Anna sensed the stillness of the wood. There was a silence in them, a silence that she knew had always been present. Even as a young girl it was present in those early mornings, standing outside the back porch watching the dawn rise over their winter field. They were still that family of three souls then. She remembered these were her moments, hers alone. The penetrating stillness, the unutterable absence which consoled her into thinking that life itself was this fabric of silence which just might stretch from where her little feet stood to far beyond the surrounding hills, beyond the dawn sky. It made her worries seem smaller in the waking light. She would stand there thinking as little girls do that the world was watching her and that she and the silence had a simple understanding that they shared until her Father’s voice would bring reminders about school and real things to be attended to, the brushing of teeth or the packing of lunch. And it was silence that he left her with once he had gone. It was this grand silence that she felt now.

It wasn’t until they emerged from the snow filled woods and were racing the snowmobiles along the ridge trail that Anna caught her first sight of La Du Barrage. Under the sullen blanket of snow this was a lake only by memory. Though its stretched its full expanse across to the distant shores it existed only by virtue of its absence like an lingering imprint of dream overexposed by morning. She peered past the absence into the distance and the downy hills of the Gatineau that formed the periphery, a grey sky the lid. ‘Silent,’ she whispered and felt suddenly cold and unfastened.

Silent it was but for the stubborn wail and forward charge of the two snowmobiles that cut through the listless winter wood. They coursed their inexorable path along the periphery of the lake. With Wesley forging a course ahead, Kris carried the two of them breathlessly along behind. She had felt safe until this moment. She had felt a calmness in the clutches of the wood while tantalized by the caressing curves of their motion. It was something to reflect on as a passenger watching the landscape pass. Here was balance she found here between the danger of speed and empowerment of a coursing engine. She floated there clear of the hard earth if only for that breathless moment as moments of senses can only be, held aloft until the spring comes pushing through the snowy down.

Now with the lake in sight she awakened to other thoughts. This was all forbidden of course she realized. All of it. The snow. The hills. The silence. Her tentative embrace. All this was forbidden and already made secret by the white sweep of consciousness. She lifted her head upright, shifted in her seat and drew her arms toward herself leaving only the faintest touch on his coat to mark her retreat and steady herself. “Not safe,” she thought. Closing her eyes she felt herself drift, only for a moment lost.

“Hang On,” Kris bellowed above the engine wail and took her hand to encircle him once again. Wesley had already reached the edge of the lake and was charging a route into the open. Kris gave a hollar and willed their sled onto the ice. She could hear the hollow thud of the tracks as they made contact with the blackened ice below. And they were away. The wind swept up around them, the engine wailed and she buried her head into Kris coat and hurried to keep safe the broken glass that she mended together in the face of her doubt, despite her girlish fear, too fragile for this all together. “Not safe,” she whispered.

The boys made wide arcs in the canvass of snow delighted in the freedom of the open expanse and cut a course vaguely South in a direction where the lake narrowed and disappeared behind distant shoulders of hills.

Wesley was just disappearing behind the white outstretch of shore when she lifted her eyes above Kris’ shoulder and marvelled. How truly alone they were now. She welcomed this thought as it made her fear seem small and far away. With Wesley now vanished into the narrows beyond there was no other focus of sight. If they were to stop and the wind and engine stilled she knew it would be absolutely silent, still and together.

Rounding the bend they could see Wesley come into view. He appeared to have come to a stop at the head of a long dark streak, like spilled oil that stretched behind. Another moment past as she considered what appeared to be an uncanny tilt to Wesley’s snowmobile. And then she realized, with horrible certainty, that the oily streak was in fact the dark belly of the lake itself.

This dark fear lasted for an instance replaced by the crack of ice, the sharpness of cold water and then terror of an immense darkness below the ice. Below the snow. Silence now.

An infinite silence emanated around her slowly sinking form, a darkness embraced her as if had been waiting for her all this time and was at last united with her. But life began its struggle again. She found herself. It was the will for breath. To wrench herself from this crushing emptiness was her one crystal thought. Her lungs, convulsed by the terrific cold, inhaled the dark oily lake and in that same moment something hard smashed against her nose and front teeth.

On the surface Kris was breathing his first frigid gulp of air realizing only then how immensely cold he was. His lungs strained to breath the most shallow of quick successive breaths. His feet kicking back and forth kept him tenuously to the surface, back and forth and then hit something, solid, soft, human flesh. A moment later and he was pulled under the ice.

They sank below the surface. Two blackened forms under the ice. Anna strained her way up to the white light, clawed her way. The cuff of Kris’ pant leg, his back pocket, his loose jacket. She dragged him down toward herself. She forced her way to the light. Nearly to the surface and Kris grasped her angle. He held it there frozen. Anna’s lips pursed nearly to the surface. Then Kris with a strong upward thrust, pushed her up and out. In the act of launching her up the impassive laws of nature pushed him further into the abyss. Kris had leveraged her hard enough to allow her torso to clear the edge of the hole so that she was flung fish mouthed on the surface of the ice. With her lungs filled with the lake, water was first gasped out of her mouth before her lungs could inflate at last fill with air.

With her legs still dangling over the edge she took her fist real gasps of air rasping aching heaves of breath. She returned at last to a sort of consciousness familiar us. Still heaving for breath, swung her legs clear of the water, rolled, stood, and turned to the hole.

She found Kris has surfaced. He stared up at her blinking his face white, his lips blue. His breathed came in shallow shards of exhausting tufts of steam that rose to mingle with the mist that lingered around the surface of the oily gash. “Ok?” he asked.

She considered the simple question that came as if from a far away world. “OK? She pondere it as it were a moon rock and noticed then that she had become curiously warm. Her nose tingled and was beginning to throb. She rubbed it with the back of her hand where it left a streak of blood. “Ok,” she said.

“Wes just let it go!” Kris shouted in the direction of his brother Wesley. Wesley still sat perched on his sled teetering on the edge of the other hole in the ice. Oblivious to the scene that had unfolded behind, he continued to rev the engine of the half submerged sled in a desperate attempt to free in from the broken ice. On hearing his brothers shouting he abruptly stopped and turned round. “What the fuck,” he cried. “You need to get the hell out of there.” He turned the key in the ignition, the engine coughed and shut off. He hopped from the snowmobile onto the ice and froze transfixed where he stood above the creaking and groans of the ice floor under him. His snowmobile noiselessly slid backward into the steaming caldron and quickly sank.

Kris position himself to the edge of the whole and with his elbow and began to pull his body up. But, the ice cracked, broke, and gave way under his weight. He was again treading in the dark watery hole.

He resurfaced and returned again to the lip of the ice. He positioned his right forearm and left hand on the surface. With a fierce struggle he slowly strained to leverage his way onto the open ice kicking and pivoting his legs to leverage himself higher. Forcing his body forward he brought the full extent of his torso onto the ice surface, but as he pivoted his hips to draw his leg to the opening, the ice cracked. Anna stepped back as the ice gave way in front of her. She watched as Kris, clambered and strained back into the dark clutches of the cold water. A woeful defeated sigh rose from his lips, a final expression of utter defeat, as he sank into the mouth of the hole. “You can’t go,” she whispered. I can’t let you go.”

“Try again Kris,” Wesley knelt as near to the broken ice as he dared with his useless outstretched hand held in the direction of the hole. Anna looked down to her feet where they stood still and fixed on the ice. She noticed then that she wore only the one boot with the other foot clothed in a wet sock that stretched comically across the ice like a deflated balloon. She could see that the ice here was of a darker colour. She noticed the suggestion of the current below the ice that flowed in the direction of the little bridge that arched across a narrowing of the lake where Lac Dubarrage merged with the Lac Grand. She could see that it flowed gently but insidiously under the snow. She noticed the same current gently nudge Kris to the far extremity of the icy gash.

His lipped quivering, his breath jagged and uneven, Kris looked up at Anna and searched her face. She could see he was slowing, his mind easing, resigned and contemplative and the light that shone only moments before extinguished, replaced then by a glassy gaze. Her lips now moved for something to say. The horrible truth of it all left her to only stand silent, dumbfounded and helpless.

She could see icicles had begun to form along the ridges of Kris’ eyebrow and at the tips of his wet prickling hair. She saw then that he was sinking lower into the water. His head arched, and his neck stretched. He appeared to be looking beyond her now, gazing at something entirely less distinct. With eyes blurring, at the horizon beyond where dreams can bend reality into that which is best, where the Universe becomes both tangible and malleable to the touch and above all radiant and good.

“No you don’t” she blurted her voice cutting across the open expanse. “Don’t you go.” His eyes flashed with a returning light and almost smiling he said gently “don’t worry.” Still treading the surface he was unaware of his slipping. His ears submerged, slow sinking. He no longer could hear her urging, couldn’t hear his brother’s cursing at him, “Don’t fucking give up Kris.” With his lips just skimming the surface of the water, he watched Anna’s anxious face silently screaming and falling away. “It’s going to be ok” he heard his words echoing in chambers where his dream await him. “It’s ok”. His kicks slowed, his shakes were easing. Something about him was all-together more peaceful in that moment as the waters cleared clean and closed it’s veil.

And all was quiet on Lac Du Barrage.

“Try again Kris” echoed Wesley plaintive cry “Try” he shouted the empty ring of water.

“He’s not gone,” she whispered. She could see him there, still shimmering and present just below the cold river it’s current passing gently over his upturned lips, eyes wide open.

She dropped to her knees. And with a sound that came from somewhere deep in her belly she reached into the darkness to grasp a curtain of hair. “No you don’t” through gritted teach she pulled his serene face the surface blank and peaceful.

And then as if the air brought him sense Kris exploded into life. Sputtering and coughing he returned an arm on the ice surface and heaved for breath like an animal caught in trapper’s snare, it’s body savaged and yet somehow still alive. “Still alive,” she murmured through chattering teeth.

“Here,” she said simply. “Take my hand.”

It was all he could do it seemed to reach up his arm made heavy by the sodden coat. But he met her hand the his. He grasped hold and let her ease his body up. It was a nearly effortless thing she thought as she watched his torso, his blue jeans and bare feet come cascading onto the surface. He came to rest a wet bulk, emeshed and entangled with hers in an intertwinement of limbs. They lay still. She watched the current below the ice flow soundlessly in the direction of the little bridge that arched across a narrowing of the lake where Lac Dubarrage merged with the Lac Grand. She could see that it flowed gently under the snow.

And all was quiet on Lac Du Barrage.