On Ice
by P.D. Allen
She was the Ancient One; ancient even among her kind. There was nothing in this realm that had lived even half as long as she. In her lifetime she had laid many eggs; enough to populate all the waters of the world, enough to earn herself the name The Progenitor. She had seen her kind flourish, and she had seen them decimated by the surface dwellers.
The surface dwellers changed the world in their madness, changing it because they were not of the waters themselves. They rode over the surface of the waters on their bellies of metal and wood, some of them immense even in comparison with her. In the quiet season of cold sleep, they cut holes in the ice and hunted her kind with spears, even to the brink of extinction. And in the season of light, they churned the waters and dumped filth in them, poisoning and choking her kind.
Yet, though she avoided them, the Ancient One was also curious of these surface dwellers. They exhibited an awareness she had long thought only she possessed. And so, though she knew she should stay away from the surface dwellers, she was attracted to them. One day she hoped to communicate with them and share with them her wisdom, teaching them to respect the waters that gave life to everything. She knew that was the only way to save her kind and their realm.
Weary with age and burdened with the thick strata of many lifetimes worth of memories, sick with the poisons that permeated the waters and weakened by the alien parasite that had attached itself to her, the Ancient One returned to the lands of her youth. These were the breeding grounds, the havens of warm water that were once rich with food. Now they were the domain of the surface dwellers. To avoid them, the Ancient One had long ago confined herself to isolated inlets and hidden depths, where the food was not so rich, nor the water so fresh with oxygen.
There, she finally realized, she would have been consigned to oblivion had the surface dwellers gone on with their madness. And so she took the risk of venturing into compromised waters, in the hope of touching those from whom she had long hidden.
*
Bruce Torvalds stopped on the edge of shore, looking out on the icy arctic expanse extending clear across Huron Bay, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Open water would only be found miles to the northeast, near the mouth of the bay and the open waters of Lake Superior. It was doubtful anyone else would be out here today, not with a winter storm approaching. Bruce would not be out here himself, but he had something to prove, and he did not care to wait the two days this blizzard was supposed to last before finding his proof. Two days of smug grins as he entered Hank's Bar, biting remarks and jokes of which he would be the butt. No, he would go now, and with a little luck he would have his proof before the storm struck. He would show them, he would show them all.
Pulling his sled behind him, Bruce set out across the frozen bay. He was well prepared for this little expedition. Under his snowmobile suit, he wore a pair of jeans and a wool sweater, and thermal underwear beneath it all. So many layers would be a nuisance should he need to urinate, but this was a minor inconvenience compared to life-threatening hypothermia. He wore rubber-soled mukluks over thick woolen socks and insulated mittens. On his head, he wore a warm winter cap with ear flaps. If the wind blew up, he could always pull the hood of his snowmobile suit over his head. And should his face grow too cold, he had a knit ski mask packed away in his gear.
He hauled a portable fishing shanty. It had canvas sides and roof over an aluminum frame that folded down onto the thick plywood base. On the bottom of the base were two sled runners to make it easy to haul over ice and snow. Loaded on top of the shanty was all of his gear. He brought his fishing spear, a package of chicken liver for bait, an ice strainer, his largest bore ice auger, and his ice spud. In addition to the spear, he brought his pole and a couple of tip-ups. Bruce figured if he tired of spear fishing and the storm held back, he might try to catch some jumbo perch.
Packed with the rest of his gear, he carried a small plastic stool so he would not have to sit on the floor of the shanty. He brought a ham sandwich in case he grew hungry, and a six-pack of beer to take the edge off his thirst. All of this was secured atop the collapsible shanty by a plastic sheet lashed down with bungee cords.
Should he find the quarry he was after — and he fully intended to do so — he would have to lay it across the sled and pack his gear around it. The leviathan would undoubtedly be longer than the sled, and much of its body would trail behind. He could wrap it in plastic to keep it safe.
The monster would not escape this time, so long as the storm did not move in too soon. He would haul the sea monster over to Hank's and lay it out along the top of the bar, where all the blowhards could marvel at it. That would shut their yaps.
Old Jordan Seaborg would choke on his own tongue when he saw what Bruce finally hauled in. Eric Kinnunen and Bill Nieminen would buy him drinks for a month to make up for all the jokes they made at his expense. The only one who had ever given him the benefit of a doubt was his good friend Sal Johannson. Sal might have thought Bruce was stretching the truth a bit, but he never poked fun at him like the others did. They had not let up once since he told them of his second encounter with the leviathan. And yesterday afternoon topped it off.
Bruce sat at the bar with Sal and Harry Maetland watching a Packer's game on the television. Bruce felt something wet and fleshy brush against his leg. As he swung around, kicking out his foot at whatever was touching him, Bill Nieminen called out, "Look out, Bruce, it's comin' ta getcha!"
Bruce spilled his beer as he turned to face whatever it was, his eyes big with fright. Something wet, cold and fishy slapped him in the face. He grabbed it in his hands as he leapt from his bar stool. Eric Kinnunen shouted in mock alarm, "It's dat sea serpent come after ya!"
Bruce looked at the thing in his hands. It was a dead sucker, a big one too. He was looking into its ugly mouth. Eric had snuck up behind him with it. Now he was standing there laughing at him along with all the others. Bruce threw the fish at him, but he batted it away.
"Don'cha wanna catch yer sea monster, eh?" Bill chortled.
Bruce's shirt sleeve was soaked with spilled beer, and his face was smelly with the slime of the dead fish. He started to charge after Bill and Eric, but Harry held him back by the shoulder. Sal stepped around him and whispered into his ear, "Let it go, Bruce."
Turning to the others, Sal said, "Okay, you've had yer joke, eh. Now let'm be."
Jordan Seaborg spoke up from the table where he was sitting. "Ya, Bruce, yer right. Dat's da biggest sucker I ever see'd. Gotta be a state record, dat."
"Shut up!" Bruce growled. Old Jordan Seaborg knew just how to stoke his fire.
"We oughta getta picture a you wid dat," Jordan paid him no mind. "Hank can hang it over da bar. Ya could show it ta yer kid, eh."
"Shut da hell up!" Bruce barked out. Sal was the only thing keeping him from lunging over the table at the old man. Everyone was laughing at the way Jordan Seaborg got his goat. The sucker lay on the floor, forgotten for the moment.
"Don' like it when one a yer stories comes ta life, do ya Cap'n Ahab?"
"Let it go," Sal counseled him. "Go wash up, eh."
Suddenly Bruce wanted out of the bar. He shrugged off Sal and Harry and pushed past Eric and Bill.
"Ya, let it go," Jordan taunted him. "Dat's whatcher good at: tellin' stories and lettin' go."
Bruce stopped in the doorway as he pulled on his coat and hat, turning back to look at everyone who was laughing at him. "I'm gonna catch dat fish and bring it ta dis bar, jus'ta prove I ain't lyin'."
"Ya," Jordan replied, "Go right ahead. Everybody knows dere's no sturgeon in Huron Bay or da Silver River — much less a monster like yer talkin' 'bout."
*
He played this scene over and over in his head as he dragged his portable shanty atop the ice approaching the mouth of the river. He had an image in his mind of him dragging the giant sturgeon into Hank's and throwing it across the table where Jordan, Eric and Bill were sitting. Its tail would flop across Jordan's lap as its fleshy lips gave Eric the biggest, wettest smooch he ever had in his life. Bruce even imagined his boy Mitch was there to see what his dad caught. And his ex-wife, Mary.
This vision kept him going as he hunted for the spot where he last saw the sturgeon. You had to be careful this close to the mouth of the river. The ice was thinner here, and the currents from the river made channels where the ice was dangerously thin.
At last, Bruce found the spot where his trench from a week ago had frozen over. He set to work with the auger, drilling the numerous holes needed to reopen the trench. He rested several times as he worked. Finally, he set the auger aside and finished the job with his ice spud. Then he set up his portable shanty over the trench. At last, he took his five-pronged fishing spear and the bag of chicken livers, and went inside.
It was pitch dark in the shanty. Bruce closed his eyes and counted to twenty. When he opened his eyes again, he could just barely see the inside of the shanty. The trench in front of him was a little clearer. Gazing down into the water, he found he could make out the silty bottom several feet below. As he looked, his eyes continued to adjust. There was the shallow trench made by the sturgeon in its passage as it swept up food from the bed of the lake. Sturgeon used the taste buds in their lips to detect food — be it larvae, worms, smaller fish or whatever — which they would suck into their mouths and eat.
Last night, Bruce sat around the kitchen preparing his bait: chicken liver bundled into little sacks of loose-knit nylon webbing and weighted with lead sinkers. This was his favorite bait. Bruce doubted the fish existed that would turn up its nose at chicken liver. Now he dropped the bait bags into the water. Most of them landed in the sturgeon's trench, though a few drifted slightly off course before settling on the bottom.
Feeling around for a beer, Bruce found one, opened it and took a drink. It was already starting to warm up inside the shanty from his body heat. He took off his cap and unzipped his snowmobile suit. Now all he had to do was wait and hope the sturgeon would pass by here again. Bruce laid the fishing spear close by and kept his eyes on the trench. He would be ready for the sturgeon this time.
*
Bruce remembered his previous encounters with the big fish. He first sighted it the previous summer, while sitting in a boat fishing for menominee. He saw a large, dark shadow pass through the water directly under him, a shadow nearly twice the length of his boat. Bruce knew there was only one creature in these waters that could possibly grow to such a size: sturgeon.
Then he made the mistake of telling the guys at the bar about it and the ridicule began. Lake sturgeon do not grow that big. No one ever saw a sturgeon before in Huron Bay or the Silver River. All he saw was a shadow, so it could have been anything — maybe a log or a school of menominee or smelt. When he stuck to his story, they began making jokes.
Bruce knew what he had seen, and he knew what it must be. So once the ice formed and grew thick enough to be safe, he began scouting around the bay near the mouth of the river. It took him weeks to locate the sturgeon trenches. And it was more than a month after the first hole he chopped in the ice before he finally caught sight of the behemoth at this very spot.
Everyone knew what he was doing out here. They ribbed him about it almost constantly. Jordan gave him the nickname Captain Ahab, and it stuck. They joked that if he ever disappeared, he would later be sighted lashed to the body of the Great White Sturgeon. Bruce knew the only way to end the jests was to continue his pursuit until he had proof of the creature's existence.
Two days ago he had finally seen the leviathan. Parked over this spot for much of the day, he grew bored and tired and nodded off sitting on his stool when he was jarred awake by the strong feeling that it was here. Looking down into the trench, he spotted the sturgeon. He could only see its head and the upper portion of its body as it paused to suck in the bait bags he left for it. The rest of its body stretched out of sight under the ice.
All Bruce could do was stare. It was immense. The sturgeon was so big Bruce did not know if he could lift it, much less haul it out of the trench. It was obviously ancient, maybe centuries old. While he gazed in wonder, the fish moved on to some other bait sacks.
Bruce realized that if he did not move quickly, it would be gone. He reached for the spear lying across his lap. It slid off the front of his lap, bounced off his mukluks and landed lengthwise in the trough with a splash.
In that moment, Bruce felt something touch him. He could have sworn the fish looked at him, though it would have to roll over on its side to do so. He reached out and grabbed the rope tied to the end of his spear. And the sturgeon was gone, kicking up a cloud of silt behind it.
Bruce could not help talking about this encounter. He told Sal and Hank, before anyone else showed up at the bar. During the evening, Hank let it slip. Everyone was very amused, even more so as Bruce insisted it was true. They were of the opinion he fell asleep and dreamed the whole thing.
"Did Ahab dream a da Great White Sturgeon, eh?" Jordan had chided him.
"Ya," Bill Nieminen spun the tale, "it came up from da deep, up tru da hole in da ice. It locked its powerful lips around ole Ahab an' started ta suck him in, feet first."
"An' ole Ahab thought he was getting' da best blow job a his life, eh," Eric threw in. The bar resounded with laughter.
Bruce drank up his beer and left quickly.
"Hey Ahab," Jordan called after him amid more laughter, "pleasant dreams."
He would show them. He would show everyone. The last couple days since then, the ridicule had been unbearable. As Bruce polished off his beer and opened another, he made up his mind to stay out here until he caught that sturgeon, weather be damned.
He also needed to catch the fish to prove something to his ex-wife and his son. Mary had left him because she could not take it anymore. She was tired of his grandiose schemes that amounted to nothing more than empty words. She was tired of living off federal aid and the little money he made here and there. So she took Mitchell and headed back to Green Bay to be with her family.
Bruce remembered when Mitch had been very young, he used to read to him at bedtime out of a book of fairytales. Mitch's favorite was the story of the fisherman and the enchanted fish. He asked for that one until Bruce no longer needed to read it from the storybook; he knew it by heart. Sometimes, when they went fishing, Mitch would wonder aloud if there were any talking fish in Lake Superior. They would fantasize about what they would ask for if they caught such a fish.
The only time he saw his boy now was for a few weeks during the summer. Mitch loved him, yet they were growing apart. Bruce noticed the boy looking at him with an increasingly critical eye. The boy saw that his dad had nothing and was dependent on handouts. Bruce knew the day would come when his son would not want to spend time with him in the summer, and he could already feel how much that would hurt.
More than anything else, this was why he had to catch the sturgeon: to make his son proud of him. Catching this fish would put him in the Great Lakes Angler's Hall of Fame. It had to be the biggest lake sturgeon ever seen, and probably the oldest, too. They might want to have this fish mounted in a museum, maybe even the Smithsonian. Such a catch was the closest Bruce could ever hope to come to landing an enchanted, talking fish, and it would make his wishes come true.
Sturgeons were the most mysterious of fresh water fish. They dated back to the first bony fish, millions of years ago — long before the dinosaurs even. Female lake sturgeon grew up to five or six feet in length, with rare specimens reaching eight feet. It took them twenty years to reach sexual maturity, and then they only mated every couple of years. They could live for centuries. Not much else was known about them. They preferred silty lake beds where there was food to be found, preferably near the mouths of rivers. But tagged sturgeon later were found hundreds of miles from where they had been tagged.
*
As luck would have it, Bruce did not need to wait long before his third encounter with the freshwater leviathan. Sitting in the shanty for about an hour, Bruce had just finished his third beer when he felt the fish approach.
He felt it before he saw it. He simply knew the fish was approaching; he could see it in his mind. Crouched over the hole, Bruce held the spear so he could drop it straight down as the behemoth passed under. He stayed perfectly still and counted the seconds — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5….
Slowly the creature swam into view. First its snout, tasting everything in front of it as it moved along, then its head. It was huge and ancient. It must be at least two hundred years old, and it might predate the Revolutionary War. It kept coming and coming, filling the breadth of the trench and still no sign of its dorsal fin. Bruce seriously wondered if the trench was big enough to haul it through.
It reached the bait sacks and stopped. Bruce knew this was his chance. Then the creature did tip its head and look up at him from the icy depths. In its eye, Bruce saw awareness, and even wisdom. And in that moment, Bruce knew — quite apart from its size and age — this was no ordinary sturgeon.
Slowly he lowered the spear. He could no more kill this fish than he could kill one of his friends. He simply had no right to spear this fish. In fact, to end this animal's life would almost be a sacrilege.
The fish regarded him calmly, as though it was quite aware of his change of heart. Bruce could read its eyes, and he was sure it knew what had transpired here. Then he felt an irritation on the side of the sturgeon's belly. The knowledge came to him powerfully, in feelings he translated into words in his mind.
The sturgeon passed on slowly, until the length of its belly was exposed to the trench. It stopped again, and he could see a lamprey eel plugged to the right side of its belly, sucking the life out of it. Bruce knew this was the irritation, and the sturgeon somehow wanted him to help remove it.
The big fish began to wiggle its belly back and forth in the silty trench, widening the trench at this spot. When it moved to the left, the eel stretched out to the right. Suddenly, Bruce knew what the sturgeon wanted him to do, and he thought he could do it. He held out the spear and waited for a good shot.
It would be tricky, harpooning the eel without injuring the fish. The lamprey did not stay distended for long. It was quick to tuck itself back in along the side of the fish. Bruce waited until he had the perfect shot, and then he let go of the spear.
The spear dropped straight down, its prongs piercing the body of the eel and pinning it to the lake bed. The sturgeon twisted away and pulled itself loose of its parasite. Bruce felt a little pain and a great deal of pleasure. Then the fish swam off and he was sitting there, looking at a dying lamprey eel on the end of his spear.
He hauled the spear up. Bruce hated lamprey, as did all Great Lakes fishermen. They were an invasive parasite from the ocean that adapted far too well to the Great Lakes, where they preyed on any fish big enough to latch onto. Bruce was disgusted by the sight of them with their big ugly jawless sucking mouths surrounded by many rows of teeth, but he took great delight in watching this one writhe on the end of his spear.
Twisting around on his seat, he stomped the eel's ugly head under the heel of his mukluk. Then he pulled the spear out of it. Withdrawing his mukluk, he watched the eel finish its death spasms. Killing a lamprey was almost as satisfying as catching a fish, and in this one case, maybe more so.
By way of celebration, he popped open another beer and sat there drinking it as he looked down into the trench. Once again, he did not follow through with his intentions, but this time he knew it was the right thing to do. He could not kill that sturgeon. Eventually the guys would stop ribbing him, and he would find some other way to make his son proud of him. Hopefully no one would ever kill this fish, but it certainly would not be him.
Down in the trench, the sturgeon swam into view again. It tipped its head and looked up at him warmly and gratefully. He could feel its thanks and, oddly enough, a sense of indebtedness. Then the fish swam off.
Bruce toasted the departing leviathan, "May you live ta be a t'ousand." Then he drained the rest of the can.
*
There was no sense in sticking around here any longer. Bruce zipped up his snowmobile suit and put on his cap. Then he gathered his empties and the remaining beers and stepped out of the shanty. There was still no sign of the pending storm and he had brought along extra ice fishing gear, so Bruce decided to head out over deeper waters and fish for jumbo perch. It was not a wise decision, but he was in a good mood after his last encounter with the sturgeon, not to mention the four beers under his belt. So he broke down his shanty, packed up his gear, and headed farther out into the bay.
He did not bother setting up the shanty again. He cut three holes several feet apart. At two of them he set tip-ups baited with chicken liver, and played out about twenty feet of line. At the third hole he sat down on his stool, holding his ice fishing rod. Then he cracked open a beer and drank it while he waited.
Before he even finished the beer, the fish started biting. For a while Bruce was so busy running from rig to rig he did not have time for anything else. It started snowing while he was hauling in fish, a light but steady snow with big, fluffy flakes. He had a dozen jumbo perch by the time they stopped biting. Bruce sat down and opened up his last beer.
It was a nice little haul. The fish would make a tasty dinner tonight. Admiring his catch, Bruce rested and drank the beer, and thought about the sturgeon. It would be a crime should anyone harm this creature. Better to say he was mistaken. The leviathan turned out to be an old log. He would never live it down, but it would certainly kill any unspoken interest others might have in making their own attempt to catch the giant sturgeon. Bruce all but made up his mind to do just that.
The wind was picking up and the snow was growing heavier. Bruce thought the temperature was dropping as well. His nose was numb and his hands were aching with the cold. He needed to get those mittens on. Finishing the beer, he packed his gear. The weather was quickly growing worse. The storm was definitely moving in fast.
Just as he reached for the last tip-up, a fish hit it. Bruce grabbed the rig. He could tell right away that it was a big one, full of fight. It took him a while to play it in. His efforts were rewarded with a twenty-five inch perch; the biggest perch he ever caught. It was so big that when he first saw it, he thought it must be something else. As he pulled the hook out of its mouth, he thought, just wait till da guys see dis.
Intent on landing this fish, he forgot about the blizzard. Now he looked around to discover he could not see more than a few feet away. The wind was whipping around turbulently, like a fistful of snow intent on beating him in the face no matter which way he turned.
*
Now that they were wet from handling the fish, his fingers quickly grew numb. He added this last fish to the stringer and finished packing up his gear. Before leaving, he traded his cap for the ski mask and pulled the hood of the snowmobile suite over it for added protection. Finally, he put on the insulated mittens. His fingers felt like frozen sticks in the mittens, throbbing frozen sticks. But they were already beginning to tingle, which indicated they were warming up.
Taking the lead line for the shanty in his hands and draping it over his shoulder, he was ready to head for shore. The only problem was that he had no clue where to find the shore. He could not see more than a couple feet in any direction. Nor could he see the sun up in the sky. Sure there was probably a seventy-five percent chance that no matter which direction he headed in, he would eventually strike land. But what good would that do him if he came ashore in a wilderness miles from his truck or any shelter. And there was a twenty-five percent chance he would head out into the open bay, eventually falling through the ice where it thinned out. Finally, there was the possibility that he would walk in circles, simply stumbling around out here until he froze to death.
Paralyzed by indecision, he stood rooted in the ice, unable to choose a direction. He tried to reason with himself, admitting that while his chances might not be good, it was a sure thing that doing nothing would prove fatal. Already he could feel the cold seeping in from his extremities — his feet and hands, and his nose. Along with his eyes, his nose was the only part of his face that was not covered by the ski mask. It had grown completely numb, and he could feel the numbness biting into his cheeks, even under the knit mask.
He could erect his shanty and take shelter inside. His body heat would soon make it warm and cozy. But how long could he survive in the shanty with scant food and nothing to drink? He had only his body heat with which to melt ice for drinking water, and only one ham sandwich and uncooked fish to eat. And if the winds grew much stronger or the snows piled up, his flimsy shanty would not stand up to it. No, his only hope lay in reaching shore and finding shelter there.
Bruce did battle with indecision and passive aggressive tendencies that had ruled his life since childhood, when it was his only way of dealing with an alcoholic father, and later when it was his way of evading a cruel world of which he wanted no part. All those years of habitual indecision and avoidance gripped hold of him and held him frozen as surely as the cold wind was freezing his body. It would be so easy to give up, as he always had, to lie down on the ice and make peace with his defeat.
This time, however, he could not give up. He thought of his truck and his warm home, most of all he thought of his son, Mitch. Bruce tugged on the line hanging over his shoulder, and he began to walk. From where he stood, the direction he was facing looked as good as any. Slowly he picked his way across the ice, dragging the shanty and all of his gear behind him. The cold wind made his eyes water, further diminishing his ability to see where he was going. Yet the era of indecision was over. From now on, he would pick a course and stick with it no matter what the end.
The shanty with its load of gear seemed far heavier than it was when he came out here. Bruce fought with it even as he kept up a constant battle with the wind and the snow. He walked leaning forward against the rope. Every now and then he would move the rope from one shoulder to the other, until both shoulders were so sore and knotted he could not bear to have the rope bite into either of them any longer. Bruce turned around, pulling on the rope with both hands as he walked backwards. He did this for maybe one hundred feet when he tripped over something.
At first he thought it was shore; he certainly had traveled far enough. His hopes were quickly dashed as he realized he had come to a fault in the ice. Here the ice of the bay was fractured, and one sheet rose over the other before freezing in place, creating a step some two feet in height. Bruce had not encountered this buckle on the way out here. Maybe he missed this feature, flanking it his first time by. There was certainly no way he could haul the shanty over it.
Leaving the shanty where it was, Bruce followed the ledge for about a hundred yards in one direction, and then returned to his gear and continued on in the other direction for not quite one hundred yards. It gave no indication of shallowing out either way. It went on for a long distance, maybe all the way across the bay. Bruce trudged back to his gear and sat down on the edge of the step for a moment to ponder his dilemma.
It was clear he was heading the wrong way. He had never encountered this shelf before. It might mean he was approaching the shore somewhere. Or it might mean he was heading out to sea. Bruce feared the latter was more likely.
*
Once again he was assailed by doubt, and this time it very nearly pulled him under. He thought of Mitch. His son could not lose his dad like this. The boy needed a father who could teach him the importance of persevering. And, oddly enough, he thought of the sturgeon.
Here was a creature that lived for hundreds of years. There was no telling what adversities it had survived. How long had it played host to that lamprey — decades maybe. And yet it went on, resonating with its existence. It survived because it was focused on the present moment.
As the tears froze up in his eyelashes and around the rim of the eyeholes in the mask, Bruce put himself in the place of the sturgeon, focusing in this present moment with little care about anything else. He felt an urge to be on his way, a sort of beckoning from the distance. Taking the guideline of the shanty over his sore shoulder, he followed the instinctual lure away from the shelf, back in the direction from which he came.
He lost all track of time and place. There was the buffeting wind and the constant assault of blowing snow. There was the spreading numbness and his resistance to that numbness. Most of all, there was the calling, drawing him ever onward, directing him across the frozen bay.
He stumbled on, leaning against the guide rope to keep from falling down. The pain in his shoulders was gone, or rather it grew so intense it became a permanent fixture, riding just behind him on the edge of his awareness. He developed a sort of tunnel vision. The ice building up around the rim of his eyeholes blocked all view except straight ahead. Not that there was anything to be seen, only the snow driving into his face, making his eyes burn and water. His eyelashes kept freezing to the ice on his ski mask. He had to bat his eyelids to keep them free.
His breath burned also, causing icy pain to stab up through his sinuses, resulting in a pulsing headache throughout his forehead that further diminished his vision. He tried breathing through his mouth from time to time. Yet the cotton ski mask where it covered his mouth quickly frosted up. Snow stuck to it and before long it was crusted with ice. He could not feel his feet and he could hardly feel his hands to keep hold of the guide line. Yet he went on, ignoring all else to heed the call.
However irrational the thought might have been, something told him it was the sturgeon repaying his favor. This ancient and undoubtedly enchanted fish was guiding him to shore. Of this, Bruce was sure. And he stumbled onward, impelled to follow the call.
Suddenly, he was in ice water up to his armpits. The shock brought him back to his senses immediately. His feet were not touching bottom. Only the instinct of throwing out his arms kept him from going under entirely. Fortunately there was solid ice around him. He thrashed about, grasping blindly for some purchase he could use to haul himself back onto the ice. His right mitten landed on something soft. He grabbed hold of it and brought it close enough to see it. It was a dead lamprey eel.
He had fallen into his own spear fishing trough. That meant he was only a mile from shore, yet he might as well be a hundred miles away, now that he had fallen through the ice. His chances of reaching shore were fast disappearing as his body went into thermal shock.
Bruce put his hands palm down on the ice and tried to lift himself out of the water. It was no use. When he fell in, water had splashed up on the ice, making it so slick his hands simply slid on it. What was more, his snowmobile suit and the clothes underneath were soaked, adding to his weight. He must find something he could use to pull himself out, and fast.
Feeling around, he found the guideline for the shanty. He pulled on it, hand over hand, and succeeded in pulling the enfolded shanty with its load of gear into the trench next to him. It was too big to fall in completely. The front end of the shanty simply wedged itself into the hole.
At least now there was something of which he could grab hold. He tried to pull himself out of the trench, but there was still the extra weight of his sodden clothes. He did not have much time left; soon he would weaken and succumb to hypothermia. With all the strength he had left, he pulled at the side of the shanty and almost succeeded in drawing himself out.
Numb though he was from the waist down, Bruce thought he felt something nudge him in the seat of the pants, giving him the boost he so desperately needed. The muscles in his arms shaking with effort, he pulled himself up out of the water along the side of the shanty.
*
He wanted to lay on the ice and rest, but he knew he could not. He must get up and start moving or he would die, frozen on the glacial bay. Already his snowmobile suit was growing stiff. It stuck to the surface of the ice, and he had to pull it free as he forced himself to stand. It was so cold in the wind and the snow, wearing the wet clothes. He wobbled around as the muscles in his legs grew unresponsive.
In an outdoor magazine, he once read an article about the insulative properties of various fabrics, both dry and wet. Dry wool had the highest rating, followed by wet wool, dry cotton and finally wet cotton. It seems wool does not soak up water the way cotton does, so even wet wool retains much of its insulative capability. Wet cotton, on the other hand, serves as a conductor of cold. According to the study, it was better to go naked than to wear wet cotton.
Remembering this article, Bruce came up with a desperate strategy for beating this storm. If it failed, then he would die. Yet he would almost certainly die if he did not try it. Already, he could barely move his legs.
He stripped off all of his wet clothes. The zipper on his snowmobile suit was difficult to open, as it was frozen shut and he repeatedly lost his grip on it with his numb fingers. Finally, he got it down far enough to peel the suit off. Bruce had trouble with his mukluks and his pants as well, but soon the wet clothes lay in a pile beside him. He stood naked on the ice, exposed to the storm. Bruce retained only the woolen socks, the wool sweater, and the cotton ski mask that had not gotten wet. It was not much, but it was better than nothing.
For one terrible moment he stood shivering, feeling the cold sapping him of his body heat and his life, while he tried to determine the direction toward shore and his truck. The calling no longer directed him; now it urged him to hurry. He studied the trench and the dead lamprey for a moment, using their position to judge the way back to shore where his truck was parked. Then he began to run.
At first, it was very difficult to move. His legs were stiff and unresponsive. He seemed to move in slow motion, stumbling half of the time. As he persisted, however, his body heated up and he managed a lumbering jog. It was his feet that slowed him in the end. They were still frozen and he must be careful how he placed them. Several times a misstep came close to sending him down with a sprained ankle.
He could not keep this up for too long. At any time his body would succumb to hypothermic shock. He was drowsy, fighting the desire to lie down and rest. What was more, with exertion his breathing grew heavier and he began sucking cold air into his lungs. The cold lodged inside his chest.
Before long, Bruce slowed to a walk. His heart felt constrained, as though it was freezing within him. The only thing that kept him going was the unspoken imperative to keep moving, which grew more distant all the time. He was growing increasingly disoriented. It seemed like an eternity since he stripped off his clothes and began running. Bruce could no longer remember what he was doing out on the ice. His only clear thought was that he must get to shore and find his truck. He did not even know why, only that it had something to do with his son and an ancient sturgeon.
Bruce was hardly aware when he did reach shore at almost the same spot where he disembarked onto the ice what seemed eons ago. Had he been able to think, he would have marveled at the feat of such precise navigation. And he could only have deduced that he was directed to this very spot. He could not think, however. He simply followed the impulse to stumble ashore and wade through the snow drifts to the spot where his truck was parked. Stumbling to the driver's door, he grasped at the door handle with his frozen hand. Focusing on manipulating his frostbitten fingers, Bruce pulled on the door handle, but nothing happened. The doors were locked and the keys were in his snowmobile suit.
Bruce slumped to the ground unable to hold himself up any longer. As the cold stole away his life, he thought of Mitch for a moment. Though he could see his face, he hardly knew who the boy was anymore. He let the image go. The last thing he thought of was the sturgeon, coming to rescue him.
*
Sal Johannson fought his way through the blizzard to the boat landing on Huron Bay near the mouth of the Silver River. Nobody else was out in this weather, not even the road crews whose job it was to keep these avenues open.
Sal would not be out here himself, except that his friend Bruce Torvalds went out fishing this morning and did not return. Sal tried to call him several times, and drove over to his house to look around. And now he was battling his way down Skanee Road in his four-wheel drive truck with the wide blade plow on the front.
Twice he lowered the plow and cleared away drifts before he could proceed. At last he reached the turnoff to the boat landing. He was tensed up from the drive, and his hands were numb from gripping the steering wheel. He plowed out the entire access road all the way down to the boat landing. He would push the snow off to the side of the road, back up a bit, and then clear another stretch of road. In this manner, he finally worked his way down into the parking lot.
During a brief lull in the wind, he spotted Bruce's truck half buried in snow. He threw his own truck into park, hopped out into the storm and waded over to Bruce's vehicle. There he found his friend, lying with his back against the driver's door, drifted over with snow.
Sal crouched down beside him and brushed the snow off his ski mask and out of the crusty eyeholes. Bruce's brow and lashes were matted with ice. His nose was badly frostbitten. Sal cleared the snow away from his neck and shoulders. Pulling off a mitten, Sal reached his hand in under the icy ski mask and felt his throat. His skin was so cold. Sal could not tell if he was alive or dead. Putting his mitten back on, he hastened to dig his friend out of the snow.
He was shocked to find that Bruce was more than half naked. He could not help but wonder what happened to his snowmobile suit and the rest of his clothes. His skin was tinted pale blue, and his hands were badly frostbitten. Sal supposed the same was true of his feet inside the wool socks. Sal pressed his ear to Bruce's chest. He could not tell whether his friend had a heartbeat of not, for the howling of the blizzard. Though his body was cold, it was not stiff. Sal hoped there was a chance he was not dead. If so, then he needed medical attention as soon as possible.
With strength he did not know he had, Sal lifted his friend's cold body and loaded it into his truck. Then he hopped into the driver's seat and began the long trip to the emergency medical center in Baraga.
*
Back out in the bay the Ancient One lay silently in the silt near the mouth of the SilverRiver, waiting for the storm to end. She had made contact with one of the surface dwellers, communicating with him. He helped to rid her of the parasite that was slowly sucking out her life. And in return she led him off the ice and out of the life-threatening storm. She could not tell if he had survived or if he had frozen to death. Another surface dweller took him way. For all their power, these creatures were so fragile. Yet she had made contact with one of them, and now she knew it was possible to communicate with the surface dwellers.
She must ponder on what had happened this day, and that would take some time. She was normally a slow thinker, especially in the season of cold sleep. Once the barometric pressure returned to normal, she would travel out of this bay and look for someplace more secluded where she could meditate on this encounter; maybe in the north.
In her long life, she had explored throughout this realm. She would find someplace to put up for the rest of the season of cold sleep. There she would ruminate over this encounter and what to do next. It was best to proceed slowly and cautiously. She had seen too many of her brethren impaled on the metal claws for not being careful around the surface dwellers. These creatures had destroyed much of her habitat and most of her kind, but she still knew of a few secluded spots to the north where she could find a quiet sanctuary.
She did not trust the surface dwellers entirely. They were too unpredictable, and they knew little of respect and courtesy. Maybe it was because they were so weak and fragile that they struck out at everything first, before it could strike them. They were frightened creatures, and that made them dangerous. Yet today an unusual encounter had given her hope that maybe these creatures could overcome their fright and realize the world was not so threatening a place. Maybe her species could coexist with the surface dwellers.
PD Allen is a novelist and a musician. He is currently marketing a fantastical dystopian horror trilogy titled Under Shattered Skies, about the breakdown of civilization, human evolution and the importance of saying no.