The Iceboat

Hello Readers, 

     I've been busy with school and work, so obviously keeping up with the blog has been a challenge. I wrote this piece for my fiction writing class though, so I thought I'd share it. Fiction is not a style I use or experiment with, but the class has been interesting so far and I'm enjoying the challenge and trying something new. Maybe I will embrace the short story more after this semester. Enjoy!

The Iceboat

     One brisk midmorning in February, the sun gleamed across Ruby Lake. Here were the perfect conditions to take the new iceboat out for a sprint. Shaun was certain he would return before sunset as the door clicked behind him.

     The skates slid smoothly from snowbank to obsidian ice. Shaun stepped in and hoisted the sail, feeling excited. He glided quickly over the frozen water for the first time. But soon, Shaun noticed air bubbles clouding the boat’s reflection. Ahead, the weakened ice contorted upwards, forming a dangerous peak. Yet Shaun moved quickly as a charging moose.

     The impact sent Shaun soaring. Mere seconds later, Shaun followed his boat through the fragile ice. The water gurgled, swallowing Shaun as his lungs pleaded for air. He felt a bite in his leg as he struggled to pull himself back atop the ice.

     Free from the gelid hole, Shaun’s leg seared from ankle to knee, while the cold needled him. He shriveled upon standing. Hypothermia and injury weren’t keen to help him return to his cabin only 800 yards away. Having no choice, Shaun pulled his chest to his hands, using one knee as the other leg screamed. Every part of his body melded with the ice beneath him, but he continued, never so tired in his life.

     He remembered his time in the city, out of touch with the natural world and her challenge. Of course he was comfortable there, but people must fulfill an inner desire to live as their ancestors—subsisting off the land surrounding remote lakes.

     As he passed the 200 yard mark he flattened, his heart knocking his sternum and his throat burning raw with the scrape of exertion. He would give anything to sleep in the sled of some nonexistent rescuer. But Shaun was alone as a real Bushman.  Stoked with pain, Shaun’s hope was sinking with the sun.

     He understood why his friends mocked his plans. He’s just Shaun from the city after all. Iceboat Explorer and Wilderness Extraordinaire demean him, not at all the carefree existences he watched on TV.

     He crawled again.

     Closer now, the dot of the cabin expanded with each eternity. Shaun moved to escape the pain and hypothermic paralysis that refused to release him. Nature has a way of seeping into a man’s soul, he supposed, but forever forgetting her beauty posed as an afterthought until today. He watched his prime of 35 years dissipate like the heat from his skin. His life projected from his mind as Shaun pondered death. Never so miserable, never filled with as much determined hatred for the lake and his fantasies, he crawled ten more yards.

     At last! Numb, Shaun floated to the cabin and crumbled over the steps. He reached for the door as the last rays of sun, feeble as him, shined down.

     And there, in the pink February stillness, the knob ceased to turn. It was locked as the ice slabs forming the cruel wedge, resting in solitude until spring.