, he looked at her. She shook her head. There’d definitely been no red.
He pulled his hand back quickly.
The tiny school of fish darted and leapt for cover, but not before Blue saw that every one of them was silver and red.
Not a little red, but bright red, sunset red, red as a dream. Like they had never been any other color.
"I don’t understand," Blue said. Something in her ached, though, like she did understand, but couldn’t put words to it, wrap her thoughts around it. She felt like she was a part of a dream this place was having, or it was a part of a dream of hers.
"I don’t, either."
They both turned their head at the same time then, at the sound of a voice from their left.
"Was that Adam?" Blue asked. It seemed strange that she had to ask, but nothing felt very definite.
Again they heard Adam’s voice, more clearly this time. He and Ronan stood on the other side of the pool. Just behind him was an oak tree. A man-sized rotten cavity gaped blackly in its trunk. In the pool at his feet was a reflection of both Adam and the tree, the mirror image colder and more distant than reality.
Adam rubbed his arms fiercely, as if chilled. Ronan stood beside him, looking over his shoulder at something Blue couldn’t see.
"Come here," Adam said. "And stand in there. And tell me if I’m losing my mind." His accent was pronounced, which Blue was beginning to learn meant that he was too bothered to hide it.
Blue peered at the cavity. Like all holes in trees, it looked moist and uneven and black, the fungus in the bark still working away at enlarging the crater. The edges of the entrance were jagged and thin, making the tree’s continued survival seem miraculous.
"Are you okay?" Gansey asked.
"Close your eyes," Adam told him. His arms were crossed, his hands gripping his biceps. The way he was breathing reminded Blue of what it felt like to wake after a nightmare, heart pounding, breath snagging, legs aching from a chase you never really ran. "After you stand in there, I mean."
"Did you go in there?" Gansey asked Ronan, who shook his head.
"He’s the one who pointed it out," Adam said.
Ronan said, flat as a board, "I’m not going in there." When he said it, it sounded like principle instead of cowardice, like his refusal to take a card at the reading.
"I don’t mind," Blue said. "I’ll go."